Driveway/walkway freshen-up, gobble work and crafts

 Back in 2015, a couple of years after we switched to being part-time on the sailboat we had the driveway/walkway's refinished in a decorative concrete finish & sealer and it was quite an improvement. Here's the before/after for that.

A sad sight for sure - I hated those white rocks!

2015 - Quite a spiffy-up, looking good.

After many years that lace-like pattern trapped a ton of dust and dirt which hardened & turned it into a dirty looking mess, not to mention the surface cracks reappearing in the concrete. Going off and leaving it for several months at a time didn't help the situation. 😞 I got kind of fed-up about how bad it looked, so to stop my b*tching and complaining about it we bit the bullet and had a different treatment applied. No more dimples, instead a slate-like, smoother texture for easier maintenance.

Big-time pressure wash finished, and now fixing the cracks.

It took a week, luckily we had great weather, and it came out great! Ryan and his crew did a thoroughly professional job, and made no bones about getting our input all along the way to make sure we were happy. Looks a dream again now! 😍

I think I'm going to get some brick stain to breathe a little
life back into my brick paver edging, it's a little washed-out.

If you click on the picture you can see the grid lines & new texture.
Also, in between the 2 doors is the new-to-me floral arrangement.

On to other things that I've been spending time on. Remember that .49¢ per lb turkey I picked up before Thanksgiving? Well, I had to do something with it that didn't involve eating it - too much other stuff to try to eat up before decommissioning the freezers and heading out west. The solution; thaw it out, cut it up and pressure can it using the raw-pack method!

I have a separate piece of plastic I use over my craft table 
when I doing messy work. No lingering contamination that way.

I got 8 nice pint jars out of it and, as they say in the Islands,
"Dat Finish" - whew, happy to have that done, (it wasn't too bad).

Additional things I've been working on are silk floral arrangements, I'm a victim, really! I see these half-way decent straw basket/greenery projects at the thrift for $2.99 and I can't resist - it's a compulsion. 😁 Anyway, I have to bring them home with me and "fix" them. Here's my latest; unfortunately I didn't take a before pic showing all the bare stalks of  greenery in the pretty good basket. It looks quite nice now, I didn't spend more that a couple more bucks on it (Dollar Tree flowers, lol), and I'm using it in the courtyard.

Nice oblong straw basket, now full and pretty

Still on the puzzling train and enjoying it in between bigger projects. Here's the latest. Bigger than usual at 550 pieces, it took more time but was fun. Patsy (https://patsyischillin.blogspot.com/ ) could knock this out in a couple of hours, she's a master puzzler!

In the food arena, we had more beef pot pie, more cookies (pecan & chocolate chip macaroons) and fresh cornbread to go with our baked ham leftovers from the freezer.  I was mentioning to my sister that I may try to source some dry ice and pack an old Omaha Steak cooler with some of our frozen goodies - I still have quite a few steaks and center cut pork chops not to mention roast pork and baked ham. It would make for some easy meals if I could get it out there intact.

Edges got a little dark on me, boo.

A "half recipe" is perfect for us, we usually get at least 3 meals off it.

And finally, building some more fabric squares for some future project.  It's great busy-work and I enjoy it. I'm loving my puff quilt/pillow!

I guess it's going to be purply-blues this go round.

Thanks for the visit, hope to see you again sometime. In the meantime, take care, be safe, count your blessings and have a great day. 

Cruising right through April

And the weeks keep rolling on by at a good clip. Soon we'll be to the travelling time of the year, but in the meantime we'll do our chores and otherwise entertain ourselves as per usual. 

I have a favorite thrift store just a mile or so up the road called B.A.S.C.A., whose mission is to provide better living, working, educational, social, and recreational opportunities for adults with special needs. Their store helps support 4 group homes - 2 for women and 2 for men. It's a great store, and gets some wonderful home furnishings, dishware, and artwork donations to resell, and at Christmas they have a beautifully decorated Christmas-themed room with lovely crystal glassware, elegant dishware, and everything needed for entertaining during the season.

Some of the lights are still up. At Christmastime the table in front is
set in high style for 10,  plus a large Christmas tree resides in the corner.

A few more shots of their store to give you an idea of what a fun browse it is. I make it by every week or 10 days. I should really volunteer sometime.

If only I had room!

This small seasonal section is featuring Easter at the moment. 
Lots of nice small housewarming gifts and other doodads.

I finished my lap/nap quilt and am quite pleased for 2 reasons; it's finished, and it came out very nice. I'm happy with it, even if it is a tad small. 😉 It was hard for me to judge the size when starting it. Using 4½" squares; 15 squares down by 13 over. Sounds like simple math right? Well, the polyfil puffing shrinks them up, fine, I'm fine with that.

How it looks on a queen-size bed, impossible for 2 people,
but for 1 person @ quiet/nap time it's great, so snuggly. 

With right sides together, I used a whip stitch to attach the fleece
throw to the topper, then turned right sides out and again whip stitched it 
all the way around. Finally I tacked front to back every 4 squares.
The backing is the same royal blue as the bedspread.

The boss had his projects as well, one of them being to add a topcoat to the deck after a good scrubbing. He made it look easy and all I had to do was help move some furniture.

Almost finished! Looks like he's painting himself into a corner
but not so, he'd painted the far half a few days before.
It was pretty dingy but now, clean, nice and fresh.

I stopped by to see my friend Nancy's new place and to have a wonderful shrimp creole lunch with her. We had a great catch-up session and so far, she's loving her new apartment. She is an artist as well as the mother of 4 grown children, so her 2nd bedroom needed to be large enough to hold her studio and to double as a "doable" guest room - score!  To top it off it has a great patio area lakeside with eastern exposure, so it's shady and cool out there during the afternoon/evening hours.

She's pretty happy with it!

I've delved back into the relaxing world of puzzling again. With all the sewing and canning projects I haven't had much time for it. Here's my set-up. I use Dollar Tree flexible cutting mats for extra pieces and work the puzzle on a 22"x28" piece of poster board. That way I can gather up all the cutting mats, place them on top of the puzzle and pick the whole thing up and walk it away, quickly freeing-up my craft table.

My small rolling table (thrift find) holds 2 mats.

We have had some really pretty mornings around here lately although the last few have been rainy and we've got more onshore rain in the offing - a good thing as our lake level is down.

Great morning for a row around!

Well, I guess I'll leave it here for now. Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to leave a comment, I'd enjoy hearing from you. 😊