Utility Sewing, Housework, and Theft!

This last week has been pretty busy with the yard sale, cleaning up the yard sale, moving stuff into the basement, life, and such.  We had beautiful weather for the yard sale--the only time in the last few weeks that the weather has been sunny.  The yard sale was the least successful we've had. But we did get rid of at least half of the stuff.  Some of the leftovers were donated to the historical center's yard sale/fundraiser, some will be taken to the Habitat ReStore, and some is getting donated to our elementary school.  It feels good to have more stuff out of the house.

Our bathroom cabinet finally came in, so my husband picked up that and the bathtub unit Friday night and we moved those into the basement.  I'm hoping now that we're past the yard sale he will have some free time to work on the sewing room and bathroom again.

I decided that we could really use a Swiffer at work.  Target had a special, so I bought one and then made a few washable/reusable covers to try out.  One side is terry cloth, the other fleece. I'm hoping the covers work well at picking up dust.  We'll see.

Our irises came up really... yellow... this year.  We got all of these irises for free from a lady who lives near us.  There are usually pale purple, brownish purple, and a few brighter yellow.  This year they are pretty spectacular, but mostly pale yellow.  A bunch more of the brownish ones are now blooming, but almost none of the purple, which are my favorites of this bunch.  And something, a cat or a raccoon maybe, keeps pooping in the liriope at the bottom of the picture.  Boo, hiss.
In birding news, we've had loads of woodpeckers on the feeders.  We always have a lot of downy woodpeckers, red bellied woodpeckers, and pileated woodpeckers.  Sometimes the hairy woodpeckers, flickers, and even yellow bellied sapsuckers.  But never red headed, which is the other type that is in our area.  So I was really excited to see a red headed on the feeder a few weeks ago.
Hairy and red bellied woodpeckers
The elusive red headed!
We've also had a ton of rose breasted grosbeaks.  It started with just one male, then two, then three, four, five, and finally a female.  It seems like we add one more each day.  They don't usually stay through the summer though. Our hummingbirds returned a few weeks ago, although not as many as usual, and we saw our first Baltimore orioles this week.  Oh, and a catbird on the feeder one day.  Other than that it's been pretty pedestrian--sparrows, finches, blue jays, and cardinals at the feeder and the usual cowbirds, blue birds, king birds, mockingbirds, phoebes, mourning doves, robins, and the like in the yard.  And we've had a few pests too--unfortunately four crows have been hanging around.  We've been trying to chase those away along with a few starlings.
Here's one I was really super excited by! While trying to get a picture of the red headed, I caught a picture of the blue bird pictured below.  I've never seen one like it before.  It is a blue grosbeak. Good thing I managed to catch a picture since that fleeting moment was the only time I've seen it.
In other news, it was brought to my attention that an eBay seller stole my pattern logo from the Pixie Faire website and was using it as their own in their eBay store.  I spent Friday night dealing with that mess.  It seems to be resolved, at least for now, and with zero return communication. What a pain!  Why do people have to be like that?   You can see a few more details on my cutie pie & me Facebook page if you're interested.

I noticed that my 365 post Sunday didn't actually post until Monday.  Sorry about that.  Not sure what happened there.  

I got a Groupon and a coupon for an Ancestry DNA test back in March.  The results came in this week.  I expected it to say European--I mean, we are, like, super white!  And knowing the bits we know, it's the usual English, Irish, German.  SO>>I was really surprised that I got 88 percent European and 12 percent sub-Saharan African.  I thought that it would have the country of origins like the ads on TV and even their own website seem to indicate.  Apparently you have to pay another $50 for it to say that.  I'm super glad I only paid $39 for the test since there's not much to the results.  Kinda wish I would have known and paid the extra.  It was pretty interesting though. Ha!

We have nine more school days, and loads of events.  I've been trying to make myself a shirt for a month now and just haven't had the time.  Hopefully soon.  Check back Friday for a funny.


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