Autumn Breezes

FINALLY - Autumn is really here in Georgia - at least for this week LOL  It seemed to go from the 90s to the high 70s overnight - cool breezes, a little rain, and lots of sunshine.  The perfect kind of weather.  So I cleaned out the gardens and out came the fall decor.  Enjoy!

The Last of the Flat Betty Tales

Now Flat Betty lived with her mother, Maude, and worked at the Ding Dong Dinner Diner.  Her current heartthrob, Harley Hoyt Holcomb, had been about to ask her to marry him but then there was that incident at the Fourth of July parade.  HH decided to sew some wild oats first and ran away to become a circus clown.  Flat Betty was devastated, and rather than sit home with her mother, who kept nagging, “Ya HAVE to do SOMETHING about that hair!” she started playing bingo. 

Now if Rev. Flugle from The Holiness Church of the Sacred Glade KNEW that Flat Betty was playing bingo every Friday night, why he would just have a FIT!  But he didn’t know.  So every Friday when she got off work, she dressed up, put on her purtiest bright red lipstick (for luck), fluffed up her hair as best she could, and set out to WIN, WIN, WIN!  She had her special card with her lucky numbers on it.  By the end of the night she lost every tip she had made that day.  But our Betty didn’t give up.  Her motto was:  “I always say if it’s worth doing, it’s worth over doing!”  So she did.  

Now y’all, one Friday night Bubba (who had a big old crush on Flat Betty) talked her into giving him a teeny good luck kiss.  And Betty bingoed FIVE times in a row!  WELL, she started taking a little more notice of Bubba.  And now she and Bubba are an item in Tweed Town and play bingo most every Friday night. 

MORAL OF THE STORY:  It takes more than lucky numbers to win at bingo and men named Bubba aren’t particular about hairstyles!

Flat Betty & The 4th of July Parade

Now Flat Betty was at work at the Ding Dong Dinner Diner when Mary Lou came flouncing through the door.  “Oh hi Betty”, she said, “are you skating in the Fourth of July parade?  I just bought a brand new pair of skates.”  A little background here – Flat Betty and Mary Lou were old high school rivals.  Flat Betty HAD to have a better looking pair of skates than Mary Lou so she counted up her tips and called Bubba, at the Doodah Skate Company.  “Bubba,” she said, “you HAVE to make me some new skates to go with my Fourth of July outfit!”  Now Bubba had been trying for years to get Flat Betty to go out with him.  So he figured if he did a REALLY great job on those skates, he might have a chance against Harley Hoyt Holcomb – Flat Betty’s current heartthrob.  Little did Bubba know that HH was planning to ask Flat Betty to marry him after the Fourth of July parade.  The day of the parade arrived and Flat Betty put on her best outfit and her new matching skates.  She grabbed an American flag to carry and skated on down to the parade site.  Now in Tweed Town it was customary for cows rather than horses to be ridden in the parade.  And Flat Betty happened to be just behind Moonbeam, the purtiest cow in all of Tweed Town.  Flat Betty was skating along – looking from side to side, every hair in place, well, sorta every hair in place – when all of a sudden she was flat on her behind, legs up in the air, right in the middle of a giant cow patty! 
MORAL OF THE STORY:  New skates aren’t much good if ya don’t pay attention when ya skate behind cows!  

Flat Betty Tales - Installment Two

Flat Betty & Pressley

One night when Flat Betty was working at the Ding Dong Dinner Diner, she heard this awful howling at the back door. When she went to see what it was, this dog stood there with his head up in the air, just a howling. Flat Betty could have sworn he was singing, “I ain’t nothin’ but a hungry hound dog, wailing all the time.” Well she felt so sorry for him that she let him into the kitchen and fed him some leftover hamburger (even though it was against county regulations and Judge Dither was sittin’ right out front eatin’ his dinner). Well, the next night there he was again, just singing away. So Flat Betty decided she’d best just adopt the dog and take him home before the Ding Dong Dinner Diner was fined. So she did. And since that dog seemed to sing so pretty, she named him Pressley, after Elvis of course. Now what she didn’t know at the time was that if you fed Pressley hamburger, it didn’t exactly agree with him and Lordy, ya had to wear a clothespin on your nose to be around him.

The next week she saw an ad in the Tweed Town Journal about a dog show – one where you could win money. So she decided that surely Pressley could win with his singin’ - especially if she dressed him up in a hat and sunglasses! The day before the show she told her mother, Maude, (who she lived with) to absolutely NOT feed Pressley any hamburger. But Maude was gettin’ just a tad bit senile and fed Pressley a big ole hamburger for his lunch that day. Flat Betty and Pressley were in line at the dog show and just as the judges got about up to them, Pressley howled his song and let a BIG ONE! Miz Primpkins, the head judge, fell over in a dead faint and Flat Betty quickly stuck a clothespin on her nose (ya see she carried it everywhere with her, just in case). Needless to say, Pressley didn’t win the big money THAT day.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Watch out for howlin’ dogs and always carry a clothespin!

A Quartet of Flat Betties (or is it Bettys?)

Long long ago in a far off land - oh wait this isn't exactly a fairy tale.  OK, several years ago I was in my studio creating a new primitive doll.  Had her legs sewn and stuffed, her arms sewn and stuffed, and her body sewn - her body was actually her dress.  Her head was done except for the hair.  So I sewed that little beauty together, realized I had not stuffed the body, and Flat Betty was born.  She hung on the wall and of course had to have a story to go with her as most of my dolls did, in a wee little book that she held.  I was so taken with Flat Betty that I just had to keep the tale going.


Now I'm going to blog the Flat Betty tales during the next week.  So if you like this one, be sure to check back in a few days for the NEXT installment!

FLAT BETTY and THE SNOWBALL 

Now Flat Betty was on her way to work at the Ding Dong Dinner Diner and she was in a VERY bad mood.  Her dog had chewed up her best feather pillow.  Her cat had gagged up not one but two hairballs right in the middle of her bed.  Her shoelace broke and she had to use twine to tie it with.  Her best lipstick was down to a nub.  And worst of all, the wind was so strong that it  blew her new hairdo right up in the air (of course there was ALWAYS a reason for Flat Betty’s hairdo).  So she decided that SOMEONE was going to pay!  Scooped up a huge snowball with the intention of throwing it at the first person she saw.  But - Harley Hoyt Holcomb – the purtiest man she ever knew came walking down the street and she knew if she was EVER to get another kiss from HH, she just couldn’t throw that snowball at him.  So she didn’t.  Next came Rev. Flugle from The Holiness Church of  Sacred Glade.  And she of course couldn’t throw a snowball at a man of God. So she didn’t.   Now ‘yall know how if you put your tongue on a cold lamp post it will stick?  Well, by this time Flat Betty’s hands were plumb stuck to that snowball!  How in the world was she supposed to take orders at the Ding Dong Dinner Diner with a giant snowball in her hands?  MORAL OF THE STORY:  A snowball in the hand isn’t worth much except maybe a good excuse for a bad hairdo! 

Momma Don't Let Your Caterpillars Grow Up To Be Cowboys!

Lookee what we found in our herb garden this afternoon.  Good thing I didn't want any Italian flat-leafed parsley to cook with tonight (or in the near future).  These beauties were all asleep digesting all that parsley and if you look closely at the base of the plant you can see little pieces of the stems that fell to the ground while they were dining.  Do click on the picture to enlarge it because these are gorgeous!

Did you know that these guys always choose parsley, fennel, Queen Anne's Lace or anything related to that family of plants to roost on and eat?  They fill themselves to the brim, sleep awhile, wake up and politely shall we say get rid of everything in their digestive tract?  My poor parsley plant LOLOLOL  Oh well, maybe a little fall fertilizer?  Then they crawl off to find a nice stick or tree branch, molt and clean that up by eating it - OH YUCK!  Then spin silk threads around themselves and pupate for 9-11 days before they turn into

Black Swallowtail Butterflies.  Isn't that the coolest?  And we were honored to provide them the first part of their journey.  I sure hope they pick somewhere in our yard to pupate so we can hopefully see them fly for the first time.  And I know you may not believe this but see those little things hanging down at the bottom of the butterfly - yep, cowboy boots!  Really!

TA-DAAAAAAH!!!

I'm coming up on one year of blogging in a couple of months so I decided it was time for a re-design.  Now I could have probably figured it all out myself - eventually.  But since I'm on the computer at work for 8 hours a day and then probably for several hours at night - I let someone who is already in the know about all this blog 'stuff' handle it.  Kim at seventhirtythree did a fantastic job of taking all of my wishes (and there were many) and putting together a new banner, header buttons, and the whole works.  I thank her for her patience and great design work.  If you need even just a button, she's your gal and is very easy to work with.  Thanks again Kim!

Attitude is Altitude

No words needed - just watch this. We are so blessed!

Untie a ribbon in your life – you might find an adventure!