Ready for Spring!!

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I am definitely ready for Spring! I always feel like once my birthday is past, it's time for warm weather immediately. For now, though, let's enjoy some shots from last year at the Atlanta Botanical Garden during Atlanta Blooms!

I'm a huge fan of tulips, and I thought these lovely pastels were awesome!

But then, the vibrant colors of the pansies are also excellent!

I was happy to catch this guy in action. Check out his iridescent wings. I upped the shutter speed so I could catch the action.

We have a ton of Japanese Magnolia (or tulip) trees around Atlanta, but most of them are the purple or white varieties. I love this creamy yellow! I used the macro lens to capture the interior of the flower.

One thing I love about Atlanta Blooms! is that they always do several color combinations of tulips around the gardens. I love this rich scheme as much as the pastels.

I also love seeing the different varieties. Last year, Spring came slowly due to the super-cold Winter, so each week we visited the Gardens, different colors and varieties were waxing or waning.

I loved the pots of daffodils by the reflecting pool outside the main building. See that little boy at the end of the pond? A couple minutes after this picture, I heard his dad say, "Just be careful, so you don't fall in like last time!" But was it a fall or a jump?? LOL!!

I love the color combination of the pink tulips, green leaves and blue/green stoneware pot!

Speaking of daffodils, they were EVERYWHERE in the gardens before the tulips started to show their faces. There's a whole hill right when you enter covered with them. These were some of the late-blooming ones that stuck around to party with the tulips.

I love the color combinations, but the monochromatic scheme is nice, too. =)

Wonderful with the cherry trees!

JiffNotes
I hope Spring comes early in your neck of the woods...I'm ready and waiting here!

Gifted Gorgeousness February

It's once again time to show our progress for Gifted Gorgeousness, a lovely stitch-along hosted by Jo at Serendipitous Stitching. Gifted Gorgeousness is all about stitching on things we've been gifted (or possibly that we *want* to gift). You can click on the graphic above to find out more about it.

I have stitched on two things this month for GG. Last month I was really close to finishing Dragonlet 11 from Jennifer Aikman-Smith's 12 Dragonlets of Christmas (which were gifted to me by Bonnie at Bonnie's World since I don't do facecrook). So now he is finished!

I may take a little break before I tackle the last two (yes, TWO...I'll let you stew in mystery for a while if you don't already know why there are two ;) The constant color changes and tons of backstitching make these not my favorite thing to work on, but honestly the worst thing is the fabric. I will never use Brittney again!

Fabric is not a problem with my other GG project: Shakespeare's Garden by La Broderie. This chart, along with the specialty fibers and embellishments, was gifted to me by my friend Cathy (no blog). I'm stitching it on a beautiful Silkweaver solo.

So that's it for this month! I'm looking forward to making some major progress on Shakespeare's Garden this month!

Results of IHSW January 2015

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My update is a little late because I had the day off on Monday! I got to spend the weekend at a friend's condo in Highlands, North Carolina, with my peeps. It's very pretty there, although we did not see much of it! We really did just hermit and did nothing but watch movies and stitch. Of course, we all brought way more to stitch on than we could possibly get through in the weekend. One of my friends had the brilliant idea to have a mini Sparkly Compote of Decree, so we took some red plastic cups and each had an American Party Cup of Revelation (or something). Every now and then, someone would yell, "SWITCH!" and we would draw slips from each other's cups.

The APCOR had a decidedly Christmas bent for me...I stitched on Victoria Sampler's Heirloom Christmas Sampler...

Quaker Christmas II (over one)...

and Dancer.

The final project I worked on was Spring Garden Gate.

I also have to share the "housewarming present" I gave to my gracious hostess. She and her husband were joking about having bear-related things in the condo since the bears in Highlands can be a nuisance with respect to the trash cans. I can't remember who texted this picture to whom, but when I saw it, I knew I had to make it part of the decor...

I don't know if her decorator will ever speak to her again.

JiffNotes
I came, I saw, I sat on the couch all weekend!

Gifted Gorgeousness

This year Jo at Serendipitous Stitching, hostess of many a fabulous blog hop, is also hosting a great stitch-along! Gifted Gorgeousness is all about stitching on things we've been gifted (or possibly that we *want* to gift). You can click on the graphic above to find out more about it.

I have a few things I want to work on this year, but I'm starting with a project I should have finished last year! Bonnie at Bonnie's World kindly sent me printouts of Jennifer Aikman-Smith's 12 Dragonlets of Christmas...she even contacted Jennifer to make sure it was OK! Why all this trouble? I don't do facecrook, and the dragonlets were only released on there. Anyway, I managed to complete 10 out of 12 last year during the Smalls SAL, but I really want to finish them this year! Here are the 10 I finished:

Here's how far I've made it on dragon 11, a little piper.