Country Christmas Doily

I fell in LOVE  with this free Christmas doily pattern, Country Christmas Doily. 

Head over heels in LOVE!

Red and White together - stunning!

First I tried using #10 cotton thread with a tiny steel needle. 

Nope, not going to work. 

It's too hard on my eyes and my hands.

Luckily I found some thinner cotton yarn in my stash that is easier for me to crochet. 

The only problem is I only bought one skein of each color and the flower took up quite a bit of the red yarn.   

So I'm not sure I have enough red yarn to finish the project.  

If I run out I'll frog and use white in place of the red to finish it off.

  

But I couldn't wait to show my work in progress photos of this beautiful doily.

Hop over to my Ravelry project page (here) for more details.

Do you think this pattern would be lovely as a small throw? 

I think it would. 

But that flower would probably be HUGE in acrylic yarn!

I also want to crochet one of these cute red and white pin wheel Christmas throws one day too.

What about you?

Do you love RED and WHITE together too?

❤️ My Valentine ❤️

I'm starting on my Valentine decorations now that Christmas is over. 

Easy peasy to machine embroider this one.

Well, that is easy peasy after months of practicing on my new Janome Horizon Memory Craft 12000.

I will add fabric borders to this design and frame it to hang for Valentine's Day.  

And in the meantime I machine embroidered/appliquéd another holiday mug rug.   

This one is another Patrick Lose design I purchased on line.

It's a pretty poinsettia design named "Merry Minis Mug Mat" (click here to purchase).  

I used fabric scraps in my stash.  

I just have to bias bind it.

Patrick Lose has a wonderful video (here) on how to sew a bias binding.

He even tells you on to make a bias binding with a small square of fabric. 

I like both of these projects because I used fabric in my favorite color... RED!

Adding R.E.D. In Your Home

This is a fun post showcasing some of my favorites from Pinterest...

Folks who love RED as much as I do.

Believe it or not I had a red and white tile floor in my childhood bedroom.  

My Daddy installed it for me.

I LOVED it!

 I'm still leaning towards painting my oak kitchen cabinets some day.

A red island with white cabinets is perfect.

And isn't that green and white painted floor adorable too.

This is something none of the designers are doing...pretty red and white tiles around the kitchen sink.

And one of these days I would love to order a red and white table covering like this one.

And when the carpet wears out on our staircase I would love to replace it with a painted red and white gingham pattern just like this one.  

Yes, I have red Buffalo Check valances so, of course, I like these checkered drapes and that lovely red and white rug.

I like the blue lamp too.  

And here's a very cheerful red and white vintage kitchen. 

Followed by another cute red, white and blue farm kitchen.

The only thing missing from this adorable kitty is some red jewelry!

I hope you enjoyed my splashes of RED today.

Maybe you will be inspired to add RED to your home.

Autumn Colors

Autumn is truly the most beautiful season here at Teacup Lane.

Up Close

This is our Mountain Green Maple - probably the maple with the most stunning fall colors in our neighborhood. 

Reds and Golds

 Deep rich reds and oranges that make my heart sing with glory.

Blue sky and red leaves

The reds change from the top to the bottom.

More Reds

Our landscaper finished his work in our back yard. 

 We had the grass removed from between the sidewalk and garage and had crushed red stone put down instead. 

Our outdoor water faucet is located in the corner here and we store our hose in this area during the summer months.   I plant to get a bench for this area and some flower pots.  

Then we had the bed around our Serviceberry tree edged in stone and mulched. 

 The last improvement was edging the walkway around the deck with stones and adding the same crusted stones around stepping stones. 

No mulch to speak of and weeds and grass growing next to the deck.

It is so clean and neat now. 

 Our goal was to eliminate the need to weed or trim any shrubs or grass close to the house or deck.

After

A view from the other side.

After

The landscaper added another stepping stone for me.  

I have short legs and now it just right for walking on.

After

We are very pleased with the results.

Next year we'll edge and mulch the trees and shrubs on our back property line and hopefully bury the four downspouts.  

We plan to slowly do each section in the back stretching the work and cost over several years.

Check Off Red "Buffalo Check" Valances

This has nothing to do with my valances but Hubby has hooked up his Apple laptop for me in my craft area for my use.

And I asked him to hook up our big screen Apple monitor.

I always wanted one of these.

First time using my new cutting table!

My muslin lining fabric is just the right width.

Sewing up a storm on my old "New Home" sewing machine!

It's almost 30 years old and still sews beautifully.

Here I have one valance lined and one to do.  

Valances all lined and up in the kitchen!

I bought two valances because I like the fullness of two.

One is just too skimpy.

Sorry for the burry photos (again!) but low light issues.  

It's a Red Letter Day

We ran out to the mall yesterday to pick up a few things. We popped into Kitchen Kapers and out with some kitchen Red.

First I added a cute red spoon rest for the stove.

Then two red canisters scoops - one for sugar and one for flour.

I bought a red school house bird feeder up from the basement for our white shelf display.

Add caption

Sorry for the slightly burry photos - the light is low in the back of our home in the morning. 

The sun is out today after a day of rain.  The landscapers are here continuing their work on our front yard.  

I think today I will work on sewing a liner into my new kitchen Buffalo Check red valance. 

Hope you are having a fun day!

Lazy Days Are Here...

I am so excited!

Yesterday we ordered our new Lazy Boy furniture to replace our old - and I mean OLD...over 25 years old - dark blue (huge) five piece Sears modular unit.

We splurged and ordered two power recliners and one smaller manual recliner for our family room.   

Hubby's requirements weren't much - a recliner comfortable for him and one with a high back for neck support!  He's tall at 6 feet.  

Our family room is our TV watching room so we wanted to have chairs that would be comfortable to sit in to watch a movie for a few hours.  We decided not to have another sofa in the room just four chairs.  We wanted more room to get to our windows and our wall units.  

Here are the two fabrics I picked and Hubby approved.

The flowered blue and red fabric will be placed on the smaller manual recliner (chair style shown above).  This little recliner is very comfortable too.  

The solid light blue fabric will go on the two power recliners we ordered.

This is the power recliner style we ordered. 

 We have Lazy Boy furniture in our living room and love it - you can't beat the comfort. 

I like to have the foot rest completely filled in with padding and these chairs fit that requirement.  Oh, I forgot, the power chairs rock too!  

I love rockers!!!

We ordered the two power recliners to include the headrest and lumbar options.  The headrest is so neat.  It's going to be great to be able to adjust our head position for TV viewing.    

The power positions available are limitless.

Take a look at the remote for the power recliners!

(Sorry for the fuzzy photos - lack of light)

I love the touch of red I'm bringing into our family room.

Red is my favorite color followed by blue!

I moved this blue leather Ethan Allan wingback down to our family room from our upstairs library. 

 I inherited this lovely chair/ottoman from my brother. 

 The leather had been badly scratched by a cat so we purchased additional flowered fabric to recover it someday to match the small new recliner.  

Now we (...ah...I) have to wait until September to get our new Lazy Boy chairs.  

I'm not good at waiting!

I'm good at whining though!

You will have to wait until September to see our new chairs.  

So no whining! 

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Back to My Granny Roses

We're home from our travel van trip to Ohio. 

 I managed to fit a little bit of crocheting in between visiting with three brothers and the RV Rally folks. 

We did more socializing in one week than we do all year! 

 LOL

The body of my Christmas Granny Rose throw is finished. 

 A total of eighty one roses - half red and half green!

All joined with red yarn.

Now I'm working on the border of white granny roses. 

At first I thought I would join the white roses with the light green yarn but wasn't happy with it so I tried a join in red to compare the two.

I like the red yarn join better than the green on the white granny rose squares so that's how I will continue.

I've made five of the white granny rose squares so far...only 35 more to do. HA!

Not to toot my own horn but this throw is so beautiful...never thought I could ever make something this lovely. I've wanted a red rose throw ever since I saw one on Kim's (Daisy Cottage) blog. She found one at a yard sale that was stunning for less than $5!

Showing off more RED - this is a photo of a Red Bird of Paradise! (Source Pinterest)

 Isn't it beautiful! 

I had heard of this bird but never saw a photo of one before.

Not everything is sunshine and roses here.  

It's completely overcast here with rain off and on...I so wanted to do some yard work and our shed's flower boxes this week. And rain is forecasted the rest of the week. 

 Crap is all I can say.

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