Keeping Busy

We have been a little out-of-sorts lately so Dash and I went on a little outing. We just spent a night (Friday) away from home and did a little shopping, sight-seeing and such. It was nice to get away, if only for the night. We went to the movies and saw The Raven with John Cusack, on opening night no less. We NEVER go to movies on opening night. The movie was fun and Cusack is such a solid performer. He's easy on the eyes too, lol. This movie also features Brendan Coyle of Downton Abbey fame. 

A neat surprise was the family of Bluebirds outside our hotel room window! There were four chicks (just fledged) and the parents. They hung out on this Woodpecker-hole-riddled pine tree. The babies were learning to fly and mom & dad were busy bringing them bugs. Sorry for the lousy quality, these photos were taken with my iPhone, through the window, into the sun. 

The babies kept peeking at us. 

"Can they SEE us?" They wonder.

Daddy bird wasn't happy with our stares.

"Who are you LOOKING at?," He asks.

Daddy flew off to catch bugs and baby s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s his wings. 

"This flying business is such HARD WORK!"

We went to a town near Tulsa called Jenks, as we'd heard they have lots of antique shops to visit. We hadn't realized it was also the weekend of their annual herb festival so they were crowded like you wouldn't believe ~ but we had loads of fun. I found lots of goodies:

Jars and jars and jars of buttons. A very pretty (and tiny) clear glass flower frog. Some neat old commercial thread spools. Two jars full of old, old wooden thread spools.

A cool Needlecrafts book. This thing is HUGE. Some old leaflets, including an early Prairie Schooler. Then I also found several lots of 1980-90's cross stitch magazines. When I've gone through them I will offer my duplicates up as a giveaway, k?

Eeek!

So sorry about that! I had to include an "I live in freakin' Oklahoma" story for you. The other evening I went out to get the mail and there were hundreds of tiny spiders all over my mailbox and the planter it sits in. Oooo! Spiders kinda freak me out if there is the slightest chance they could get ON me. So I go get the bug spray and give the mailbox and the planter a good dousing. To my absolute HORROR seven (OMG 7!) huge Black Widow spiders come rushing out from between the bricks of the planter. I gave the planter another good dousing of insecticide and phoned Dash at work to tell him I'm packing up and moving to Antarctica where surely it's too cold for spiders. He convinced me to stay by promising to spray around the house inside and out. Incidentally, after he sprayed, I found another Black Widow dying on the front porch! Don't poke your hands into places you can see around my house. Just sayin'. I have found Black Widows here before but never so many at once.

Maybe I will stay here in Oklahoma. Our weather has been just lovely lately and I have spent many, many hours stitching on the back porch. Since it's usually too windy, too rainy, too cold or too hot for me to stitch outside this is quite the pleasant development. I have several things to show you but I'm going to just tease you for now! See you soon!

Thank you for visiting my blog today!

xox