My friend Carmen Sutton, from Doublecross in Knoxville, TN, sent me this photo of her Spot the Horse. How cool is this???!! I love how she put corner squares on her pillow! She's a clever, clever girl with the most amazing finishing skills. The stitching girls in Knoxville are lucky to have her...and I am lucky to call her my friend.

Thank you Nicole, from the bottom of my heart. I love, love, love it! And I will treasure it always.

P.S. This relates to my previous post....Today Rose and I were hiking the fields, as usual. I picked up an old soda bottle to bring home and pitch and guess what I found right beside it....a dollor!!! Again!!!

After! Now I have work sruface!!

In this photo (above), I've zoomed in on the walnut tree so you can see where we actually go. (Cause I know you are VERY interested!)

I'm very sorry for being so quiet lately. It's been a busy spring. Doesn't quite feel like spring, but it's been busy anyway! I JUST - two minutes ago - finished packing up all my income tax stuff for 2008. Everything has been mailed off to the accountant and all I can do now is wait (nervously) for the returns to be mailed back. NOT my favorite issue, for sure!

Then there's house stuff and barn stuff. We've started working on my old office in the house. So far, we haven't done much except install a wood stove (Yay, heat!), rip up carpet and try to make it look like a room. There is much to be done. There's a beam in the middle of the ceiling which supports the bedroom floor above. The beam is supported by a vertical beam which is sitting in the doorway into the living room. Makes for a tiny doorway. So, we have to remove that vertical beam and find an alternate way to support the ceiling beam. And, Art wants to fir out all the walls a few inches and insulate the room. It is truly freezing in there. But, this means taking out all the wood trim first and it will mean rebuilding the wood window well casings afterwards. Stone houses have wonderfully large window sills and ours will be even larger when he's done. And, we have to rip out the heat vents, which block a doorway. This is the case in the laundry room next door to my old office, so the project expands. Before we do any of this, we need to move some plumbing around under my old office (we HAVE to come up with a name for that room!) so our pipes no longer freeze. These are NOT fun projects!! I'm sure it will be fall before that room is finished.

So.....moving onward....there's the wiring we had to re-do for the swimming pool lights. This meant running three strands of wire, inside pipes, from one end of our 80-foot barn to the other. If you've never pulled wire, please take my advice....don't!! That was a couple day project.

We're also doing a lot of grass seeding. That's not a bad project. You just scrape up the ground and throw seeds down. Then you wait for sunny days and run outside every chance you get to see if grass is growing yet. That part is fun!

I'm still making jewelry, making charts, designing a little, fretting over Christmas at Hawk Run Hollow, the usual.

We're supposed to have snow tomorrow. Can you believe that?!! MAN!!!!

I hope you are all enjoying your spring, wherever you may be.