"Summertime and the livin' is easy..."Yet there are items on my agenda that can, in time, make life anything but easy. When you live here in the Northeast, summer can be a fleeting thing. Weather can play a cameo role. A couple of summers ago, June and July were loaded with more moisture than you would want. At the start of a summer, you have what seems endless miles ahead, plenty to do with plenty of time, but before you know it days are creeping shorter. Ol' Mr. Summer Sun is on the wane and many of those plans can come crashing down around you. Over the next few months, I have things that need to get done, and those that I want to get accomplished or at least I do for right now. Sometimes it's a challenge to distinguish between the two and keep myself and those around me happy and enjoying these all too brief warm days around here. So, I'll take some trips, see some friends, do some celebrating, get an important project or two or three done, buy a book, get some 'me time' in and hit a beach or two. Oh ya, almost forgot the beach...
Such a delicate flower. Some things in life even now, after all these years, still make me sit back and shake my head in amazement. No, I'm not talking about this delicate, wind-swept flower among the dunes at Willard Beach. I'm talking about the purple bikini top! So, Thursday we get to Willard about noon and pick out a fine spot up next to the dune grass in the warm sun and gentle ocean breeze. Perfect. Well, almost. Once I had gotten myself situated and comfortable in my chair, I heard it. Miss Purple Bikini Top, about 10 feet away in front of us, was on her cell talking. Over the next hour, she NEVER quit. Talk! Talk! Talk! Yak! Yak! Yak! When I complained to Elenka about her incessant talking, she laughed hysterically! "You should talk!" She said. "Ya, but I make sense when I talk..." She got a kick out of that comment! After about an hour, a miracle occurred. The call was over... but not for long. Within a minute, she was back engaged to her cell engrossed in another friendly exchange. On, and on and on. Now, you know I'm a gentle man, but after 1 1/2 hours of this all I wanted to relay to her were these few, simple, dainty words "SHUT UP!"
"My Three Hours"
... more "My Three Hours"
... more "My Three Hours"
I hear it snowed somewhere in the country this week. Here, the citrus trees are blooming and it smells heavenly. Nevertheless, I drew a winter dress for Clara this week for all of you who had snow and ice.
Clara's Dress 48 (741k)
During the 1910s, fashion designs became softer and lesstailored than those of the previous decade. Dresses like this one and this one were very structured, pleated, and decorated. 
It may surprise you to see that Clara’s shoes are boots, and not exactly what you might expect to beworn with a dress. However, boots were very practical, and were worn with daydresses in the early 1900s. This little clip from a postcard shows a girl wearing boots with her dress. 
This week, Clara gets to wear a 1930s double-breasted coat, the uniform of sleuths in every clichéd mystery book and movie. Clara is wearing a similar coat and hat in the black and white illustration from an original copy of The Bungalow Mystery, one of the first three Nancy Drew Books published in 1930. The original cover has Nancy in a very cute blue suit with a stylish yellow scarf. The familiar yellow spines for the Nancy Drew book covers were not created until 1962, when the books were republished. 
Clara has a cute double breasted trench coat, worn with a drapy scarf around her neck. She also has a floppy rain hat to match the coat. And finally, she has some galoshes to finish off her rainy-day outfit. Galoshes were pulled on and worn over whatever more fragile shoes were being worn underneath, thus protecting the shoes from mud or water.
Clara's dress for this week is a pretty day dress trimmed with roses. In the 1840s, the slope-shouldered look became popular, so dresses were sewn to hide the natural shoulder line, and mimic a round shouldered look. Women would practice holding their shoulders a certain way to accentuate the rounded look. The things people will do to be "in style"!
I use this for everything. My table tops, counters, sinks, appliances...you name it. In fact I look for things to clean with this stuff because it smells that good!
This stuff even comes in a concentrated bottle that you just add a little bit to a whole bunch of water. I've seen this stuff at TJ Maxx, at Target and Walmart. Try them. I think you'll like 'em.
Both brands of product are natural and safe and smell amazing so cheer up and clap your hands. Cleaning can be fun if you do a little extra something for your house and for yourself every once in a while!
Here is our little apple tree last week just before we put it in a bigger pot outside. We didn't really have much hope for it in the beginning, but now I'm looking forward to seeing it become what it was meant to be. And when it gets bigger it probably won't bear tasty fruit (apple trees from seeds don't grow the same apples they came from - weird, huh?), but it's worth giving it a chance, don't you think? You know, 
This lampshade was in there. Other than 
