Lazy Summer Days

Since sewing has almost come to a screeching halt with the warm days of summer upon us, I thought I would share what I have been doing, working in the garden. I love puttering around in the garden, planting, finding just the right spot for each plant and just plain enjoying a pretty backyard. Here are a few pictures I took around my garden today. Oops I don't have any flower pictures here....next time.

I did say almost no sewing...a couple of things I was playing around with last week. A applique table topper done in bright colours and a fabric collage inspired by this amazing designer.

Have a great day, next time I'll have a quilt ready to show....woohoo a flimsy out of the closet....finally.

Flat Annie

Annie is not so flat anymore, she got some much needed stuffing and is feeling much better. She was missing her eye's for a couple of days too...poor Annie, I looked high and low for my paints to make the little black and white dot, without any success. I was heading to Micheal's to pick up some paint but first I had to drop my daughter off at home. She showed me the cutest sign she painted for her "kitty X-ing" out in the back lane. Light bulb moment....I asked her for a little paint to finish Annie...duh. So Annie is now happy. The funny thing is I found my paints this morning, right under my nose....next to the computer.....duh again

Here is the magazine I found Annie waiting for me to bring her home. In case you can't see, it's Vol 8, No 9.

Have fun making your own Annie.

On My Cutting Table

Yikes....another week just few by....I don't know what the heck I did all week but I know....I did stuff. A little sewing, cutting and puttering here and there. This is what I have on my cutting table "body parts". A friend was kind enough to point out the cutest Annie doll pattern in a magazine...well look what happened (what are friends for?). Soon Annie will have all her parts together and she will be a wonderful addition to my little quilt collection.

I hope you are having a great week and have a little time for sewing.

More Pictures and a Quilting Treat

Has it been a week already since I've been home....where did the time go??? It took me a few days to get back to my time zone and a normal routine again....what ever that might be. I thought a few more pictures of Portugal were needed, it's a difficult task of picking only a few from the over 700 photos we took. I'd go back to Portugal in a heart beat....such a beautiful place. If you want to skip the scenery photo's scroll down and you'll see the stitching I did while on the train trips we took.

This is Porto which is North of Lisbon. The boats are the old method of tranporting the grapes to the wineries. There are several wine caves we visited....and yes they gave us generous samples of port....we had a good time tasting.

More beautiful trees.

The green sign closest in the picture was our hotel in Faro, as far South as you can get in Portugal is the Algarve. When the hotel was renovated a few years ago they found Roman artifacts...pretty cool to be sleeping over a Roman Ruin site.

Lots of this blue tile work everywhere, both inside buildings and outside.

Just another street view. The narrow streets are fascinating. One door is the entrance to someones home and a bar right next door....how convenient for them.

This is Pena Palace in Sintra and the most beautiful I've ever seen, it's considered the Romantic period because of the ornate detail of the building. The palace dates back to 1839, walking around inside was amazing, I wish I could show so many more of this place.

This guy was over the main entrance, he would scare me away...for sure. I don't know how he fits with the Romantic period.

A little something I've made this week for a friends birthday.

Here are the bunny's I stitched while traveling around Portugal. Stitching with one colour made it easy to pick up and stitch whenever I had a few minutes.

I'm looking forward to getting these bunny's pieced into a quilt.

I'm BACK!

Warning: Lots of beautiful pictures and very long post.

We are back from our 2 week holiday in Portugal. What a fun time we had touring around the country. We took the train to different areas around Portugal. Our flight was into Lisbon and we stayed for 3 days before taking the train West to Sintra (my favorite place in all of Portugal, you'll see why soon). Isn't this blooming tree so beautiful, it's so full of flowers you can't see any greenery.

There are little cable cars to take you up to the St. George's castle that over looked the city, it dates back to the 6th century and was fortified by the Romans. We didn't take the easy way up, we walked up the narrow windy streets making a guess that we are going the right way. This was the start of many walks UP HILL and hoping we are heading to the intended destination, why is it that you can count on the place you want to go to always be uphill.

So many narrow streets to follow. We had to watch for coming cars because they couldn't be seen until they were right at the corner and cars in Lisbon don't watch for pedestrians anytime.

Oh look we found the St. Georges castle at the top of the hill. Here's a glimpse looking down at the city.

Other view of the city. One house seems to be added to the next and it just keeps on going as far as the eye could see.

Incredible views in every direction.

These were some stairs that went down to the main shopping streets, I guess we could have walked up these stairs instead of the street. I didn't go down to see, I was too afraid I would have to turn around and come back up all those stairs.

A fountain in one of "many squares" around the shopping district.

Isn't this the cutest train station, we are now in Sintra the most beautiful romantic place in Portugal, even the train station is lovely.

That's a little restaurant on the corner of the building, there is a cute little table with 2 chairs sitting outside. We tried to get that table for dinner but wasn't successful.

I was amazed at how narrow the streets are, see the handicapped parking, there's barely enough room for a car to get by never mind the pedestrians walking. See the clothes hanging out the window. I swear they don't have dryer's in Portugal, everywhere we went the laundry was hanging outside the windows. Even the 14 storey high rise apartments had laundry hanging outside the window. There seems to be a standard hanging line attached to all windows for drying clothes.

The castle of moors in Sintra, was built by the moors in the 9th century. And of course the castle is located in the high hill over looking the town, do you see more up hill walking for me. The next picture shows the town below and the castle on the hill.

See how beautiful and romantic this little town is. DH wanted to walk up to the moors castle and it really isn't as far as it looks in the picture but this time I had to say we are taking the bus as the incline is very steep. It turned out to be a good thing since we walked all the way around the castle walls, up stairs and down stairs. You can see in the picture above this one how the stairs are all the way around, I think it took us a couple of hours to get through this castle.

Another picture of the Castle of Moors.

This street is in a small town North of Porto, I know I've skipped ahead. I can't seem to get Picasa to load more than 4 pictures at a time and I've got some pictures a funny order....sorry I'm getting off topic. This small town is called Guimaraes, we took a 3 hour train from Porto to get here. This is one of the medieval streets we walked around.

I thought this sign was pretty funny, good illustration of what is expected when you have a dog. I wish some of my neighbours would do this.

Another castle, this one is a 10th century medieval castle with 8 towers 92 ft high. Again there was more up hill walking and we also walked around the castle walls. Every day we did about 10 to 12 km of walking. The food was awesome in Portugal and we sure ate well after all the walking we did. Sometimes ordering food was a challenge because most menu's were not in English and most people didn't speak English either. I was able to pick out the word salmon and ordered this I think at least 5 times.

I don't know anything about this church, I took the picture because of the blue tiles. The tiles were used extensively through out Portugal both inside and outside of buildings.

I think this is enough for one day....I hope I didn't bore you too much.....time for bed, I'm still trying to adjust to the 9 hour time difference.

My next post will have more Portugal pictures and I also have some stitching to show as well. Train rides are a good time for stitching.

Thanks for visiting.
Wendy