Hurrah! Yesterday I sewed a bunch of napkins. Altogether, we have 10 new napkins. We ought to be good for now. 

How many pot lids do I need? How many small ones, big ones, and in-between ones should I keep? The huge ones make wonderful cymbals. Clang, clang!  Those I'll keep for now. I doubt any of the pot lids I found in the cabinets belong to the Husband and me, whether acquired together or individually before we knew the other existed. Most, if not all, of these pot lids belong to Mama. Awk! She wouldn't have liked knowing that so many lids have no accompanying pots. If she were here now, I would expect her to glare at me, spew out her hit parade of unflattering names at me, and critique me with something like "You're worse than a boy!" In hindsight,  hearing it all said in Ilocano and understanding it in English may have saved me from being susceptible to herd mentality. Thank you, Mama and Daddy. Where was I? Pot lids! Mama had favorite ones. A few of the lids are etched with her name. "Why would she do that?" asked the Husband. "Would someone actually t...

Zip, rip. Wrap. Zip, rip. Wrap. "That looks like fun," said the Husband. "Want to make one?" See the yellow butterfly in the above photo mosaic. That's the Husband's creation. I love it when the Husband plays artsy-crafty with me. Over the past few months, we transformed hangers and colored and patterned tape into four butterflies. The fourth butterfly was shy about getting its photo taken. We think it may be hiding near the back fence. I thought it would be cool to hang butterflies around the backyard. I was done after making three. I still have a lot hangers. What to do with them? What to do? A PLYWOOD BOARD Who has made a desk by setting a solid piece of plywood (or door) over two file cabinets (or something like that)? My canvas of a plywood board was once my desk top when the Husband and I lived in the big city area almost two decades ago. Pshew, wow. I wrote a whole bunch of good stuff on that desk. Before being my desk, the plywood board was the ...

"Do you think someone might report our backyard as a nuisance?" "Nobody can see back there." answered the Husband.  "Snoops can," I said, thinking about that drone we saw one afternoon turning around above our house. I wondered if it had followed us home. The bastard. As Mama liked to say after I said something weird, but quite entertaining to her, "You have too much imagination." "It's nobody's business how our backyard looks," the Husband said.  I imagined him word-sparring with a snoop. The Husband, my hero.  At this particular point in time, the backyard looks like a colorful junkyard in the Spring. I find its look comforting. It's familiar to a time past. It gives me strength to keep on keeping on. I wonder if that's how Mama felt when she played out there, growing her vegetables and tending to her flowers.  It's my turn now to transform the backyard into a fantasy of my making. I have...

The other morning I went through the last of Mama's clothes hanging in the closet. Hanging at the back of the closet was a little girl's red coat with matching red bonnet.  The outfit is in pristine shape, as if it had been bought yesterday. It was, about 64 years ago, at least.  Most likely I wore the jacket a few times. I was a fast grower in my early years, both in height and girth. See how cute the hat is on the camel in this collage. Yes, that little girl being directed to look at the camera was me sporting the red hat. Mama must've just put it on me because in another photo with only Big Brother and me, the bonnet was perched limply on the top of my head, as if Mama said to Daddy, "Put the hat on Susie's head." Snap.  I'm thinking about cutting the red coat apart, along with a few other things I found in Mama's closet: her wool black dress, a blue tweed jumper Mama made for me in 7th grade, and a blue wool skirt I bought during my early...

Ha-haaah! Two days ago marked one full year of posting every day on this blog. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Last October I was feeling quite aimless.  Within two years, the Mama died of old age, the Husband got a pacemaker, and my reproductive system, along with a bit of cancer, was cut away. Yes, I had an excuse, if I needed one, to feel aimless.  Except I didn't want to feel aimless, which for me could lead to digging a deeper crevice in which to fall. So, I committed myself to this blog. Post every day I told myself. Original posts, preferably. On wordless days, I looked in my archives for something to share. One year later, do I still feel aimless? Buzzed is more like it. Buzzing like a bee flitting from one flower to the next. My flowers are artsy and craftsy repurposing rojects of all manner. Fun projects are revealing themselves to me, left and right. What to do? Which to attempt first? I also want to finish reading Anne Perry's Dark Tide Risi...

The paints came out last week. Splash! Splish! A blue elephant now dances across a dinner plate. A once-upon-a-time metal spoon holder now pirouettes in the breeze. This morning the Husband set up the portable table outside so I can play at being an artist. I envision a white pan being painted into a turtle, chicken wire being mangled into the shape of an elephant, and a branch being cut and put back together into something, maybe an asterisk. If any of those things turn out well, it becomes my entry for garden art in next month's county fair. We shall see. Time again for All Seasons , a weekly meme hosted by Jesh of The Jesh Studio , which is where I'm heading to share my post. Click here to check out Jesh. For the participants list, click here . Thanks, Jesh!

Where oh where did my fabric go? Where oh where did it go? I've been looking for the pieces of rayon fabric for my tunic, the cotton remnants for L Studio's curtains, and the blue hue bunch of fat quarters and scrap. Well, I've been talking about looking. That's not true. I did look through the boxes and containers of fabric in the NW corner of L Studio on Monday. Since then, I've been letting my brain consider where these missing materials might be. Regardless of the misplaced fabric, I have been busy on the sewing machine. In my search, I found worn-out tee-shirts of ours and skirts I bought at a thrift shop that I put aside years ago to repurpose into something useful. So, there you go. Up in that photo, Husband is modeling our four new tee-shirt shopping bags and in the photo below, another new shopping bag made from a skirt. Hot cha-cha.

  Two prized finds among the Mama's stuff were the Daddy's eyeglasses and my middle school eyeglasses, which I hung on the hallway wall with a couple of old sunglasses. Because I lost a screw on my red Hollywood sunglasses, I was checking those on the wall. They didn't work. Oh, well. For the fun of it, I tried on my middle school eyeglasses. What do you know? I can read with them! Waaaaay better than the reading part of my new progressive lenses.  I haven't tried my middle school eyeglasses with reading paperback tiny print, but they are so far so good with magazines and newspapers, as well as with books that have 12-point type or the illusion of 12-point type. The Mama held onto things because, she said, you never know when you may need them. With these certain eyeglasses, it only took 52 years, more or less.

That's a photo of my First Communion veil. It's quite pristine for about 55 years. The Mama had stored it in its original plastic case. So, what is it doing outdoors? I'm tearing it apart to line planter pots. Yup, that's what I'm doing.

Part of the pink tea rose plant leaned over the pathway to the front door, making it a sweet-smelling and annoying obstacle for us, humans. Molly the Cat had no complaints.  The Husband and I considered using the Mama's aluminum tiny step ladder. It was a perfect height for holding up the rose branches. But, as is our custom, the Husband and I left the thought hanging in the air. Last week the Husband called up to the second floor office window, "Where is the ladder?" He was outside watering the front yard. (I say "call" because the Husband and I don't like to shout or yell. We merely project our voice from our diaphragm like old-time actors on a stage. So I think.) "I don't know," I called out from my desk about 10 feet away from the window. My hand still posed over the keyboard, I said, "I'll go look." Fortunately the Husband called up, "Never mind." By then I was curious so I searched for the ladder. Yup. I...

Hello Visitors from the Blogging from A to Z April 2018 Challenge. This post is for the weekly All Seasons. You can find my posts for the April Challenge here . Sometimes it's right before I fall asleep that an idea for garden art comes to me. Other times an idea greets me when I open my eyes in the morning. Wait till you hear this! my inner voice says, as it waited patiently for me to be quiet to hear the idea. So, today I share with you my latest two pieces for the garden. Both are items from the 1960s that belonged to the Mama. The metal peacock in the above photo was once in black, brown, and burnt gold (is that a color?), which the Only and Older Brother gifted to the Mama one year. The lamp in the photo below was one of a pair that the Mama and the Daddy bought for our brand new house way back when. Its original color was a cross between yucky bronze and gold. I think it was supposed to be a take off on baroque style. Now, the lamp could be a prop in a carnival. ...

"Yikes, a flamingo!" exclaimed the fish. " I need to get back into the sea. Blub, blub." "Yummmm!" smacked the flamingo. "More leaves on the left."

French presses don't last long in our household. It used to be we could go a couple of years before the glass container breaks. In recent years, nope. Three months, if we're lucky. Each time one breaks, we go back to using our makeshift coffee system—a 32-ounce glass measuring cup and a leftover plastic funnel from a legitimate coffee dripper that got broke who knows when. I can't bring myself to throw the coffee press plunger right away because I never know when it may come in handy. The problem is I put it away and forget where. It's not uncommon to reach deep into a kitchen shelf or open a box marked Kitchen Stuff , voila! there's a coffee press plunger. Last month I finally did something with a coffee press plunger. It so happened that I came across a  bunch of metal tubes that were once-upon-a-time chimes at the same time that I spied a coffee press plunger. Yup. The coffee press plunger chimes make a pretty sound hanging from the apple tree outside the ...