Something Borrowed, Something Blue…

Happy Mosaic and Blue Monday to you! Visit Mary at Little Red House and Sally at Smiling Sally to join in the fun.

On Saturday we had our first and last wedding dress shopping debut for Katie. She chose the 8th dress she tried on for her special day. We all agreed it was the one. She looked stunning in 7 out of the 8 dresses she tried on. On Monday the dress will be ordered. Our experience at Bellevue Bridal Boutique was great and we would recommend the shop and staff to anyone in Western Washington looking for a dress. We don’t have a date for the wedding because Katie is marrying a Marine who is in the middle of his training. We hope to have a better idea of when the wedding can take place by December. Until then we are getting all our best choices for venues etc. organized so we can hit the ground running when the date is set.

After we ordered the dress my sister Lana (Aunt Lana) treated Katie, Laura and I to a wonderful dinner at Ruth Chris in Bellevue.

If any of you are wondering about the blue, it’s all in the jeans!!

Photobucket replaced all my photos with ugly black and grey boxes and they are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.

A Special Monday in September…

Monday is my parent’s 67th wedding anniversary and my post for them will follow. In the meantime I’m posting a Mosaic and Blue Monday post from some of my photos from Minter Gardens in British Columbia, Canada.

Visit Mary at the Little Red House for Mosaic Monday.

Visit Sally at Smiling Sally for Blue Monday

We Ate Cake…

…after an enchanting wedding ceremony surrounded by mighty Redwoods!

I’ll be posting all my wedding photos soon but in the meantime I’ll post these for Mosaic Monday hosted by Mary at The Little Red House. Thank you Mary.

This was the wedding of my cousin Jim and good friend Jeanie’s middle son Ben that Dear and I flew down to California to enjoy.

Marine Mosaic Blue!

AND RUBY, TOO! I’m adding this to Ruby Tuesday with Mary at Work of the Poet.

Our daughter is in love with a Marine. She and I are going to be traveling to South Carolina via the Savannah airport in late September to witness his graduation. It will be our first trip to the South and minus the humidity and mosquitoes we’re looking forward to the trip. She found this fleece fabric and made a blanket for him. Projects have been a good way for her to pass the time since snail mail is the only communication they have these days. I’m glad she gets to experience the wonderful art of letter writing and the anticipation of receiving a letter in the mail.

Please pray for my daughter’s marine Andrew as he’s being pushed to his physical and mental limits and pray for all our guys out there serving us and our country! Thank you. I’ll give him a hug for all of you when I see him in September.

For Blue Monday please visit Sally at Smiling Sally and for Mosaic Monday please click over to Mary’s at The Little Red House.

Flowers in Mosaics With Blue?

It’s a stretch but I think there is some blue in the mosaic of my Hydrangea so please click over to Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday and Sally at Smiling Sally for Blue Monday. But wait, I’m also linking to Today’s Thrifty Treasures hosted by Rhoda at Southern Hospitality. Don’t I sound like one of those awful commercials that are selling super duper Magic Cloths or something?

My little potted Hydrangea that I planted a few years ago is really showing well this year. I think I got a total of 5 blooms last year. My friend Beth gave me this Hydrangea a few years back for my birthday and it was pink. When I re-planted it here in this spot it bloomed purple and blue.

On a river trail walk with my sister we did a lot of stopping to take pictures. These are some of the wild flowers we found growing. I’m calling them wild because they seemed to grow on their own with no help from any human being. LOL with that definition all the flowers in my yard are wild. Thank goodness the Master Gardener keeps them alive.

Now for my Thrifty Treasure. I bought this Villeroy and Boch pitcher at Goodwill for $5.95. I decided to bring the outdoors in and use this pitcher as a vase for my hydrangeas. It also will qualify for Blue Monday with it’s blue motif.

This week I’m getting ready for an onslaught of visitors from Southern California. The first group arrives next Monday with overlapping guests arriving the following week. At one point during those two weeks we’ll have 9 out of state visitors together. Half will be staying with my sister who lives a couple minutes from me and half will be at my house. Whoohoo time to partay! I will probably be a random blogger during this time.

Dear and I are saving our big trips for the Fall. In September our daughter Katie and I are traveling to Parris Island via Savannah to attend her boyfriend’s graduation from Marine Boot Camp. In October Dear and I are headed to Dallas to visit my brother, SIL, and little Hope. Do you have any travel plans?

Thanks for visiting and have a great week!

Mosaic Monday ~ Painters With Issues!

After church today we headed to the Bothell Art Festival being held on the grounds of Cascadia College/University of Washington Bothell Campus. We were hoping to see one of our favorite contemporary artists Patty Forte Linna. Here she is with her friend and fellow artist Pepper Peterson. Can you guess what color is Pepper’s favorite? Hint…look at her shoes, top and hair! Both of these gals are so full of energy. They are starting a blog called Painters With Issues. You can see some of Patty’s art at her website here. If you click on the link the first photo you’ll see is my daughter’s new favorite. Patty painted it from a photograph of her mother and father as a gift for their 63rd wedding anniversary. Go ahead and click, you’ll be happy you did.

This is the Patty Forte Linna painting we own. It’s beautifully framed and hanging in a prominent spot in my living room.

After our walk through the booths we strolled around the campus and to the wetland area adjacent to campus. Such a lovely setting. (The top right photo in the mosaic is a tree/wood sculpture)

To see more mosaics please visit Mary at Little Red House.

Between Storms ~ Mosaic Blue

We’ve had a couple dry days this week tucked between some very soggy ones. Saturday dawned dry and glorious.

My kids swung by to pick me up for the Sounders Soccer Game at Qwest field and the Blue and Green was proudly displayed everywhere. Some people go way out to show their colors. We had another record breaking crowd for MLS Soccer. Seattle is the best place to be if you are a soccer fan in the U.S.A.

Here I am with our son Josh and our DIL Laura after we stopped at the Taco truck for our Street tacos, 3 tacos for $5.00. It’s our traditional meal before the game. Oh good there’s no cilantro stuck in our teeth!

I was very happy that the Sounders shut out the New England Revolution 3-0 but another thing that made me very pleased was to finally meet Oliver face to face and to be able to hold him during the game. He slept the whole time grimacing when the crowds exploded in cheers. At the end of the game when I handed him back to his mom Bridget he woke up with a sweet smile for her.

He smiled while I held him, too.

Please visit Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday and Smiling Sally for Blue Monday.

The Rains Came Down…

…and the puddles came up!

What a miserable day for a garage sale. Thankfully we live in the Northwest and weather does not deter people from heading to garage sales. People here are used to doing anything in the rain. Dear created a amazing tarp canopy for us so we were able to put some tables out on our trusty blue tarps for the sale. I’m sad I didn’t get a photo of the creation for you (bad blogger!!) We had made space inside the shop for the rest of the stuff and for a nice shelter for the workers from the rain and cold. Friends of ours came to contribute to the sale. Their young daughters wanted to raise money to buy Bibles for people without them. So sweet! We had a good steady stream of people with only a couple lulls. We didn’t sell anything over $5.00 but still made $173.50.

The Rolo yummies in the collage were a great treat for us workers and I found the recipe at Sandy’s Reluctant Entertainer blog. So easy to make. One of the garage sale shoppers looked at me sheepishly and asked if she could have one. She had been staring at them for a good long time.

The highlight of the day was when our son and DIL Laura came with the ingredients to make us all dinner! What thoughtful kids I have. Josh had the two young girls that helped with our garage sale in there helping him make biscuits and corn muffins for the dinner. They really enjoyed their baking lesson from Josh! Josh and Laura are good friends with this family and even flew all the way to China a few years ago to visit them when they were living there. This picture is of them all at the Great Wall. You can see how much younger the girls were in this photo.

I’ll be adding my link to Mary’s Little Red House for Mosaic Monday and to Smiling Sally’s for Blue Monday. Hope you are all having a nice relaxing weekend. Now that the garage sale is over I’m doing some relaxing and recuperating…

Birds & Squirrels…

So if it’s Sunday night it must be time to post some Mosaics for Mosaic Monday with Mary at Little Red House and something blue for Blue Monday with Sally at Smiling Sally.

We’ve had a regular flock of these Evening Grosbeak finches at our bird feeder.

And then Mr. Bluejay visits once in a while shooing everyone else away!

And then this trapeze artist really kept me entertained!

Hope your new week is starting out nicely. I’m hoping to get around better this week as things are finally getting organized around here from our move…

Mosaic Blue Monday ~ Jury Duty & 5K

For Mosaic Monday please visit Mary at The Little Red House. Her photography is always stunning. I took these photos of the beautiful Dogwood and Wisteria during a 5K walk I participated in on Saturday morning. I always have time to stop and smell the roses!! I just had to jog to catch up with my walking buddies. I am determined to plant a Dogwood, Wisteria and lilac in my yard!!

For Blue Monday you need to visit Sally at Smiling Sally. She’s a very gracious hostess! These sculptures were on the courthouse where I was on Jury Duty last week. I never had to sit on a jury but at least I got some photo time in! These are a great assortment of Northwest wildlife!

Have a great Monday and start to your new week!

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Category Archives: Mosaic Monday