Warm and Cozy..........

The snow has ended but when it was falling last night, it was really pretty. I couldn't resist taking this photo at our back door.

Look at the perfect scallop that is forming on the ledge outside my kitchen door. We don't have a deck yet, so there is just a wood barrier there to keep one from falling into the back yard. I thought it was really interesting that the snow was building up in this way. By morning, the scallop was gone because the winds whipped the snow across the yard and around the house leaving some spots in the yard almost bare of snow and in other places there were large drifts of snow. I was happy to be warm and cozy inside. And so was Kaiser.............

There he is, all curled up in my sewing chair on my favorite blanket. I covered him up with a scrap of fleece because my sewing room was not real warm and cozy first thing this morning. While he slept, I enjoyed going through my mail...........

That reindeer ornament is in the little pink package in the lower left and then I read some cards from an exchange with some pincushion collecting friends. Look at the beautiful little ornament that Marielle machine stitched. It can be removed and made into an ornament. That's two machine stitched ornaments in one Christmas!! Then there are the Blueberry Muffin goodies that I received from Barb in Pago Pago. I'll share more on that in my next post. :-)
I thought that I'd share a few more pics from my trip to Iowa. Here's another lovely place that I passed when I ventured "off the beaten path" and drove through the town of Parkersburg. I don't know why, but when I think of that town, I think of Nancy Drew mysteries. Her fictional town was River Heights so I haven't a clue why I think of Nancy Drew. :-) Anyway, what did happen in Parkersburg was a very large tornado in June of 2008. I didn't realize that until my sister mentioned it when I told her about seeing this house..........

This beautiful mansion is home to The Parkersburg Historical Society. It was formed in 1970 to preserve the home which was built in 1895 as a wedding present to C.C. Wolf and Mary Wilson Wolf. What a lovely wedding present!!

I drove around the block three times so that I could see the house from all angles and then snapped some pictures. The sun was quite bright and made picture taking difficult but I know that sometime I would love to return for a visit to the inside of the home.

My favorite feature was the third floor windows. Yes, I think I can picture someone sitting up there on a window bench, reading a novel of the day and looking out at the fields in the distance.

Maybe they could see cows like the ones in the picture below. :-)

I had to take this photo. All the way from my home in Henderson, MN to Iowa City, I saw the same thing................cows grazing in recently harvested fields. And if the fields weren't harvested yet, then there were men (maybe women, too) in combines harvesting the corn while big semi trucks waited to haul the grain away. I don't recall seeing so much harvesting going on so late in the year. They didn't know then that a big snowstorm was on the horizon.

When I returned home to Minnesota this past Monday, the scene was almost the same, only this time there was a light dusting of snow as the combines worked their way through the fields. My heart went out to those farmers who were making a huge effort to get as much crop harvested as they could before the snow fell. And now the ground is covered with several inches, and in some places a foot or more of snow lies over the fields. Winter is here for sure.

In addition to seeing cows in the fields, I also was on the look-out for Barn Quilts. I saw them everywhere but was usually too far from the buildings to get any good pictures. I was lucky to be driving through Grundy County where the Iowa Barn Quilt project began so there were plenty of patterns to see! Guides to the Barn Quilts are available and I think it would be fun to return in the summer for a more leisurely tour and a stop at a few of the neat shops in the area. If you want more info on Grundy County Barn Quilts go here . For background on how the Iowa Barn Quilt project began, just click here . And if you want to know where the Barn Quilt Project originated then you will want to go here . You'll find yourself in Ohio and the story is fascinating so venture on over. And then.............since I don't have any pictures of barn quilts, you might want to check out Ryan's blog, "I'm just a guy who quilts". Just click here and you'll be there and you can sign up for a chance to win this...............

Then you might want to read about the barn quilts of Neversink and you'll find yourself in the state of New York. And after all that traveling you won't have spent a dime on gas!!

I am thinking that next summer I will have to paint a small version of a barn quilt and place it on my front porch or perhaps in the garden we plan to start. Right now, I'm a little tired from all this traveling so it's off to bed for me.

See ya tomorrow.

Sandi

(oh, and my patriotic block is still "in the works" because I changed my mind on the design and started all over again)