Good Stuff and Bad Stuff

As we all know, last weekend was Mother's Day and my girls did not disappoint. My youngest, Taylor, found me the biggest, most beautiful hanging basket of deep purple petunias I have ever seen! This plant must weigh 20lbs. The photo does not do it justice. I have it hanging on the railing to the front deck so it is the first thing visitors see.




My oldest, Mackenzie, made her gift this year. Back in kindergarten she made me a little bag with different items in it to represent different things. A band aid for all of the boo-boos I've kissed, and things like that. She decided to make me a new version of that gift this year in the form of a bookmark. She used different charms to represent different things. She wrote a note to explain all of the different charms. I love both of my gifts!

Now for the bad stuff. We found out on Thursday that our local JoAnn's is going out of business. I have been working there part-time since last summer and I feel terrible about it. Both as an employee and as a long time customer. The ladies who work at the store are a great group of women and I will miss them. We have until mid Spetember. The plaza where the store is located has a new owner and apparently he and corporate can't come to an agreement on the terms of the lease. Moving to a different location isn't worth the expense to the corporation so they decided to close the store. In an effort to show corporate that we ARE worth the expense I did my part and bought a bunch of brown and turquoise fabric for a quilt order. :)

Now, back to the good! My sister and I went flower shopping today! We hit up about 5 different nurseries and found some beautiful plants. This is a sweet potato vine, some orange and yellow marigolds and deep purple petunias (the color in the photo is off) that will fill the 3 hanging baskets I bought to hang on the front of my garage. We have a frost advisory tonight so for now they are safely tucked away in the garage. I also bought some shade plants and some "mystery" flowers. The tag just says that they have an unusual flower. There are a few buds on the plants so time will tell.

I'll post some pictures of the finished baskets when I get them hung - maybe tomorrow!