DEBBIE-DABBLE BLOG: July 2022

I am a Victorian Soul, who lives in a small townhouse that was built in the mid 1970's, not a huge Mega Mansion!! I just recently lost my Hubby Joe, who was a Retired Letter Carrier. I worked night shift as an RN on a Hospital based Rehabilitation( Physical Medicine) Unit for 37 years before I had Knee Replacement Surgery and officially Retired in 2019 after 41 years working in Direct Patient Care ... I am so glad that we retired at 62 years of age and got to spend that time together before he passed....I still do love Retirement!!!!

I DABBLE IN A BIT OF THIS AND THAT!!!!

" IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO BE WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN"
George Eliot

George Eliot was actually a pen name for a woman named Mary Anne Evans......

BLOGGING FOR FUN AND FRIENDSHIP!!!!!!

Sunday, July 31, 2022

Late July This and That Including New Buys, Gardening and Crafting.....

Welcome to Debbie-Dabble Blog!!

I am so happy you decided to stop by!!

Just a reminder, I will be posting on Wednesdays and Sundays every week so be sure to check back on those days to see a new post......

Today, I am going to be sharing a bit of this and that for the end of July.....

I know I had mentioned that I would share the rest of the Living Room decorated in my late Summer "Under the Sea" theme today but there was too much other "stuff " going on this past week that I wanted to share......

In my last post, I shared my Late Summer "Under the Sea" Tree and the " Beach" underneath it....

Click HERE if you missed that post....

And now for a few Personal Notes...

Food of the Week

Friday night dinner was pizza from Dino's in the Mall right by us!!!

One plain pie.....

And one with bacon on it!!

Of course, Joey treated us.....

Every time we get pizza from Dino's it brings back memories of going to the movies at the Mall when the boys were young and then going to Dino's afterward for pizza....

Joey says it brings back memories of hanging out at the arcade with his brother Jim and friends and then going for pizza at Dino's when they were older and would walk down to the Mall.....

This was a Sunset taken from our front porch on Thursday evening.....

I love being able to see the sunsets from our front porch in the Summer months.....

A New Buy

An Amish farmer sets up stands every Friday right down the road from us at the convenice store and gas station called Valley Mart....

He was selling several used wheels from his Amish Buggy that suffered a bit of damage from extended use for $80....

At first, I said no when Joe called me about it but then I thought about it and really, how many people can say that they have an authentic wheel right off of an Amish Buggey made by the owner of the buggy.....

So I told Joe to buy it....

It reminds me of a wooden wagon wheel that my parent's had out in the back yard of the house I grew up in.....

Here is where it is damaged from use.....

Joey looked up Amish Buggy Wheels and saw that most are going for over $120 and people want them used because of the authenticity...

Now really, how cool is this????

Okay, so now where was I going to put it?????

I thought this was the best place for it as it is semi protected from the elements.....

I like the contrast of it against the white lattice.....

I also like how it looks with the dark brown/black furniture....

I wanted to add some lights to it.....

I found these solar dragonfly lights on Big Lot's website so I sent Joe down to buy them as they had them in our store which is right down the road.....

And they change colors!!!!

Did I mention that they were marked down to $10 and Joe used a $5 off $15 coupon!!

I wrapped them around the top of the wheel......

He also bought a solar dragonfly stake too.....

Here are a few more pictures of the garden in the evening....

More solar lights in front of the arbor.....

And the light post in the back yard that comes on by timer....

I have a yellow bug light in it for the Summer.....

Speaking of the back yard.....

Here are some pictures I took yesterday after I was finally able to get out there and do some sweeping, trimming and transplanting of some plants into other pots.....

End of July Back Yard Cottage Garden Update....

It has been so hot that I actually had a bloom on a missouri primrose!!

They are usually done blooming at the end of June.....

I moved some pots from here out into the yard and moved one over here from the other side of the Patio.....

The arbor.....

The marigolds I grew from seeds are growing well but need to start to bloom.....

A pot on front of the arbor....

And the watering can on the other side of the arbor.....

The back of the yard.....

I threw a bunch of seed from a wildflower mix that was bought at Dollar Tree in this planter....

Hopefully, something will start to bloom soon.......

And I threw some marigold seeds that came from the ones I have in the front of the house....

The loose strife in bloom.....

I cut back some perennials that were done blooming.....

And put more pots out into the yard....

Gnome Land...

The sedum should start to bloom in August.....

I took 2 plants out of this pot as they were getting overshadowed by the 2 coleus that have just exploded....

On the Patio....

We are supposed have another heat wave at the end of the week with several days of 90 degree plus heat so I will be watering every day as we are not getting much rain this Summer at all .....

Bunnies

Staying outside, I wanted to share my neighbor Khalid's Bunnies that he bought for his son and daughter.....

He built a little pen for them that is in front of their little bunny house.....

So cute, aren't they?????

More New Buys

I actually left the house the other day and it wasn't for a hair cut!!!

I decorated the Kitchen in an Apple theme last year for Late Summer and since then, I have been collecting a few Apple and Sunflower decorations....

I was checking out Dollar Tree's web site and decided to check out the 2 Dollar Tree stores right down the road from us.....

This is my Dollar Tree haul....

Quite a haul, huh?

Crafting

I dabbled a bit with some of the things that I bought....

I used some markers to accentuate the sunflowers and leaves on this sign.....

I sent Joe back to get 2 more place mats in addition to the 2 that I bought at first...

I decided to add some gold gimp trim to the edges to dress them up a bit....

I sewed 2 place mats together to create a runner for the counter bar in the Kitchen......

I cut this one to fit on the window sill above the itchen sink.....

I also spruced this Dollar Tree sign that I bought last year up a bit....

Last year, in the Fall, I was finally able to find the apple wood cut outs to make ornaments....

Since I made them after I had taken down the Apple decorations in the Kitchen and replaced them with Fall/Halloween decorations, I completely forgot about them.....

Yep...A Senior Moment!!

So since I could not find them again this year, forgetting that I already made some wood ones last year, I decided to make some fabric apple ornaments instead....

I checked my stash and found that I had several small squares of felt that I bought at an estate sale years ago.....

I found a pattern on Pinterest, cut out 9 apples, using up the red felt, and sewed them together by hand , using some of the embroidery floss in my stash.....

I stuffed them with some polyfill, also in my stash....

I am very happy with how they came out even though I could not feel my arthritic fingers after working on them for 5 hours one day last week!!!

Glad I did not find those wood ones this year or I do not think I would have thought about making these....

Joe thought these looked like apples when we saw them at Dollar Tree as they also had ones that were definitely pumpkins...

Now they are definitely Apples!!

I needed more ornaments for my first Kitchen Apple and Sunflower Tree that I was planning on doing in the Kitchen so I looked online and found these graphics which I printed out....

I looked in my stash of wood pieces and found 2 that I could use to make ornaments with these graphics.....

I painted the wood pieces red, using paint I bought recently at Dollar Tree...

I found I had 4 pieces of wood that I could use for the other graphics....

I used spray glue to adhere them to the wood pieces...

I used a thin burlap ribbon, that was also in my stash, to make the ornament hanger...

In keeping with the Apple and Sunflower theme that I wanted to use in the Kitchen for Late Summer, I added a few sunflowers to this apple wreath that I made last year...

I usually make the valances and curtain for the area under the microwave in the counter bar from tablecloths that I buy but I could not find a Sunflower tablecloth for a cheap price....

Yes, I am cheap...

I found this curtain set on Amazon and since I do not even have an Amazon account, I had my son, Joey, order these for me as they were marked down to only $7.50!!!

He's a good kid and would not take any money for them...

They were delivered the following day at 7pm and I got to work....

I hung the valance in my fake window area in the Kitchen.....

Do you can see what I did with the large felt sunflower place mats from Dollar Tree????

LOL!

I then cut off the excess fabric from the 36 inch long cafe curtain and sewed a new rod pocket to hang the cafe curtain here.....

Then I hemmed the cut off part of the cafe curtain and created another valance to hang here .....

I did all this and had all 3 pieces hung by 8:15 pm after the curtain set was delivered at 7pm!!!

Sneak Peeks

For 3 days this past week, I cleaned, sewed and crafted and then decorated the Kitchen in an Apple and Sunflower theme for Late Summer....

And this is my Apple and Sunflower Kitchen Tree!!

I will be sharing the entire Kitchen decorated in this new theme for late Summer next Sunday....

In my next post on Wednesday, I will be sharing the rest of the Living Room decorated in my "Under the Sea" theme for Late Summer....

And I will leave you with yet another Sunset from our front porch....

As seen from the back yard....

The last 2 weeks, I have been super busy with changing over the Living Room and Kitchen to late Summer decorating themes so I have fallen behind on answering emails and responding to comments on the Blog....

I apologize for this and will be playing catch up this week as I am now done with decorating now until after Labor Day...

So sorry!!

I hope you will stop by to visit again on Wednesday!!

Stay safe, healthy and most of all, HAPPY!!

Thanks to those who took the time out of their busy day to spend a little bit of time with me!!

If you do not have a blog, PLEASE give me some way to reply to your comment, maybe by including your email in your comment. If I can not find a way to reach you, I will reply on the post where you commented so please check back......