Our weather turned cool here on Friday and Sat.then warmed up today. I went to the flea market this morning to stock up on our weekly fruits and vegetables. We try and eat a lot of fruit and raw veggies with our meals - not sure we make 5 a day but give it a good try. I picked up a bag of vintage bottle brush trees for.50 cents. One fairly large green one, 2 medium beige and 1 small green. I have started decorating this weekend. I bought a small pre-lit 4' tree and put it on the table in the sunroom that is right in front of the kitchen window. When lit you can see it from both rooms, I also picked up a cute Santa with a pink velvet hat for 2.00 plus bought some air plants that just need misting for my terrarium. Things that need water either do so well they hit the ceiling or else they die. Will give the air plants a try. 3 air plants and 3 small pots for them to sit in for 8.50. I gave the orchids a bypass today and bought 1 pink poinsetta for $4.00. I get that I can't stand the site of the red ones because they fill the whole front entrance and all the way down the boulevard with them starting Dec. 1. Out come all the yellow mums and in come the red ones. The entrance does look lovely especially at night. All the lamp posts right down to the clubhouse have red ribbon wrapped around them and red bows at the top. Each entrance to a section of the club is decorated by the people who live in that area. They do a beautiful job for volunteers. Aparently the club rents storage space somewhere and thats where all the things go after christmas. No basements here to put them in.

We had some visitors the other day. 2 sand hill cranes came to visit. A few years back my neighbour started to feed them and they were around all the time then we found out it is illegal to feed them plus dangerous as when the want food they will come and peck their way right thru a screen lanaii. After she stopped feeding them they disappeared and so was surprised to see them come to our area. It is nice to see the wildlife. We get a lot of different birds in the ponds thru the winter and I alwlays like seeing the large white ones. We often see eagles and hawks and they will dive bomb down and come up with a fish and do it so fast you almost can't see it. I also included a pic of our "fall color change". We have 2 crepe myrtle trees in our back yard and they lose their leaves by about Jan. Then come feb. the crew cuts them right back and we look at skeleton trees for a couple of months until the new leaves emerge. There is something wrong with this pattern. We are gone all summer and that is when they flower and really bloom and nary a one left when we get back in Oct. we keep thinking we should remove them and put something else there but never do.

My friend Cathy over at http://www.cathyscrazybydesign.blogspot.com is having a great giveaway scheduled for next weekend. She has a wonderful blog and is a great crazy quilter. Go over and visit.

I thought of the owl from yesterday and decided to try him today. See what happens.

There you go Cathy. Isn't he cute? that shows me that if certain pics go crazy one day just wait till the next day and try again without killing ourselves trying to enter them.

I am going to try once again to download 3 pics of the new book I was telling you about. See if today is a better day.

Well what do you know - they worked except I forgot to take the owl for Cathy. She will have to get the book as I know she will.

Happy Turkey day to all who celebrate Thanksgiving Day today. I would be more thankful for a small thing. I posted my yesterdays post a few minutes ago minus the 5 pics I had taken to go with it. On the desktop screen they are correct. when I added them to my blog they turned sideways. One facing one way and the other 4 facing the other way. You would have to stand on your head twice to see them. I have been playing around with them for hours trying to get them to post correctly. If anyone out there can help me I would appreciate it and then show you the pics of this great book.

HELP

Hugs

FredaB

I saw this book at JoAnnes last week and immediately grabbed it. It was one of those books that you look at for a moment and get so excited. I thought this might nudge me back into a creative moment or two - lets hope.

The 2 authors are from South Africa I believe. They are Lesley Turpin-Delport and Nikki Delport-Wepener who I assume is her daughter. Of course you know what happens to people who assume. It is absolutely filled with small projects that would work wonderful on cq and silk ribbon embroidery. Birds, butterflies, animals, flowers, etc. The book puts me in mind of Di van Niekirks type of work. Now the more I look maybe I can start on one of these.

There is even a beatiful owl and a pair of owls shown here for my owl loving friend Cathy K from www.cathyscrazybydesign.blogspot.com. She just finished making a basketful of cute stuffed owls for her market sale at the farm where she works part time. Cathy you would love this book.

Great one for anyone's Christmas list. Too bad I couldn't have waited for Santa.

It is about time I made a post on here. I think this is the longest I have gone without posting and hope never to be this long again. Part of it is because I have been in a stitching slump and can't seem to get going. Today I would like you to see stitching done by a very good friend of mine who is very talented. Barb & I met about 10-11 years ago when we moved into our house in Mt. Dora. We are the last house on our end of the steet and Barb was right in the middle of the cul-de-sac at the other end. When you come into Stonebridge you go either right or left. I went left and Barb went right. I can't remember how we met but we were kindred souls probably from the day we met. She invited me into the garden club which I joined and am still there. She also invited me into a small group of gals that meet every second Mon. morning from 10 - 12 to stitch, knit, just sit and talk, whatever. I am still in it and was there this morning. We lost a gal to cancer in the past year and lost Barb but one new gal entered our group.

Well I knew Barb was a little unhappy with this area and was itching to move on but I did not take her seriously until the day came that she said I was the first to know they were selling their house and moving to SC. Well that was in the days where you listed a house and it was sold in no time. Mind you Barb had a beautifully decorated house and I knew it would go fast. They lived here full time while we were snowbirds and that probably made the difference. I have never experienced a Florida 6 month 90 degree summer with high humidity. Well Barb moved and there went my shopping buddy, my sewing buddy, my best friend down here.

Well good friends do not lose touch and we haven't. When she left I gave her one of Trish Burr's beautiful books and look what she sent me via email a couple of weeks back. The pics are so gorgeous I thought they were pics out of the book until you see the little initials on the bottom. I am also enclosing the pic that Barb made for our 50th. anniversery this past summer. I had it with me this morning as the sewing gals wanted to see it plus the invitation my daughter had made. No one could believe that Barb made the embroidery by hand. It is just beautiful. I am going to make a journal next summer with all my beautiful cards and Barb's will be front and center. I think you will agree with me that this is a friend to brag on. By the way her name is Barbara Kitrel and she now resides in Simpsonville, SC.

I was going to mention last week that our friend from http://magpiescollectables.blogspot.com/ is having a giveaway of a beautiful crazy quilted journal. Sorry to be so late posting this but go to her site and have a look.

Also another Canadian crazy quilter. I think we are getting some very talented ladies from the frozen north.

Hugs and just kidding about the frozen but I get blamed every time the weather turns cold.

Hugs

FredaB

Here I am back again and hopefully our life will settle down to a normal routine again and I can get some stitching done and some blogging as well. We had the re-union and all went well except Harv picked up some kind of virus (not HINI) as they tested him for that. He was one sick puppy with a fever the day we went to the doctors that was 101 arond 1 pm and at 2.45 it was 104. His normal is around 97 so that was really extreme. He put him on a very strong antibiotic called Cipro for 15 days and he just finished the last one yesterday. It took over a week and almost 2 until I could tell he was really feeling like his old self. We both had the regular flu shot before we came down here so we have no idea and neither does the Dr. as to what it was.

I was also involved with our Garden Club's 60th. anniversery tea and offered to decorate one of the tables (3 in our circle) which meant the whole ball of wax. China, silver, flower arrangement and all the goodies. I offered last spring thinking November would be easy. Well it might have been but with all the other stuff going on it wasn't. It did get done with a little help from my friends, had a great time and when I get some pics will post them. Can you believe I went to all that work then forget to take the camera. Will get some from other members.

Back in Oct. I sent in money for breast cancer to Monica Magness who started the pink artist project. The main winner would have won an extremely beautiful, though artsy type, quilt. Not your usual grandmother's quilt. Certainly a one of its own kind. Well I did not win that but many artists contributed their work and there were 60 other prizes. I actually won 2 of them and I have the pics to show you. The Josephine collage painting was done by an artist named Lulu Moon who comes from the Pcific Northwest. The other was a sewing bag when opened included a beautiful little beaded doll attached to a pair of scissors. This was made by a fabulous beader named Cynthia Bicker also from the Pacific Northwest. I was very lucky and did not expect to win even one prize never mind two. If they repeat this next year I must get involved and make something to donate. Hope you enjoy the pics.

I would like to recommend a book to you today. I was browsing new fiction at the library when I saw on the cover a favorable review by Lisa See. The name of the book is "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by a man named Jamie Ford who is himself of a Chinese background like Lisa See. I felt if Lisa liked it I would and was right.

The book is based in Seattle and starts in 1942 at the start of the Japanese invasion of the Pacific. It goes back and forth between 1942 and 1986. The young Chinese boy Henry is re-telling the story of when he was just 12 years old and the Japanese people in his area are rounded up and sent to concentration camps until the end of the war. He has a young friend from school, a girl, who is Japanese and she is taken away. His family makes him wear a button on his shirt saying "I am Chinese" so he will not be mistaken for Japanese.

Going back to my childhood through the war time I do not remember this ever happening in Canada. My husband does not either. Maybe there were not a large amount of Japanese living in Canada. If I am wrong with this maybe some of my Canadian readers could correct this for me. I do remember VE day (Victory Europe) and VJ day (Victory Japan). I was only little but in school and when they announced it all the church bells started ringing, streetcars sounding their bells and they just opened the schools and let all the children out. I remember my Mother was working in a paper factory called Egry Continuous forms making forms and paper for the forces. We ran down to her building and they were letting everyone out so we all went home together. Can you imagine nowadays them opening up the schools and just letting all the children out. Of course living in the city of Toronto we all walked to school. Odd memories popped up while reading this book.

I would highly recommend this book both for those old enough to remember the era and more so for those too young to remember this sad time in history.

I also have a new blog to tell you about today especially since I am talking about Canada. This gal lives on the West Coast about a 40 minute ferry boat ride to the city of Vancouver. Her blog is http://www.creativedaily.blogspot.com. She is having a great giveaway and her blog is beautiful. Drop by and see it.