Lighthouse and a Jack-O-Lantern

Welcome to my blog on a warm(yes,even in Seattle) Sat. night.  Thank you so much to all of you who comment and read my blog! I have some new followers and thank you very much!!
Today is the Sat. in July that the SBA(husband and Super Blog Assistant-he loads the pictures) and I volunteer as docents at the Point No Point  Lighthouse.  I have done blogs with lots of lighthouse pictures, so I'll only show a few today.  We have had really strange weather.  We never have thunderstorms out here.  Before yesterday, maybe two thunder claps in 8 years.  Well, we had storms all day yesterday and again this morning.  It is muggy and humid(very rare for here).It seemed foggy and humid at the lighthouse,not the beautiful blue sky we are used to.  It was still fun and we had many very nice visitors!
Since my only cross stitch has been on the mystery sampler, I haven't been showing much.  I decided to show a pumpkin as that is no surprise.  Any good Halloween sampler would have a pumpkin!!

Our beautiful lighthouse!!!

 

The tower and lens.

New on the grounds.  A great place to sit and relax.  The bench is all drift wood.

A view from the front door of the lighthouse.

I thought this sail was so pretty.

Mystery Sampler pumpkins!

I hope you are all having a wonderful week-end and staying cool.

Welcome to Day 2 of Whidbey Island! Today I'm going to focus on the flowers.  It seemed that both the towns of Langley and Coupeville had beautiful flowers everywhere.  I think it has to do with the mild climate.  Since it doesn't get too hot, keeping flowers looking great isn't a lot of hard work. In fact , the week is still just beautiful.  Our days are sunny with temps in the 70's to low 80's.  My daughter and I will probably go raspberry picking at a U Pick farm tomorrow morning.  The berries out here are the best I have ever seen. Well, I hope you are having a great end of the week.  Thank you so much for taking a look at this blog and I hope you enjoy the flowers.

 Not quite flowers, but a lovely view from the Main Street in Langley.

 All the posts had these hanging baskets on them.

A very cute bench! Out here, salmon is king!!!

 This was our lunch spot.

 The view from the lunch spot.

I had read about this pace and wanted to visit.  The owner specializes in dark colored flowers and flowers that smell like chocolate. She was proud to tell us that she is getting ready for a visit from Martha Stewart Living.

 One of her plants.  

Now we are back in Coupeville.  These lovely containers were all along the street.

 Just a typical back porch!

 There were 3 different colored begonia baskets in this back yard. All were equally lovely!

I hope these flowers have brightened your day!  Thanks again for joining me.  In the cross stitch world, I'm working on the mystery sampler part one.  I'm about half finished.  I'm not sure how much we are suppose to share, so for the time being , it can remain a mystery.  For those of you waiting for it, it is a fun stitch!!

Whidbey Island

I hope the week is going well for everyone.  It looks like the heat in the East is much better.  Thanks to all of you who read my blog and I do love the comments!! We had two great days on Whidbey Island.  We took tons of photos.  Today I'm going to show mainly pictures of the Coupeville area.  Coupeville is a delightful little town right on the water.  The famous Penn Cove mussels come from this area.  Much of this land is the same as it has  been for years.  They have preserved it as a National Historic Area called  Ebey Historic Preserve.  It was named after one of the pioneer families. This is one of the few areas in Western Washington the had a wonderful prairie for farming.  Because the people in the area wanted to preserve it, many of the houses have been there for years and are still farm homes.  The prairie goes right down to the shore.  As usual we spent lots of time walking on the beautiful beach.  I hope you enjoy the pictures.  Tomorrow, I'm going to focus on the wonderful flowers!

 This is the prairie that ends in the above picture!

 There was a lot of kelp!

A great place to gather drift wood.

This is probably one of the original old farm houses.

 I think this is a new home but built like a very old one.

This house was next to our B&B.  It had a nice water view! It is for sale!!!!! Well,let's see...maybe if I win the lottery...

Thanks again for taking a look at my blog! The flowers on this island were wonderful . That's for tomorrow!

Welcome to my blog on a very nice warm Sun. afternoon.  Thank you so much for taking time to read and comment .  I love reading your comments!! I hope it has been a good week-end for all of you. 
 We finally have summer here in the Pacific NW.  Now not the kind of suffering heat many of you have been getting.  It's actually funny to listen to the weather people out here.  If it is going to be in the 80's they tell you to drink plenty of water and watch the children and animals!!  Last night our weather lady scared me! I thought we might be headed to the dreaded 90's. She said that today the heat was on!! This meant it was going to maybe get to 85. Now on the East side of the Cascades, that is another matter.  They are in the high 90's. Enough of the weather.  I started the Lizzie-Kate Halloween Mystery Sampler.  So far, I'm loving it.  I bought all the recommended threads and the colors are just lovely. I'm using Salem as a back up.  I expect to finish the first part before the second part gets here.  So I'll have Salem Village to fill in with.  I'm not using the threads that were recommended.  The best price I could find on line for the recommended floss was $7.20 a skein.  That is a bit over my price comfort level , especially for a seasonal piece.  I substituted with threads I had on hand.  So far, the words and the date are with GA Black Crow. The skeleton and the little trees are with GA Freedom,and the witch hats are with Weeks Dye Works Mascara.  I do think the recommended floss was prettier, just too expensive. Also,  the Freedom is quite a bit lighter, it does not look like that in the photo. I have added a few garden photos.  Hope you enjoy them.

 Lisa,who was the designer at the Primitive Needle before her horrid accident, did a great job with the skeleton type design.

 We went to Boston several years ago and took this photo of a very old grave.  You can see the similarities.I do think these old cemeteries are so sad as many of the graves belong to children.This little child was only six.

Now if you just like the cross stitch part you can skip the rest of the garden photos.

The mock orange is still wonderful.  I love the little bit of red near the center that is part of this variety.

I tried to show the blues, pinks and the white of the delphinium.  Notice that a peony is still in bloom!!

This plant is about 5 feet tall.

This is a hardy fuchsia.  The bush is covered with these pretty flowers.

Tomorrow I should have an interesting post.  The SBA and I are headed over to spend a night on Whidbey Island. Earlier this summer, we realized that we saw more of this magnificent place when we used to visit.  So we decided that one goal for this summer was to do more road trips to fairly nearby places. The island is very pretty so I hope you will take a look! Have a great week!!!