Winning Ways and Crazy Days

Thank you everyone for your wonderfully supportive comments about my great week!  Your kindness only doubled my excitement and happiness for everything that has been going on around here!  Life has been so great this past week and to top it all off I won not one, but 2 great giveaways!  One was a magazine from down under and the other was a copy of the upcoming Holiday with Matthew Mead!  Does it get any better than that?!

And the crazy life I've been leading will continue for at least one more week.  Tomorrow my in-laws will be arriving to help us celebrate our son's high school graduation next week!  On Monday we'll be having a cookout at our house for some friends and family and then the big graduation day will be on Wednesday...so it will be non-stop action fun around here this holiday weekend and into next week!

Of course we cleaned for our special visitors from just a few days ago, but can someone please tell me the answer to the question of why, no matter how recently you've cleaned you still need to clean again when you have more company coming?!  I think you could clean all day everyday and still never be completely finished...UGH!  I visited The Biltmore last year and I walked away from it thinking...wow I should have been a Vanderbilt and lived during that era!  I love to entertain, I love coming up with the party ideas, but to have someone do all of the cleaning, cooking, and other preparations...that my friends would be the life!

Last weekend we bought a bunch of flowers, a lot of them were only $1 on clearance at Lowes, simply because they weren't blooming!!  The bargain hunter in me can be patient enough to wait for the blossoms to arrive, so we loaded up the car and brought home everything from azaleas to lantana.  But as you all know, those darn things don't plant themselves.  So today we will be finishing up the planting and pulling the yard and house together for the visit with my in-laws.

We also bought this huge hanging basket from a local Mennonite farm.  It's full of a variety of flowers, including these gorgeous pink petunias.

We get so much direct sun here all day long that I need flowers that can hold up to the heat.  Petunias will bloom until late fall in our part of the country, and with some watering they are happy clams at our house, providing beautiful color all summer long!

But after all of the yard work is done, I plan to kick back and take a few moments to enjoy a tall glass of iced tea and to read this magazine.  I won a copy of Home Beautiful from the talented and oh so nice A-M, who has the great blog The House That A-M Built.  Her gorgeous home was featured in this issue and she gave out several copies in a recent giveaway, one of which I was lucky enough to win!   I am completely addicted to home decorating magazines, but I especially love perusing mags from overseas!  They just give you a little different perspective that we can all use from time to time, and they make a great addition to my ever growing stack of magazines which are piled in every room of my house!

I'll take my favorite turquoise pillow out to the hammock, let the dogs out to have a run, and then settle in for a good scan of this gorgeous read!  If you click on the picture at the top of the post you'll see Mr. Quinn and Miss Kylee are all for this idea!  It seems that a good romp and a few yummy sticks make for some very contented doggies now that we have our yard all fenced in!

And just in case the breeze isn't quite right up the hill where the hammock sits, I might just wander down to our dock and pop open this bright blue beach umbrella and set up my lawn chair underneath it.

Hard work makes a person deserving of a little down time don't ya think?  And relaxing with a cold drink, some fresh fruit, a wonderful new magazine, along with some furry friends is my idea of shear bliss!

Don't forget that you can be a winner too, just click HERE to find out how you could win my latest giveaway!  And I hope all of you will find a little spot to relax and enjoy your weekend!