ONE CRACKED POT - 3 NEW TREASURES

You will learn something about me today that I am not very proud of.  Now don't get me wrong, I am not a "pig;" but then again, I am not the greatest housekeeper.  My least fav things to do at home are sweep and vacuum.  Oh yes, did I forget dusting.  There I have said it.  Along with all that is the fact that sometimes things can just sit there for awhile before being cleaned under and behind.  In this case it is a very good thing. 

A couple of weeks ago we had a huge gust of wind shoot across our front porch - minus any rain which was desperately needed - and it blew everything over.  As we lay in bed wondering what all the crashing noise was, little did I know that I had a cracked pot out on the front porch!  My large Mexican style pot with tall curly sticks and a bit of Ting-Ting in it was laying in a big ugly heap.  The arrangement in the big pot was not exactly pretty, but it suited me and was just the right thing for the porch.  It required absolutely no upkeep and was a bit rustic looking.  I was sad when I saw that it was all cracked and I just didn't want to deal with the clean up right away.  It has been too stinking hot lately!
Finally I decided it must be cleaned up, remember I hate to sweep, and I would just have to deal with trying to replace it or rearrange the porch decorations.  What in the world was that thing down in there?  Oh my word, a HORNET's nest!!!!!!!  Yikes!!!!!!  After waiting, poking and checking the thing out, it was decided there were no angry tenants still living in there.  See, if I had been a great housekeeper, I probably would have been eaten alive by those hornets!  Now that they had had plenty of time to move on, I began to get excited.  The nest was pretty small but very interesting looking.  What a great find!  Yet another natural thing to decorate with.  At least all was not lost when mayhem blew through the other night.  We've all seen what kind of ugly things Mayhem can do on TV lately.
With new interest I realized the jug was broken into only four big pieces, a huge chunk of the top, about a half of the bottom of the pot and two pieces which made up the middle of the pot.  How great that the top could be used as a piece of yard art in my flower bed around a stump which we are watching slowly rot away right in our front yard.  Then I turned the bottom half to check for more cracks and to my astonishment it was sitting perfectly level on the rough jagged edges.  Yippeeee, I had a new little table to use beside the old rocker.  What a happy accident and three new treasures.

This chunk just looks great nested right in among the pieces of old rotten stump.

This is the bottom of the little hornet's nest which is attached to a thin stick of Ting-Ting (a curly wooden stick covered in gold glitter).    About seven years ago my son-in-law brought me a large hornet's nest he found in the woods.  I really love the natural look and cherish both of them.



The new one looks really tiny compared to the one Joe found in the woods.  Actually it is about the size of a man's fist. 

COMFY PAD FOR THE OLD SWING

Hancock Fabrics has great sales and I am such a sucker for fabrics and sewing/craft notions on SALE!!!   You just never know when that sewing urge will hit, so by all means you must squirrel away a little bit of everything, just in case.  Anyway, I decided it was time for a nice comfy cushion for my old swing on the back porch.  Back during the cold, cold winter (Oh how I am missing that cold rainy time of year.) HF put their indoor/outdoor fabric on sale for about 60% off and I found a stripe piece and so now was the time to get busy and use it before I decided I no longer wanted blue stripe.  Actually, I already am not as fond of it as I was in January, but it is just a swing cushion and I will only be looking at it everyday through my kitchen window for the next five to ten years.   Oh gosh, it sort of smacks of nautical and I have never really been a fan of nautical motif.   Oh mercy, just stop this now!!

Not only did I use the sale fabric, but I managed to re-purpose an old wool Army blanket as the padding inside the cushion.  Who in the state of Mississippi will ever be able to sleep under wool anyway?  The feel is just what I wanted - not plush, but comfortable.  More than comfortable was the fact that it was very reasonably priced - free.  I needed a cute pillow to add to the look and didn't have anything on hand that was exactly right, so I just cut apart the stripes and pieced them back together to make a solid color pillow top and used another scrap accent color for the backing.  Now all I need to do to complete the look is totally redecorate the other things on the back porch.  As soon as we get a good break in this heat wave - 100 degrees today, again - I plan to tackle that - maybe about October.

Don't you think a cute cushion or something was needed?

       
This will be a perfect place to sip a tall glass of Crystal Light lemonade in the cool of the evening and plan my redecorating frenzy.