This and that on a lovely Saturday

I've been wondering what have you been doing on such a lovely day as this. I've been busy busy... resting and praising the Creator of all things...

and dreaming in my rose-filled little world...

I often find myself lingering over such elusive experiences as dreams. You? What would Heaven be? This. A garden. Roses. You!

And I've been collecting colors....

from petals from the garden...

Actually, it is more like deadheading my roses... Yes, I've been deadheading my roses. Sounds both complicated and mysterious; doesn't it... the word alone, "deadheading" sounds archaic. And it is. We've been deadheading roses for centuries. From Arabella to Anastasia to my great-great grandmother Otilia Micaela De Luna to my mother and her sisters and my own cousins and my sister Lissette, we've been deadheading roses for years.

If you ever thought that deadheading is a complicated matter, then just take my advice and follow only this: Don't ever spend a minute of your life worrying about what's the correct way of deadheading your roses... all you have to do is remove the spent flowers or the "dead" "heads"; just right at the end of the stem... that's all there is to it, really.

When I first started cultivating roses I bought many a gardening book that were nothing but confusing gibberish to me--you know, the "cut the correct angle, cut the rose stem at a 45-degree angle approximately 1/4-inch on top of an outward facing bud, and make certain the center region (pithy tissue) of the stem is white and healthy, and do this and that"... so many instructions, so many ideas. So I decided I should do just as I thought things would work better... and they did! Such joy roses are... and the only thing they require is a little bit of love... really!

So, what else have I been doing? Since tomorrow is a very special day and we are celebrating the birthday of someone very dear to our hearts, I've been spray painting bottles in the loveliest of pastel colors—pink and lime green!

And collecting lovely pieces of fabric to use as tablecloth...

Making pretty cupcakes stands...

Our dearest little princess Averi Cecilia is one year old tomorrow, and we're throwing her a nice little birthday party! But I better hurry and finish up this post, as I still have two dozen cupcakes to make and some more! Here is a pic of us four girls taken this past Christmas... I can hardly believe Averi is already a year old and already walking! ;)

See you super soon my friends! Pictures of the birthday party coming up! ;)