Linda just got a Sweet Sixteen from Handi Quilter and I have sewing machine lust! She is really excited and I know she's going to love it. Guess what I'm going to be getting instead?

That's right, I'm getting braces. I only need them on my top 8-10 front teeth for 4 months, followed by a retainer. I'm getting the more invisible bands and buttons (I think that's what they call the doodad that is glued to your tooth). As braces go this is not all that bad.

But you know what? Braces = most of the cost of a Sweet Sixteen. That's the part that hurts! At least Linda will have a year to learn all the ins and outs of the Sweet Sixteen and I look forward to the time she can share what she's learned!

Steve and I went to Dallas today to shop – but not at the mall. We went to Orr-Reed Wrecking looking for used wood to make a new dining room table. We tried to buy one new, but I guess we are too particular. We decided to make something unique! We found this wood:

Notice that it's tongue and groove? It's 2" x 6" pine flooring. Not what I was expecting to find but Steve is very happy. He's going to glue them together, side by side, to make a solid tabletop. The tongue and groove is going to make that process easier.

It turns out that these boards are about 60 years old. They were flooring in a hanger at Love Field. I would never have imagined an airplane hanger with wood floors! They are currently stacked on our garage floor with the 2 porch posts that we also purchased. We're going to cut them in half and use them for the table legs. Steve is going to start working on this soon so I'll post more photos as the table progresses.

This is what Orr-Reed Wrecking looks like. There's a lot more than this. Notice the bird houses?

Mr. Jones has been making these bird houses for many years. I have one on my front porch and love it dearly.

Next we went to Century Modern where we picked up this chair for our living room. It's my new sewing chair! Century Modern is like an antique store except that their 'antiques' are century modern in style. Great place to find this sort of thing.

And these are the chairs that I had to leave behind. I don't think Steve was sorry that we couldn't afford them. They are almost awful – but I loved them anyway. But I can picture them without the horrible vinyl seats…

…but not yesterday. Steve and I hauled and spread mulch for hours on Sunday. There is a lot of roadwork going on on Hwy 82 east of town. Lots of equipment that was parked for the weekend:

Including "Hogzilla':

Hogzilla is the mulching machine. Don't you love the name Hogzilla?!

The extremely wide median, which was pretty smooth in the center, was lined with enormous piles of mulch an dirt. And parked machinery. We made 6 trips, filling the back of Steve's pickup, and hardly made a dent in the pile we worked on.

It's a lot easier to move the mulch (both into the truck and onto the yard) if it is in manageable bins and buckets.

If you look close you'll see the mulch on the ground. It's mostly cedar and has a quietly nice smell. The pretty tree in the distance is one of two native yaupons. The leaves are yellow and it is covered in small red berries. These little trees drive me crazy most of the year because they send off roots and new trees all over the place. They'd take over the yard if I let them. But this time of year I appreciate their beauty.

And here's Steve, cutting stone. We had raised beds for vegetables in the area behind him, next to the driveway. We realized last summer that we are just not vegetable gardeners so he took out the raised beds and we covered the area with mulch today. We're going to put in a tree next week and I'm going to plant lavendar and zinnias there next summer. He's cutting stone to go in a row next to the driveway so that when we get out of the truck we can step onto stone.

So, while it was a glamorous day, it was a really nice day!

I got the how-to-make earrings movie finished. I'm embedding it here and it's also on our video page at pieceocake.com. I'm sorry I wandered off-camera a bit to the left. I have a little trouble seeing what I'm doing when I'm straddling a tripod and camera. You'll also notice that I spliced in a little segment, correcting myself. I'm at least learning new video tricks!

Who knew yellow was the new black (As seen on de(coeur)acao.)? Actually, as much as I love yellow, I don't think it can replace black. But yellow is a very, very nice accent when paired with black! I do think that chocolate brown can in many instances be substituted for black. But I'm hard pressed to think of another color that is a good substitute for black in quilts.

Other dark colors can be used in place of black but each brings a particular attitude to a quilt. Think aobut burgundy, navy, deep forest green – they can all be very dark, but they each have an attitude that brown and black do not share. Burgundy and deep purple take me back to the jewel tones of the 80s, navy feels coastal – I think of Ralph Lauren. Almost any 'color' brings up a reaction in me. Is it just me, or do you associate colors with different times, different smells, different attitudes?

I finally had time to make some earrings using the felt balls, seed beads, and findings we have on our site. They are even easier to make than I thought they would be – and I thought they'd be very easy!

FYI – for those of you who have never heard of 'findings', they are the wires, hooks, chains and clasps that are used in jewelry making. We have just a few on our site – enough to get you started. If you really get into this, you may want to go to your local craft store or look for more online.

Here are some close-ups:

Those are 2CM black felt balls with beads sewn to them. The bigger white beads and the b/w combination beads are ones I had in my stash.

This pair is made of two 2CM green felt balls and two 1CM or 1.5CM gold felt balls. The seed beads are the black iridescent and the crystal from our site.

I'm in the process of making a 'how-to' movie and I'll let you know when I get it uploaded.