OLD GLORY SIGN

newest sign at Farmhouse Mercantile
click on the sidebar link to window shop....

I am off on to the wilderness to camp with my family wish me some sunshine! Have a great weekend!
Take Care now,
Dee

Happy Father's Day!

So, what do you do when you want to show your love and appreciation to great Dad's at our farmhouse on Father's Day? You don't take these guys out to a fancy restaraunt, nope, that just isn't their style. You can't make them dress in their Sunday best, and you don't even tell them that they have to use the fancy china... Not in this family, not these guys, they get to do something they like on their special day and you make it casual and fun....

You have a crab boil! Not just any ol' crab boil either....a crab, clams, shrimp and lobster boil! Their favorite type of food...seafood. You set a very casual table, make everyone comfortable and throw a bunch of good food into a pot!

If you are wondering about the precise art of having a crab boil, I am going to illustrate and explain...lets start:

First, you take a HUGE pot...I mean REALLY HUGE! Next, you get your water boiling ....some Old Bay seasoning and secret ingredients mixing it all up in there. Mmmm, smell that? Heavenly!

Then you take some red taters, boil them for 15 minutes.

Now add some fresh sweet corn on the cob. Throw them into the boil on top of the taters for 10 more minutes.

Next, you take some smoked sausage and slice it into 2" pieces, and throw that into the boil.

Let that all roll around in the HUGE pot for 5 more minutes. With a slotted spoon put everything onto a platter, leaving the boiling water in the pot. I cover it tightly with tin foil.

Now, for the really good stuff....you LAYER in this order....king crabs, Lobsters, shrimp, and then lastly the clams.....some of it will be sitting on top of the water and will be steamed. Put the lid on the huge pot!

Boil at a low temperature for 15 more minutes and then remove everything with tongs and the slotted spoon, draing the water from your huge pot and put everything back in with the lid to keep warm. Now proceed to your fully prepared table....right this way folks.

A properly prepared table for a crab boil consists of the following: a plastic table cloth, news paper (yes you read that right) crab crackers, mallets and anything else you can use to get that juicy seafood from it's shell.

Remember, this is a mans meal and you are allowed to eat like a heathen! Just kiddin, but maybe not! Bring in some mismatched kitchen chairs, ignore the bad lighting, the fellas don't care about that! Lots of paper towels, lemonade for the children and summer ales for the papa's and uncles. Fruity drinks for the mama's and the aunts......some homemade coleslaw, garlic butter, and........

did I mention rolls and rolls of paper towels? Heed my warning, have lots handy!


You put one happy grandpa (pop-pop to my children) and.....


and a happy daddy in front of this mess, yes, right on that newpaper....(nothing fancy remember) and ya'll dig in! My Hubs and Father enjoy this meal alot...they barely spoke!!

Happy Father's Day to the important men in my life.....

My father, who I love so very much, you are a great father, loving, a good care giver, and he can fix anything! I was a lucky girl when god chose you to be my daddy! I love you!

My hubs who is a wonderful father to our children. He loves them with all of his heart and it shows....He works his tail end off for us and he would bend over backwards to make his babies happy....and you are the silliest man on earth and you keep us laughing all the time!

I love you very much and thank you for being such a great dad!

My brother, David, although you do not have your own children, you are my Cassidy's god father and so very good to all my children and

we love you very much too!

My Brother, Shawn, although I don't see you very often, you are missed and a wonderful father to your beautiful girls, we love you too!

My brother, Mathew, your time is coming fella! I can't wait! Ha!

Happy Father's Day, we love you very much!
xoxoxoxo

CoNGrAtulaTIOns to Dirt Princess you are the winner of my giveaway!!!

Thank you ladies for all of your kind comments regarding the sign, my blog and my sign shop! I am glad to hear that you all love SugarPie Farmhouse as much as I do! I want to congratulate Dirt Princess on her win of my PIE FIXES EVERYTHING sign giveaway! You can visit her adorable blog at http://northmobilegardensociety.blogspot.com/ it is just so sweet with all of her flower gardens and dragon flies...so very cute! I cannot wait to get back there and read some more of her posts, she even has categorized her posts by flower type.


In addition to her wonderful blog, I have been introduced, by so many of you, to some really great blogs that I am really enjoying and cannot wait to get the time to really sit down and read them. Be it something pertaining to gardening, scrapbooking, homekeeping, or raising a family I can see why you all have chosen these as your favorite blogs. It is such a treat to open up the "pages" of these blogs to discover something new and captivating.


Well I also want to let you all know that I wish that I could give each one of you a PIE FIXES EVERYTHING sign! But my fingers have been painting as fast as they can, my nails are every shade of the rainbow and I am plum tuckered out! Instead, I am offering it at Farmhouse Mercantile for 20% off for the month of June to the SugarPie Sista's, so if you do still want it you can get it at a discount for a little while...just send me a comment with your user name.
I have had such a crazy two weeks, with trying to get my online shop up and running, my children are at the end of their school year and next week is their last week of school. It has been non stop field trips, book fairs, award ceremonies, field day's, end of the year dances, sport tournaments etc. etc. Ongoing fun! I am very involved with my kids and am trying to balance my painting with keeping things going at home.....and whewwweeee, I am TIRED!


I wanted to make sure that I announced the winner today as I promised. I will get back on here early next week with some real down-home bloggin! In the meantime I have some pictures of a class trip I took with my 11 year old daughter this past week. I am a big history buff and jumped at chaperoning this trip when I found out where we were going....a local place called Cold Spring Village one of my favorite places. It is a living history museum which means that there are actual people re-enacting history before your eyes in period clothing inside the old buildings using historical artifacts. I really love it there, it is one of my favorite places, so peaceful and beautiful there.

My daughter is on the right....her and her friend purchased those bonnets in the country store.....oh, how cute they looked!



The wheel wright....




A summer kitchen...large oven for baking breads...

This is the printer shop....

This house here was inside one of the workers homes...I really love how authentic they made it.....

The beautiful mural in the dining room of a workers house.....

A corn sheller demonstration in the barn.....

This kind woman explained a day in the life of an average working family...hard work!

She explained it all inside this beautiful barn...ohh... who it made my heart melt....I heart this barn!

Basket Weaving demonstration.



The Black smith......

The tin smith shop.....LOVE, the punched tin all over...

The country store....MY FAVORITE PLACE!!

Oh my I love these haning lights...beautiful bubble glass, just georgeous!

All decorated patriotically inside....

Love, the old boxes...and displays.

A good ole fashioned one-room schoolhouse!

The cutest lil bakery! With fresh baked goods....mmmm!

Well that concludes our tour gals...I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I love this place...I never grow tired of it, I could visit it every month and still love going there!

Congrats Dirt Princess! Enjoy your sign!

Take Care now,

Dee

Farmhouse Mercantile

Open For Business!!

Alrighty girls...alot of people sent me messages regarding where to purchase the

PIE FIXES EVERYTHING SIGN

and wanted to see some more....I really do appreciate all of your kind comments and decided with those responses it was time to go one step further and open shop.

We'll here it is.....

www.FARMHOUSESIGNSHOP.BLOGSPOT.COM

Farmhouse Mercantile is officially open for business! You can also click on the link on the top left of this blog and it will take you there...I have a handful of country signs listed and will be adding more signs and other country farmhouse items weekly. So check back regularly.

Up until now, I have only sold my signs to a few local shops on a small scale basis, always ordered ahead of time. I have never really gotten to see my customer's reaction to my product...so to say the least all the kind and encouraging comments were so exciting for me!

I also have alot of kinks to work out as far as my time scheduling. I am a mom with responsiblities and a house to run, so I now have to set up certain days a week to paint and ship out. I hesitated to do this on a bigger scale in the past when my son was younger even though I was encouraged....sadly, he is no longer an infant but now is a much better time to start up. I plan to be up late many a summer night painting these signs...I am such a night owl.

Thank god school is getting out soon!

If you have any questions please contact me at

FARMHOUSECOUNTRY@YAHOO.COM

I hope that you are happy with the signs,

I love making them with lots of country lovin and

they really do add an extra touch to your decor.

They are all over my house, inside and out!

Here are some pictures of our

"staging and photo shoot" from this past weekend.....

Our Barn Cat Daisy had kittens late April

and we had them out and about over the weekend

for some country sunshine and frolick

since they have been protected safe and sound inside while they

were very young.

Well...they wanted to help out too!

Then they decided they wanted to run things a little.....

Lil Man here discussed our business plan for a while.........

Then he said, "Ok....darling, I'm loving the red gingham,
but the red geraniums might be too much...

let's work with this some more."

"Hello ladies...ummm...
do you see the grass smudge on this sign here..this just won't do....

lets get another one in here, can we please!"

Lil Miss decided she would help out too, and suggested we incorporate the terra cotta pot in a shoot....she's a lil camera shy and much more soft spoken though!

I enjoyed their company so much that we decided

they needed to be a part of this business too...

and so we gave lil man the role of.....

Don't worry with checked the kitten labor laws first

and we didn't work them too hard!

Pssst....if you are a sugar pie sister and are interested in the

PIE FIXES EVERYTHING SIGN

after the drawing is held email me your user name you will get back a coupon code for 20% off that sign for the month of June.

I hope that you had a nice weekend ladies....Thanks for stopping by!