Happy Fourth!

May all of you celebrating today have fun. To all our service men and women may it be a safe day for each of you. (This is my prayer for our soldiers every day!)

As I write this post, my husband is smoking a pork roast which will become pulled pork sandwiches for our dinner.  We are in a semi rural neighborhood and there will be lots of late night fireworks. . .yes, not legal and always there is the worry of a stray fireworks starting a fire. Lucky for us, we have farmland on several sides of our property so we are somewhat protected from a fire here.

To honor the day, here is a little red, white and blue from my studio of my president's blocks top progress.

In June, we took a trip to visit our daughter who currently is living/working in London, England. I'm going to use Sunday or Monday posts to share some photos as well as share some inspiration I got for some of my on going projects!




Our daughter travels a lot so we actually met up with her in Paris, France. Paris is one of my favorite cities.


My husband does not like to travel; so I've visited our daughter on my own. This time, he went because while we were on the trip, he turned 60. He didn't want to be at home because he didn't want a "special" birthday party! So for him, he picked the lessor of two evils!

Walking is my usual mode of transportation. Alas my knees didn't hold up well this trip, so I had to change my mode of transportation --use the underground trains--to get the most out of the less than 24 hours we were there!

 We did walk to a favorite little French restaurant of mine from a previous trip. I had said to my daughter that her dad would like this place and he did. Normandy butter on a French baguette is heaven. The cheese and meats make it nirvana! Yes, wine was involved.


We were a little early so the owner of the restaurant served us. He was born in Paris which is unusual as most Parisians are from somewhere else! His family was Italian and he had been operating this restaurant for about 15 years. He was surprised and delighted some Americans from the west coast thought his place was one of the best in all of Paris!

As you check out this photo, notice the colors. Red meats, white cheese, white bread, blue/purple/green grapes and yellow cheese. I thought that this was an interesting color palette.


My friend, Joanne who authors the blog, She Quilts It, suggested yellow cornerstones for my president's block top. It fit the above palette so I tried it. While I like the sparkle it created, I decided that I would stick to the plain white cornerstones so the blocks would remain the focal point.

For another project, however, I want to sprinkle some yellow in with red, blue and white just to see what happens! I'd say it was a happy inspiration!