2010 County Fair Pictures

In my post HERE, a few weeks ago, I sortof promised pictures from the County Fair, but I never got them posted. So, I am going to take a few minutes and upload a few of the many pictures I took Fair week!

At/in the livestock exhibit building:









(I love this picture!)










In the handwork exhibit building:


















Some of my entered items:





This one was quite a challenge! I saw a 'wren house' at Wal*Mart, and since I love wrens, birdhouses, woodworking, and crafting in general, I asked Dad if he could coach me through making my own! It didn't turn out quite like I imagined, but better than I thought :) ! Sorry the picture's blurry:



These few images are by no means an exhaustive example of all the events and displays that go on at the Fair! There is also a Mule Pull (whose team of mules can pull the most weight), a Horse Show, a Pet Show, a Prettiest Rooster Contest, and lots more at the barn, besides all the crafts, crops, plants, Blueberry Desert Contest, Made In This County clothing contest, and more in the exhibit building!
But I wanted to give you a peak into the fun an flurry that is Fair Week around here! :)

"Inside Garden" Update

Just a little update on my "inside garden" experiment :) . I noticed yesterday morning (or maybe it was the night before) that the pot I had planted the Asters and the 'mix' in had little sprouts in it! I was so excited!




And then last night, the dish I have the Shasta Daisies, Forget-Me-Nots, California Poppies, and Carpet of Snow in had sprouts on the Carpet of Snow row, and this morning the Shasta Daisy and California Poppy rows did too! So now in that dish (and yes, it is one of those trays you buy ground meat in. We recycle, OK?! ;) ) the only thing that hasn't come up (yet!) in that dish are the Forget-Me-Nots, and I'm hoping they will soon.
You probably can't even see the little green sprouts in the picture - they are very small still. Maybe if you look really close...




None of the seeds were even supposed to come up for at least a week, but every time the dirt even looks a little dry on top, I've been misting it with water out of Mom's spray bottle we use to dampen the clothes with when we're ironing :D ! So I think that has really encouraged them to go ahead and grow :) .




The only pot that doesn't have anything yet is the Lavendar pot. Hopefully they will start coming up soon.




I have all the dishes in front of our dining-room window during the day, to catch as much sun as possible. Then when it begins to get cold in the evening, I move them away from the drafty window and put them against another inside wall. I can't wait to have little plants to put in the garden!




Don't you just love my Americana flower pots, by the way?! I am a very patriotic and crafty person, and one year while Trissy and I were still young enough to be in 4-H, at one of our end-of-the-year closing programs we had a patriotic theme, and pots like that were used as centerpieces for some of the tables. I commented on how I liked them and would like to paint some myself, and our 4-H leader heard me and just gave me two of them! Wasn't that nice?!

Well, class is about to start so I'd better go. Have a wonderful day!

Reading And Crafting Are A Good Combination

Good evening to you all! I hope you have all had a wonderful and profitable Monday!
I have been working hard on school pretty much all day, but I'm looking forward to an evening of rest. Mom often reads out loud to us as a family during the evenings, and we've been through lots of good books together that way! Lately she has been reading "The Gentleman From Indiana" by Booth Tarkington. It is a pretty old book. Have any of you read it? If so, please tell me what your opinions/thoughts were about it.
Anyway, while she reads, I work on crafts (Trissy does too sometimes), while Dad watches the backsides of his eyelids (he deserves the rest)! I've made lots of things that way, and it makes the whole evening so enjoyable! I finished my blue/green/yellow dishrag/washcloth Saturday night and started on a stormy blue one, which I finished last night (Sunday) while she read a little while after we got back from church. I thought I'd post pictures, and y'all tell me what you think please. Any suggestions on improvement?

I took these pictures this morning on our dining table, and just as I finished taking the varigated one, the sun came streaming through the dining room window, and so that's why the stormy one looks all lit up like that :) .

Oh, I posted pictures of my finished shawl, so if you want to see them, you can click HERE. Tell me what you think! And not just if you like it - I value constructive criticism as well as praise :) !
Well, I'd better go. I've still got a little school work that's due in the morning. Y'all have a wonderful evening, a good night's sleep, and may the Lord guide your day tomorrow for your good and His glory!

Confess Your Faults, One To Another...

Well, if you read all I have to say about my day yesterday, you would not go away uplifted, I am sure. Lets just say I had a "Jonah Day", and if you don't know the story behind what that means, it just means I had a really, really bad day. It seems that the devil lets me get to the end of one of Jenna's monthly challenges, and then lets me have it! *Sigh* It was just one of those days where everyone and everything seems against you. The day starts off at the bottom, and goes down from there. And many times I did not react in a Godly way. The Bible says to confess your faults to one another, and to pray for one another, so here I am confessing my faults, and hoping you will pray for me and my temper when the Lord brings it to your mind.
Hopefully I learned from the situation though - I know the Lord can take the crumbiest situation and use it to teach us something valuable. Sometimes it's just hard to find the diamonds in the dirt. :]

Well, enough griping - I did get to accomplish a couple of things that were enjoyable, one of which needed to be done soon if it was going to happen this year:

I love growing things, and last year Dad gave me a little section of the "big garden" for my own, to grow any flowers, vegetables, and herbs I wanted! The only dissapointment was: nothing came up! I'm not sure what the problem was, but I thought I may have started my flower seeds a little too late. So this spring, I'm going to try starting them indoors in pots, and then moving them outside when it's warmer. I got Shasta Daisies, Forget-Me-Nots, California Poppies, and Carpet of Snow, and (when I get them outside) I want to plant those in rows next to each other. Because of the stair-step heights they are supposed to grow to, and the amazing color contrasts, I thought I'd like to see how that looks! I also got Lavendar (I love herbs), and Asters, and a perinial mix. I put the Lavendar by itself, but mixed the Asters and the mix. Hopefully they'll all grow and provide us with some beautiful color and cheer! :) I took pictures of the pots once I'd gotten the seeds planted, but they didn't turn out, so I'm just posting a picture of the packages before I'd planted them. :)

I'll try to keep you informed with how this "expirament" (that spelling doesn't look right, but I can't remember for sure how it is LOL) turns out!

I also started on a knitted dishrag! Recently I've been on a dishrag crocheting frenzy, and have made about ten. Knitted projects don't take as much yarn as crocheted ones do though, so I'm changing to knitting for a little while. :)

Aren't the colors in this yarn just wonderful!?! I love combinations of bright contrasting colors :) ! I'll post a picture when I finish it. Bye for now!

Odds And Ends, And Recent Happenings

Ok, this post is just sort of random stuff that's been happening in my life lately, and I thought I'd share it...

This is just something small that happened about a week ago, that reminded me that the Lord just likes to make us smile sometimes!
I have a keychain that a friend gave me for my birthday years ago, but it is probably my most treasured possession next to my Bible. It is a sturdy little metal cross with ivy engraved on it, and the words, "With God, all things are possible." I was getting ready for bed the other night about a week ago, and thinking about some things I'd like to see happen, but that seemed almost impossible. I flipped back the covers to crawl in, and there was that keychain, in the bed! "With God, all things are possible" My mind immediately jumped... maybe it would happen! Then, almost as soon as I thought that, this verse popped into my head, "...I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. ..." Of course, this is the Apostle Paul addressing the Athenians on Mars' Hill, but the timing was just so perfect, that it made me laugh out loud! I believe the Lord truly does have a sense of humor!

I've been working on a crocheted shawl for about two weeks now, and finally finished it Sunday! It didn't quite turn out how I thought it would, but it works, and was fun to make! Here are a couple of pictures of it:

Thanks to my friend W. for "modeling"!
If you want to try it yourself, click HERE for the pattern. Just a warning though, if you want the triangle to be very deep, you've got to make the beginning chain longer. I have a friend who made one out of the same yarn as the pattern calls for (I made mine out of maroon acrylic), and hers turned out BEAUTIFUL! She even wears it to church over a black top, and it looks so elegant!

Well, in about twenty hours my grandparents, Mom, Trissy, and I will be headed on a six-hour car ride to attend the wedding of one of my cousins! Trissy is going to be the 'bride's assistant", and I'm a photographer! Not the main one (I'm not THAT good LOL), but she (the bride, our cousin) liked some of the just personal pictures I've taken at other cousin's weddings, and she wants me to be sort of a 'candid photographer'. I'm really looking forward to it! The wedding's Saturday afternoon, we'll be staying for church Sunday, and come back on Monday. I hope it's not too hectic, 'cause I have classes early Tuesday morning! Oh, well, it'll all work out. :)

This past Saturday we (Dad, Mom, Trissy and me) went to an evangelism study being started at the church. Justice and another man in the church have been 'trained' to teach the material, and it's designed to teach how to share your faith in a non-confrontational but thought-provoking and loving way. Saturday was the all-day introduction, and now classes will be every Wednesday night starting Mar. 4th. My family, Oliver, Landon, two older ladies in the church, and Ashlyn ( I haven't told about her yet, but I'll try to soon) are the ones who are taking this class. I'm hoping it'll help me share my faith in college. We'll see how it goes.

Tonight's college Bible study, and I'm (of course ;) ) looking forward to that little boost. I still haven't told about last week, and it was about the best one we've had so far, I think. It was so good. Maybe I'll get a chance to tell about it, but with the trip and everything, I may not.

One last thing I thought some of you might enjoy: Hannah Paige is having a photography contest on her blog! The theme is "Color". I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of entries she has! Click HERE to find out more, or to enter!
I'm going to accomplish two things here at once :) This is my entry in her contest, and it's also a mystery picture:




Several of my blogging friends have done mystery pictures, and they have been alot of fun, so I thought maybe I'd try one! You have until next Thursday (a week!) to guess, mainly because I probably won't have much blogging time between now and
then :[ ...

Ok, I'm at the college and class is about t0 start, so I'd better go. Maybe I can come back later today :)

In the mean time, have a wonderful day, and Keep looking Up!

-Kyrie<><