Remembrance Quilts and Painted Rocks

 I made this Remembrance Quilt recently for a sweet widow.  Her husband passed away late in 2019 of pneumonia.  He was 84, they had been married for 62 years.  He had such nice shirts!  She said he was the oldest of 12 children and really liked to have nice clothes.  She was pleased with the quilt, and shed a few tears, which I did too.  I hope it is a blessing to her when she misses him -- to wrap herself up in it and remember the good times.

I haven't painted in quite a while so after the Remembrance quilt I decided to spend a little time with this hobby.  I did another 3D apple.  I love doing these!  So fun.  I watched a youtube video over and over to try to get it right.  I gave this to a school teacher friend who was so excited to get it.  Makes me happy.

I attached my label which is what I do for the rocks I hide in our community for our Rock group.

Amazing, aren't they?

I also tried my hand at a June Bug.

I've noticed a lot of these flying around the pool where I've been taking the grandkids to swim.  I remember them as a kid. I was afraid of them but had neighborhood friends that would tie a string on them.  Poor June Bug :(

I got a few blue rocks with red hearts for a world wide painted rock drop next weekend.  The effort is to bring smiles to people around the world who will find and pick up these rocks. Its called "Paint a rock, hide a rock" day, and people are encouraged to post their finds on facebook.  The blue represents the world and the red heart the smiles in making someone's day brighter.

I wanted to duplicate a painted rock I found online.  Mine isn't nearly as good as the original by Martha Winenger (credit) but I like to try. Those little raccoons are harder to paint than they look.

...and I got in a little canning. I made some caramel apple jam. Tastes a lot like apple butter, in fact may be mostly the same recipe, except bits of the apples are still in tact in this jam.

The year is half over!

 How can that be?  2021 half over!  It's true. We are all enjoying the summer. The fourth of July was no exception.  Kids came over for some fireworks.

And they had some fun down at Grumps and Gigi's too.

This year was their first July 4th holiday fun as they were in the United Kingdom (Scotland/England) the past six years. They thoroughly enjoyed blowing stuff up!

I finished the second Little Miss Sawtooth quilt in blues and did a change out of the quilts on the beds.

Still my favorite room...

Jim "posing" with the new quilt.

Love this room too!

Put the colorful Jagged X on the love seat.  We are still awaiting the arrival of our couch we ordered five months ago!

My porch seemed a little bare this year. I loaned my patriotic quilts to our church for a display.

The display was amazing.

Uniforms from many arms of service and wars. Notebooks detailing top gunners missions, army rations, many photos and stories.  Amazing what the 'finest generation' did for our freedom.