Fair Time Again

One of the best times of the year for me is Fair Time! It gives me the motivation to get some of my UFO’s finished up to enter into the Fair for judging. I love everything about the fair from getting to see my crafts on display, (hopefully with a ribbon), baking pies, breads, cookies etc. and getting to watch the judging of these special events, to riding the farris wheel and having an excuse to eat cotton candy and funnel cakes!

I usually have quite a lot of crafts to enter into the fair every year, but this year was a little slow. I did a lot of knitting and knitting takes a lot of time. In fact, of the eight items I entered, five of them were knitted, two were crocheted, and one was cross-stitch. 

The Fair starts Fri. and I’ll be in the “Weird Chocolate Cake” contest that day. For this contest, you need to put something out of the ordinary into a chocolate cake. Last year, I put sweet potatoes in my cake, cooked it in a casserole dish, and finished it off with marshmellows on top for the “icing” which I put back in the oven for a few minutes to melt the marshmellows so it would resemble a sweet potato casserole. It didn’t win, but someone else put sweet potatoes in their cake and won a third place ribbon! I wonder what I did wrong!?! Anyway, this year I’m putting the new strawberry-peanut butter-flavored M & M’s in my cake. What’s better in chocolate than peanut butter, right? We’ll see……

Here’s a pic of one of my entries, a crocheted granny square hat. I LOVE this hat! This is a hat that I will probably actually wear! (I’m not usually a hat person.) Isn’t it cute!?

This is the knitted snake for the Toys for Tots special contest. After the judging, the toy will be donated to Toys for Tots. So one of these days, some little boy or girl will own this snake. I hope they enjoy playing with it as much as I enjoyed knitting it.

These are the only two pics I have of my crafts so far. I’ll be taking more pics Fri. when I go to the Fair to see if I’ve won any ribbons. I can’t wait!

New Furniture

We’ve had some wicker furniture in our sunroom ever since we had the sunroom built. It was a cheap set which consisted of a couch, two chairs and a coffee table. One of the chairs didn’t last long because it was a cheap set. It didn’t come with cushions, so I had to make some. It was an uncomfortable set of cheap wicker furniture. I can’t believe we kept it for all these many years. Did I mention that it was cheap?

I’ve been wanting to get a set of patio furniture to replace that cheap set of wicker. Something that would be comfortable and attractive. I like to sit out in the sunroom with my first cup of tea and enjoy the quietness of the early morning hours. (I get up at 3:00 am!)  Hubby and I are both a little on the thrifty side of life so it’s hard for us to let go of money some times. But………

We swallowed hard, opened our purse (well, MY purse) and look what we got. . . .

It’s very good-looking, AND it’s very comfortable. It has a wicker look, but it’s actually a hard plastic of some type. It came with all the cushions including the throw cushions. It’s a little bigger than our first set but it fits into our sunroom just fine.  The other morning it was raining softly, I was sitting all curled up on the couch, and I was drinking my first cup of tea. Ahhhh, I wished time could have stopped for a few hours.