Bad! I'm a bad blogger these days. I have things to say, just simply don't feel like saying them. When the sun starts shining, the bees start buzzing and the flowers start blooming, it's really hard for me to sit down at the old computer. Weeds are calling, birds are chirping and sun needs soaking up. I hope you're all getting out, enjoying the beautiful weather and the company of friends and family. We went camping over the long weekend, up to Mt. St. Helens which is only a couple hours drive from home, but we had never done it before. Incredible, incredible sights. So intriguing and awe-inspiring. I would suggest a trip to the mountain for anyone coming to our Pacific Northwest. The devastation is still so staggering, even almost 30 years later. And beautiful. Here are a few shots from our local volcano. Enjoy!

This is miles away from the crater, but the mudflow came much farther than this point down the valley. Even with the re-planting of tree's and other vegetation, the mud and lava flow was so thick that it is still very apparent.




29 years later, pretty much still looks as if you've landed on the moon.




This is one of the many stumps on the mountain. The jaggedness is caused by the force of the volcanic blast and lava flow literally tearing the tree off the stump and flinging it up to 17 miles away.

On the Banks

Photo of the day here . How exciting is that, I ask you?!
This is an old building that sits on the banks of the Lewis and Clark River just outside of Astoria. I'm not sure if it was an old cannery or what it was used for. I love the old pilings in the river, which can be seen all over this area.

Thank you, Coast Community Radio, for choosing my picture for the May 23rd picture of the day.

Help!

I have a 4th of July project in mind and I'm in need of your help. I need a word that signifies the 4th. Not a huge long word, but something like 6 to 8 letters. So far I've come up with "Liberty", "America" and "Freedom" but not sure if any of them is just right. Put on your thinking cap and tell me what word says 4th of July to you. Maybe it IS one of them that I've already come up with ~ if so, let me know that to, will you?
Thanks much. You guys are the best!

Sunday Stills - Eyes

I had such big plans for this weeks Sunday Stills challenge. The topic is Eyes, and I immediately decided that I was going to have my daughter, Shilo, come over and I was going to shoot her using the color accent feature of my camera so that just the color of her eyes stood out and the rest was black and white. I have it pictured perfectly in my mind, but sometimes the best laid plans fall by the wayside and my plans were not even close to the best laid. Work tends to get in the way of the things I want to do, strange how that happens. I didn't even mention my plans to Shilo at all during the week, because I turned around just once and that week was gone. Turns out that yesterday she had to work all day and so here it is Sunday morning. Below you'll find two sets of eye's that presented themselves perfectly to me yesterday.


Yesterday was a gorgeous May day here on the north Oregon coast, so after a day of working in the garden, we thought a walk on the beach was in order. After our walk, we pulled chairs out of the back of the truck and sat to enjoy the waves, with a snack and a beverage, of course. Our black lab, Blackie, was looking at me with these eyes. Wondering if I was going to hand over some of that snack. He really didn't like the camera pointed at him, but sat still for this one shot. Nice doggie!


Earlier in the day, I was working on planting all of our windowboxes when the phone rang. I ran into the house and chatted away while wandering back towards the front door, which was wide open. There, standing on the sidewalk was Mr. Raccoon. I grabbed my camera and tried to get a little closer, but he decided to run up the nearest pine tree. Tree'd my first coon, I did! Our town raccoons really aren't very afraid, so he didn't climb very far, which gave me a perfect opportunity. Look at those eyes. The Masked Bandit strikes again.

I'm still planning on the photo shoot with my daughter. Thinking those are going to be some fun pictures...

May(d) For Me Slumber Buns Pajama Bottoms

YEAH! May(d) for me, which doesn't happen very often. I found this sweet slumber buns pattern at Diamond Works Fabric in Cannon Beach and knew I had to have it. So cute! I made the cropped jammie's, finished them last night and can't wait to wear them. Giant deep pockets in the front trimmed with a contrasting fabric, a fun tie in the front and big buttons on the fly. The pattern makes a real fly, but I made mine faux instead. Call me lazy, that's okay. I didn't want to mess with the button holes. I'm a terrible buttonhole maker, so I took the easy way out.


Fun contrasting back pockets to dress up my behind.




Sweet bias trim around the cropped legs. The pattern also has directions for a ruffle here if you want a little more girliness.


Want to make your own slumber buns? Log onto Paisley Pincushion and order your pattern! This pattern has all sizes, childrens from size 2 to 12 and adults from size 6 to 28. Who could ask for more! The designer, Katie Organ even has pictures to help you along. I had to look at the pictures a couple of times. It really helped when my brain wasn't functioning properly! The best part about this pattern for me is that Katie is from Vernonia, Oregon, a sweet little mountain town between her and Portland. I was so tickled to turn the pattern over and find that it is from a local designer. Couldn't get better than that~
What have you May(d) for yourself this month. Join us over at Adrienne's Some of a Kind with your creations.

Sunday Stills - Black and White's

This weeks Sunday Stills challenge was to take a category from the past challenges and to play with black and white or sepia tones. It's been a crazy weird week here at Rainy Day Cottage, so I've dug into my archives this time. My pictures fall into the architecture category.

This is the Hotel Condon that sits deep in farm country in Condon, Oregon. My niece-in-law's famiy owns and restored this beautiful old hotel where her bridal shower was held late last summer. It' really a gorgeous old building and I love how it looks in black and white, like maybe you just stepped back a few decades in time.



Now this old run-down house is here in Astoria and is well known as Astoria's Haunted House. A once-prominent Astoria family owns it, but live back east. The house sits empty of living souls, but from what I hear, full of furniture and and things forgotten long ago. Driving by late at night, you can often see lights in the upstairs windows. A pretty spooky place to be walking by late at night.
My favorite of these two shots is the sepia-toned. I love to play with that in my photo's and don't know why I don't do it more often.
Thanks for stopping by today. I wish all of you Mom's a wonderful Mother's Day!

Famous Firsts

Famous Firsts

Mama Bear had this over on her blog, Bears In Exile Return Home, and I thought it was so fun that I had to play along.

First Job: Working for Grandma and Grandpa in their hardware store; Working on our neighbors farm building fence and helping in the hayfield. Elgin, Oregon.


First Real Job: Carl's Jr. fast food restaraunt. Redding, California.

First Favorite Politician: President Lincoln

First Car: 1969 Ford LTD. What a tuna-boat that thing was!



First Record/CD: Hmmm....I think it was a 45 of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band or possibly Olivia Newton-Johns Xanadu

First Sport Played: on a team, basketball. I was terrible. My only basket was made for the other team.

First Concert: Charlie Pride at the Royals Stadium in Kansas City when we went there for the National FFA Convention.

First Foreign Country Visited: Canada (and only foreign country visited so far!)

First Favorite TV Show: Captain Kangaroo and Electric Company


First Favorite Actor: John Wayne in The Cowboys

First Favorite Actress: Melissa Gilbert in Little House on the Prairie


First Encounter with a Famous Person: I remember walking right by Charlie Sampson, a champion bull rider, standing by the horse betting booths at our very own Union County Stockshow. Since then, I've met a lot of champion rodeo cowboys and have waited on Tanya Tucker several times in the cowboy bar I used to work in at Cody, Wyoming.

First Brush With Death: When my Grandpa died. I was 14.

First House/Condo Owned: I owned a double-wide mobile home in Cody, but don't really count that. We bought our first house only 4 years ago here in Astoria, fixed it up, (boy was it a fixer) and sold it almost 2 years ago now for a really nice profit.

First Film Seen: The first movie that I remember going to was Disney's Song of the South. I think I may have been about 5 and we lived in Ketchikan, Alaska.

First Favorite Recording Artist: Alabama. I loved them for many, many years!

First Favorite Radio Station: I don't remember the call letters, but it was a station out of Spokane, Washington that we could pick up. At night we also got a station out of Walla Walla, I think, that played Masterpiece Theatre. Spooky and fun!

First Book I Remember Reading: I come from a family of readers and was always surrounded by books. I don't really remember the first one, because they were just always around. I loved cowboy and outlaw books when I was little. Kit Carson, Billy the Kid, the Pony Express Riders, give me horses and cowboys and I would have my nose stuck in it until it was done. Guess I'm still kinda like that!



Oh this was fun. I love remember when's. Makes me think of things that I haven't for awhile. Feel free to join in and make sure you leave me a note so that I can pop by and read your first memories!

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Turn The Page Tuesday - Widow of the South

It's Turn the Page Tuesday again, hosted by Adrienne from Some of a Kind. Join us in posting a book review on the first Tuesday of each month. Below is my favorite of all the books I have read this past month. Really good.

'Down the rows of the dead they came. Neat, orderly rows of dead rebel boys who thirty years before had either dropped at the foot of earthen works a mile or so away or died on the floors of the big house overlooking the cemetery. Now there were stone markers, but for so many years there had been only wooden boards, weathered and warped, and tall posts proclaiming the numbers of the dead.'

This is the first paragraph of Widow of the South written by Robert Hicks. This is an incredibly moving book that really opens your eyes to the horrors of the civil war. Based, and very well-researched, on a true story, The Widow of the South tells the story of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. The battle at Franklin, Tennessee raged for just 5 hours, but when the smoke cleared there were 9,200 casualties in a field just outside the town of 2,500. Carrie McGavock's plantation home was turned into a makeshift hospital where Carrie and her slave and friend, Mariah, worked tirelessly for days on end to save the wounded men who covered every inch of her house and yards. Two Confederate doctors worked away in the surgery upstairs, tossing amputated limbs out the window until a huge pile had grown. The story continues even after the men are gone and a bit of normalcy begins to take it's place. For Carrie, the war still rages on and she will tirelessly write letters to the dead men's families, so that they may know what has happened to their loved ones. The field where the battle raged and the men fell has also become their graveyard, so when, a few years later, the man who owns the field threatens to plow it over to plant crops, Carrie works to bring the men home to her plantation and several acres that her and her husband have set aside to become a cemetery for those lost men.
This is such a compelling story, written so well and with so much emotion. It will haunt your days until you finish the last page. Beautifully written and so full of history that it is very hard to put down. I know want to visit Carnton Plantation and the cemetery that Carrie worked so hard to preserve.

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