Arte Y Pico Award

LOOK AT THE SPECIAL AWARD I JUST RECEIVED!!! Oh...Look what has come my way via Lorena from Rose Chic Friends ...I had the honor and privilege of receiving the Arte Y Pico award from Lorena. What an Honor and privilege this is, thank you SO much Lorena! I so appreciate all the wonderful people that I have met out there in blogland!

Here are the rules:
1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributeto the blogging community, no matter what language.

2. Each award has to have the name of the author and a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.

3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name of and link to the blog that presented her/him with the award

4. The award winner and one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y Pico blog so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5. To show these rules.

Now for the fun yet very hard part... to choose5 other people for this award...

The five blogs which I chose nourish me and enrich me with creativity. In them I see dedication, creativity, care, comradeship, but mainly, ART, much art. I choose..............

1. Jen of Jennifers Petal Palace
2. Cleste of Le Rea Rose
3. Steph of Angelic Accents
4. Karen of A Second Hand Rose
5. Judy of Vintage to Chic

PS

My friend Katie over at Rose Breeze Boutique is having surgery on her shoulder and while she is healing up she would love to hear from you and give her some ideas on what to name these beautiful chickens that are pictured below. She has a beautiful blog so I’m sure you will be happy if you go and spend some time with her!

Thank you so much for stopping by! It was so nice to spend some time with you!
Blessings, Shirl

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

I wish you and your family a very Happy and Blessed Father's Day! The pic above is a few little pieces of my father's collections. If you look real close you can see a little rabbit in that bunny hutch!

I’m doing this post in memory of my father. The picture above is my parents on the day they were married. He was born in 1921 in Philadelphia, Pa. He and my mother got married in 1941. He was in the Air Force for 20 years, when retired we moved to the state of NJ and there he worked for Ransom Airlines and US Air. He was an instructor and director of aircraft maintenance. He and my mother were married for 43 years when she passed away.

My father was a such a loving, gentle, caring, hard working soul, and oh how he loved my mother. There was never any doubt in our home about their love. I can still here him saying to her, “I Love You Babe” he called her “His Buddy”. On her tombstone, he had engraved “my buddy“. He passed away in 1988 and oh how much I miss him.

I grew up in such a loving home, always felt so secure. It was a comfort to know that you had such a loving place to come home to!

At Christmas my father would not let my sister and I see a bit of Christmas until we woke up on Christmas morning. He and my Mom would stay up all night and decorate the house, put up the tree and he always put up a train platform. Not a little one either, it had mountains, tunnels, bridges, running water, town, city, lakes, ponds and county farm houses. The Christmas tree always had tinsel put on strand by strand and angel hair. My sister and I would wake up to a Christmas wonderland. Those memories I will always treasure. I’d like to share some pics of my father, feel free to click on them to get a close up!

This is a pic of my parents just after WWII ended, he got stationed in Florida, it was a paradise for them.

This pic is when they were dating.

After retiring from the Air Force he worked for Ransome Airlines. This is a pic from one of their meetings. He was doing some teaching for US Air, he was teaching this class in Canada.

This was taken in the 70's at my house, it was their anniversary but I'm not sure which one it was. That was my first attempt at cake decorating, not to good. LOL

This one was take at my wedding in 1971.

Going Home

God saw him getting tired
And a cure was not to be.
So he put his arms around him
And whispered, “come with
me.”
With tearful eyes we watched
him suffer.
and saw him fade away,
Although we loved him dearly
We could not make him stay.
A golden heart stopped beating…
Hard working hands to rest,
God broke our hearts to prove
to us
He only takes the best.

Thank you so much for stopping by. It was so nice to have you visit!

Blessings, Shirl

PINK SATURDAY

Welcome to My Pink Saturday! Hosted by Beverly of How Sweet The Sound. One of my new girlfriends, Beverly of How Sweet The Sound, Is hosting PINK SATURDAY each week. All that means is that she posts something, ANYTHING, pink every Saturday for all the other pink lovers out there. She has asked any of us who would like to join her to go to her blog to link up with her on Saturdays.
If you are interested in doing "Pink Posts" on Saturdays, just let Beverly know and we can all play together. Just do your Pink Saturday posts, send her a link each week you want to participate, and she will post the links on her Saturday post.

I have a few things in pink that I am posting today. The first thing in pink is a cake. My dear sweet friend Maryjane from Beehive Cottage recently posted a beautiful pink cake on her blog. My daughter and grandsons were coming for lunch on Thursday so of course I had to make a pink cake. I made a red velvet cake and used Maryjane's recipe for buttercream frostings that she posted several months back. It is just the best buttercream! Thank you so much Maryjane! Feel free to click on the pics to get a closer look!

It was so nice and creamy, not to sweet just perfect!

This sweet little teacup pincushion I purchased from my dear friend Ellen. She did such a wonderful job in sewing it then she embellished it with little embroidered flowers, beads swarovski crystals. I just fell in love with it and was thrilled when I won it on ebay!

Here's a close up. The swarovski crystals are in the center of the boullion rose.

I found this pretty teapot in a flower shop this week. I love the green bow!

Here's another thing that I came out of the florist with. I was looking for a new wreath and found this pretty pink one just calling my name! I liked the oval shape of this one and I do love morning glories so this was perfect.

My last pink item for today is this cordless pink Dirt Devel Broom from Target. They did not have it in the store, seems it's a item on their web site only. My friend Lynn Laura from A Romantic Nest had mentioned in on her blog a few months back. I'm very happy with it. I like the idea of having not having to drag an electric cord around for quick jobs. It's perfect for under the stools around the island. It's not for big jobs, once a week I drag out the big vacumn but this is perfect for in between.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed looking a my pink. This will be such an easy post for me because I have so much pink!!!! Be sure to go to How Sweet the Sound and visit the other blogs that are sharing their pink! Have a great week!

Blessings, Shirl

I'VE BEEN TAGGED BY STEPH

I've been tagged by my dear friend Steph of Angelic Accents.
So, in the spirit of getting to know each other better.....

Answer the following 5 questions about myself, then tag 5 others.


1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
Ten years ago I was working as a designer in a flower shop. Also working on this old house!


2. 5 things on my "to do" list:
A. Finish 1st guest bedroom. (2 more to go)
B. Learn to paint roses.
C. Paint sewing room.
D. Eat healthier and get more exercise.
E. Paint and freshen up my kitchen.

3. Snacks I enjoy:
Lindt white chocolate truffles, Bryers coffee ice cream on a brownie, Classic Lays Chips.

4. Things I would do if I were a millionaire?
Give some to my church and my charities, pay off my debts and my kids debts, give to pet charities. Buy an ocean front house in Cape Hatteras, NC. Build a Thomas Kinkade log cabin on the hill behind my house.

5. 5 places I have lived:
1. California
2. Newfoundland
3. Kansas
4. Delaware
5. New Jersey

OK, I tag . . . . . . .
Amy of Bunny Rose Cottage
Jen of Jennifer’s Petal Palace
Mary Jane of Beehive Cottage
Lynn Laura of A Romantic Nest
Alecia of Homemaker @ Heart

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed this little visit, it was fun!
Blessings, Shirl

FRONT PORCH PARTY

Hello and welcome to my porch party being hosted by Rhondi of Rose Colored Glasses. If you click here you can go to her blog and get all the links who are participating. When I heard about Rhondi’s Front Porch Party. I was so excited about it. I have always loved porches and I’m so happy to finally have a house with a porch. Our first two houses only had small little porches not even big enough for a chair. When my husband and I started looking for our retirement home that was one thing it had to have. First on my list! This house has two so the one in the older part of the house we are going to turn it into a four seasons sun room. Perfect because it is south facing so we will be able to grow lettuce, tomatoes and beautiful flowers all year round. Well I just couldn’t wait to get started on taking photos for this fun post! I thought since our porch railings and my shabby white furniture was due a coat of paint this summer I would go ahead and do that before taking pics. Well just about the time I got all my materials ready to paint the sky’s opened up with rain, hail and wind, and it has been doing that for three days. We have had awful floods in WV from this and I pray for the people who lost so much! I thought I would wait until this morning to take pics when hopefully the sun would be shinning. I was up and out on my porch bright and early today and the sun was out but I never thought I would find the mess I did. It had rained so hard the porch flooded with water and mud. What a job to get that cleaned up before taking pics. Needless to say, no freshly painted furniture and railings and the floors are a little messy, cleaned up best as I could. But my pretty porch is still there and Oh how I love it! Take a look, please click on the pics so you can take a closer look!

Some close ups for my little table scapes!

We spend so much time on our porch, it's quite large so we have picnic's out here also. Sit and relax at every chance we get!

Most of the hand painted items on my porch were done by my daughter Jen from Jennifers Petal Palace.

A view from our porch.

Wisteria at one end of the porch. Really makes a cozy place to sit. When in bloom it's just beautiful with a heavenly scent.

Roses are just now starting to bloom.

A few pics of other season with our porch. This is a view from my porch during a cold snowy winter in the hills of West Virginia.

My picket fence was another must have for me, it took quite a few years to get hubby to put that in. Coming from a farming family he loves wide open spaces. He did not want any parts of a fence but now loves it as much as I do!

Below is the older porch on the pre-civil war part of the house, this is the one we are going to make into a four seasons sun room. We will put steps on this side so we can enter from the picket fenced area. Windows that we have purchased will be from ceiling to floor. We are going to keep the old wainscoted ceiling, we love it. We will be putting a fire place in here also. A very cozy place to sit in the winter while the snow is coming down! It has two front doors, one entering into the office and the other into our bedroom. The rooms used to be front and back palors. If you scroll down to my first post you can read about the history of our home.

A warm misty evening last summer!

Now how is this for a porch? This beautiful place is a resort in Bedford, Pa. My daughter works for this chain called Benchmark Corporation. My husband and I used to stop in Bedford on our trips to NJ and admire this beautiful place before Benchmark purhased and restored it over the past three years. We plan to spend a few days here later this year.

This is what it looked like before it was restored. My husband and I always stop at places like this, we just loved it here and hoped one day it would be restored. Our wish was answerd.

Thank you for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed this little tour of our porch! Now I'm going to take the rest of the day to relax with my kitties and puppies, take my lap top out and look at everyone else's porch. I'm sure I will get some wonderful decorating ideas. A home is never done!