Things That Get in the Way of Quilting....SIGH!!!!

Here's a bit of what I have been doing instead of quilting.....working on the deck, staining boards for my shelves, cleaning out dad's house, trying to clean our house.....hahahahahaha.....work in the yard, knitting, and any other thing that comes up.

Well, I haven't totally given up quilting....I did manage to work on my Lost Ship block the other day.  I plan on working a little bit on it tonight after supper is done cooking and I get done with this post.  I'm cooking sun dried tomato Alfredo with chicken and a chicken pot pie.  Don't know about you, but I really hate having to come home and cook after I have been at work all day.  Most of the time I don't get home until midnight or after.  The deli must get clean.  LOL!!!!

 Got some more purple stain on the boards today.  Added some Sand and Sealer on top of that.  The next step will be putting polyurethane on them.  Just waiting for a day off to do that.  Hope it doesn't rain.....It's the rainy time of year for us.  We needed it so bad.  We've been lucky so far and not had any tornadoes in this area for awhile.  We've not had any flooding in this area even though we've had 3 1/2 inches of rain.  Some days it pays to live on a hillside.

Here's a short video clip of me when I was staining the boards last Friday.

The shelving is definitely not going to get done over night.  You have to wait for the stain to dry so that you can turn the board over.  Then you have to apply the sealer and let it dry so that you can sand it, but in the end it will be something that you can use so that you can get the clutter up off the floor or wherever it is in the rest of the house.  LOL!!!!

Here's a couple of pics of what the deck looks like.  A before and an after.

Lovely Catalpa tree growing there.  LOL!!!!  The little boogers are hard to get rid of once they grow into big trees.  We had one on the other side of the deck that my honey had to dig up the roots to get rid of it.   Notice the quilt inspector on the deck.  He had to come out on the deck and see what was
 going on.  :~)

The railing isn't finished
yet.  Ray has since added another top rail at the right of this pick.  We are using 2" x 6" as the top rail.  Nice lovely spot to set a large cup of ice water.  Sat out there this afternoon for a water break and had a hummingbird buzz me.  Guess it thought that my fuschia colored cup was a large cup of sugar water.  Went and looked for my hummingbird feeder.  I must of tossed it last year because it was old and needed replaced.  Gotta add that to my list of things to get.  The Chickadees have been going at the bird feeder like crazy.  

Got dad's house cleaned out a little while back.  My dear daughter and grandson are living there until it gets sold.  So glad to have them back.  Hope she stays awhile.  Never know about her though.

Now about cleaning our house.  I got this wild hair up my you know what and decided to do a spring cleaning again this year.  Got the clutter in the corner of my living room cleaned up.  Got the quilting table rearranged so that I can actually use it for what it was intended to be used for.....quilting!!!   It was a catch all for quilting stuff and whatever else was tossed up there by me.  Our resident cat thinks that it is a way to come over and visit me when I am sitting in my recliner or jump over to the kitchen table where he's not supposed to be.

Working out in the yard has been put on hold until the weather gets a little cooler.  It was down into the 80's for a little bit.  It's back up into the 90's.  Have to get the bag of cement out of the trunk of my car before it sets up.  I'm going to try my hand at making some fake rocks with the help of a template from the store.  Still have to get some corner pieces for some used pvc pipes that I'm going to make a sifter for the compost pile.  The plan is to connect the pipes together into a square or a rectangle and attach some screen to it.  

I can remember dad making one out of lumber for sifting the dirt at an old house that we used to live in.  The house was so old that it was built with square nails and had slats on the walls.  Dad enclosed the back porch and repainted the outside of the house.  I helped him with the painting on the front porch.  The kitchen in the house was a small galley type with the washer and dryer located in it.  The upstairs bathroom was long and narrow.  Dad started moving the bathroom to a larger room just before we moved down here.  Dad was a Jack of all trades.  He could do just about anything.  His main hobby was working on electronics.  He took a class when he was in high school and the rest was history.  

About the knitting....I'm trying to make a lady that I work with a scarf.  She gave me a cute leopard print purse a little while back.  Thought that I would make her something in return.  Her favorite color is hot pink or fuschia.  I found some fuschia yarn that I thought she might like.

Anywho....I'm off to finishing supper and a night of relaxing.