July On Our Front Porch

Hi there!!  Have you had a good summer so far?  Since I haven't been posting much, I thought I would take some time to do a re-cap of July.  First of all, it's unbelievably hot here (for us).  These temps. would be no big deal for people in Texas and Arizona, but whew!  I even saw that North Carolina was mentioned in the The New York Times yesterday in reference to the heat wave we're having.  I'm not a fan of The New York Times, but I get e-mails from them because I play Wordle on their website.  Anyhoo, the temperatures have been in the 90's consistently, with the heat index in the triple digits.       Aside from this heat wave, July has been a nice month for us.  We made homemade ice cream to take to my mom's house for July 4th.  We had a cookout, and I got to see my niece's little foster child; I tell you I'm smitten with that child. 😊 I've gotten some really nice fresh vegetables and fruit so far; this has been a good summer for the produce.  We're engaging in our annual tradition of watching the Tour de France here.  It actually ended Sunday, but we're a few days behind.    

Fall Front Porch 2021

I'm very glad to see October -- how about you?  Such a lovely month of changing foliage, early morning mists, blue skies, and beautiful sunsets.  Today we've had Irish weather, as my husband says.  It's been alternating rain and sunshine for most of the day, and the rain has been such a nice, gentle one.     

      

   

New Front Porch Lights

Another week has begun, and our temperatures look to be cooling off this week.  It was quite hot last week and over the weekend, too.  Whew!  I'm done with the heat, folks.  😳  Has it cooled off in your part of the world, yet?  I have a trip to the garden shop planned for this week because I'm ready to get our front porch pots planted.  We installed the new front porch lights over the weekend, and we're both very happy with them.     

      

   

Hello SPRING!

It's still quite chilly outside here; there's a crisp March wind and I still need a coat to go outside, but it's officially Spring today.  I couldn't be happier, and I'm willing to bet a lot of other people out there feel the same way.     I'm glad I planted pansies back in the late fall/early winter because now I can enjoy their colorful blooms.  They're already starting to get leggy and hang over the sides of the pots; does anyone know whether these plants can be pinched back?  They seem a little too delicate for that, but I just don't know.   

  

Better Late Than Never

It's December 26th; are you tired?  I am a bit, but not as much as I thought I'd be.  Our Christmas day weather was perfect -- cold but not bitter and not raining.  Hooray for sunshine.  :)    I so hope that all of you had a good Christmas, filled with the people and things you love.  We had a lovely Christmas with our families, and it's been wonderful to rest a bit today.  I also took the opportunity to take some more pictures around the house.  I honestly have not had a spare minute to post any pictures before, so I'm sharing now.  If you're sick of seeing Christmas decorations, you'll want to skip this post.  ;)  

Checking In

Hi everyone.  I hope you've had a good week.  I'm personally wondering if there's another country I could move to, because I'm sick, sick of this election coverage.  So, I've been hiding out here -- 

A Productive Weekend

Hi everyone!  Can you believe it's the last day of May?!  I want to thank all of you who left such nice comments on my wedding anniversary blog post -- I appreciate you so much!!  You all are the best.  :)

I hope you had a nice Memorial Day weekend with family and loved ones.  

This and That

Happy Thursday everyone; I can hardly believe another week is almost over.  I hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July holiday.

I seem to be stuck in a bit of a rut at the moment.  I feel like I've had a big case of blogger's block.  ;)  I can find plenty to talk about, but it wouldn't be a good idea to put it on my blog.  I'll bet you've felt that way a time or two yourself, huh?  So, moving along, I do have a few little things to show you today -- nothing too exciting.  The heat and humidity has settled in here, and I just can't get in the mood to do much when it's this hot.

Spring Sprucing

Hello there friends!  I hope you had a blessed Easter and Passover holiday.  We were glad to see all of our family on Sunday, and it was a beautiful day here.  I've been absent from blogging for two weeks now -- not a planned break.  Everyday life and family matters have kept us very busy here.

I really made an effort to write a post last Friday; it was to be about Beatrix Potter.  I had pinned all these pictures of her home, Hilltop Farm, with wonderful interior shots.  Well...as I was looking over them again in order to provide links to my sources, I realized that over half of them were in some way linked to the National Trust, and the National Trust does not have a good sense of humor about people sharing images of their properties without express written permission.  Which I did not have.  So there went all that work down the drain.

I'm in an indecisive mood, folks.  I have some good stuff to share from Southport and Oak Island but didn't want to write about that right now, either.  So I'll just show you a little of what we worked on over the weekend.

Christmas Outside the House

Hello everyone; I hope you all had a nice weekend.  It has turned very cold here in our area of North Carolina.  We now have a bitter wind blowing, making it feel even colder, but we did have sunshine today, which was a welcome sight for sure.

I continue to decorate for Christmas, and hubby is great about helping me out when I ask him to.  Today, he put some small nails in our birdhouse so that it could get a little touch of Christmas --

Working on Curb Appeal

We've been working on improving curb appeal here at the homestead.  Our house is 42 years old this year; it's a child of the 70's.  :)  Now that we've gotten our son through college, we're focusing on making some improvements to our home.  Fortunately, we were able to have our kitchen renovated two summers ago -- what a difference that made!  Duncan is just about fully house-broken, so we're going to replace the carpet in our den and hallway after Christmas.

Currently though, we've been focusing on sprucing things up outside.  I thought I'd show you a comparison of our front porch and surrounding landscape from last winter versus now.  It's not a huge change, but it does look much better.

Our Patriotic Summer Porch

Hi folks!  Can you believe June is already half over?  Honestly, I can't.  This has been the fastest spring and summer -- the days just fly by faster and faster.  I wanted to share the further progress that I've made on our front porch.  The three things I mentioned in my previous porch post that I wanted to do can be checked off my list.  I still have a couple more things, and then I'll consider the porch done for the summer (except for keeping the flowers watered, of course).

Flower Therapy

Happy Monday to you!  I just wanted to share a few pics of what I did this past weekend.