March 25, 2010

400th Posting - Madonna and Child Giveaway Winner - She Dreams Big!

And the winner is.......

Connie from She Dreams Big!

Thank you for the overwhelming response to my give away in celebration of my 400th Blog.  I am already working on my giveaway to celebrate the BIG 500 coming up later this year.

Your praise, encouragement and well wishes are so welcome - it has been my deepest pleasure to create this reliquary and then send it off to a new home.  I like to think that this little piece of me will be around for hundreds of years....and that this reliqary will bring pleasure, hope, strength and courage to whoever holds it in their hands and gazes inside to see the Holy Mother and Child within.  That just makes me happy thinking about it - and isn't that what art is all about....creating something soulful and then sharing it with the world.

Visit Connie
She Dreams Big - a blog filled with arty inspiration.

Now I want to share a little bit of my world with you from the weekend.....


We had 12 inches of snow at the farm over the weekend!  The little cowbirds were flocking to the feeder for seed and didn't mind being photographed in the process.  The bird on the railing is a woodpecker that visits the feeder each day.  He wasn't thrilled to see the cowbirds invade his feeder - poor little guy.

The daffodils were rescued from the garden before the snow covered them and they brought sunshines into the kitchen for the weekend and the fragrance is one of my favorites.


We were having a barn cleaning party at the farm over the weekend - well it wasn't much of a party with the 12" of snow to plow through as we hauled away junk from the barn.  We purchased the farm two years ago and have been working on it ever since.  We replaced the roof this year and now the next phase was removing all the "junk" left from the four previous owners...what a mess!  We still have one horse stall filled with metal that will have to be hauled away in a few weeks.

We still haven't decided what we will do with the huge groundhog that has taken up residence in one of the horse stalls - underground of course.  As the barn improvements continue I think he will probably move his den to a more quiet location.  I imagine him as being a grumpy sort of fellow, who gets all huffy when we visit and mess around "his" barn disturbing his otherwise peaceful existence.  I have seen him when we drive up to the house and he is the largest groundhog I have seen.  He stands on his back legs - prairie dog style and then scampers under the barn doors and then his head pops back out from underneath the door one last time to see if we are still there and then he disappears into his den.



My sweet sis in law, Laurie and her sweet husband, Bobby came down to lend a hand and what a mess it was...everyone was filthy by the time the last load left the barn.  We joked that Bobby and Laurie would probably never come back again...which is really not far from the truth.  We try to offset the hard manual labor with good eats.  We do feed our guests and farm hands well - we had biscuits and gravy for breakfast and a grilled steak dinner... everyone seemed to have a good appetite after all that hard work and fresh country air.  We were all rosy cheeked and happy sitting in front of the fireplace at the end of the day swapping barn stories from the day and marvelling at the heavy snow fall on the first day of Spring!

To me there's nothing better than working outside in the fresh country air and the feeling of calm bliss at the end of the day as you sit in front of a blazing fire with a warm cup of coffee in your hands....heaven....

What's your personal "heaven" like?

8 comments:

~*~ saskia ~*~ said...

c o n g r a t u l a t i o n s to Connie. Enjoy your gorgeous treasure!
Have a wonderful weekend, Julie. Sending many sweet Spring sparkles your way! xo

Oklahoma Granny said...

Congrats to Connie!

Sounds like you've been working hard! I know you'll be glad when everything is nice and tidy.

Lori said...

congrats to lucky Connie...i was really hoping to win...maybe the next one {?}...wow, i can't believe how much snow you had...and here i am whining because it is snowing here right now...and there is just a light dusting...it is spring though, so i think i can whine just a little bit...

Femmy said...

what a beautiful hanger!
thanks for visiting my blog.

Lesley Edmonds said...

Well done Connie - lucky you to be receiving this lovely giveaway.

I love your photos Julie, our daffodils are out at the moment over here in the uk too but we don't have snow it's raining hard at the moment.

Snuggling up with a hot cup of something by a roaring fire sound as good as it gets.

Lovely.

Lesley x

Lee Weber said...

Sounds like heaven to me. You can smoke the groundhog out, block the one door so he exits the other. I lvoe the watch the baby groundhogs in the spring, but they make mess of the lawn. We have a few weird spots on our barn too, where you can see something fairly large dug in from the outside... over by the foundation (which is all rotted on the one side, I might add...) Think about your often- hugs- Lee

Bitte said...

Congratulations to Connie! :-) I think this lovely necklace will bring happiness and good luck to her.

Thanks for sharing the pictures from your farm, I loved the picture of the small cute birds :-). Daffodils sounds like a dream to me, it's snowing here, day after day... hmm...

Have a nice weekend! :-)

Many hugs
Beatrice

Möllebacken said...

Big congratulations to Connie, what a treasure she won.
I can understand that your farm is your heaven, i feel the same with our farm "The mill on the hill" thats why i gave that name to my blog. The other one "panyx kennel" is my husbands blog and that is his heaven "smile".
Have a rally nice start on your week.
Hugs Pella