Tea cups and TREES

This "tea for me" mat is going to take some time. Each one of the eight tea cups have intricate details to sew on and you can see from the picture, I've only 5 cups attached with lots more sewing to be done. I ran out of floss last night too, so sweet hubby and I made a late 8:00 trip, 8 miles away, to Joann fabrics to get more thread. All that time and distance, just to spend $1.25 for floss. Stupid me for not planning ahead on that.
I almost always use #8 pearle cotton threads for my sewing. Even though it's a lot more expensive, it's so much easier to work with than embroidery floss and it doesn't tangle like floss, when stitching. This pattern design, however, has such small details, I decided that it would look better using the thinner strands of floss. The pearle cotton would just be too bulky. Blah, I'm spoiled by the pearle cotton so switching over is a real adjustment for me.

This morning, the Stanley Tree Service guys came back to finish the clean up job. Last month, we had a bad wind storm which completely uprooted a large pine tree. The pine tree, on it's way down, took out a long row of beautiful pine trees and a couple ash trees too. Thankfully, it barely missed the neighbor's house by just a few feet. About 10 trees were destroyed as well as our stockade fencing which was behind the trees. Our whole lined property border of trees is gone now, exposing the entire back yard of our neighbors. Let's just say, it's not a pleasant site. (click on the picture to see the larger picture of it)

Oh! I had to get a picture this morning of my first daffodil of the season. Every year, these daffodils grow up in an area where I don't want them to grow and every year, I work to pull out all the little bulbs. Thinking that I get them all, they still continue to sprout up, year after year. I should just give up ... but then if I did, they would take over the entire front yard area of our house! Pesky little things, but they sure are pretty.