Monthly Archives: May 2016

“My ‘Blue’-ming Garden” and Away with the Blues

I am happy to say that my mood is no longer “blue” and the sun is shining for the second morning in a row. Thank you for all of the uplifting and helpful comments the last couple of days. It’s been fun hearing from you.

I picked a bouquet yesterday with creeping Charlie (yes, it’s a weed and my husband didn’t think it was funny), phlox, and forget-me-nots.

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The title of Lucy’s ensemble was quite easy to come up with. Outside of the obvious, it’s blue, and everywhere I look outside I see shades of blue/blue violet blossoms.

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Here is Lucy! She is all ready to stroll around the SUNNY garden paths and collect some flowers to make mom a bouquet for Mother’s Day.

This ensemble ended up having more hand made pieces than what I normally make for an outfit; it was quite labor intensive. As I was working on this outfit for the Little Darlings, I felt it needed a hat, and then I felt the sweet little crocheted slippers would be perfect… so I went with it, and just kept on creating. Do you like it?

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The hand knit and embroidered mohair/silk lace weight sweater really is “light as a feather” and so soft. The motifs that I embroidered on the sweater coordinate with the dress print.

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Lucy’s crocheted hat is made with three colors of cotton and two different weights. I wanted it to have the feel of a straw hat, so included a camel color. It is delicately embellished with cotton lace, silk ribbon, blue blossoms, and seed beads. I fussed with the bow to get it to lay “just right”. Everything is carefully hand sewn to this hat with Fray Check added to the ribbon edges. I love how this photo shows off Lucy’s cute profile.

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Lucy’s flower cutting basket is crocheted with hemp. Her flowers can lay in the basket or she can hold them. They are secured with a clear band and silk ribbon.

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I love these girls in ballet styled slippers. Their legs are so graceful. I made these soles out of a matching tan to pick up the natural colors in the hat and basket.

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Gina’s drop waist styled dress is simple and perfect for a garden stroll.

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Lucy had to have matching panties… a hand dyed and tied silk ribbon to match her dress!

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Lucy’s “My ‘Blue’-ming Garden” will be available tonight (May 3, 2016) at 7:00 pm CST, cindyricedesigns.com , link is on the “Shop What’s New” page (at 7pm).

It’s a Sunny Morning!

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It’s beautiful outside! The sun is shining, the sky is BLUE, the birds are singing! Glorious! I snapped a few photos to show you, so I can share my sunshine with you. My kitchen faces west, but you can see shadows in the grass.

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And, out the front door (east) the yard is all nice and sunny. When I am sitting at my kitchen table I can look out both the west facing bay window and the east facing front door.

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You can see the last remaining white magnolia blossoms and to the right is one of our (?) flowering bushes. We also have a larger one which got a little clipping yesterday. I made a bouquet with quite a few of its blossoms. They smell absolutely heavenly!

Does anyone know for sure what these are? We didn’t plant them, so we don’t know. They smell and look like lilacs, but I couldn’t find this variety anywhere on the internet. Last year, I must have found a photo of these because I then thought that they were honeysuckle. I just now searched for honeysuckle and these do not look like the photos I found at all. Hmmm… any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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Thanks to Orli and April for the links to my flower question from yesterday. These are called Creeping Charlie here in the U.S. with a European version called Lamium amplexicaule. Yesterday I discovered this “weed” growing in our yard, but with the fuchsia or magenta blossoms. They are from the mint family, so a bouquet might be nice.

Hope you all have a beautifully sunny day. If not, I’m sending some your way.

Bye for now!

It’s May!

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It’s May, but it doesn’t feel like it around here. We are on day 6 of dreary, dark, usually rainy weather. Ugh, ugh, ugh! Really, I am so very tired of it. When it is so dreary day upon day, it takes a real mental workout just to get out of bed in the morning.

One thing that I’ve started doing in the last few days is to count my blessings (and I have many) before I get up, so I can get up on the right side versus the wrong side of the bed. It makes all the difference to get out of bed with a grateful heart rather than a “woe is me” feeling inside.

Once I get up, this is how I start my mornings on these dark days–30 minutes of blue light (and a cup of coffee or tea 🙂 ). The blue light really make all the difference in how I sleep at night (as long as I remember to stay off of the computer a couple of hours before bedtime).

Just to show you how dreary it’s been… I think this was taken on Thursday or Friday.

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In addition to the clouds, we’ve been getting lots of rain too. A mallard couple thought that our pool cover was a pond and flew right in yesterday. The feral cat was on the deck, the dog was barking at them, and they didn’t care; they stayed awhile and swam around.

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One of the blessings that I took note of on Saturday morning was the sunshine we got at 5:00 pm on Friday. I know, not much, but I’ll take what I can get. I made sure my BJD resin dolls were out of the sunlight and opened the curtains in my sewing room. It was so nice and warm!

Unfortunately, my last doll outfits (the one I just finished for Sugar) and the one I’ve been working on all week are in blue. Couldn’t I pick something in yellow? It is really hard to work with blue when it is dreary. I think I will look at the weather forecast the next time I want to make something in blue. lol

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Here are some photos from the last time I took a sunshine-y walk (last Monday). The violets were blooming; I love violets!

Even dandelions are pretty (I think so anyway).

These teeny tiny purple flowers bloom in large patches in the grass this time of year. They look like a carpet of purple. Does anyone know what they are? They are super duper tiny; you can see that they make the dandelion appear huge.

We are supposed to have a very nice week, so that is what I am counting on, but I am aware that you cannot count on the weather, so I had better prepare myself… just in case.