Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to my wonderful husband

I can't imagine Amelia having a better daddy!

  Happy Father's Day to my dad, my Pop, my Grampy, Josh's dad, and Josh's stepdad as well!  We are full of Fathers here!

The Summer Cottage

Notice I didn't say MY summer cottage!  Living in Rhode Island, we get to go visit the summer "cottages" of the rich and richer.  The day before Mother's Day, we took Josh's mom to Blithewold,  the summer home of the Van Winkles, a coal mining family.

You can't take pictures inside, but I was able to get some of the grounds, the green house, and the lovely flowers.  Imagine playing croquet on that lawn in the warm summer breeze?

Or sipping lemonade from this porch?

Or growing fruit and flowers in this greenhouse?

 

Imagine seeing such loveliness in your personal gardens?

Imagine needing bamboo for plant stakes and just growing your own bamboo garden?

Imagine having your picture taken beneath this tree all the time?

Imagine???

Decorations

I have been having a great time reading each and every response to my giveaway.  I like hearing about the different meaningful decorations that loved ones have given you, made for you, or left for you.  Sentimentality and simplicity seem to be two themes running through the comments.  When I post a winner, I'll tell you about my favorite Christmas decoration. In this post I'll tell you something neat about my husband.  He loves Christmas.  He loves Christmas decorations too.  In fact, he loves Christmas so much that he came with a whole bunch of Dickens Village pieces.  They are set up in his bookcase right now.  They are so beautiful all lit! 

 

I love how God put us together - "Loves Christmas" was not something on my list of things to look for in a future husband, but God took care of that for me!

Celebratory Fruit... A Cake and Heather Bailey

Weird title, I know!

Monday and Tuesday were my
1.) Birthday and
2.) Anniversary
which equals
3.) Complicated gift and celebration planning time for my husband. He always comes through though as you will see in a minute!

We had a GREAT few days, which I'll share more abut in another post. I wanted to highlight just the fruit in this one... ;)

So first, my mom made me this fantastic cake for my birthday. If you remember the cake from last year (2008 cake) you won't be surprised at how cool this cake is. My mom is talented!
The juice is actually colored corn syrup to make it look like juice. Take that Ace of Cakes!

Secondly, this is our second anniversary {cotton anniversary} and I got the sweetest, funnest, most fabulous present from Heather Bailey (and Josh).

He emailed Heather Bailey, looking to find out about signed pin cushions that he saw on the website a while back. He got a very sweet email back from Emily saying that there weren't any more signed pin cushions, but Heather was willing to part with a pear one. (He was inquiring about getting one for my birthday, but gave it to me for an anniversary present instead since it fit so nicely with the cotton anniversary). SO, Heather signed my pear! And it's perfect in the craft room! And my husband is the best! So are Heather and Emily! Thank you so much!


This is what I made Josh by the way. It's his name in nautical flags for his "man room." Cotton anniversary is my specialty (his too apparently)! Next year is leather - oh my!