Happiness Is ..........

Heaven sent, if you will only be content .......... as the song goes! And I must say, I'm feeling pretty content with my little lot in life! I have a good, loving and caring husband, wonderful children and grandsons who all spoil me, a home that I love in an area that I love - really -  everything I need in life and much more! AND I have this little space here where all you lovely friends come and say hello and encourage and inspire me through your sweet and kind messages, as well as your posts that I devour on a regular basis. I'm saying a huge thank you to all of you!

And of course I have my creative expression which these days is coming forth in little stitches, crochet, and knitting, and I couldn't begin to describe how happy, relaxed and peaceful these activities encourage me to feel.

I am hoping that everything is going well for all of you, and if you're having a bit of an off time then I hope that things soon pick up for you!

A friend included a very meaningful quote in a recent email:  

"Cherish yesterday, dream tomorrow, live today!"

Perhaps it could also say - love today! Love is a verb - it works!

Before I go any further and get myself lost in photos and words, I just want to mention Shari's blog. I know that lots of you have been following Shari at Kashmere Kisses but, a little mistake happened on her computer and to cut a long story short, she is now blogging under a different name -here you'll find everything the same apart from the name.

Anyway lovely folks, here are a few of the things that have brought contentment to me this week:

Another stitchy project! 

On tackling this wheelbarrow with flowers I remembered a time when watercolour painting was high on my agenda! I used to be part of a group being taught to paint  flowers in a stylised fashion in the art deco manner, and really it was also a kind of botanical study too for we would sit there with flower and pencil in hand and draw the intricate individual parts of the plant and then use our imaginations and plant parts to produce - well, you could say fantasy flowers. The next step was to combine some of the popular ornamental motives from that art deco era into our drawing, duplicate up, down, left and/or right with the aid of tracing paper, and finish up with, hopefully, a lovely design worth painting, framing, and hanging on the wall! Those approaches are obviously embedded in me for I find it so easy to slip back into those ways when I have a pencil in my hand, even though  it's not strongly evident here. 

I also had the hook out intermittently over the past couple of weeks or so and crocheted up these apple slice coasters from Issue 7 of Simply Crochet - I think they're rather cute and would make nice little gifts - I was even thinking of making a little folder to slip them into - we'll see! They are a good size really - that is a red wine glass sitting on there and it has quite a large base!

Our garden is looking good at the moment so I took a few pics to show you our blue bush - sorry I don't know it's name ....

And the crab apple blossom; unfortunately J couldn't prune this properly this year because of his injured shoulder and so the tree has spread itself out all over the place and the blossom is not as prolific as it was in previous years, but still such a lovely bloom!

I love the Irises!

I don't know if this worked or not, but I keep trying with my close-ups!

I do have other things to talk about but since I'll be back again tomorrow with the Sunday Stitchalong with Chrissie,  I'll keep it until then!

Again, thanks so much for being here and please feel welcome to leave a little message - I love to hear from you!

❤Joy xo