…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.

… or, if you are me, you might sometimes say "WTF"?

I have changed my vocabulary since my youth, deleting those words that really can't be said in polite conversation. But my kids are grown and every now and then I do have to say "WTF"! (I apologize to those of you never resort to using words that can't be printed in a newspaper.) But I do think there are some situations that might make the nicest among us say WTF…

These are designed by Minga, from Argentina – and there are more designs that are just as good. If I could figure out how to order a poster, I would. Of course I'd have to hang it out of view of my grandchildren who would ask me what 'WTF' means and then I'd have to tell them. Their other grandmother, Judy, would figure out how to not tell them and I'm so happy that they have her in their lives too!

I've got my house ready for the holidays – had to because we had a party last weekend. Nothing like a deadline to get you moving! I'm not particularly good with centerpieces and I didn't want to spend a lot of money on flowers that I knew I couldn't arrange well. Instead I used glass pieces I already had with sparkly inexpensive garland and glass ornaments. Here's a grouping that ended up on top of my grandmother's china cabinet in the dining room:

And a close-up, below. What's nice is that I can move them around from place to place as needs change.

It has taken me years to figure out that if you keep the color combinations fairly simple (in this case red and white and clear glass) it looks planned and more expensive. I used the color combo throughout the house except on my tree where the lights are multi-colored and the ornaments span the ages.

We've had this tree for more than 20 years – it's become a member of the family. I've spray painted and glued glitter to it in recent years and it fits our space really well. Why mess with what works?!