Happy Fall Ya'll

A lot of fall decorating happened at the Satterfield house over the weekend. The temperatures here in Mobile have been fall-ish, meaning daytime highs in the mid 80's and morning lows in the mid 60's. That is near perfect weather for us. What is not perfect for us is......love bugs. Scientific name = Lovus Bugus. Just kidding. We are subject to these little worrisome bugs two times per year. They have worn out their welcome.
(Thank you Goole images.)


This is the first year that I've decorated my porch for fall. My sister always gets her decoration did and it looks so cute. So, I decided to brighten up my porch. This is what we wound up with:

I found the chair at the auction in Lucedale. The bad thing was it didn't have a base. That's when you call 1-800 Dad. My dad cut the board for the base. I was going to spray paint the whole chair and base navy blue to match our shutters but then decided against it. The wood on the chair is so pretty. I can always paint it later if I want it to look more cohesive. But is junk supposed to be cohesive? I don't think so!

Now to drag out all my inside decorations.........

Recent Yard Sale and Thrift Store Finds

I've had pretty good luck lately at yard sales and the thrift store. When we went to Hattiesburg, I found this precious pink butterfly napkin holder at the Salvation Army thrift. It was 55 cents. It is unmarked. It matches my kitchen perfectly!

I found these nice candleholders for $1.55 each. They are very nice and heavy. I haven't decided yet where I will put these. But for $1.55, how could I go wrong?

We drove to the nearby town of Wiggins and stopped in at an old fashioned trading post. I wish I would have had more time to explore in this wonderful store. Row after tightly packed row of every kind of junk imaginable. I found this cute bowl for $2.00. It's hard to tell from the picture but the bowl has a wonderful polka dot type pattern. It also is unmarked.

Saturday was a WONDERFUL yardsale day. I found so many nice things! But prolly my favorite find of the day was this wonderful quilt for $5.00. My heart almost stopped beating. It's my first yardsale quilt purchase.

Now, granted it is not handmade and was probably mass produced but still very charming!

I found these embroidered pillow cases for .50 each. There is some yellowing and a brown spot that I hope to be able to remove with a good OxyClean soak. They are gorgeous and very detailed:

We found a lot of GREAT stuff Saturday! We literally had stuff hanging out the back of the vehicle. I would count that as success!

Hurricane Gustav and Quilt Progress

Hurricane Gustav was, in my opinion, an over-hyped wind bag. But, after hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan and Frederick, people on the Gulf Coast do not take any chances. There was a lot of irony in what happened to us yesterday with Gustav. It was clear when we went to bed Sunday night that , short a turn of biblical proportion, we would NOT be in Gustav's direct path. So, OK, it's all good. We knew the winds would start picking up and there would be a chance of tornadoes but felt we would be ok. All was well UNTIL.....around 4:00a.m. Monday morning. The mister and I both woke out of a sound sleep to a loud BOOM and said, "What was that?" Well, everything sounded ok, we still had power so we went back to sleep.

Well, I'm kind of antsy about the whole Gustav thing anyway, so when daylight breaks I get out of bed to check out the window and see how the weather is shaping up. It was then that I discovered the origin of the BOOM. A huge mass of tree limbs and part of a dead tree had fallen on the main power line that runs our house. In the process it ripped our whole electrical service off the house. When Mister first saw it outside he saw this:

Yeah, that little box thing should not be dangling in mid-air. And certainly the line should not be that taut. Keep in mind at this point we still had electricity.

The air conditioner was running, lights were on, had computer up and running, etc. I knew what had to happen. I knew that we would be losing power REAL SOON. And, it would be of our own doing. So we called Alabama Power and within minutes a lineman was out disconnecting our electricity until we could have the service repaired. Thankfully Mister is a master electrician so the repair should not be a problem. Everything was fine until we realized that today was labor day and, in addition, most of Mobile had shut down due to Gustav. Our first hurdle was getting a meter from the power company. We drive to Alabama Power and the gate was closed. We then drive to another location hoping to find a body, anybody, that could help us find this meter. No luck. So we make one more effort to check the gates. Well, lo and behold, after an act of congress, the Mister gets the part he needs and repairs the problem. And all this is in tropical, stormy weather. To make a long story short, our ordeal involved the Mobile County Electrical Inspector and Alabama Power coming back out to our house. We got our power restored at 5:00p.m.

I can see God's hand in the quick restoration. Under "normal" circumstances it would have been at least one day before this could have been done. No way could it have been accomplished the same day.

Well, after we got electricity again I decided to again work on my quilt. I rotary cut all the pieces and started making my 9 patch blocks.

This is a picture of the completed 9 patch block. Do the points match? That would be a big fat NO!

So after you get the block made you cut it in 1/4ths. And it looks like this:

I'm loving how these look. They look like a real quilt block!

Ok, so that's all I know. I have to do some research to see how you arrange the blocks. I guess you could just use creative license and arrange them as you like. That's ok with me. I can't read a pattern anyway. I'm A.D.D. like that. I just want my blocks to look the best they can.

I definitely made progress. Only 300 more blocks to go. Ok, well, not literally 300.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of Gustav. Been there done that!