Cross stitch update and Give Away!!

Thanks so much to all of you who looked at my Poulsbo post.  The area in my post was the part of town down near Liberty Bay(part of Puget Sound).  Up the hill there is another part of town with things like grocery stores, offices, and other places necessary for modern life. I do love our quaint little part of town by the water!  Now for today's post.  First, I am giving away a December Word Play.  If you would like it, please let me know in a comment  on this post.  I had a Sr. moment and ended up with two of them!!!!!! I will be drawing a name on Sunday. I would love to give one of them to one of my super followers. The rest is just a short catch up on the projects I have been working on. Pardon the poor photos , we are in the middle of another fall storm and the lighting is horrid !

 November Word Play is finished and in the lovely frame from Valley House Primitives!

 I am busy working on "Turkey Love" by Plum Street Samplers.

Thank goodness, I'm up to date on the Mary's Sampler sew along. I did change the color of the scarf on the shepherd.  All my browns were looking the same!

 Here is the December Word Play. I plan to stitch it in more reds and greens than the chart calls for.

 Look what the DH and I found at an antique mall yesterday.  It is an old chocolate mold from the 30's.  We got it for $30.  We found it on the internet for over $100.  Made our Day!!

When I saw that it did have a mark, I knew that we were doing pretty well with the price.  It will be fun to use him in Christmas decorating.

Thanks for taking a look and hope your week is going well!

Last Little Bit of Halloween!

First, thanks to all of you who took a look at my last post.  I so appreciate any comments that you make!  This should have been posted last Fri. but life got in the way.  We had gone over to my favorite huge gift -decorating store on the Sun. before Halloween.  I hoped to see all kinds of goodies.  Well, no way. It was all Christmas!!! There was a small shelf with Thanksgiving things but all the rest was Christmas.  Now, I do love decorating for Christmas BUT not in October!!! So last Wed. we went into Poulsbo to see what they were doing.  Much to my joy, all the stores were still immersed in Autumn and Halloween.  I will share the photos with you .  I do apologize for the tardiness of this post!

 A local coffee shop

 Even the book store is in the mood!

All kinds of Halloween aprons.

 We have several Galleries in town and they all had Autumn themes in the windows.

 A little antique store

Another gallery

 Isn't the owl cute?

A thrift store

 The local bakery-Do I need to stop there??NO!!!!!

 My favorite coffee shop had super decorations hanging from the ceiling.

We took a walk down to the harbor.  These pretty leaves were floating in the water.

I do love living near this delightful little town on Puget Sound!!

Happy Halloween!

A VERY HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO ALL OF MY WONDERFUL CLOUD FRIENDS!!

Cross Stitch Catch Up!

First, I would like to thank all of you who took time to read my blog about our short little trip to the coast. You made so many wonderful comments.  This will be a quick post showing what I have been doing with my cross stitch projects.  I also have something very funny to share with you.  Many of you remember the cross stitch I did fore my Grandson, Caleb.

 He said the funniest thing about it. His Mom had him call us on Sunday.  He said,"Gradma, I'm going to put this on my bedroom wall all my life, no matter where I live even when I'm as old as you."  I'll take that as a compliment!

 I have been doing the Mary Sampler 2 sew along by the wonderful Plum Street Samplers.  My linen is actually an off white color, not the blue you see here.  I had to make the angel's robe blue.  The off white color that was called for would never have shown up on my linen.

I have also been working on my November Word Play.  Again, the linen is much prettier than it looks in the photo.  Sorry for the wrinkles.  I press after I'm all finished.

 

Thanks for joining me today!  Hope you are all having a great week.  We have been stuck in fog but yesterday and today , the sun comes out around noon and we have a beautiful autumn afternoon!

The Beautiful Quinault Rainforest!

I hope you enjoyed the cranberry post from yesterday.  This was our last full day on our short little vacation.  We had never been to the Quinault Rainforest and it was only about 35 minutes north so we decided to go that way.  It turned out to be a great decision!  We saw a beautiful old lodge,some huge trees, a pretty lake and more interesting mushrooms than I can count!  In fact, this week-end they are having a mushroom festival.

 I guess this photo shows why Washington is called the Evergreen State!!

 This is one of the very old National Park Lodges built in 1926., very warm and inviting.

I am just showing you a few of the most unusual mushrooms .  We saw many more.

 My DH says these look just like fried eggs.

 I call this one the space ship!

 The purpose of the hike was to see this lovely waterfall.

 This Valley is home to 6 conifer trees recognized by the Forestry Association  as the largest living specimens of their species.  This tree was not one of them. Still so amazing.

On our way down, we saw this warning.  The sign said to make noise!  I talked to my DH all the way down!!!

 It takes a lot of rain to grow these giants!

Thanks so much for joining me on this great little trip.  I'll catch up on cross stitch on my next post!

Cranberries and the Ocean!

Today, we are taking a look at cranberry growing and the little town of Westport, Wa. This is the heart of western cranberry growing.  Plus it is a small town built on the Pacific coast. Thanks so much to those of you who looked at yesterday's blog.

 Another beautiful sunny day!

 Ready for harvest!  The previous week-end, they had the Cranberry Festival.  Today it was very quiet.

Ocean spray has a huge plant in Westport.

 This machine picks and bags the berries.

 Then they come on a wagon and pick up the bags.

The fields were this lovely shade of pink.

 Downtown Westport, very much a fishing village with lots of charter boats.

We could hear these guys a quarter mile away!

 Lots of surfers-notice the wet suits! This is not Hawaii!!

I hope you are having a restful Sunday.  Thanks so much for joining me.  Tomorrow it's the Quinault Rainforest!

A Perfect Storm!

My title explains what happened at the end of last week.  First, the weather prediction was beautiful sunny days as far as they could see. Second, I received an email from Sunset Magazine(the Western equivalent of Southern Living) saying that they had picked a town on the coast that was this years idea town and if you stayed 2 days, you got a third one free.  So the DH and I decided that this was something we could not resist.  Oh , I forgot to say that the news had done  a very interesting story about cranberry harvesting in that area. Off we were to the beach!  My first post will be about this delightful little place called Seabrook.  Tomorrow I will show you the cranberries and beach photos and next will be the amazing Quinault Rainforest. If you are only interested in my stitching, you might want to skip my next few posts.  (But I did quite a bit of stitching, that's for another day.)

 Most of the homes are second homes. The nearest large grocery store is over a half hour away.  I love the New England look of the village.

 This was our little rental.

 Not all the houses are small!!!!

 One of my favorites!

View from the Main Street!

 Beach access.

 Patio of the Idea House.There were week-end tours of this house.

 This is a small garden that I fell in love with!

Lots of garden art!

 Many cottages had names.

When I win the lottery, I'm going to buy a house over here!!!!!! Thanks for joining me today!