Sticks Stitches ~n~ Boards

Life Changes

2010-08-24T12:50:00.001-04:00

I’ve been gone for some time now, so I’m not sure who may actually read this.

I last posted in mid-July and since then I’ve had a lot going on. I was stuck in a rut and I was deciding where I needed to go with my life from there. I stepped back and really took a look at my life and decided that I needed to make some changes. I realized that by taking dead end jobs, I have not been doing what was in the best interest for my family. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing home care- it is rewarding and it is easy, but it was becoming apparently clear that it was not a job that was helping my family very much. The pay is low and the daytime hours that I so wanted were just not there. I could have taken all the evening hours that I wanted- I could have worked 7 evenings a week and make a better paycheck, but with the kids going back to school soon, that would mean that I would hardly see them. That is just not an option that would benefit my family. So I had to decide, ‘Where do I go from here?’

Probably the week that I wrote my last post, and the same time I was contemplating my next step, I received a catalog in the mail for adult education classes. Something told me to really look at it this time, because they mail them out at least twice a year, and I always immediately throw them in the trash. It did not take me long to put 2+2 together and realize that I needed to get specific training so I can really help my family and our finances. There were a number of courses that I could take, but most would require me to take evening classes-again, didn’t want to be away from my family in the evenings. One course really jumped out at me- Medical Assistant. I have worked in health care for most of my adult life (except the 4 year stint that I was at Walmart) so medical assistant really appealed to me. I read over the course description and realized that it was actually a DAY COURSE! Monday thru Friday 9a-4p. I could DO THAT! So long story short, after a lot of discussion with my husband and the kids, I began taking the steps to try to get into the program.

It has been quite stressful for us. It was not something that was planned in advance, so trying to arrange the financial part is nerve-wracking, but I think we are going to be okay and I should be starting school in 2 weeks! I have had to give up my job because I will need the weekends to study, spend time with family, try to keep the house in order, etc. So it will make things tight. Pretty darn tight around here- financially and time-wise- for the next 10 months. I am not the most organized person, so I am a little scared. I am doubting myself left and right with this decision, but I just have to keep thinking that God is in the drivers seat. I am not looking forward to the struggle, but as long as I come out on the other side and finish the schooling successfully, my family will benefit greatly from the struggle to get there.

All of my energy has been focused on starting school (mine and the kids), football practices (at 2 different times each day), and worrying about everything. I have not touched a craft in weeks now. I have several pieces that are still unfinished. I just have not had the mental capabilities to focus on them! lol It’s hard for me to say right now what my life will look like in a few weeks, but I hope to be able to spend a little time on them. I will know better in a few weeks. God knows that I could use every penny that I could make by continuing to sell my cross stitch and crafts, but only time will tell what kind of time I will be able to put into making them. I would like to imagine that my every waking moment will not include studying and trying to keep the house together, but for now I have to plan for the worse. I am in the process of packing away my paints and fabrics (but not too far packed away) and making my work table for school use. I will be keeping my cross stitch supplies and sewing machine out in hopes that I can stay acquainted with them throughout this whole thing. Once I get most of that organized, I will try to get some UFO’s done and up for sale. I have Fall and Halloween items that I need to get finished and sold, so if you may be interested, please bear with me a little longer and I hope to have them up for sale really soon.

On a good note, the weather has been much cooler here the last two days- highs in the 70’s!- and my hair is finally starting to behave again! lol The heat and humidity we have dealt with this summer has been unreal! I am loving this fall-like weather!

On a bad note, sadly, Timmy has flown the coop. He had been practicing his flying this summer and about a week ago, he left and hasn’t been back. :-( Oh well, that is what we wanted. For him to survive when we took him in and grow up to be a free duck. Of course, we would have been fine with him being a ‘free duck’ on our pond, but I guess that wasn’t in the cards for him. Perhaps he will find himself a mate and return with her one day. Life changes for everyone :)

2010-07-16T10:56:00.001-04:00

This is what I look up to as I am doing my dishes- a typical farmhouse window. From the candle burning brightly, the tomatoes ripening on the sill, the moths and bugs looking for a way into my kitchen, and even the old wooden spoon propping it open. Nothing is fancy. Nothing is spotlessly clean after the day’s dust has settled.

What caught my eye was the little abode that some little spider had begun building from the candle bulb…

What a busy little guy indeed- this was not there the night before as I washed that night’s dishes. How fast those little spiders can complete a job. Does it ever make you wonder? Do you think they are ever really ‘done’ with their works of art? Or are they forever tweaking and changing things- much like we do with our homes?

Have a little makeover to show today.

Originally, not my style. Of course, you would think that by now, I would know that when I have a vision of making something over, I would immediately take a picture of it. I do have a pic of the shade which shows the coloring of the whole lamp pre-makeover…

It was fake looking rusty with black speckles and had moose, pine tree, and bear cutouts around it. Cabin themed. Again- Not my style. A little trusty black spray and it is now suitable to my taste.

Very cute now.

My worktable is full of things that need finished! I am proclaiming today to be ‘Sewing Day’ and hope to get these things stitched and stuffed and ready to sell!

I have staining to do to the white ones, first. I don’t think that I will ever buy white linen again. Ever. Although looking at the bottom left one, it does stain up rather nicely.

And as you can see, I’ve been dreaming of Fall. The cooler temps would be enough. I have had enough of this dang humidity. Do you know what humidity + naturally curly hair =’s??? Mess. That’s right. One big frizzy mess. Hate it. For all of you girls with poker straight hair who’ve dreamt of having naturally curly hair….be glad your dream is not my reality. lol Sure, in the 80’s, big curly sky-high hair was in. That era has long since passed. The grass is definitely NOT greener on THIS side of the fence. I live with the ‘just rolled out of bed’ look… all…day….long. Ugh.

Sorry for the poopy mood. That is just how I have been feeling lately. So much stuff clogged up in my head and I can’t seem to get anywhere. And the not-so-funny part about it is that I can’t really put my finger exactly on why I keep feeling this way. If anyone has any good thoughts to send my way, I’d really appreciate it! For now, I am going to get to my sewing and finishing. It will make me feel better to get something accomplished :)

A Visitor on the Pond!

2010-07-10T11:27:00.001-04:00

Looked out the kitchen window this morning as I was pouring my coffee to see that Timmy has a friend!!!

Timmy is on the right. I know because when I called out to him, “Tim-Tim!'” in my squeaky Tim-Tim voice, he popped his head up like he always does :)

Could it be that Mama has come back to stay?

We don’t know if it is her….yet. She’s still out there, so I will test her later by throwing some bread out in to the yard. If it’s Mama, she should come away from the pond to get it. If it’s not her, well, that is why I am waiting till later. I don’t want this new duck to be spooked by thinking we are trying to lure it to us. I’m thinking it’s a new duck just for the fact that it has stayed pretty much in this very same spot all morning…like it’s not comfortable moving around the pond area. I guess time will tell.

My house is a wreck. It is absolutely beautiful outside today, but I am going to stay inside and clean, clean, clean! I don’t get in this mood very often, so I need to take advantage of it! lol Gannon left Shrek on the t.v. in the living room, so I restarted it to have something to listen to as I go. I love that movie :) Hope you all have a wonderful and beautiful weekend!

The Heat is Off- I hope!

2010-07-09T09:59:00.001-04:00

At this time yesterday morning, I looked at the t.v. to see that it was 86° and like 150 % humidity or something crazy like that. At 9 a.m. this morning, the t.v says it’s 72°. Whew. I’ve been looking forward to Friday all week long- and not just because of the normal TGIF reasons. Today we are supposed to be granted some relief from this heat wave and we actually got a little rain this morning. All I know is it feels much better now.

This is what the boys have been doing to beat the heat this past week…

Gan was so funny- he couldn’t figure out how to get on the raft without having to step in the water. The water is fine, but the bottom of the pond is not-so-fine ;) He was so excited because I wouldn’t let him float on a raft on the pond last year. It’s really only 4-5 feet deep in the very middle, but he really couldn’t swim last year. He still technically can’t ‘swim’, but he can doggie paddle and is able to swim underwater for short distances. Enough to get out of the middle if he were to fall off there- which he didn’t, thank goodness.

Ah HA!

Timmy enjoyed the company for a little while.

He is a big duck now. Still so cute. He stays at the pond and does not wander up to the house like I was afraid he would do. Well, not usually. Yesterday, I was so disappointed that I didn’t have my camera outside. Our outside cat, Tarus, was walking around the yard and laid in the grass near the pond. Well, Timmy must have thought that he was coming to visit him, so he got out of the pond and walked up to Tarus. Tarus didn’t like that, so he got up and walked about 5 feet toward the house and laid back down. Timmy followed. Tarus got up, moved another 5 feet. Timmy followed. It was so funny because Tarus was so obviously peeved with his ears back and he kept glancing back at Timmy while he walked. LOL Timmy kept following Tarus almost all the way up to the patio where I was sitting. I started talking to him and he hung out for a minute and then walked back to the pond.

Wow. So that’s it, huh? Nothing else to talk about today. lol My life is so unexciting. I guess sometimes I like it that way :)

A visit to a frontier village

2010-07-06T10:53:00.001-04:00

Last Friday, the boys and I took a trip back to the State Park that we visited the weekend before- had to retrieve the forgotten fishing pole. I took my camera because I wanted to get a few photos of the frontier village that we didn’t have time to look at the day we were fishing.

When we arrived, the volunteer Blacksmith was just opening up his shop!

(this pic was taken as we were leaving the park- he had a small crowd at that point :)

We were the first to wander in as he was preparing to start his fire. He was very nice and we got to talking. Turns out that the man that has been the Blacksmith in that shop had passed away, and this guy was the new volunteer. He had only had 2 lessons in blacksmithing, and said he had more questions than answers, himself! I got to talking to him about how we were just at Williamsburg and he was interested in how their shop was set up. I happened to have the pics on my camera still! He was such a nice man. The shop was so neat…

loved the hitching block and watering trough outside the door! I just have a ‘thing’ for cut stone and foundation stones! lol

This thing would sell for a fortune!

( I want that wheelbarrow!!!)

He was the only building that was open, but he did tell me that on the first Saturday of every month, ALL of the frontier village is open! I am so excited to make it back down! I couldn’t wait, and after peeking in the window of the church and messing with my camera setting, I was able to get a few shots inside of them.

Beside the blacksmith was the church.

The windows were old blown glass. They did leave one clear pane which made it easier to see inside and take pics through.

A few pics of the Gaston’s Mill. Can’t wait to be able to go inside this!

Front

Backside where the water wheel was…

Then we walked across the little bride and up to hill to circle around to the other buildings.

The school house

Teacher’s desk

Student desk

Then we walked back to the Williams house.

This house is shown by appointment only. I am definitely going to be making an appointment to get inside this one! Now remember, I was taking these pics through (dirty and fingerprinted) windows and I had to shade my camera to reduce glare, but you will see what I mean!

a sitting room

looking into the kitchen…

I had to come off the front porch to see if I could get a better look at the kitchen! This great water pump was located off of the kitchen porch!

I looked in the back door….Oh be still my heart!!!

the ‘sink’

the stove!!!

the table and laundry area!!!…

Oh- and the floor!!!

It was seriously almost too much to handle not being able to go in and sit down to soak it all in!!

We went around the back of the house and I got pics of the other rooms. This was the parlor? That is the front door. I couldn’t get a pic from the front porch b/c of the lace curtain. The bedroom is to the right.

I was able to get pics of the bedroom from both the front and back windows.

Back

and back at the front porch to get pics of the other side of the room…

It was cute that they left the bed ruffled…like it was hurriedly made up that morning :)

We then walked up to the Trading Post. It had some awesome stuff inside, but also a lot of modern stuff. I would love to go in and explore.

The porch was just awesome.

Wouldn’t you love to decorate this??

A few shots inside…

Next we walked back down the hill to the last little cabin home. I can’t remember the name of this one.

Oh, I see it was the Floyd Lower Cabin :)

Just look at that stepback and fireplace!

See that fence? That is the barrier. It looks like you walk in the door and stand in that area to see both sides of the cabin. All of the buildings had some sort of barrier area except the Williams house. That must be why you need an appointment there.

The bedroom area was fantastic here too! Pic is blurry, but on the left is a ladder to the loft and in front of the window is a spinning wheel…

I was trying to get pics around this darn lamp that was sitting in the window.

I was trying to get a better pic of the rope bed and stuffed ticking mattress. This cabin was beside Gaston’s Mill. This is the last side of the mill. It has a bridge walkway on this side.

Tired of bad pics yet? lol

Last 2 areas worth mentioning is the covered bridge and the lock bedside it.

This was the back side of the bridge. We walked over to it after visiting the blacksmith. He parked his truck right in front of it- lol

The lock was also very cool.

The lock gates.

Well that was about it for the window tour around the frontier village. Someday I will make it down to actually get inside these beauties and share some better pics of them.

I’m sure most of you are dealing with the heat and humidity we are, so I hope you are staying cool! We don’t have air conditioning in this old house, so we are ‘sweating it out’- to say the least. I am almost ready for Fall! I’ve been stitching up a storm and have 3 Fall themed offerings stitched and waiting for finishing. I should have them ready for my selling blog in the next week or so. My neighbor has been cutting down trees and I have a big bag of fresh sawdust waiting to fill pinkeeps and pillows. You may find me sitting in front of the fan stitching today, or on the patio later on, laying in the hammock…

(That tree is sooooo tall! )

or you might find me sitting in here with Gannon!

after I put fresh water in it :)

Enjoy your day- I’m gonna try!

Happy July!

2010-07-02T10:42:00.001-04:00

I can’t believe it’s July already! I’m sure I’m in good company there- it seems that the days are just flying by. I have been trying to get inspired to work in the house and move things around and tweak and create….but since I’ve been home from vacation, it’s just not happening! Ugh!! I keep thinking of this day….

and I wanna go back!

Maybe I need a little more sun on my face and sand between my toes to inspire me again. Nah. That probably wouldn’t work. I just need to get my mind back in ‘the real world’ again. Can’t afford to take another week off work. :(

I will show you a couple of beautiful RAK gifts that I received recently. This is one I received from a wonderful lady by the named of Dora of Reedy Creek Primitives. It came as a total surprise on a day that just was not going very well and it really lifted my spirits :)

The doll is dressed in blues and I just love her little sheep!

This next RAK , from a very talented gal named Deb, was waiting for me in the mail that my neighbor collected for us while we were away.

I really ♥ this too :) What a great surprise to come home to!

I have been stitching- which isn’t something that I could concentrate on while preparing for vacation. I did start one before we left, so I could take it with me-just in case I had a lot of free time while there. Yeah right. I am almost done with that one and have already started 2 more! I NEVER start another before I am finished…and now I have 2 more started. Very weird for me. I am doing 3 of the 4 pieces from Stacy Nash’s booklet Merry Hallowe’en. Love them. I guess that is why I couldn’t wait to get started on the next… and then the next :) Such fabulous Halloween designs and I have several Fall themed patterns that I am hoping to get stitched also.

So I guess I can’t say that I have not been creative. I just haven’t been inspired to tweak and decorate. My fireplace is still undecorated. I don’t know where I want to go with that yet. I am going to have to take some time and browse the internet for pics of fireplaces for inspiration. I have a few furniture pieces that I need to get moved around first (one being right beside the fireplace) so maybe if I get working on getting that settled, I can be inspired to start working on that whole area.

Hubs went to the doctor the other day. He woke up with a severely sore throat the other morning and wanted me to make an appointment for him- which I was glad to do. It turned out that the throat problem doesn’t seem serious and he got a script for that (his blood counts were fine too), but he found out something that I think in the back of his head, he already knew. His blood pressure was high. Kind of off the charts high. I think he said it was 168 over 108 – second stage hypertension. Granted, he was nervous about going to the doc. He never goes so when he does it’s for a reason and he always thinks it’s going to be bad. That morning, he was in ‘worry mode’ and kept saying that there was no reason for his throat to be sore, his tonsils were probably infected, and that he probably needed to have them taken out…just blowing it up in his mind. So I’m sure that contributed to his pressure going up- a little. Fact is, his dad has been on blood pressure meds since he was in his 20’s, so it was no surprise since Hubs is now 41. Last time he had been to any Dr. was last May when he cut his fingers, and his blood pressure had been fine for those few visits, so it’s probably only been getting worse in the last 6-8 months. Thing is, he said that he had a few occasions where he had been feeling ‘funny’- almost like panic attacks. Did he mention that to me at the time??? No. So I know he knew that something else was going on and probably contributed to his ‘worry mode’. :) He has to stop in at the Dr’s in a week to have them check his pressure again, and then again at the end of the month for another appointment where they will probably decide if he needs meds to help control it. I think ‘diet and exercise’ is in order until then!

Since I have started eating healthier in the past few months, I have been trying to encourage him to jump on the bandwagon. I told him that I was concerned about his weight and his health also. He is and always has been a meat and potatoes kind of guy, so resorting to chicken and veggies was not something he was jumping-up-and-down-happy-to-try when I suggested it. He does love vegetables and would eat a salad every night without complaint, but he prefers the biggest portion of his meals to be some sort of red meat. Now he’s looking at things a little differently, and I am extremely thankful for the sore throat he woke up with. He needed a ‘wake up call’ and he finally got the one he needed. Now I can finally fully concentrate on making healthier meals for the whole family and not just myself- which was a pain. When he was eating what he wanted to eat, then the boys were wanting to eat that too- not the healthy stuff Mom was eating. I will be spending some time looking through healthier recipes this weekend. Tonight on the menu- Turkey Taco Salads :)

If I don’t get to post before the weekend is over, I hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July weekend with your families and friends!

Vacation is Over

2010-06-29T11:13:00.001-04:00

Saturday was my last day of vacation, so we decided to take the boys to Beaver Creek State Park to do some fishing. The weather was hot, but after enduring 100 degree temps down in Virginia, 85-90 degrees here didn’t seem so bad :)

We pulled in to the picnic area that I used to visit with my family when I was a kid. I remember my mom packing a cooler and we would spend the better part of the day playing by the creek here.

I remember that it could get quite crowded and there would be parked cars lined up along this road and the grassy area would be filled with families, picnics, and frisbee games. It was sad to visit this place and see how empty it is now. This was at 11 a.m. and hardly another soul in sight. Times sure have changed…

Of course, maybe this isn’t quite the hot spot for picnics anymore…the whole area was riddled with droppings from this crew. We decided to try this area of the creek for fish, but no luck here. I did get some good pics though.

Within the first few casts, Gannon got his caught in the tree :)

This area was too shallow, so we loaded up and headed up creek a little to try another spot.

Apparently, the little ghost named ‘Somebody’ had taken an extra fishing pole out and laid it on one of the picnic tables here. I thought that ‘Somebody’ only lived at our house, but I guess he follows us everywhere we go. lol I’m sure you other parents know what I’m talking about- ‘Somebody’ will leave messes in the kitchen, eat half the cookies in the cookie jar, leave cups in the living room, etc. We didn’t realize the ‘Somebody’ took the fishing pole out of the van and laid it on the picnic table until much later in the day. Hubs called the Park office and left a message about it, and they called him back and said it was turned in. There are still honest people in the world! lol I’ll have to make another trip down there to get it this week.

Anyway, we moved up the creek and passed some people set up for something? I don’t know what was going on, but it looked interesting.

Of course, when it comes to my husband, we go somewhere with ONE objective in mind…that day it was fishing. Not looking at the other sights in the park. When I go to get the pole, we may be stopping at a few of the other things down there like this area…

an old lock…

and this area on the other side of the park…

This is one of the old mills. You can’t go in, but I would at least like to walk around the back side of it.

We did park again on this other side of the park and fish. First right by the parking area, and then we grabbed our gear and traveled down one of the trails along the creek. We were heading to an area called Gretchen’s Lock.

The trail was very narrow in some spots, and we stopped along the way to throw a line in, but after what seemed like a mile, we finally made it to Gretchen’s Lock.

You can read the tale on the monument if you want to enlarge the pic, but basically, she and her parents sailed over here from Ireland when Gretchen was an infant. Her mother got sick and died on the way over. Her father ended up becoming the main engineer in building this lock and when Gretchen was 10 or 11, she contracted malaria and died. With plans to return to Ireland eventually, her father entombed her coffin within the stonework of this lock until he left. When the canal shut down, he removed her coffin and began the journey back. Along the way, the ship sank in a storm, taking Gretchen’s remains and her father with it.

Over the years, there have been many reported sightings of seeing Gretchen’s ghost in this area. I don’t know about that, but it sure is a beautiful area. The stone walls of the lock are still there…

We wanted to walk in between the walls, but water lays down in there. We had to walk back out and around it. This is Calvin standing down in there.

One of the ends of the lock walls from up on the trail around it.

Down past the lock we finally found some good fishing water.

Talked to a few people who came by :)

I didn’t end up fishing at all. I just sat on the bank of the creek and soaked in the serenity of it all.

They caught a few small mouth bass, and after a few hours, we headed back the trail to the parking area where the boys threw their lines in again. Brady ended up catching a small walleye which he was very proud of.

It was a good day :)

On Sunday morning, I went back to work and Don took the boys fishing at another local lake. They were loving Dad being on vacation!

I worked again yesterday, and today I’m trying to catch up on weekend laundry and I need to make it out to the garden. The weeds have taken over and vacation is over, so I guess I need to get out there and rescue my veggies!

I’ve been working on a Stacy Nash cross stitch project since before we left for vacation and I’m finally almost done with it. I’ve started working on Halloween and fall pieces and should have a few up for sale after the beginning of July. Can’t start too early, can we? It’s my favorite season, so I was excited to get started working on a few patterns that I have had for awhile. I really want to work on rearranging some things in the house, but I have got to find time to do it all! lol

Before I go, I wanted to show you how big Timmy has gotten! It seems he was still a baby when we left and we returned home to an almost full grown duck! I know, it was only 5 days, but he seems so different now….and he found his big boy ‘quack’ while we were gone!

The pond had gotten quite ‘scummy’ while we were gone. We could tell it had gotten pretty hot here, because the pond gets bad like this when it’s hotter. Hubs and the boys went in to clear it up some.

Timmy happily swims all over now, where he was sticking to the edges before. They didn’t get all of it out, but today it is cooler outside and the pond is clear as can be. We’ve treated it in the past, but it killed some of the fish we have in there, and with Timmy being in there now, we aren’t sure we want to risk making him sick. We will have to live with the ‘hot day scum’ I guess. I just love looking out the window and seeing him floating along :)

Probably kind of a boring post again, but hopefully I will have some more interesting pics to show soon :)

A Wonderful Vacation

2010-06-25T12:07:00.001-04:00

Hi All! We left Saturday for Williamsburg, Virginia and returned home on Wednesday well rested. We had a great time. I’ll give you a short recap with a few pictures :)

We arrived Saturday evening and checked into our resort-Wyndham Resorts

The grounds were beautiful, and boy…it was HOT. Here in Ohio, we were used to the 80 degree weather, but were definitely NOT used to the 100+ degree weather they were having! The resort had mini golf, game rooms, 3 pools (the water was so warm that it was not very refreshing), tennis courts, and much much more. It was certainly a place that you could go to and not have to go anywhere else for entertainment and activities! We had other plans, though.

We checked in to our units and when we opened the door….

we were in Heaven!

Our view couldn’t have been more perfect for us ‘country folk’! lol

Despite the heat, we could not resist sitting out on the deck to relax, and feeding the ducks and geese was a daily activity:)

This little guy couldn’t have been more than a few days old- he was so wobbly on his feet that every time he bent forward to eat he would lose his balance :)

It kind of made me miss Timmy :)

On Sunday we went to visit my MIL’s son and his family and on Monday, we went to Colonial Williamsburg!

The wig shop

The Magazine (where they stored supplies, guns, and ammunition) was a favorite spot for Don and the boys..

The Gunsmith Building

The Blacksmith

We went on the tour of the Governor’s Palace

Our guide played the part of a servant who was ‘sneaking’ us into the Palace. The Governor was away at the moment, and they were preparing the Palace for a Ball that was to take place later that evening.

The Entry Room’s walls were lined with guns, spears, and swords

I think this was the Parlor.

The Master Bedroom

The Dining Room

The Ballroom

I wish I had been able to get some better pictures. The groups were a bit large, and by the time we all got into a room, we were standing shoulder to shoulder in the roped areas. The only way to get better pictures would have been to lag behind the group and then you would miss half of the story the guide was telling. :(

All of the rooms were much smaller than I would have imagined. Of course, compared to the cabins that most lived in at that time period, this was definitely a palace.

We exited into the Palace garden and went through the hedge maze and down to the lake behind.

My In-Laws :) They spoiled us rotten with this trip!

Then we walked back up the hill behind the Palace Kitchen and Laundry.

Looking back down over the tiered hillside where the Kitchen Garden was…

The Palace Kitchen…

The Buttery

I tell you, if I ever had the chance to visit again, I would have spent HOURS there taking picture after picture and not so much listening to the guide. I feel like I missed so much and really didn’t get to see everything!

Between the Kitchen building and the Palace was the building where they butchered animals for the kitchen and then the smokehouse

Inside the smokehouse- that is all real meat hanging from the ceiling, and it smelled WONDERFUL!

The floor where the fire is built to smoke the meat

Beside those two building is the well (which now is a water fountain) and beyond that (the little octagon building) is the Governor’s Bathhouse.

I think she said that only the Governor was permitted to use this. He would just stand down in the middle and the servant would throw buckets of water on him :)

Then we went down in to the cellars below the Palace. It was much cooler down there than the 104 degrees that it was outside

It was soooo hot while we were there that it was hard to really enjoy it. There were sites that we missed too. After the tour of the Palace we needed to get into some air conditioning and have a late lunch. We ate at Josiah Chowning’s house. They had a very limited menu if you wanted to eat inside. It was basically a few choices of sandwiches, but it was worth it to sit in the air conditioning and rest our feet for a bit.

I snapped a few pictures when I went upstairs to the bathroom :)

Loved this little child’s chair

We then hopped the shuttle and went to the museum. We were so tired and exhausted from the heat that we rushed through it and just wanted to get back to our rooms.

My advice if you ever have a chance to go there:

#1- Make sure you have a 2 day pass! We did, but only had planned for one day there.

#2- Don’t go on days that they are having record temps and humidity levels!!! lol

#3- Take pictures of EVERYTHING!!!!! I am kicking myself over and over for not taking hundreds more! Part of the problem was that while we were in the cellars, my camera acted up and said the batteries were dead. I forgot to put the fresh ones in before we left. But a little while later, I tried again and it was fine!

On Tuesday we went to Virginia Beach. Now THAT was a perfect time! The air might have been hot and humid, but the ocean was the perfect cure! It was really hazy for the first 2 hours but then cleared off and was sunny. Despite wearing sunblock, we still got some sun, but we left before it got to be sunburn.

My guys :)

I had bought a bag of sand toys for Gannon to play with, but he spent his time looking for shells and playing in the waves. They found a bunch of shells and even a few had little crabs in them.

My in-laws had bought into a time-share thing and they asked us to come on this vacation with them. They had to go to a breakfast so they could ‘discuss their account’ and they didn’t sign back up… yet. They still have a few trips planned for themselves, but Pap Pap was already talking to Gannon about ‘the next time we come down’…lol He was a Navy man, and he said he would like to try to see more of the port where the ships were.

We had a wonderful time, ate great food, had fun, and enjoyed the relaxation. We missed our pets and couldn’t wait to come home. Once we got home though, we wished we could go right back! Not a drop of rain the whole time. Well, that is until we crossed the state line back into Ohio…go figure. lol

Now it’s back to catching up on laundry, trying to get the grass mowed, and the gardens weeded. I haven’t been up to the upper garden yet, but Don said he thinks that the deer ate our pumpkin, butternut and acorn squash plants while we were away :( We’ve never had that happen before! I have to say that we are enjoying the temperatures here a LOT more than there. Loving the 50’s/60’s lows at night :)

Tomorrow we are going to take the boys to a local State Park to fish and play in the creek. Work has called me twice (once while we were still in Virginia) to try to get me to cover a shift, but I am insisting that I am still on vacation until Sunday :)

Two Big Changes (and a makeover)

2010-06-15T13:10:00.001-04:00

We’ve had 2 big changes this week here at my house- and both are animal related.

The first big change is that we decided to try to keep Timmy here with us. The person who expressed interest in giving him a home has not contacted us, so we are thinking that he didn’t have THAT much interest in him. Since we are going to keep him, it was time to re-introduce him to the ‘big pond’ that he hasn’t been in since he was 3 days old. He has gotten quite big since I last posted a picture of him.

He is almost all feathered out now. The first day we let him out of his cage, I led him to the pond and he just stood beside it hiding in the taller grass. I had to catch him and put him in it. I was expecting him to jump right in I guess, but he was too scared and immediately jumped right back out. So I took him over to this area and spread some food out for him and he stayed. Then he discovered the little puddle by the waters edge and there is where he happily stayed for the rest of the day. The puddle is shallow and he felt safe there.

We caught him that night and put him back into the cage and let him out the following morning. He went right back to his puddle and eventually sometime during the day he stepped over the edge of his puddle and into the big pond- but just swam right by the edge of his puddle. He was testing out the waters :-) He seems very happy out there and is not attempting to follow us to the house like I thought he would. The cats and the dogs are used to him too, and I actually looked out and saw the one cat sitting 2 feet away from him on the first day. I panicked and ran outside thinking that Timmy was being stalked. Tarus was just sitting there eating a piece of bread that we had thrown out there! lol Timmy was just happily sitting by his ‘friend’! Anyway, we spend a lot of time outside in the summer, and the pond is just right behind the garage, so he’s not as ‘alone’ as I thought he would be. Hubs talks to him through the open garage window a lot too :)

The other big change is one that I was not going to post about at first. It can be a bit controversial and I do not want to open myself or my blog up to nasty comments about it. But I decided that with the difference it has made in our lives, it was worth posting about if it might help someone else with their dog.

Our dog, Matty, has been a challenge. She is just turning 2 years old and we have not been successful with training her to stay in the yard- it’s kind of hard when we can’t fence the whole thing in. So when she needs to go out, our only option is to keep her tied or she will take off and run the orchard for hours at a time. We do not want her to get lost, hurt, or hit by a car, so she gets tied. She is wonderful in the house- if we call her, she comes running. But, if we open one of the doors to go outside, she does her best to shoot out and has been successful many many times- too many times to even count. If she hears you call her outside, she will take off and run further away. Two of those times were as I was going out the door to work and there is no way to catch her. I had to go to work on those days and worry the whole time and hope like heck that she was worn out and sitting on the porch waiting for me when I got home. Luckily she was. When we are cooking on the patio or just sitting out and enjoying the evening, it is spent trying to untangle her long leash from around the legs of the chairs or the rocks in the wall cause she likes to make her rounds and visit with every one of us :) Like I said, she’s been a challenge.

One morning, she shot out the door when the boys were going out for the bus. I ran out after her and tried to catch her. She was ‘taking care of business’ in the back yard and I got within 2 feet of her and she saw me and took off- dropping the rest of ‘her business’ as she went. I was fuming! I came right inside and started researching training collars. My neighbors had used one on their ‘runaway’ dog, so I knew that they could be a great tool. I found one at a decent price (but any price at that point would have been worth it to me) and I ordered it. It came around the time that we started working on the patio. Just so you know- I have tried every setting on that collar on my hand. I wanted to know what it felt like. None were painful, but the higher settings were uncomfortable, but no so uncomfortable that I couldn’t do it more than once. I watched the instruction video several times- I wanted to be sure that we would be using it effectively. I would take her outside with me on her 20 foot leash and I trained her to come to me when I pushed the Tone (beep) button. She did great like that for days and would come running excitedly when I would have the collar in my hands to put on her because she knew she would be going outside with me. Long story short- she bolted after something and broke away from her leash and no setting on that collar would make her stop. I was convinced that her ‘will to run’ was just too strong. I put the collar away deciding it would not work for us.

Hubs and I were talking about it the other day when I had her on a leash in the garage with us. I went up and got it and put it on her again. She still remembered to come to me when I beeped her- which was good because we had worked so long on that. I went ahead and tapped the lowest setting on her to show Hubs how it wasn’t working…she didn’t feel a thing. I tapped the second setting….nothing. Hubs called her over, and tightened the collar one more notch. Lowest setting worked! I would have sworn that I had that collar tight enough all that time! Within 5 minutes, we had her off the leash and in the garage with us! If she went to go outside the garage, she would return on Tone. She walked outside the garage once and started to run down to hill to go behind the barn (one of her favorite spots to run because we can’t see her) and I pushed the Tone button and she literally made a U-turn and came right back up. It was the most amazing thing ever! We walked up to the upper garden with her, which is near the orchard (another place she always runs off to) and only needed to use the lowest setting on her twice when she would not respond to the Tone and us calling her back. A total of 3 times that first day with the lowest setting (one of them being the ‘test’ one), and we have not had to use anything but the Tone button since! She’s been outside with us for the last 3 days and she is now the dog we always wanted her to be! The biggest relief for me is that when I get the collar out, she still comes running to get it on!

I am still amazed at how well she has done. For awhile, I was upset that I had spent all that time training her to come to Tone (while still on the leash) and I had felt that it was a lot of wasted time because the collar would not work for her. In the video, they said that training collars may not work on all dogs- some just have a stronger will. I was afraid that she was just one of those dogs and she would never be able to be outside with us without being tied. This would have never been possible before…

I have had her on a short walk in the orchard with me and she walks right beside me now. When I have taken her up there with the leash, she constantly pulled on it trying to sniff rabbit trails into the weeds. It was rough and frustrating for me (and her too, I guess). She still thinks about taking off now, but she responds to my voice and stays with me. It is literally a ‘night and day’ difference. I am now so glad that we tried the collar again- and I am doubly glad that I did spend all that time training her to come to Tone and my voice. I now think all that time made all the difference and made the transition that much easier. I was afraid that it was going to be a long and hard process, and that I would just feel like I was torturing her, but it has been nothing like that at all.

Where I was not a huge believer in using training collars before, I am now a convert. If they are used as instructed and used with patience, they can work miracles without being harmful or cruel. She is my baby and I would never want to do anything to hurt her, but I never want anything else to happen to her either when she would run off. Now she is able to be my baby inside and outside :)

I haven’t been up to much else lately. Mainly I have just been enjoying seeing my Timmy on the pond and my Matty enjoying the outdoors with the rest of us :) I’ve been trying to get things organized for our vacation and will get back to crafting after that is over. I almost forgot to show the trash to treasure thing that I mentioned in my last post!

Remembered this firkin planter that I picked up at a yard sale recently?

I took the firkin off and put it in the redo pile- haven’t gotten to it yet. But I was left with the sturdy stand that it came on. I just couldn’t throw it away and I knew I would find a use for it eventually. Well I ‘married’ it with another piece that I was going to throw in the trash. It used to be one of the kids’ Easter baskets but the handle had come off. I put them together and painted it up and here it is…

I wasn’t sure if it worked well together or not, but I kind of like it. It will look great with flowers planted on it on the porch. I was going to get flowers to fill it the other day, but I decided to wait until we get back. I didn’t want to put any more responsibility on my neighbors- they have graciously offered to take care of our animals and watch our house while we are gone. It can wait.

I have much to do before we go, so I doubt I will be posting anymore for awhile. When I get back, I will be refreshed and ready to get back into the swing of things, and I will be looking forward to catching up on all my favorite bloggers!

The ‘Piece’ is Done!! …for now

2010-06-09T11:42:00.003-04:00

I know that since I posted yesterday evening, some people may not check their blog lists for new posting several times a day (like I do *Ü*), so if you didn’t read my post yesterday of the trials I had to go through to finish this piece…the blood…the sweat…the tears…okay, no blood and not much sweat (temps were quite pleasant yesterday), but there were a few tears…so, if you didn’t read yesterdays post, you can read it here. I purposely put all the negativity about the project in that post so I wouldn’t ruin the reveal. lol

Hubs was at the neighbor’s house (the ones with the ‘magic shed’)a few months ago, and they were redoing their bedroom. New paint, new carpet, etc. She’s not big into decorating, but kind of got into it when they were doing their bedroom. Hubs was there helping them move something. He came home and told me I needed to stop by and see what she bought for in the bedroom-it was something that we had been talking about building for the dining room, and just the day before, I had drawn it up and figured out what size lumber I was going to have to go get. He told me she bought it for $17 at the local close-out store. What?? I had figured the lumber to cost around $60 for ours…and that was guess-timating! Next day, I stopped down to look….I was in shock. Painted and distressed….it would have been PERFECT for my house. I went straight to the store and scored me 2 of them!

~~~~~~~~~~~$17$~~~~~~~~~

Isn’t is a beautiful thing??

Yes, it is one of those flat-pack chip board pieces, and they are made to put a heating insert inside, but for the price of the piece, and the savings vs. buying the lumber to build one, I could not help myself. I bought this one and also a corner model (which I will show it’s placement soon). I had started to prime it when I remembered to take a picture. And then it sat, until ‘the conditions’ I explained in yesterday’s post, were right. I won’t go back there in this post- it wasn’t pretty. But here it is sitting on the front sidewalk yesterday…

That is when it was splotchy…you can see it on the side, across the top front panel and at the base by the opening. Then I clear coated it again, and it was worse than that. <—Not going there again.

More paint later, I had ‘fixed’ it, and I had Brady help me bring it in before it started to rain. I painted the inside, attached a front board, and put ‘a back’ on it (I will explain that in a bit). Here it is as it now sits in my Dining Room…

Did I tell you I almost L-O-V-E it?

I say almost, because it HAS to be distressed for me to really L-O-V-E it. I will have to work on the distressing which will probably have to be dry-brushing it with some brown because I’m still not confident that sanding will not take all of the paint off again. I worked too hard to get it to actually stick and don’t want to risk ruining it.

Since I almost love it, I knew I had to take pictures to show you today. I couldn’t show it without a back on it though, and I didn’t have any thin plywood to make one with. We have some thick plywood, but I didn’t want all that extra weight added to it because I like to be able to move things around when I want. So no back….what’s a girl to do?

Improvise.

I may, or may not, be bragging about my creativeness at this point (LOL) but I just wanted to show you what a creative, determined, trash-to-treasure- type woman like myself (and YOU) can do when push comes to shove and you are forced to ‘think outside of the box’.

I was going to use fabric. Yes….fabric. I went to my stash and found that I did not have a big enough piece of black fabric to cover it. I went outside of the box again, grabbed a piece that was large enough, and headed to the basement.

What did I do with the fabric in the basement? Some of you might know where I’m going with this…cause I know there are several spray-paint-aholics out there like myself. Yes. I hung it on the clothesline in the basement and I broke out the black spray paint. Seriously.

Luckily, as I was setting up to paint the inside of the fireplace I found the spray can helper that I bought a month ago that I had forgotten about- it was still in the bag with the quart of black I bought for the fireplace! If you don’t have one, this is a spray-paint-aholic’s dream tool…

Of course I had to pay $6 for this one at HD because after I became a spray-paint-aholic, I never saw one at Dollar General or Family Dollar like I had seen them before I became one.

Back to the fabric…I attached my spray can helper and went to work. I sprayed and I sprayed and I sprayed. I sprayed so much, that I began to feel a little ‘high’ from the fumes ( Note to self: need to purchase a painters mask). I went up to the kitchen to finish dinner and ignored Hubs remark that it smelled like I spray painted a car in the basement (Another note to self: never spray paint a car in the basement- do it outside).

But it worked. I stapled that piece of almost-black fabric to the back of my fireplace and wa-LAH.

Back of fireplace….done. I tried to get a good picture of it, but it seems to be impossible. If I took it like above, with a part of the mantle in the picture, it flashed off the wood and blacked out the fabric. If I took it without any of the wood in the picture, it flashed on the fabric and made it look waaaaayyyy lighter than it appears…like this.

So just look at this picture, in which it looks gray, and imagine it darker- that is what it looks like. It almost looks like dark bead board, which made me soooo glad I picked the striped fabric instead of printed, and that I did not run the stripes horizontal!

Here is another picture taken in a different setting on my camera…

I do almost love it. So much.

Now I have to make decisions for decorating that area. Of course I will show pictures when I get something worked out with it.

This has turned out to be a long post and it’s almost noon now. I do have a T2T piece that I finished yesterday and I wanted to show. I took 2 pieces of ‘trash’ and married them to make something kind of interesting for the front porch. It's raining cats and dogs outside right now, so I will show that Friday. The rain also gives me the opportunity to work on rearranging my t.v./craft room instead of working outside today. That’s a good thing.

A Dog and Her Boys…

2010-06-08T17:58:00.001-04:00

The coaches changed their minds and did not allow the 7th graders to attend the Browns football training camp. Brady was quite disappointed and even called me at work on Monday to try to get me to call and talk to the coach. I told him that since the high school football program was paying for the players to attend camp, that there was nothing I could do about it. He would probably get to attend next year. Calvin really liked it yesterday and they sent the kids home with a bag full of ‘stuff’. lol

Since Brady is not going, he asked Gannon to take a walk in the orchard with him. Of course, Sadie saw the pellet rifle and she was raring to go! She’s a true hunting dog. She was excitedly barking the whole way up through the yard :-)

As far as she’s concerned, they aren’t my boys…they are hers!

Some may wonder, have I finished my blue bonnet I showed the other day? Um….no. It still hangs on my sewing machine where I left it. I decided that since the humidity is down and the wind wasn’t bad today, that I would work on a big piece outside this morning. I won’t say what it is yet, but I primed it probably 2 months ago. I thought I was going to spray it black, so I needed to take it outside. I had to wait for a few conditions to be right first….it couldn’t be raining, it couldn’t be windy, and I definitely needed at least one of the older boys to be here to help me carry it out. Today seemed to fit the bill.

THEN the problems started. Somewhere along the way this morning, I decided that I was going to brush paint it tan instead of spraying it black. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sand it to age it (because it is made from that pressboard stuff and I already tried that with the cupboard in the dining room awhile ago…sanding peels the paint right back off), so I decided to go with a color first, and then if I don’t like it, it can always be sprayed black later. Both boys actually carried it out for me this morning, and we set it on the front sidewalk. I got it all prepped with newspapers under it and brought out my paint, brush, coffee, and cell phone. I dipped the brush in the paint and went to work. It took me about 5 seconds to realize that the paint was NOT sticking to the primer in places and was almost peeling back? It looked like I had taken candle wax and rubbed it all over and the paint would not stick! Well, I figured that I would just have to use several coats of paint to get it to cover. I one-coated it and went inside to work on something else for a little bit. Came back out to find that the birds in the trees were not happily chirping earlier, like I had thought. They were downright mad because I was disturbing them! They had pooped on my piece while I was in….twice. Great. Washed it off….put on some more paint. Then more. Then more. I was getting desperate by this point because there were still stubborn spots that the darn paint would not stick to. I kind of gave up at that point and just decided that it was going to have to have little pinpoints of white primer showing out through the tan…which I hated. I really, really, did not want to spray it black-I was sold on the tan by this point. Since it was the pressboard stuff, and since that name brand primer was not all that it thought it was, I figured that I’d better spray it with a clear sealer to try to keep that stupid paint from scratching right off. I sprayed it over. It came out splotchy. Niiiiicccee. Now I have a white-speckled-tan-piece with splotches all over it. My day was just getting better and better. I tried spraying it with the sealer again….still splotchy, but now even more splotches from the second go-round with the can. A w e s o m e. I walked away. Took Calvin to weight lifting/training camp, made a few stops at some stores to pick up what I needed (which included the makings for spinach dip- I have been craving it and today was not making it any better) went to the post office (anyone expecting a package from me- it’s on it’s way!) and then home again. Looked the piece over one last time before I was going to decide if it should go on the burn pile or not (lol) and ran my hand over it. The finish felt good. Just looked like crap. I scratched at it a bit with my fingernail….it didn’t scratch off. Really?? Last ditch effort time-I took out the paintbrush again, swiped some paint on one of the stupid peely parts….waited…and it STUCK!!!! I bet I smiled the whole time I painted that dumb piece one last time. Matter of fact, I think I may have been beaming! It now looks A w e s o m e ….seriously this time. I’m not even thinking of how I’m going to attempt to age it yet. That’s a problem I will have to deal with another time. I’m going to get it ready to come back inside and take it’s place of honor in my dining room. It did not defeat me like I thought it had. It felt really good to conquer that demon today. Pics will be coming soon-Maybe even tomorrow.

In between putting a few of the 100 coats of paint on that thing, I hung up some flags and a sign on the porch.

I worked on a sort of makeover while I was taking a break between painting and crying. lol I have to put one more coat of paint on that before I show it. It’s kind of different- neat. I’ll show that tomorrow for sure.

I guess that’s it for now- I’ve had no other dramas today :) Time to do the dishes and get dinner done. Hope you all have a pleasant evening- I know I will now!

Weekend Workings….

2010-06-06T22:18:00.001-04:00

It seems like the weather watch box had permanently burned itself onto our television screens here in Ohio. It has been there for the past 4 to 5 days, and then finally this afternoon they were able to take it off. I don’t get totally freaked about it, but I do like to sit and watch the weather guys and the current radar when something is ‘going down’ in my part of the state. lol Where I am, we escaped a lot of the nastier weather that has been blowing across the state, but we did manage to have 2 pretty good lightening storms on Friday (along with a tornado warning for the lowest part of the county) and woke this morning to the entire area being on tornado watch. We never did get any kind of storm here today. Just a little wind and rain. Anyway, I’m glad that front is past us. I love a good thunder storm, but I’m not favorable to it being every single day.

So Saturday, since it would rain, then stop, then rain, then stop, then rain again, I knew there was no chance that I was getting outside. I decided it was a perfect day for sewing, so I picked through my patterns to find something that I hadn’t tried yet. I had 2 bonnet patterns and some yardage, so I went to work. The first one turned out fabulous!!!! I LOVE it!

This one has a really long skirt on it (22 inches, maybe?) and I was so proud of how it came out for the first time! I was a little worried, because somewhere in one of the patterns the designer mentioned maybe making it out of muslin the first time because it’s not as expensive if you mess up. Mess up? Pssshhh….not a problem. It worked up quite nicely, and believe it or not, the only thing I had to do over was putting the front ties on! I couldn’t decide where to put them! I definitely will be making this one over (and over and over lol) but I will probably make the skirts different lengths- not quite so long. This one reminds me of someone’s ‘Sunday Best’ and not one they wore everyday. It’s definitely life-sized- I’ve tried it on! I almost got a picture of Calvin trying it on- but he figured out I was setting up my phone camera and he never got it on his head! lol

I was feeling like such an expert by that time (ha! just kidding) that I decided to tackle the other pattern. I have had these patterns for quite awhile now, and I have read and reread them over and over so much that I almost had them memorized. They seemed like they were going to be pretty challenging, and I would read them step by step and ‘piece’ them together in my mind. I got the second one almost done up to putting the skirt on…

I still have a few more lines to stitch on the brim, but I was up till almost midnight by this point, so I hung it on my machine and called it a night. I love this blue print that I had, so I knew I would be using it for this one. I had to work today, and when I got home the gardens were dry enough to work in, so we all went out and got some annuals put in. The boys were even helping….and it made it go quickly.

It was getting dark when I went out to take pictures, so it’s hard to see the annuals we put in along the front of this garden.

This is the back garden with the post (that is still birdhouseless…I know, it will be made some time this summer, lol)

We stopped for dinner and just put everything we were working with in the garden.

My rose bush is looking quite impressive this year! I want MORE!

Not much else going on right now. We have been discussing Timmy’s fate, and sadly, we are probably going to end up sending him to a friend’s farm. He is just so lonely here, and I’m so afraid that will make him a sure target for some racoon or hawk. I can’t bring myself to set him out on the pond alone, and I feel that there is safety in numbers, so he will do well in a pond with others of his kind. He’s looking quite scraggly now because he’s growing his feathers in!

Not such great pictures, but as I said, it was getting dark. I have stopped bringing him inside and putting him in his tank. Even that breaks my heart that I have to leave him out there alone…and with the storms lately…oh, I feel like such a bad mama just covering his cage and making him stay out there! I had to realize that I can’t ‘baby’ him forever- there is no way I am having a duck in the house! I have to allow him to adjust to living outside. One good thing is that I have his cage right beside the front porch, and our outside cat eats and sleeps out there, so he’s not totally alone. And finally the cat has decided that Timmy is not a ‘snack’ for him, and he no longer sits by the cage and stares Timmy down! Over the past few weeks, Timmy has started to ‘shy away’ from us more and more. My neighbor told me that since he is technically a ‘wild’ breed and not a domesticated breed, that he would never be really tame. I didn’t believe her. Now I do. Even with all of the handling we did with him from day 3 of his life, he just seems to have the instinct that even though we feed him and take care of him, he is not supposed to be held by us. He is fine with being nearby us in his cage (like while we were working out in the flower gardens), but he’s not fine with being picked up an carried anymore- he fights and kicks like mad! So my baby is growing up fast, and by the time we go on vacation in a few weeks, he will probably be at his new home with new friends.

This week looks to be busier yet with the older 2 boys starting summer weight lifting every day for football and they will leave from there to go to a Cleveland Browns Training Camp at another school in the area. They will be gone from 3-8 every night this week. That will make for 2 starving teens by the time they get home at night- I promised them I would send them snacks for in between :) It’s been a challenge so far this summer to keep them from camping out in the kitchen all day. It’s true what people say about teen boys having bottomless stomachs! lol

Well, I have to work in the morning so I’d better get off here and get things finished up before bed. Not sure when I’ll be back around to post, but I hope to have a few more things finished up to list on my selling blog later this week. I’ll have to see how it goes. Till then, hope you have a great week!

The Sale is On

2010-06-02T10:39:00.001-04:00

I just finished listing my first offerings for my $25 and under sale on my selling blog ~By My Hand~. You can click here to check it out! Actually only one item that I listed is over $20, so I think I did pretty good with pricing :) Here are a few of the offerings I put up…

There are a few cross stitched items listed also. I didn’t get my dolls dressed yet, so they will be listed in a day or so, and hopefully along with a few more things I have been working on. I haven’t done much but cross stitch lately, and I really loved sewing these critters for a change of pace. And if you know me, you know that I like a little ‘bang for my buck’, so I loved that all of these guys would be great to decorate with from Summer through Fall. I only wish I had gone upstairs and dug out a few fake pumpkins to take some pictures with too.

Besides making things to list, we are slowly trying to adjust to the boys being out of school. I think they really look forward to the last day every year, but every year, about 3 days in to summer vacation, they are bored! lol I’ve tried to keep them fairly busy with helping to get the garden put in and keeping the grass mowed and trimmed. If they aren’t busy doing something, then they want to camp out in my kitchen…and my wallet does NOT like that! lol The neighbor has hired the older 2 to do a few jobs around his farm, so today, they took the quad across the orchard to his property to pull the cat tails out of his pond. I don’t even want to imagine what they are going to look like when they come home from doing that! We’ve had to do that to our pond a few times over the years, and it is one mucky dirty mess!

Timmy-kins is really getting big too!

No more using one hand to carry this guy around! We’ve still been carrying him in to his tank in the house at night, but it won’t be long before he is spending his nights outside. He kicks and wiggles whenever you pick him up, but he is so happy when he’s all tucked in his tank and he sits there and happily preens himself and peeps away :)

Well, I called my mom in the middle of writing this post (and she is still talking away in my ear, lol) so I’d better get it finished and posted. I have some dolls to dress!

$25 and under Primitive Sale

2010-06-01T13:36:00.001-04:00

Wow- I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve posted. I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend! We cooked out with friends and got the veggie garden put in, and I worked 2 shifts on Sunday and one yesterday morning. It’s been busy around here. I have been working on things to put up on my selling blog and have several things in various stages of ‘almost done’. lol I have some stitched items, dolls, and a few critters sunning themselves on the patio in the hot sunshine today, so a few more touches to those and they will be ready to go to new homes! I had said that I would be putting a post up to give a ‘heads up’ for when I will be posting the sale, so here it is! I’m thinking that I will have a first batch of items up tomorrow morning. I’m wanting to make a little spending money for our vacation that is coming up, so I’m am trying to price items to move and shipping will be included in the prices. I would love it if you would stop by my selling blog tomorrow to check it out- maybe you will see something you can’t pass up! lol Until then, I have plenty of things to keep me busy! Have a great day!

Before and After

2010-05-25T08:55:00.001-04:00

I don’t know what it is about this time of year, but it seems like I’ve been busy, busy, busy….but not much to show for it. First and foremost on my mind is the fact that the boys are done with this school year after tomorrow! I can’t believe another school year has come and gone.

I have 2 before and afters to show you. Nothing big, but I’m liking them both!

While it was raining on Saturday, I decided I would work on the front porch. I moved the furniture, swept down the cobwebs that had gathered already this spring, and washed some of the siding. I had purchased some of the hangers that you are supposed to be able to slide up under the siding to hang stuff on…yeah right. I bought those last summer and have tried several times to make them work, but I just cannot get them to hook into place! I want to be able to hang some things, but it’s just not working…and it’s very aggravating! lol So I need to go to plan B. Which I don’t have yet, but I’m working on it :-)

I have this snowman board that I painted years ago. I put it on my front porch for the winter season….

I already have so much winter stuff to store upstairs, so I wanted to try to make this a dual-season item. He was still on the porch (hiding behind the chair in the corner), and when I was moving stuff and sweeping, I took him inside and got out the paint. This is what I came up with for his reverse side…

Pretty great, right? Now it can stay outside all year round! I would love to show you the rest of the porch, but the reason I can’t kind of ties in with my other before and after photo.

This is our honkin-huge 200+ lb t.v that I have hated from the moment we brought it home. I hated this thing, and it has always hated us…

About a year after we bought it (just past the warranty date- of course) it decided to develop a mind of it’s own. It began to randomly turn on and off. And when it would turn off, you would have to push the ‘channel’ button beside the power button to turn it back on. Sit back in the chair….click….off again. On again…off again. REALLY SUPER annoying! It would throw it’s fit for a day or so (during which we would watch t.v. in the other room) and then it would be fine…sometimes for months. I tried everything…unplugging it for a day, changing the batteries in the remote, vacuuming the vents on the back….nothing seemed to settle it. Well, it has been fine for the better part of a year now, and the other day it started it’s fit again. I had enough. I had Hubs lug it out to the porch last night. I would love to go out and buy a new flat model, but with vacation coming up, I can live with an old t.v we had, for now. It looks teeny compared to the other one, but I’m liking it.

I moved a jar of flags that I painted a few years ago to on top of the t.v. and I put a few barn roof slate tiles in my carrier. I also had a space beside the t.v to sit a little set of drawers that I had found at the TS a few months ago. When we finally get one of the new flat models, I will be moving the whole room around and the cedar chest will get a makeover and then finally be able to function as storage again. I just got to the point of hating an entertainment center, so we got rid of ours and I improvised and used the cedar chest for the t.v.

That’s about all I have to show for now. I have one order left from my selling blog to finish up and get mailed out and I hope to be able to list some new offerings later this week. Did I mention we are going on vacation in a few weeks? lol I’m trying to decide what to get together to sell, but I’m looking to make a little extra $$ to take with us. I’m thinking of a $20 or $25 and under sale, but I’ll have to see what I can come up with. I’m thinking I may have a mixture of cross stitch, made over items, and other things. I doubt that I will be taking orders on most because of the time factor, so most will probably be first come first serve. If you are not a follower of my selling blog, click here so you will be notified when I post the goods. I’ll try to post here, on this blog, later this week to let you know when I’ll be listing. Until then, I will be digging through my stash of TS items, painting, sewing, and stitching!

2010-05-21T18:07:00.001-04:00

Not much to show today. The boys only have 3 days of school left, and it seems like almost every day, I have to do running for some school function. I’m sure I’m ours is not the only school to do this, but I ALWAYS hate the end of the school year. They just try to cram everything into the last 3 weeks. Today was Gannon’s Track and Field day, and instead of holding it at the school like usual, they held it at the local fairgrounds. I had no idea why they would waste the gas to bus the kids down there, but then realized that they actually made a field trip out of it and the kids got to take a tour of the barns and see some animals. I asked my friend to go along so we could scout out the area for yard sales after Gannon’s events were over.

He did good- but the hula hoop was not his thing ºÜº

We found one garage sale in the area (really only by accident) and decided to hit a few other areas to see if we could find any treasures. It ended up being a lot of driving and I only found a few things.

This little brown crock was 25 ¢ and the mortar and pestle was

50 ¢. I also found a brand new little digital video camera for $10. It’s a pretty cheap one and doesn’t have a zoom or anything, but I thought it would be cool for the kids to mess with. It takes still pictures too. Besides those things and a few nice t-shirts for Brady, I didn’t find anything else. Oh I almost forgot that I got this old green lantern. I came right home and hung it up! It was $1.

So not a huge yard sale day, but pretty successful. And don’t get me wrong, there were other things. Many, many other things that I could have bought. I’m getting a little better about not snatching every single thing up that catches my eye. I have so many things to make over so I’m not really scouting for more right now.

I took Timmy outside in his wire cage yesterday while I was sanding and base coating some things. I got the sconces that I bought last weekend sanded and base coated and also the end table. I have to decide what colors to paint them and hope to have a few done to show you soon. I have the hardest time picking colors- especially if I’m not exactly sure where I’m going to use an item. I did run out to the Depot today to get a few quarts of paint mixed. If I’m going to paint some bigger items, I can’t be relying on craft sized bottles of paint! I got my favorite color of blue and an old looking black. Here are a few favorite shots from yesterday…

Sadie, lazing around…what’s new? ☺ She wouldn’t even lift her head to look at me.

And a boy and his duck….love these!

And then I immediately cut that boy’s hair!

Have a great weekend!

What a morning…

2010-05-20T14:32:00.001-04:00

I was supposed to be at work today, but Gannon got sick last night. Ugh. I really can’t complain that he’s sick, because I don’t think he has been since Fall. I CAN complain, however, that he got sick in the middle of the night and didn’t make it out of bed. Let’s just say that there was no mistaking that he ate spaghetti for dinner last night. Luckily, most of it landed on a pillow that had fallen off the bed, so that just got tossed. It was an old flattened out pillow anyway, and he just got a new one last week. I steam cleaned his mattress and carpet ( he had some red soda also, so I will have to hit it again with some stain stuff). Not my favorite way to start the day.

Brady had to take food in for school today. Again. I hate this class. This is like the 5th time he has had to take food in for it, and it’s Social Studies! Not Home Ec.! At least this time, he was just supposed to take in ‘normal’ food and not something from the Netherlands, or Nigeria, or one of the other countries that I had never heard of before. This teacher must like to eat, although she has lost a ton of weight in the past 2 years. lol- just kidding! Anyway, he was supposed to take in brownies. Simple, right? Did I go out and buy a box mix? No….I can’t do things the easy way. I decided we were going to make them from scratch so I picked a recipe out from a local church’s cookbook. I hadn’t tried them before, but to make a long story short, I had just enough eggs to make them, when I was finished mixing them up, I discovered that there was no sugar listed for the recipe, so I added some, but the whole recipe must have been published wrong. They didn’t turn out. It was 10 pm by that time, and I was NOT running out to Walmart to get a box mix so this morning, I ended up running him to the store to get some bakery cookies to take in. He was mad at me for picking that recipe, so I sent a note for his teacher telling her that I could text her a picture of the brownies if she wanted- we really did try to make them! lol Oh yeah, and I had to take him to school after we went to the store, and Gannon was getting sick in a bucket in the back seat a few times during the ride. Nice morning, huh? Thank God I remembered the bucket.

I figured since I was off work, I would take advantage of the beautiful weather we have been desperately missing and get some stuff sanded down and painted outside. Then my mom called. She was at the dentist right up the road and thought I was at work, but decided to call to see if I was home, in case she had my work days mixed up. So I ran around the house and picked up real quick because she hasn’t been here in ages. Heck, it’s probably been a year since she’s stopped by. She only lives 15-20 minutes away, but we always have family stuff at her house, and she really never comes this direction for anything but the dentist. I’m glad she stopped by- we had a nice visit. She got to see my ‘new kitchen’ and she loved the colors and how I have it decorated. She really liked the tops of the cupboards and my small collection of Roseville crocks. She LOVED the hanging candle light and shelf that I have by my sink that Sandy made me :) She got to see our patio- what is done so far, and really was impressed with how much bigger it is and how nice it’s going to turn out. We were walking around in the house and talking and she would stop and say, ‘Oh, I like that light! (the lantern I bought from you Karen when you had your little picture trail sale) and,' I like all your blue banded crocks’ and,'Where did you get that old basket?’ and other little things I have been adding here and there. It really meant a lot to me that she was noticing everything I have been doing with my decorating, because I know that even though she doesn’t necessarily decorate the way I do, she appreciates it and ‘gets’ where I’m coming from!

She was really impressed with our bush by the patio that is now in full bloom!

It’s HUGE! I couldn’t wait for it to bloom so I can trim it back. I should have done it last fall or really early this spring, but didn’t get to it in time. We stood there for awhile trying to remember what it’s called, but I can’t remember what she finally decided it was. lol It’s the Pink Bush to me *Ü*

She liked Timmy too. He’s even bigger now than when I took pics of him a few days ago!

See how tall he is in his tank now? He does like to swim in the tub for a little while. He gets going around like a motorboat! We got out the wire dog kennel yesterday and Calvin took him out in the grass. He liked it, but panicked if Calvin tried to walk even a few feet away. I guess it will take awhile for him to get used to being in there while we are outside. I hate to keep him cooped up in the tank in the house. I don’t know how Joey and Chandler had Duck and Chicken in an apartment on Friends! lol

I’d better get moving on some laundry and sanding. I took the end table outside to work on before my mom stopped over, so it’s still waiting on me! Hope you are enjoying the same sunny weather where you are!

Oh my, how they grow…and then some just don’t

2010-05-18T08:47:00.001-04:00

I got Timmy housed in his new ‘pad’ on Sunday, and it didn’t take long to realize that he will have to ‘move’ again….and soon. I pretty much knew it as soon as I put him in there. He has at least doubled his size since I started him on ‘real food’ a few days ago.

That same day, he began jumping out of the sink and onto the counter during his ‘swimmy time’. He tried like crazy the day before and it was not possible, but he’s growing in leaps and bounds. He was good in the tank- got used to seeing us really quick. I put the container in there for him to hide in if he needed to. Now he looks for us and peeps when we leave the room. I covered his tank top with a towel when I went to bed on Sunday- just to be safe- and uncovered it when I got home from work yesterday. He immediately started to try to figure out how to jump out. He’s not big enough yet, but again, it won’t be long. I am going to have to utilize the big wire dog kennel sooner than I thought. At least with that, I can take him out and set the whole thing down in the pond for short periods. It will give him the chance to get used to the pond again- he hasn’t seen it since the third day of his life. I’m trying to figure out ways to keep him safe for when we have to return him to the pond for good. Luckily it’s right behind the garage, so he won’t be far. He’s just too little and will be by himself- Mama has not yet returned. I can’t stand the thought of putting him out there in a few weeks!

He does make quite a mess in there. He loves his water! I have to change his papers twice a day now.

I had forgotten how messy and stinky their pens can get in such a short amount of time! He’s worth it, though. :-)

After work yesterday, I got home and started cleaning house. I was so into it- which is not always the case, lol. I started making plans to move furniture around after dinner. At 5:00, I went to the kitchen, took out the 2 packages of Park Farms chicken sausages that I was going to cook, and opened one to put in the pan. Calvin was standing there and had just begun to mix up a pan of brownies, and he told me they smelled funny. My nose was kind of stuffy, so I didn’t really notice it at first, but then Hubs was coming in from the next room and he said that they were definitely bad (I took a big sniff right then and fully agreed! yuk)! I just bought them the day before! Then Calvin told me, ‘Uh…I forgot- I have a band concert tonight and I have to be there at 5:30’. WHAT?? I should have figured that with there only being a week and a half left of school, that he would be having one, but it just never crossed my mind with all that they try to cram into the last 2 weeks of school. I would have thought that at 14 years old, he would be old enough to bring papers home or remember to tell me at least a day ahead of time! Classic Calvin. Will HE ever grow up? lol I know, typical teenager. There I was, bad sausage in the pan, brownie mix half mixed, no dinner made, and not ready to go anywhere! Needless to say, I was a little peeved. He and I ran around and got ready to go, and his concert did not start until 6:30, so I dropped him off, ordered pizza on my way in to town, and came back to the concert- which didn’t start until almost 7 b/c the choir concert went longer than expected. We had cold pizza for dinner. yum. And I called the store where I bought the sausage and will be returning it to them. Hope they like the smell-I tied it up in the plastic grocery bag it came in and put it in a ziploc when I put it back in the fridge, but you can bet the ziploc will be coming off when I take it in to the store to return it. I’ve never gotten bad meat from there before, but there was tons of it in the case, and I can’t imagine that I bought the one bad package out of all of it. I really wanted to try it, so I was disappointed. Not sure if I could stomach it now though. What an evening. I hate nothing more than being in the mood to get stuff done, lay out the plans, and then get derailed at the last minute.

That was my Monday. Hope yours was better!

Yard Sale Finds

2010-05-15T16:01:00.001-04:00

My camera is home! Oh, yeah, so is my son, lol. When he got in the car last night, I asked him how D.C. was. His answer? ‘A lot of it was kind of boring….the cemetery, the-' Me, ‘You mean ARLINGTON CEMETERY??? Boring? Are you kidding me? Do you even KNOW what that place symbolizes?’ and then I had to stop myself. Yes, I was a bit peeved that I spent $200 for him to visit these places that have such history for our country and he comes home and says they were boring. I know, he’s 14. I do know that he realizes what these sights stand for. They have been doing research and reports for the past few weeks on the sights they would be visiting. He is at the age where he ‘gets it’, but he hasn’t quite gotten ‘the whole picture’ just yet. He did have fun, and I’m sure it was more fun that he was able to take the trip with his classmates rather than his family. lol It was a lot of back to back sight seeing in a very structured scheduled time, so I can understand that he thought some of it was ‘boring’. I can remember being that age, and hanging with the friends away from home would have been more fun if they had more ‘downtime’ on the trip. I’ve forgiven him for that statement and I am glad he went. :)

Okay, on to the yard sale finds. I mentioned that I had stopped at 2 yesterday and found some good deals.

I found this cradle for $3

I’ll be sanding it down and painting it for a few prairie dolls to sit in. Also found a few wooden picture frames and a mirror for a few coins each at that sale.

And this was the thing I had to come home and look up the value on. I spotted these right away! Yorktown!

She had them all priced separately, and I quickly did the math….$21. I second guessed it for just a moment and then thought, what the heck. They would be worth that to me, I guess. I came home and looked them up online, and the first listing I looked at was $75! I told Hubs that they were an investment. lol There is one little chip on the rim of the #2 but it’s toward the back so it’s not too visible. The one thing I am not sure of is the lid on the #3. The handle is not shaped the same as the other ones. So I’m pretty sure this isn’t a mint set, especially with the chip.

But I still love them!

Hubs went golfing with our neighbor yesterday evening, and his wife called me and asked what I was doing. She said she was cleaning out the shed (that’s the ‘magic shed’), and she wanted to know if I might want anything that she was getting rid of. Um, maybe! So Gannon and I went down. I can’t remember all the stuff I wanted, but she said she’d start me a pile so we could get it another day. I know I will be bringing home a box of tile to fix the patio table. Someone had left me a comment that I could tile a top for the patio table when I mentioned it before. I had considered it, but I didn’t want to go out and buy tile for it. Problem solved! She tried to send home a few aquariums with me, but I didn’t want them. I did bring home a huge one for Timmy though. The bird cage she said she thought she had was actually a HUGE cage that would better suit a chinchilla or ferret or some other small critter. The large fish tank will be easy to clean and still allow him to be able to see us. When I am done posting, I will be heading out to scrub it up for him. I’ll show a pic of his new home when he gets settled in :) She had a small square enamel topped table that she stripped the base down on (8 layers of paint!) and she said I could have that too. She also had a few other enamel tops that didn’t have bases, and I picked out a white one with a blue sponged edge that I want to build a table base for. Don’t know where either table will go, but I’ll find a place somewhere.

She was thinking of me the other day when she hit a yard sale that had crocks and picked 3 up for me! Nothing of great value, but for a few dollars each, she did good! She did put 2 of her plants in 2 of the plain ones, but said when she finds some cheap planters to replace them, then the crocks are mine. lol She’s a hoot and she felt bad that she bought them for me and used them :) No biggie. This is the one she did give me…the bigger one on the right…

Yep, I was happy with just this one! lol

She said she hasn’t had any luck so far this year with yard sales, so she wanted to go with me today. We hit a few and I found a few goodies.

I found this end table for $3!

Perfectly sturdy but a little scratched up. Know what’ll fix that? New paint! That was my deal for the day.

This little pear shaped piece of lidded stoneware was interesting for $1

Don’t know what I might put in it, but it was different.

I found an assortment of (dirty!) stuff along the way…

New candy thermometer-50 cents, small cutting board- a dime, wooden phone shelf- $1, short crock-a quarter, and 2 sets of sconces for 10 cents each. Oh, Barb bought Gannon the radio controlled spider for $2. It had batteries in it and works fine- and it amused him while we drug him around with us today.

And lastly, I found this plant stand for 50 cents…

This is my first ‘firkin’. I never see any and of course I snagged it up.

All in all, it was a pretty successful yard sale weekend for me. I felt like the $ was flying out of my pocket, but I only spent $12! And that was including the $2 spent on hot dogs for us at one place and $2 I spent to get fresh batteries for the spider. There is always something you leave behind too, that you are kicking yourself in the butt for not getting. Today, for me, it was the over 100 year old rocker that a guy wanted $10 for. I know. $10 and I passed it up! It had a woven seat and back on it, but that was falling apart pretty bad. Barb is the ‘chair lady’. She buys old chairs and works her magic on them back in her ‘magic shed’. lol She was checking it out pretty good, trying to decide if it was worth it to fix. He was trying to get her to put number out there, so she said$5. He said he wanted to hang on to it for $10. It would have been a lot of work to re do the seat and back on it, but for $10, it would have looked beautiful sitting on my porch the way it was! Like I said, I felt like I was spending a lot of money by that point, and if I would have reached in to my pocket and realized just how little I had spent, I would have happily thrown him a ten for that chair! Ah, well, there will be others.

One great thing about going with her is that where I am interested in finding the old stuff that I can decorate with or redo, she is interested in the tools, hunting and fishing stuff, and appliance type things. She does have a good eye for the old stuff too, but she does not really use it in her house, so she thinks of me when she sees it!

Thanks for the supportive comments on yesterday’s post. I kind of went off, and it wasn’t directed to anyone in particular, but it did feel better to get it out. I was able to put it out of my mind and move on. The one blog that I will say that I was talking about was nienie. If you have not read her blog or know her story, she is an amazing individual with great obstacles in her path. When I first discovered her blog, I spent hours and hours reading past posts of hers- both before and after the accident. She has been on Oprah and the Today show talking about the plane crash and how she is able to go on with her life. She is one who mentioned that she gets nasty emails from people. I feel badly for her that with all of the surgeries and pain that she has dealt with and will still have to deal with for perhaps the rest of her life, that people would feel the need to hate on her! Her blog is hugely followed, and I’m sure she gets 100 emails a day and most of them are supportive, but she has mentioned a few times that she gets unsavory emails from a few. If only those haters had to walk a mile in her shoes- if only they had to spend a day with her pain in her body…shame on them.

Okay, that is getting to sound like I have not yet moved on! lol I really have and now I need to move on to go get Timmy’s tank cleaned and maybe sand that table down! Hope you all have a good weekend!

What is happening to Blogland?

2010-05-14T18:06:00.001-04:00

(Bear with me…I really don’t know where I might get to with this, yet : )

I follow several blogs and I have been noticing a few things lately. From the postings of others, they have been noticing too. A lot of bloggers are ‘closing’ their blogs. I have seen different explanations of why. Others have been posting on this too, so I know I am not alone in my observations. I was reading a blog where the blogger felt she needed to explain how perfect her life isn’t. I was reading another that the blogger (who has been through a horrific event in her life and she is blessed to have lived through it) mentioned that she gets nasty, snide, judgmental, hurtful comments often about how she lives her (drastically altered) life now. I have read a blog where the blogger is closing down because her blog has been targeted by someone up to no good. I have read blogs closing because they feel they have nothing to blog about.

Is there a book somewhere on blogging etiquette? Are there really any hard and fast rules of how we should be blogging and what it is supposed to be about?

Could we all follow the golden rule that our mother’s should have taught us?

If you don’t have something nice to say- don’t say anything at all.

or in blog land…how about-

If you don’t like what someone has to say or what they are doing, simply just DON’T READ IT ANYMORE!

This has been bugging me all morning, and I started a big long drawn out post about all kinds of things about blogging, but I can probably sum my feelings up pretty quickly by saying this-

We are all adults. We all have opinions. We all have different lives and different aspects of our lives- and we get to choose which aspects of our lives we want to share with the world, and which aspects we wish to keep to ourselves. I don’t know of any blogger who posts every single thing about their lives- some post TMI sometimes, lol, but not nearly enough for a reader of their blog to form a concrete judgment of that person without personally knowing them. Sometimes we have a lot going on…sometimes not. I read blogs because I like them- I like the feeling of certain blogs. I like that the personality of the writer comes through in their writing. If I find that I do not like the feeling or the personality that comes through in the blog, then I just stop reading it. There is no need to offer snide or rude comments toward that person. The problem does not lie with the writer (because obviously, they will go on with their lives as they chose if we like it or not!), the problem lies with the reader. And in certain cases, that is me! I’m a big girl and I can admit that. My life and my opinions are no better than anyone else’s…so there is no need for me to point out that I don’t like the way someone decorates, or how they are raising their children, or how they chose to spend their money, or anything else, for that matter. Sometimes you just don’t ‘feel it’ about another person. It’s human nature. We are not all made to have the same views and opinions. In your life outside of blog land, if you didn’t like someone, would you follow them around in their day to day life anyway, just to get the chance to make nasty comments to them about everything they are doing? Seriously? If you would, and this is my opinion, lol, then you are a miserable person and maybe you should be looking for ways to make your own life more interesting instead of looking for ways to make someone else feel as low as you do! NOT that any of those miserable people read my blog…and if they do, then it must be on one of their good days cause I haven’t seen that side of anyone yet! lol I just feel that we, as bloggers, should be able to share only what we want to share, and should not have to feel like we have to explain our whole selves to the people who read our blogs. And if you want to quit blogging, then quit! It doesn’t mean we will be happy about it. It doesn’t mean we won’t miss the few posts that you do get out every once in awhile. We don’t care if you are not feeling creative at the moment or if you don’t have to funds to run out and buy stuff so you can blog about it. We follow blogs because we can become genuinely interested and vested in the person writing it!

I don’t feel like I am a person who has much personality at all- I never have felt that way- in fact, I feel that I can be quite backward. But, I must put out a good feeling to some people who read my blog, because you keep reading! It becomes a ‘special’ relationship unlike any relationship that you can find on Twitter or Facebook. Those can be great too, I love Facebook, but blogs are in more of a diary format. We don’t always care if what we say makes sense, but we care that we are able to share it with people who have like interests. And sometimes, it turns out to be not so interesting to the reader, but at least we have a way to get it off our chest and at least feel like someone will hear our voice- interesting or not.

Guess that wasn’t a quick sum up, was it? I know it’s not pretty or orderly, but at least I feel I got enough of it off my chest so I can just move on and put it out of my head. And I know I am not alone in feeling some of these things. I am feeling like blog land has started to change a little, and I don’t want it too! We had a good thing going! lol I know it’s that time of year when we have more important things to take care of, but my only hope is that for those who are leaving blogging for the more fast paced social hot spots, will eventually find their way back to us. And I also hope that for the people who come to blog land to try to rain on the parades of others, well, I hope they find their way to Twitter and Facebook! lol At least there we can block them out!

I know I promised pictures the other day, but I’m not all that in to sticking to the script :) Besides, my camera went with my oldest to D.C. for 2 days, so I have no way to take any. I most certainly would have shown you a picture or two of Timmy, even though I said I wouldn’t (again, not following the script) but he’s so stinkin cute and apparently from your comments, everyone loves a baby duck! lol I would most certainly have shared pictures of the heron that landed beside the pond this morning and was trying to catch fish (as I was standing at the window, screaming in my head “I told you so!’ cause I knew as soon as I handed it over I would need it back :). And I might have shown you the goodies I picked up at a few yard sales I hit when I took Brady in to get his thumb re-x rayed. I had to come home and look one purchase up…and yep. It was a great deal! So, with all that ranting, and nothing new to show yet, let me see what I might have for you today…cause we all like a picture in a post….

Miss Matty in an afternoon siesta…

(the first one I took was a little too front on, if you know what I mean…not attractive to anyone from that angle)

A young blue jay that I finally caught a blurry pic of…been trying for months and they are just too quick!

How about a squirrel I nicknamed Rod Stewart because his frosted tail reminded me of Rod Stewart hair…

you can see it too, right?

squirrel playing with the peanut cup…

Thought he might jump on it and roll it around like a circus act…I could have made $ off of that one…

Okay, one more squirrel I nicknamed Red…

It’s hard to tell on a cloudy day like this was, but when the sun shines on her, she’s a really pretty auburn color.

And just because this is what I want to share with you (because it’s my blog and I’ll share if I want to)

Swimmy Timmy, again.

I’ve been scrubbing my sink daily now, and it sure is shiny :) He loves it so how can I not?

I’ll stop…I promise!

2010-05-12T07:52:00.001-04:00

Right after this post :) Not too many comments on my last post (for those that did, Thanks :) so I’m guessing you are tiring of my incessant posting about the ducks. lol It’s just been so cold and windy and today it’s raining again, so my creativity is being smooshed a little…by this…

Timmy is still doing good. I’m actually going to head to the farm store later to grab a bag of food for him. He’s living on bread, but if he’s going to grow up to be a proper duck, he’s going to need a little ‘more’. I hadn’t thought about it, but I realized today that he spent his first 2 days on water, and he hasn’t been on any for a few days now. So, seeing as my sink was dirty anyhow and in desperate need of a scrubbing, I filled it with a little water and put him in. He was a bit frightened at first- he’s still getting used to us. It takes him a little while to relax. But soon enough, he was dipping and rolling…

I did kind of bad with the pictures…sorry. It was really cute. Mama never returned, although the male landed on the pond for just a little while yesterday. He seemed to be calling for her- looking for her to be there. I’m sure he will find her again, eventually. I’m starting to feel a little bad that Timmy is spending the majority of his life in a cardboard box, and every time we go to pick him up he freaks out. I need to find him some better accommodations. He needs to be able to ‘see’ us throughout the day and evening and not only when we are holding him. I called my neighbor (who has a ‘magic shed’- you can find almost anything in there :) and she said she thinks she might have a few cages for me to choose from. I have a big dog kennel, but that will be better for later on. For now, I think I need a bird cage- which she thinks she might have in the ‘magic shed’. I considered putting him in with my cockatiel for a few minutes of socializing, but J.D. was not going to have anything to do with him. He was hissing at him when I took Timmy over by his cage.

And as for the name Timmy… I only had one guess in the comments, and she guessed it was because of Tiny Tim. He is rather tiny, but no. I thought it would be kind of funny to call him Timmy because of something I do with our beagle, Sadie. She is a very vocal dog. If she wants something, she will bark in your face (okay, she’s really short so it’s not directly in your face, but it feels like it lol)….and she will continue to bark until you do it for her. For instance, if she wants to go out, she will whine a little, do a little dance, and once you look at her she will start to bark.…and when you get up to go let her out, she will continue to bark alllllll the way to the door. It’s annoying. lol When she whines and does the little dance, you know it’s coming as soon as you look at her. And God forbid you talk to her…it’s 10 times worse and much louder! So sometimes when I am playing around with her, I will just start talking to make her bark-like we are having a conversation. Then one day, it popped into my head…’What’s that Sadie? (BARK! BARK!) You say Timmy fell down the well? (BARK! BARK!BARK!) He did? (BARK!) We better go save him! (BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! etc. lol) -A popular scene from Lassie. So when the boys rescued this duck from the well, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to call him Timmy :)

He watched Biggest Loser with me last night and found his favorite place to snuggle was up on my shoulder, under my hair. So cute. Can I say that enough? I probably have!

Today looks like another cloudy day with more possible showers, but the weather man seems to be promising the temps are going to stay warmer. I hate to complain about the rainy cold weather here, when families are losing their homes and some losing their lives with the horrible tornados that have been hitting the midwest. So I will be thankful for the rain and the cooler temperatures, for now, and take it as an opportunity to get some things finished in the house. I have a few makeovers I need to get working on and the house needs cleaned (always), so I’m hoping to be able to get something better on here soon for you all to see!

Nature…Beauty or Beast?

2010-05-10T17:26:00.002-04:00

I have several pictures to show today. Mostly about Nature. I am undecided about Her (meaning Mother Nature)…

I’ll start with Saturday. I took this one early in the morn of Mama and her babies…morning sun really rocks a pic!

She did, in fact, have 10 babies. I was able to get a few pictures that allowed me to actually count them. She was a little more brave on day 2 of Motherhood and was leading them around the yard.

I threw some bread out for her to lead them to.

They were happily eating away at it. It was so cute to watch them run after bugs in the grass too, and try to get them :) Totally adorable.

It’s been cold here. Like highs in the 50’s kind of cold. And windy! It rained off and on Saturday afternoon. When I was in the kitchen getting dinner started, we were getting another blow through shower and I kind of noticed the sun was coming out. I thought to myself, ‘ I wonder if there is going to be a rainbow?’ Just then I turned around to look, and I was almost blinded by the sight!

That was the brightest rainbow I have ever seen! It literally hurt your eyes to look at it too long…but how could you not? That darn pot of gold was just down the hill from us! lol Never saw on THAT close before. The other end of it was beautiful as well…loved it against the dark clouds in the background.

So on to Mother’s Day. I had to work in the morning, but the boys made me cookies (um…diet? lol) and we were going to stop and pick out some flowers, but I didn’t feel like it. They cleaned up the house though…a plus. And then Hubs made steaks on the grill, which I didn’t eat. Yeah…diet. lol After I was home for a little while, I asked the boys if they had counted the babies yet that day. They told me that Mama had walked away from the pond with them and they hadn’t seen her all day! Sigh….so much for babies. Brady later came into the house and told me that he could hear one in the well back on the hill. It’s covered with a big old grinding stone and I knew I couldn’t move it. I told him he would have to wait until his dad got home. Nope. That wouldn’t do. He went and enlisted the help of the brothers, and they launched a rescue mission to retrieve it!

Trying to decide how to pry the stone off…

It took a little prying and tugging, but they slid it off far enough to reach down in…

Success! (after a few trips down to the garage for another shovel, a piece of board, and a butterfly net with a handle- that was where Gannon came in handy…he was the go-for)

They were proud of their rescue mission :)

He is a sweet little ball of fuzz. But I told myself I would not get attached. When Mama came back (undoubtedly baby-less), we would release him back to her. She did not return last night. That’s why I think Mother Nature can be a beast. Apparently Mama felt her babies were better off somewhere else, and I just hope even a few made it to her destination. I spent some time snuggling with this one while watching t.v. There is nothing quite like a baby duck…

(Calvin was holding him in the first 2 pics…I had a red uniform on from work, but those weren’t my dirty hands! lol)

Gannon took his turn snuggling….his shirt is filthy! lol Boys…

We set him up in a big box with shredded newspaper,a pan of water, some bread, and I put a light on him for heat. I wasn’t too hopeful for him…we’ve tried this in the past- without success. And he was alone :( This morning, he seemed okay. He seemed to be in the exact spot he was in when I went to bed. He was alive, but I didn’t know how long he would last. I came home from work and he still seemed fine. Still in the same spot, though. I did a few things around the house and went to pick him up to snuggle with him and his underside was wet! So he has been drinking and he had been in the water. So far so good. I am getting attached to this sweet thing. My client asked me what we named him and I really didn’t expect him to live, so I hadn’t thought about it. I’m tempted to call him Timmy. Anyone know why I would do that? *wink*

We Have Babies :)

2010-05-07T13:06:00.001-04:00

Our mama duck has diligently been sitting on her nest and the babies hatched today!

Our ducks aren’t very vocal, so we really don’t hear them very much. When they are out and flying about, they will quack away as they fly in circles around our yard and also when they are coming in for a splashy landing on the pond. Hubs and I were in the kitchen and heard a lot of commotion going on. We looked out the window and saw several ducks circling the yard and when they finally landed, one male was going after Mama (a.k.a Girlfriend), for, well, you know… We thought it was strange b/c it’s been quite awhile since we’ve seen another duck in the yard besides Mama and her boyfriend, and were watching them when Hubs pointed out the pile of babies right beside the pond! I had looked out there not too long before that, but never realized what they were! Mama was having fits b/c a stranger was too close to the babies, and she wrestled him off and scared him away.

I had to take my camera down to the garage to get closer pictures. That made her nervous and she took the babies across the pond- but still plenty close enough for me!

Get your ducks in a row…

Look at the cute little one peeking up from the grass :)

This little one is flapping his little nubby ‘wings’…

She had her eye on me the whole time I was taking pictures out the garage window. Aren’t they the cutest fluff balls? I’m still trying to count them…there are 8-10 of them. I thought I counted 9 of them once or twice, but it’s hard to tell. They all blend together or hide behind or under her. I can’t say that I would love for them to all make it- ducks are really messy on the pond (a few would be fine!), but I know the hard truth…the laws of nature won’t allow it. She has had a few hatchings over the years, and eventually the numbers dwindle down to 2 or 3- if any at all. It’s sad, and we have tried capturing babies before and hand raising them, but they never seem to make it that way either, and that’s even more heartbreaking (we’ve raised baby chicks before, so it’s not like we don’t know what we are doing). They are so, so cute, and I will just have to be content to enjoy them while I can.

If I don’t get back to posting before, I want to wish you all a Happy Mother’s Day!

(and Happy Mother’s Day to Mama, too!)

Update…

2010-05-06T06:36:00.001-04:00

to yesterday’s post. I typed this up last night, but never got around to getting it posted.

What a morning! I left on my way to work after I posted this morning and called the agency to let them know that I needed to get Brady in to see a doctor b/c of his hand and could they please try to get someone in to relieve me. I then called Brady’s doctor’s office. Now, just so you understand the whole thing, I’m going to rant a little here. Last summer, I needed to get the boys in for physicals for football. I tried to call the Ped’s office they had been with since babies and could not get through on the phone for 2 days! I was working overnights at the time, and I would stay up in the morning when I got home from work and call every 5 minutes for a few hours, give up, go to sleep, and then get up only a few hours later and call again until the office was closed. It was ridiculous! Good thing they weren’t sick! So I decided right then, that it was time to find an office that was not so busy. I switched them to a Family doctor that was recommended to us, and he was great. His office was decorated with fishing and hunting themes, and the boys loved it. They got their physicals, Calvin had to go back in September to get referred for x-rays on his arm that was hurt at his first game (not broken) and Brady had to go in October for a cold and to get a new inhaler. 3 visits- which was probably more visits than any of us had had in the 2 years before that :) My neighbor, who referred us, had to go in January and discovered that the Doctor had left his practice. No notification to any of us at all. Neighbor saw someone else there and got what he needed. So I assumed that the boys had a new doctor. I called this morning, explained the situation, and the secretary asked how old Brady was. I said 13. She told me that a doctor would not be in until next Wednesday and that the ‘visiting practitioner’ could not see any patients under 14 years old! What?? She recommended that I take him to the hospital- which I was trying, in the first place, to avoid the extra costs that go with that. Called Hubs at work asked him ‘What now?’ he told me to try his doctor or mine- I know, weird, we all have different doctors. So I called his, couldn’t see him until Friday-recommended we go to hospital. I was ready to give up at this point and just go to the stupid ER. So I tried my doctor. Who, BTW, I’ve only seen a handful of times in the last 10 years, and I have seen him in 3 different offices the last 3 times I’ve had to go (which is almost never). He was in yet another new office and he couldn’t see him, but she said I could bring him in without an appointment at Express Care Hours and they would register him with my doctor- he would have to see someone else today. Express Care? Apparently, this place has ‘clinic-like’ hours that you don’t need appointments for and you just come in! And on Saturday’s too! This is sounding pretty sweet. Because you know, with kids, nothing ever happens when it’s convenient and the office is open. I took him over, got his paperwork filled out, sat in the waiting room for 5 minutes, and then they called us back. I explained to the nurse what he did and told her that we would just probably need a referral to the hospital for x-rays. She said, “That does look pretty bad. He probably will need some. We do have an x-ray department on site and an Ortho Doc, if that will work for you.” I about fell off my chair. Why, yes…that WILL work for me. Where did this place come from? lol I don’t know where you all are from, but around here, you have to go to the hospital for everything! and wait, seemingly and sometimes for hours, to get it done! Found out that he does have a small fracture at the base of his thumb. He was seen by a doctor (which I liked), taken to x-ray, seen by Ortho Doc (which I also liked and had to correct him when he told Brady to make a ‘beer can hand’ so they could wrap it. lol He changed it to a ‘pop can hand’), and they put a half cast/splint on it and we were out the door in 2 hours! He said probably 3 week healing time on it, so it must not have been too bad- which made me feel better about not rushing him to the ER right away. And my wallet is thanking me for it! Don’t get me wrong- if he was in any kind of pain, I would have taken him. He kept telling me it didn’t hurt unless he tried to move it- and when he was showing me that he couldn’t move it, I had to ask him if it hurt b/c he didn’t even indicate that it did at all-. I was even watching his face. Now that I think of it, he fractured his arm when he was 7 or 8 and I didn’t take him till the next day b/c he said it didn’t really hurt. Never asked for Tylenol or anything. Just went right back to playing. I only took him b/c I noticed he wasn’t using it as much as he normally did. The kid has a high pain tolerance, I guess.

Stopped at the small grocery on the way home and was talking to the cashier about it (I’ve known her for years) and she said that she went to the ‘disappearing doctor’ too. She said she heard he went to a cancer clinic somewhere (kudos to him for that!) and that the only ‘doctor’ she’s seen there since, was a ‘nurse practitioner’ She didn’t even know if there was a doctor there at the practice(which they indicated on the phone that there was). So that explains why they couldn’t see him, but do you think that a practice, which has been handed a whole load of patients, would let the patients know what the real deal was? I was just so pissed that if they can’t see any patients under the age of 14, on a regular basis, that they didn’t notify the parents of those patients! It would have saved me a whole hassle this morning!

Anyway, I’m breathing a sigh of relief now. They will all 3 now go to my doctor in the new and wonderful one-stop medical facility :)I’ll be back soon with something a little more interesting for you!

TIM-ber!!

2010-05-05T07:49:00.001-04:00

?????

lol What am I talking about? Well that is what I could have yelled yesterday. I did convince myself to work outside yesterday, and I got a few of the flower beds weeded and prepped. They are looking good and now when I come across some good flat prices on flowers, I can buy away. As I was cleaning the bed below the patio out, I accidently leaned on the post….you know, the one I mentioned that I want to build the birdhouse for.

CRAAACCKK

Oh crap. You’ve got to be kidding me! Pushing on it a little….crack, crack, crack. Great. Bigger push….CRACK…..TIMBER!…BOOM.

Down it went. I didn’t actually yell timber…then I was kinda mad that I didn’t take the opportunity. Then Hubs came home and was looking at me looking at that flower bed with the post broken off, laying on the ground. It didn’t look right anymore. The flower bed was NOT the same. It had to have a post. I began the task of digging the remainder out of the ground. Hubs felt bad for me…He knew I wanted that post. He helped me dig out the remaining piece and since the hole was already there, he helped me sink a new post. :) He’s sweet like that.

I must take some crooked pictures. It’s straight…I checked :)

That flower bed is still in a make-over process. I had to pull it apart so we can dig some more dirt out to be able to attach the railing to the patio.

Flower bed by back door…

I love this one with the birdbath. It was here when we moved in, but it was in the lower bed. Hubs moved it up here for me. Only look at the dirt- not the arbor, the tomato cage, the rusty fish, etc. The basement window has to be pulled out and put in a new casing…the bottom sill rotted and fell off while I was working. I was just tearin stuff up yesterday!

That bed will now run the length of the back of the house. We are going to landscape the whole area. That bush is FULL of blooms, and once it is finished, I will be trimming it way back.

This is the bed by the walkway to the patio. I had some kind of mint running amuck and had to tear it allll out. It was everywhere…including down under and in between the rocks on that wall which will now need reset.

This is the bed along the side of the house. I filled some trays with soil to plant some flower seeds.

Then last night, Hubs was getting excited b/c everything was starting to look really good, so he brought out the tiller and started me a new bed.

He is really excited (FINALLY) about all the work we have been doing. He even said when we get the beds and patio all done, it’s going to look like it belongs in Better Homes and Gardens! lol

Eventually the bed with the post and the new one will go all the way across (where the tiller is sitting) and connect. He wanted to know if I wanted it done last night while he had the tiller out, but I told him that I would like to get the ones done that we already have, and then we will work on connecting them later this summer.

Sweet little ‘wagon’ that the boys put together for me the other day while it was raining…

lol- they were so proud of their work :)

THEN after all that work, Brady showed me his hand that he had hurt trying to catch a football…

It’s swelled and tight at the base of his thumb. He said it doesn’t really hurt, but I told him to ice it and I will be calling the doctor this morning. It’s my day off, but of course I told another caretaker I would take her shift. So I will go in and get my client up and showered, call the doctor make an appointment, and depending on what time I can get him an appointment, I will probably have to have the agency have someone come in to relieve me so I can take him to his appointment, and then likely for X-rays. Am I a bad mom for not rushing him to the emergency room? He’s not in any serious pain and by seeing the doctor who will then send him for X-rays, I avoid the $150 co-pay it costs us to even just walk through the ER door. It’s crazy. I hate to have to pay the $150 when it’s likely that he just jammed it- really good. When Calvin hurt his arm in football season, I did the same thing, and the doctor even thought it was broken. Sent us for X-rays, and it turned out it wasn’t and was just a deep bruise. Brady doesn’t mind…he gets to stay home from school today until I get him in.

So that’s my day today…don’t exactly know what’s in store. I have packages to mail out, and don’t know if I will make it to the P.O. or not. So if you are expecting something from me…please hold on-it will get out to you!

ADD overdrive…

2010-05-04T08:53:00.001-04:00

That’s what I feel like lately- like I have too many irons in the fire. I have been plugging away on orders- which I am eternally thankful for!- but as far as everything else, I can’t seem to completely finish any of my other projects! And I keep wanting to start new ones! Time to break out The List again. I haven’t been using it because I keep thinking that everything I need to finish is, well, obvious, so I will do a little of this, and then jump to do a little of that….hence the reason for the title :-) My internet went down immediately after I posted my last entry last week, and I spent the better part of Thursday and Friday messing with that and wasting precious time that I could have been doing other things. I was in full-on panic mode-I’m sure you relate if it’s ever happened to you, lol. I had to replace a cable-luckily I had one, but it took me almost 2 days to figure that out. So, The List has to come out, and I have to start accomplishing/finishing something…anything. lol

With that being said, I do have a few pictures I took yesterday morning of the small progress we have made on the patio. Although we don’t have all the materials we need to finish it, we do have enough to get a few more things done, but having to dodge raindrops every weekend is not helping! When it hasn’t been raining, we have been trying to keep up with keeping the grass cut.

This is the picture that I showed last of how far I had gotten with laying pavers…

And this is what Hubs got done on Saturday…

It’s taking shape. Those are the posts for one side of the pergola (they look crooked here, but they aren’t- I checked his work lol)- the other 2 will sit on top of the pavers on the right side. The rest of the dirt area will be filled in with pea gravel (we think lol-it’s still to be determined). I still have to pull out a section of about a dozen pavers, and reset them, but for the most part that part is done. Yes, our patio table has no glass in it. It got flipped over and shattered in a wind storm in the fall of 2008, and I have not decided what we are going to do with it yet. All 4 big chairs are in perfect shape- I’ve replaced the cushions once. We bought this set 4 or 5 years ago at Walmart and the price was ridiculously cheap- $200 for all 8 pieces. It had 2 more cloth covered folding chairs (which we used the heck out of by taking them to baseball games and such for the past few years and they finally had to be thrown out) and there is a small side table that is still good. I was looking to buy a new set last year b/c of the table, but I’m not paying $400 for one! It’s crazy how the price jumped on all of the outdoor furniture in the last few years! We really could use a new set b/c the extra chairs are a plus (and we will finally have room for extra ones!), but I’d rather spend the $ on the patio, and then next year we will spend the $ on a new set. I will have to make-do with fixing the table with wood or something, for this year. And if I come across something at a yard sale in the meantime, then great! We do need a few more chairs, so I will be looking. But I love how much room we have around it in that area. On the old section, we had to angle it to fit the chairs around it, and we were still having to squeeze around the corners.

This shot is from me standing off of the entry side of the patio/back door area. We have plans to build over the existing concrete steps-they are starting to crumble in a few spots- and we will be building wood ones over them, with a new wooden handrail. I love how everything looks in the morning sun…

The railing discussion (for on the patio) is still ongoing. We both have different ideas of how to build it…lol surprise. I think we have come to a compromise, but we will see.

I have not been able to get out into the flower beds much. I have picked up a few things to put in, but I’m afraid that as soon as I do, we will get a frost. So I have them sitting on my table in the kitchen and keep putting them into the sink to water them :) I went to the local close out store the other day, and they must have just gotten a delivery of flowers b/c they were everywhere! I had to restrain myself from loading up my van with flats! Beds need prepped first, then I can purchase flats!

Those are broccoli plants in the paper bag. THOSE do need to go in to the garden. I planted onions last week, but I don’t have the garden ‘mapped out’ yet (another project that I need to get to), so I don’t know where the broccoli is going! I picked up the Dianthus the other day…I couldn’t resist- the flower color is beautiful!

So that is what is going on in my not-so-exciting- life. A whole lotta nothing/something. I’m sitting here thinking…inside project or outside project? Inside, or outside? It rained again, overnight, and the sun just came out. What’s that? The forecast says rain again for the weekend? Outside it is.

I can’t keep a lid on it anymore!

2010-04-28T11:12:00.001-04:00

I have mentioned a few times that there are things happening outside my window- just to tease you. But I am just teasing myself - I have to show you what’s going on! There are going to be a few stages to it, so to show all of it to you at once would be to long to post all at once! I’ll just show you what we have been doing so far. We have finally been working on the patio that has been in ‘the plans’ for a few years now! Um, like 3? 4 years? Yeah. That’s how we roll around here. We started this project because our existing patio was just not big enough for a table and chairs and grill- no room to walk around for the 5 of us and any friends or family that would join us for cookouts. People would end up sitting on the steps with their food in their lap, or just stand and try to eat. So we decided we needed to extend it.

This is a picture from 10 years ago of the area. It was Brady’s 3rd birthday party, and we had to have a few picnic tables off the patio for us all to have a place to sit. In the right hand side of the picture, you can see the kid’s tables, but you can’t see the adult picnic tables b/c they had to be that far from the patio because of the little hill there.

We knew we would have to ‘dig out’ the area. Then there was the problem of what to use for a retaining wall. Well, Hubs came up with the idea to use foundation stones that he had seen laying around in different areas of of the orchard and woods. So it took him probably most of the first year and part of the second, to gather up a lot of the stones. Some of them were pretty hefty and took 2 men to move them- and they were barely able to move some of them! We dug the area out (trailer load after trailer load of dirt) and started putting in the retaining wall the second year. Then we decided to not only go off the side, but to wrap it around the flower garden we had in front of the patio- to make the add-on kind of L shaped. So we would have to build a wall so that we could fill in to level the area out- again, because we live on the side of a hill. We got that part done in 2008- I know b/c I checked back on my blog for this picture! lol

This is from my craft ‘alcove’ looking out the sliding glass doors. You can see a chair on the corner of the existing patio on the left, and the rocks are the part of the wall we had to build to extend. So it has looked like this since 2008. Last year, we had every intention of working on it, and hopefully finishing it, but with sports schedules, family life, work, etc…the ‘patio’ got pushed to the back burner. We were having a bit of a design argument about it too. lol I wanted to build a pergola on it-nothing fancy- but, he didn’t know that that was necessary. It gets full sun all day and is just too hot the sit out there until evening. I thought a pergola would allow for a little more shade. And call me redneck if you want, but I wanted a pergola that we could pull a tarp or cover up over for the cook-outs that we plan on rainy days! Which seems to happen a lot. There is quite a drop off down into the flower garden also, so we have to build a railing on those sides. If we were going to add a pergola, then we needed to plan for all of that at the same time to decide where to put the posts. SO…it’s been an off and on sort of situation. FINALLY, this year, he started talking about it again. I think it helped that his best friend has been laid off all winter, and he has been around a lot. He has been helping us figure out dimensions, and how we can add the railing and even the pergola! So a few weeks ago, they started on it. This is what the whole area looked like when they just started a few weeks ago- not very pleasing to the eye. He had to reset a few of the retaining wall stones. I hate to show this, because it’s embarassing that I’ve looked at this mess for so long, but it will make you (and ME!) appreciate the progress even more!

Ha ha…see my spray paint area? lol I was spraying a few things to make over that day.

He had to finish out the end wall with a few better stones and I got a picture of Calvin and him doing that. Through the kitchen window, of course. I’ve told you how much Calvin hates having his picture taken. lol

By the looks of it, Calvin is the one doing the work! I had mentioned that Calvin had been helping out a lot more lately, and this is the project that made me really realize it. It’s a good thing too, b/c Hubs really needed help moving those stones.

We decided to just use the 12 inch pavers that garden centers carry, for the adding on. They are cost effective (we got them on special for 98 cents a piece) and they seem to hold up pretty good from looking at other people’s patios that have been built the same way. We got sand delivered last week and the guys started laying pavers. Then the rain hit. Fun fun. This is what they got accomplished the first and second days- before the rain. Looks more like after the rain…look at my poor lilacs drooping! lol

And THIS is what I did yesterday…

The rain actually helped because it packed the sand pretty good. Notice how the paver stacks shrunk? Hubs was pretty surprised that I did that while he was at work :-) There are some low pavers where the 4 x4 is laying on there, so I am going to have to pull out some of the first 2 to 3 rows to fix that. The boys were helping with those rows and I noticed them, but I don’t think Hubs noticed until he saw how well I laid my pavers ;-)

We had to call for more sand ( you see that Gannon took advantage of it with his dump truck! lol) The pavers are only going to go for 3 more rows. Then we are going to have to put in the posts for that side of the pergola, which will be built over the new paver area, and the the rest of the dirt area will be filled in with small stones of some sort. We want our fire ring out there toward the lilac bush, so we figured that small stone in that area will be better, and we will still be able to have a few chairs out there to sit near the fire. To remind you again, it went from this..

to THIS in basically just over a week! Okay- the lilac bushes make it look more amazing because they picked now to bloom! lol

At the bottom left of the picture, you can see the flower garden. The railing will go on both sides of the corner. I don’t want anyone falling down into it and hitting their head! It’s amazing that it hasn’t happened so far with the amount of chairs and people we have had crowded on here in the past.

So you can see now, why I’m excited about this! We have made some amazing progress so far and I am so looking forward to the new outdoor living space I will have to accessorize and decorate! I am really looking forward to being able to just use that space. What do you think so far?

Real quick- a funny conversation I had with Gannon this morning.

G- You need to make that egg and sausage stuff that I like. Know what I’m talking about?

Me- That egg and sausage casserole with cheese and spinach?

G- I don’t like the spinach. But I like the cheese.

Me-You can’t even taste the spinach in it. But it does stick in your teeth.

G- Is that why you like it?

Me- Because it sticks in my teeth?

G- Yeah. Is that why?

Me (stifling a giggle)- Yep.

G- Oh. Okay.

That kid cracks me up.

I’d better hurry up and get this posted so I can get to working out there. It’s pretty cold out today, but I don’t want any more stalled progress. I want to see post holes being dug soon! I need to start cleaning out the flower beds next to the house too, so I can get some nicer pictures. Check back soon and have a great day!

And the winner is…..

2010-04-27T08:49:00.001-04:00

Morning all! I just had Gannon draw the name for the winning entry for my giveaway. He is quite a sight- freshly out of bed, sleep still in his eyes, hair is sticking up on end…I wish I could take a picture! Unfortunately, I took my camera to work with me yesterday and got a little carried away taking pics of the baby squirrels running around and ran my batteries out.

There were so many entries for this, and such wonderful comments from everyone! Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by and follow along with me :-) I always see people say, ‘I wish I could send something to each one who entered,’ and it’s true for me too!

Without further delay, the winner is…

Prims by Olde Lady Morgan!

Congratulations! Send me your mailing address and I will get this out to you.

It’s been rainy for the past 2 days and it looks like the sun is going to shine for the next few. Hopefully we can get some things done that we have been trying to work on. I know I will be spending most of today getting the house cleaned. It always needs a good cleaning, after the boys are home all weekend- even more so when it’s been raining outside!

I have to share pics of the baby squirrel yesterday! He was the cutest, fluffiest, most adorable little butterball and I wanted to take him home! I looked 0ut on my client’s patio and saw him sitting there eating a peanut.

Then he went and sat under the chair and kept eating…

Isn’t he the sweetest? We’ve been seeing younger ones out there, but none nearly this small, and one day on a walk around the block, we saw babies this size out back by another big tree. I was able to open the sliding door and stick my camera out to get a few pictures without spooking him. An adult squirrel came near, and Baby was not happy. I thought I could hear the adult squirrel grunting at him.

Then I got brave and decided to step out on to the patio to see if he was scared by me.

Nope! He just sat there and ate away. But guess what? It wasn’t the adult squirrel doing the grunting…it was him! He started grunting a little at me because he was not finished eating, and he didn’t like me being a mere 3 feet from his peanut! lol I took a few more pictures and then slipped back inside to let him finish. I love his little Thumper feet! SOOOOOO stinkin cute!

I love watching the squirrels out there. Some of them are pretty brave and will come within 3 feet (and even as close as 1 foot away a few times) of me to get a peanut. I will just stand really still and they creep up a little at a time keeping an eye on me. There have been a few times that I have thought one was sizing me up and was thinking of running up my leg. lol My client asked me what I would do if one did that. My answer, “Scream.” lol

Sorry no prim pictures today…like I said, dead camera batteries. I will have to pick up some new ones today. Before I forget to post them, I took some pictures when I went on my hike in the ‘backyard’ the other day. This is what you can find if you go out hiking at my place…

Our own personal waterfall! It’s hard to tell the size by the pictures, but I’d say that it is 4 1/2 – 5 feet tall. It’s really very beautiful with all the slate everywhere. The big rock in this next picture wasn’t always there. We had a major flash flood about 5 or 6 years ago that totally changed the entire landscape along this creek. It moved boulders that were half the size of a small car, and took out trees in it’s path.

More moved rocks…

These were left jutting up from the bank…

Unfortunately, a lot of debris like this was washed down into our friend’s back yard during this flood. They live just downstream from here, and the creek runs right beside their house. It jammed up under a bridge they had in their backyard, and totally re-routed itself right through their backyard and garage! It was devastating for them- and a lot of other folks that lived in this area. They had deep holes left from the running water, very large rocks/ small boulders, tree trunks…everything that would wash out from the woods was in their back yard. I think they ended up having to excavate their backyard to get grass to grow again. Rocks and silt from the creek bed covered their yard. They had a water line on the back of their house that was probably 2-3 feet off the ground. Their lawn tractor was washed out of their shed and ended up 1/4 mile down creek. It’s hard to believe after all of that destruction that this place is still so beautiful.

The sound of the water running down the rocks is just amazing. Water drips from the rocks on the hillside…

Wish I could add sound to this! lol It’s a beautiful place to spend some time with your feet on the cool slate on a hot summer day. Hope you enjoyed the little tour :-)

Sorting, Organizing, and Purging

2010-04-24T21:26:00.001-04:00

Yes, I am slowly gettin’ around to getting my room back in order. That much stuff was just too scary to see all at once! lol So, as I am unpacking my boxes, I am carefully going over the items in them, and as Dr. Phil says, ‘Getting Real’ about a LOT of it. I’m kind of using the concept with which you are supposed to clean out your closets- Have I worn (used) this shirt (bag of wooden heart cut-outs) in the past 2 years? Nope. Donate box. I will be taking my boxes to the Restore when I am finished. This is what it looked like earlier today:

Pretty darn scary. It’s not looking too much better, at this point, but I have a lot of it organized and put in my cupboard. Does anyone else find that in order to REALLY clean and organize something, that you have to make a BIG mess in order to get it totally done? lol

See my new carpeting? I love it! We have Marc’s close out stores around here, and have one here in town. Thankfully, my neighbor has family in other areas that also have these stores- so she often stops in to the stores in the surrounding areas. 2 months ago, she stopped in one in a bigger area and they had room sized carpet ‘remnants’ (much bigger than the pieces our local store had). She wanted new carpet in her bedroom, and she new we were looking for new stuff too. So she let us know that they were heading up to get some, and hubs went with and picked out this piece for this room. I told him I really didn’t care about the color as long as it was neutral and he picked out this tan and cream berber. Perfect! It was plenty big enough for this room- we needed a piece about 15x20- and there was quite a bit to spare~! All for….wait for it….$100! Yes. No typo there. And installation was free b/c it was installed by us. Well, ‘free’ unless you count the stress (Hubs), sweat (Hubs), blood (me- just a little), pain (my poor knees!), tears (again, Hubs)…- JuST KIDDING! lol It was all worth it because it looks wonderful!

You can see a ragged edge under the chair in the picture- that was what was what was leftover and cut off back by the sliding doors and I am using it as a runner for in front of the bathroom. That is the highest traffic area in this room. It will work for now. We also have a big piece rolled up in the basement left over from where we had to cut out around the bathroom (immediately to the left in the picture). It’s hard to explain, but I will get pictures of the whole room once it gets put back together. I still have to sort through the stuff we shoved back into the closet so I can get the closet doors put back on, and I have a few other things I need to change and move. It’s coming along and hopefully I will have it mostly done by next week.

There are some big things happening outside of my window too! That is just a little teaser for you for now, but I am taking pictures with the progress and will show them once it is further along.

I went for a long walk the other day through the orchard and picked some apple blossoms. They smelled so sweet :-)

and looked so pretty in the kitchen

and a few littles in the vase on the sill. (that is the butterfly that Brady made me take off his cake- matches the ‘blue’ theme on my window sill pretty well!)

Gannon picked some Lilac blossoms for me to mix in with the flowers he picked a few days before…

and took a pic of me with them. If I could fill my bed with those blossoms and sleep in them, I would. My favorite part of Spring!

I stopped in the little store/greenhouse down the hill to get some red onions to put in the garden, and got to chatting with her about the flowers. I said how I admired the geraniums and wanted to know when they were getting more in, and she told me that their supplier shipped them 4 weeks early this year and had stopped growing them. So what they had was all they had left! I went back out and picked up this beauty for $10.

It filled out that metal box (with a little riser in the bottom) I bought that thing years ago really cheap, and never really used it for much. I just found it in the basement recently. I would have bought more if they had any other red ones. The other few were hot pink and pink and white striped. I don’t know if any other places will have a problem with getting any, but I sure am going to check and not try to wait until last minute this year!

There are more things to share…I know there are. I’m just gettin’ tired at this point, and I will save some for another day. Hope you enjoy your weekend!

A Make-over and cleaning out my camera

2010-04-21T10:31:00.003-04:00

We got the carpeting in my craft/t.v. room on Saturday. What a job! For us being first-time-carpet-layers, I have to say we did an awesome job! No pictures yet. Still working on getting things put back and arranged and I have to seriously sort through a LOT of my craft stuff. There is no way I can get it organized the way I want to with all the extra stuff I will probably never use. As soon as I get it all worked through and arranged the way I am happy with, I will get some new pictures. I probably shouldn’t show this. Totally embarrassing ! lol But this was the view from sitting at the computer in the dining room, looking into the living room-this was Saturday after we moved stuff out of the room.

It’s pretty dark, but yes, that is boxes and bins of craft stuff piled up- all the way through the living room and spilling into the dining room! The living room was totally piled with everything that came out of that room, including the loveseat, and we only had a path to walk through it. Looking at it, we just could not believe all the stuff. That room was NOT crowded at all! It’s amazing what a closet and cupboard can hold, I guess. And I do keep my bins of fabric and box of stuffing under my craft table. So that is the reason for wanting to ‘hoe out’ so much stuff. It was definitely a scary sight to see on Saturday. Thankfully we were able to get most of it at least moved back in the room by evening so we could use the living room again. Now I just have to get it all sorted and put away.

Calvin was a big help with the whole carpeting job. Brady helped some too, but I have been seeing ‘signs’ of Calvin finally starting to really mature at 14. He’s been a big help with several projects lately. Projects that before, he would only help with if he thought he would get something in return :-) Or if he DID actually want to help ‘just because’, he would lose interest after 2 hours and go find something else to do. He stuck it out all day long :-) He’s also been a HUGE help to Hubs with the outdoor thing they are working on. Without his size and strength, it would take much longer if Hubs had to do all that lifting on his own. Now if only he would be so eager to help me with the house cleaning! lol

Brady turned 13 on Monday.

…outdoorsy, sports-minded, MISCHEVIOUS, codename: Wrecking Ball, southpaw- but plays sports right handed...?, a bit sloppy sometimes( I think b/c he’s left handed -it literally took him YEARS to figure out how to spread peanut butter without getting it all over the knife handle and outside of the jar! lol), antagonizing, fun loving, a little airheaded sometimes, okay, a LOT, social, active, and used to be a serious cuddle bug…

Just a few things to describe him. He’s the middle child, and I think that some of those traits are some that a lot of middle children have. And some of the ones that sound ‘not so nice to say about him’…well, they can be true, but are also a part of being an older brother, a younger brother, a teenage son, and just part of being a kid in general :-)

I didn’t take a picture of Brady with the birthday cake we had, because the bakery only had flowered cakes. lol I found one with big blue daisies on the corners, and offered to smear them a bit and just put sprinkles on the corners, but he said he didn’t care as long as I took the plastic butterfly off :-) We will be having a bigger family party at my mom’s house on the 1st when my sister and her fiance can come up from Columbus.

Before I bore you to death with family stuff, I painted a cabinet the other day. It’s just an old pressboard one that we have had most of our married lives (15 years tomorrow!!!). I bought it to put in our living room when Calvin was a baby. I always kept the diapers and wipes in it when they were babies, so they were close at hand. I’m surprised it’s held up so well in all these years!

I had taken the original metal handle off at this point and replaced it with a wooden knob. You can still see that I still have a child lock on the inside of the door! lol I was going to take it off while I was painting it, but still haven’t done it. lol Well, a coat of primer and some paint and here it is now.

Not completely thrilled with the turnout. I wanted to age it with some stain, because it just looked so bright and standout after painting. It looks really ‘streaky’ in the pictures. It’s not so much in real life. I immediately wanted to repaint it, but I can live with it like this for now. It’s much better than it was, and I have bigger and better things to get to :-)

I was cleaning out my camera this morning and found a few good ‘nature’ shots from the past few days, that I would like to share.

The orchard is in full bloom and it’s beautiful! I’ll be heading out for a walk with scissors in hand to bring back some sweet smelling buds!

‘Girlfriend’, our springtime resident duck, came off her nest by the pond to gobble up a favorite treat. She was raised from a baby here, and has hatched a babies in the past, but only 3 that I can really remember, made it to adulthood-they stuck around for a few years, but finally left our pond in search of mates a few years ago. She has a mate that she disappears with every fall, but they have been returning every spring for her to lay a new nest. I know it’s her because she will come up to the house to get treats, but he will not. She has picked some not-so-great places to nest in the past and hasn’t had any survivors for a few years now. Hopefully with being so close to the pond this time, she will be more successful.

I saw this cute, fat, little butterball in the yard the other morning when I was heading out to work. I remembered I had my camera and jumped out of the van to take a few pics. He was just sitting there, fluffing his feathers and looking around. Looked like maybe the first time out of the nest.

I never see baby birds with color on them. Looks like a baby Cardinal by his bright coloring and the shape of his beak.

Cute as could be! I just wanted to pick him up and cuddle him! But I didn’t, and got back in the van and went to work, trying hard not to imagine that he would probably turn out to be a morning snack for our outdoor cat, Tarus. :-(

We saw a hawk sitting out in the middle of the front field a few days ago. I had to zoom in as far as my camera would go, and then crop it in closer to get a picture of him.

He was also enjoying a bit of prey, himself. Whatever he was standing on.

Lucky for him, but unfortunate for the other. That’s the circle of life, I guess.

The boys and Hubs have been hot on the trail of morels this past week.

Mmmm, mmm, good! We fried some on Sunday to have with dinner.

While the boys were out yesterday at one of the ‘secret morel spots’, they came upon a jenny, sitting on her nest right beside the mushrooms. Calvin came back to the house and got the camera.

He took a few pictures and then she got a little spooked. Then he got a pic of the nest. It turned out awesome!

He didn’t purposely blur out the foreground, but somehow he did. I LOVE this picture! So that is what a wild turkey egg looks like! If I ever came across an abandoned nest of these beauties, I would bring some back and try to blow them out to display!

And sweet Ganny-Gannon picked me some flowers on his way up the driveway after school yesterday :-)

After I saw the awesome picture Calvin took of the eggs, I had to mess with some settings on my camera to try to achieve the same effect. It worked on this picture.

I guess that’s it for now (like that wasn’t enough! lol). This post turned out more long-winded than I expected, but it is what it is. I have to get moving so I can get a walk in. I also have a few frames to stain so I can put a few new offers on my selling blog- hopefully tonight. They are Americana themed, in case you want to know ;-) I only have one order left to finish up, so it’s time to (hopefully) get a few new ones. While I was getting this typed up, I just had an idea for a new design, so I will have to work that one out too. I will be putting a Farmhouse Gatherings pillow on there next week too (an taking a few orders for them)- after I draw a winner for my giveaway (sign up in the post below this!), so be looking for that one if you are interested and didn’t win the giveaway.

Hope you enjoy your day!

Blog-aversary Giveaway

2010-04-20T15:05:00.001-04:00

It’s finally put together! I just celebrated my 3 year Blog-aversary and I have been working on a piece I created and stitched- just for this occasion!

First of all, I would like express my gratitude to all of you for reading my ramblings and feeling compelled to take a moment to leave some wonderful comments and emails. I do not thank you enough for doing it! I love having this blog and being able to share this part of my life with others who really appreciate it. Thank you to all of my fellow bloggers who inspire me to create and thank you to the friends I have made from this.

I am only offering this giveaway to those that live in the lower 48 United States. Not to take anything away from those elsewhere, but shipping can be expensive.

This is what I have put together to celebrate with! One lucky winner will receive these items (minus the shelf and the Baby’s Breath -which would fall apart in shipping! Sorry, just wanted to show you what it could look like all together.)

This is a piece I designed and stitched for this giveaway. It is stitched one over two in tones of tan, brown, and a touch of blue. I stitched it on tea colored linen and backed it with a deep blue flowered fabric and it measures approximately 6 inches by 6 inches. I rag stuffed it and added a jute hanger with rusty safety pins that are easily removed if desired. It will come signed by me and dated.

That piece inspired me to put it with a few true farmhouse gatherings. An 8 inch blue hanging star, one old 6 inch chipped wooden bowl, a little wooden candle holder pained dark blue and distressed with a little faux candle ring, and a set of 4 of the grubby candles that I dipped myself. 3 will come tied in a bundle, and the 4th will be for in the holder. Also included is a Friend stitchery that I stitched from a pattern by Pineberry Lane. It is stitched on even weave in both one over one and one over two fashion and I placed it in a 5x7 distressed black frame (the word Except is intentionally misspelled in keeping with the original verse from 1819). I had sold a few of these on my selling blog, and had made one extra. I was going to keep it myself, but I wanted to make this an extra special gathering- enough to fill up a shelf!

This gathering looks great on any little shelf. (Again, sorry that this thrift store rescue is not included…I have other pieces that I display on it)

The rules to enter this giveaway are:

You must be a follower of my blog. If you are not a follower, you can go to my left hand column and click to become a follower.

You also must leave a comment here on THIS POST to have your name included- I hate to have to search for names elsewhere, so I won’t :-)

I have to have a way to contact you if you win- either by an email address attached to your blog or you must leave an email address if you do not blog yourself. If I do not have a way to contact you, I will have to draw another name.

You want an extra entry?

How about 2 extra entries?

I decided if you would like to have one extra entry in my giveaway, I will give you one if you are also a follower of my selling blog ~By My Hand~ and let me know in your entry comment that you are! I will be listing a few new goodies this week. Can’t hurt to check it out, right? lol

Also, you can have another extra entry if you post about this giveaway on your own blog and let me know in your entry comment that you did! You have my permission (and suggestion :-) to use my picture for that purpose. I wasn’t going to do this part, but it’s a great way for me to check blogs by others who read mine- cause you know I will be checking! lol I love finding new blogs that I didn’t previously know about.

That is 3 potential chances to win this little gathering! Don’t forget to leave a comment! Be sure to enter soon. Deadline for entries will be Monday, April 26th at 11:59 p.m. I will announce the winner on Tuesday the 27th.

GOOD LUCK to you all!

Celebration and Thriftin’

2010-04-17T12:31:00.001-04:00

Well folks, yesterday marked my 3 year blogger anniversary! I truly intended on posting yesterday, but with it being a day off work, I had things I had to attend to and errands to run and orders to ship. But I did get to stop by the 3 thrifts that I visit in town. It been a long time since I’ve hit all 3 in the same day! I found some great things at each one, so it wasn’t wasted time :-)

But first, in regards to my anniversary, I want to let you know that I will be having a giveaway to celebrate! It will be open to all of the wonderful people who have been keeping up with me over the past 3 years- through good postings and bad, through creative times and absences.

I have not been able to get to my sewing machine to finish up the cross stitch item that I made especially for the giveaway, so I will be posting my giveaway on Monday or Tuesday. So check back to enter!

I went to the Restore for my first stop yesterday and found a few great books.

I haven’t had time to check any of the recipes from the cookbook yet, but I did leaf through it and found some wonderful pictures! That was a plus!

Sorry these aren’t great, but look closer at the one of the women at some kind of sale! I would DIE if I came across a sale like that! Look at all of those old tables!

These are of laundry day. The lower left is chunks of soap.

Very cool pictures. That book was $2. This next one was 50 cents…and also equally cool since I live outside of Salem! This one I did spend some time pouring over. It is so awesome to look through and see the same buildings that I still see today!

This is State Street in 1906 at the Centennial Celebration. The suprise on the last day of the celebration was an announcement made presenting the city with a 25 acre park which was named Centennial Park. When the boys were little, we used to go there to play a lot.

This is Broadway street- where the GW is now located. It actually is in the last building on the right side! And the other thrift I visit is now located in the building that is first on the left! Pretty cool.

Some houses that I recognize still today. The top one, a mansion, has 16 rooms and 6 bathrooms. I was thinking that this was another house, so I am going to have to try to find this one to see if it is still there now.

The bottom one is still standing, but is now an apartment building. It sure doesn’t look as grand today.

These 2 homes still are there today. There are many beautiful big homes along State Street and Lincoln Ave. And most of those have been kept as beautiful as they were back when these photos were taken.

This book is filled with photos. I love looking at them. Especially the ones that show the insides of some of the stores and businesses! How cool would it be if the business section still had stores like that today? Cigar shops, Mens Clothing, Millinery, Shoe Stores, Hardware, Knick Knack and Notions….Maybe I will try to scan some in so I can show you some day. They certainly depict a simpler time.

My next stop was Second Blessings. This shop is run by one of the churches in town (which is also pictured in that book!) and all the proceeds go to help those in need. I did find a 4 gallon crock for $35. But I could not talk myself into paying that. I know it’s probably worth it…it was in almost mint condition. They had a lot of nice stuff, but they also have 50% off donated items on Tuesdays, so I passed on a lot of things. Other things, like the crock, are consigned items, and those don’t get marked down. If it’s still there next time, I may be able to talk myself into it :-) I bought a cutting board for 75 cents and another wooden item for $4. I forgot to get pictures of those.

I walked down the street to GW and found a few items there also. I found this little window sill candle for $2.

This tart warmer was $4. I didn’t have one, and I knew that someday I would come across one cheaper than new price. When I plugged it in, the bulb blew. So I bought the same size-60 watt- and then once I got home read the tag that was on the warmer and it said to not use higher than 25 watt in any warmer. It does get hot FAST with the 60 watt, so I am not going to be using it until I get a smaller bulb.

I got this little bowl to put beside my sink to hold my scrubbies and scraper. I won that little scraper at a Pampered Chef party and I use it ALL THE TIME! That is one of the handiest tools in my kitchen. It’s to use for their stoneware items, but I use it on any pot or pan that gets stuck on baked on food. I was washing dishes, so I didn’t want to get a full on shot of the sink :-)

And I found this Roseville Pottery pitcher for $5!

It had greasy spots all over it from being in someone’s kitchen, but a little Magic Eraser took care of that.

And I found some fabric too! I never find fabric there!

Well, I’d better get this posted and get going. It’s finally a rainy, cold day and we are FINALLY putting the carpeting into my craft and t.v. room! I’ve had stuff all packed up for weeks now so I have not been sewing anything, and I am missing it desperately! Now we cannot hardly use the living room b/c it is piled up with my boxes of stuff! I can hardly believe that all this stuff fit into that room and it wasn’t overcrowded either. I’ll post pictures when I get everything moved around and put back.

Grubby Candle Tutorial and TS Makeover

2010-04-14T06:55:00.001-04:00

I’m sure this has been done a hundred times in blog land, but I wanted to show you the easy way I made my grubby candles using things I already had. Have I told you lately how cheap I am? lol

I used to have one of those candle crocks- the kind that would melt your big jar candles and spread the wonderful aroma all over your house. Long story short, moved table, forgot to unplug crock, it fell off, cracked in two. Luckily the crock was not turned on or that would have been a whole other candle wax mess to talk about. lol But I was left with 2 big jar candles that I used to melt in it and they had their wicks hid down inside and were no longer able to be lit. I’m not sure, but I think that I noticed the longer I melted those candles, the less noticeable the scent was. Is it possible to ‘melt’ the scent right out of them?

So with no crock, I had to figure out how to melt the candle to use for dipping. I don’t have any old pots to put the jar right in to melt- I only have the pots I use to cook in. And I was afraid to put the jar candle right down in one of my pots to melt it- I had images of it breaking and messing my pot up. I did have a small crock pot that I bought really cheap a few years ago to use for hot dips. We used it once. ( on a side note- I saw a few of these small crocks at the TS for very cheap b/c they were missing their lids! Cover it with a pie pan!) I set my jar candle down inside that, filled around the edge of the jar with water, and put the lid on top and crossed my fingers! I checked it a few hours later and it had worked!

(Pay no attention to the grubby water…I had already been dipping a candle and stuff fell off into the water.)

I had a few taper candles that I had picked up cheap somewhere, so I carefully took a knife and scored a line around the middle of one and cut it in half.

The top parts of the candles are fine as is. I needed to do a little work on the bottom half. I left the bottom section a little longer than the top because I had to cut some of that off to expose the wick. I moved the knife down about half an inch and scored a line around there.

You have to be careful to not cut right through it. I just rolled the candle back and forth putting gentle pressure on the knife. I could kind of feel when I had scored it enough without cutting the wick. I then pulled that little top part off. Then I went to the bottom of that candle an whittled it down a little so that once it was dipped, it would still fit into a holder.

I was left with 4 candles with long enough wicks to dip.

I used a piece of waxed paper to spread my spices on. I used cinnamon, allspice, and also some coffee grounds to roll my candles in. I dipped a candle, and immediately moved it to the spice pile and rolled it.

Again, dip and roll- trying to cover the candle as best as possible. While you are rolling, be sure you are keeping an eye on the bottoms of the candles to be sure they are not getting too big to fit into a holder. A little pressure on those areas while you are rolling will help keep that in line. You may have to strip that part back off and just make sure in your last dipping that it gets covered.

Now after dipping and rolling 2 or 3 times, I still had a few places that needed covered. I’m not afraid of getting dirty, so I dipped my finger in the melted wax, got it on the bare spots, and then stuck spices on that spot.

I had to do the same for the very tops of the candles by the wicks- they were a tad bit too long to fit all the way down into the melted wax. I took the candle and held it right beside the crock, dipped my finger in wax, spread it around the wick and then immediately stuck the top down into the spices.

After I had the candle ‘spot covered’ as much as I wanted it to be, I gave it one final dip. This time I followed it with a light dusting of cinnamon and then laid it aside to dry. I will tell you one thing that I will be sure to do the next time. In the picture up above, see that little pile of dried wax peelings? Those were from my fingers from dipping and then spot wetting the candles. When I was on my last one I had an idea. I was using a top part of a candle, which was slimmer than the bottom parts, and I decided to take some of those wax peelings and crumble them into my spice mixture. I wanted to see if I could tell the difference from the others I had done.

Well, it definitely worked! The candle that I rolled with the wax peelings is the one on the bottom of this picture! It’s almost as fat as the bottom half candles. The second one from the top is the other top half that I dipped and with just the spices-it is certainly slimmer than the others. So next time, I will dip all bottom halves first, and then crumble the wax peelings in to the spice mixture to roll the top halves in!

Biggest regret? Not having more than 2 STINKIN CANDLES TO WORK WITH!!! lol I will be hitting Dollar Tree later this week :-)

Altogether, it was a pretty easy project. If you prepare all of your candles at once (while the wax is melting) the dipping and rolling goes really fast. I bet it only took me 15 minutes to do all 4 of the ones that I had- and that was with learning as I went.

What does it look like in a holder, you ask? Remember this piece that I bought on Friday at the TS for $1.50?

Well, it’s also the piece that I accidently dropped, and it broke, (allowing me to remove the slanted shelf I wanted to take out anyway) and I couldn’t get it nailed back together right without other nails popping back out, got out the glue, more nails, a few choice words…all that crap, and it now looks exactly like I had pictured it turning out to look like after a makeover! Like a million bucks!

Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration….maybe it only looks like 20 bucks!

A few things off the list

2010-04-13T08:51:00.001-04:00

I have been working on a few of the items I got at the thrift last week.

This….

was painted and stained and is now this…

Of course, my camera is not cooperating this morning. It turned out darker than it’s showing here. I haven’t decided what I will use it for- yet. Maybe put it on the table in the kitchen to hold our apples and bananas. I wish the liner that came with it was not bright red because I would have loved to use it also.

And this duck rack…

is now this…

Calvin is all about painting things, and he wanted to start it right away when we got home Friday. He chose a tan color (it’s showing a lot more gold here) and put a first coat on it, but then lost interest. I second coated it and then stained it for him. It turned out pretty nice. I told him that I wouldn’t ‘primitize’ it since it was for their room. lol I don’t think they would have cared if I did.

I have a few other pieces started, but I had to work the last days, so they are not completely done yet. I dropped one piece and then had to spend over an hour re-nailing and gluing it back together. Ugh. I finally got it back together and sprayed it.

We started working outside over the weekend. I am not ready for that yet! I have so much to do inside still! But I am so ready for a certain outside project to finally be done! It’s been a looooonggg time coming! Gannon was helping me in the flower gardens (me with the shovel, he with his trucks and tractors) and he wanted to plant some of the flower seeds that I have. I told him I had to wait until I get some bagged manure. Of course THAT lead to a long explanation! lol I haven’t put any in for so long, and I think I really need to this year. I think it’s still to early for starting them outside, so I have to find some time to fill a few trays and make some starts indoors today. I have a slew of laundry to catch up on, the house needs picked up, I have some tweaking I want to try in the kitchen, I have things I want to build….it goes on and on so I’d better get at it!

One more thing. Gannon is in 1st grade, and they have a story each week to bring home and read and then write a sentence about what they read that night. We were reading his book the other night, and I looked up to see a promo on t.v. for the new Nightmare on Elm Street movie that is coming out- first time I heard about a new one. I remember when I was a teenager, Freddy Krueger was THE ultimate! I LOVED those movies! (When I was in 7th grade, at Halloween, my volleyball team went to a haunted house at in a nearby town that was actually on an Elm Street. We had a blast!) I’m not so much into the blood and gore type movies anymore. Gannon was watching it too, and asking me about his ‘sharp fingers’. lol We went back to reading, and he turned the page in his book and I about died! This is no lie- look at this picture!

Okay, so this is supposed to be an old man from Peru with wrinkly skin, but he sure does resemble Freddy with his red and gray/black striped sweater, black hat, and wrinkly burnt skin! It was creepy, eerie, and hilarious- all at the same time! Hmmm….now that I am looking at this… his fingers on his left hand do look a little sharp, don’t they? lol

Thriftin’ Finds

2010-04-10T08:37:00.001-04:00

I did make it up to the thrift store finally yesterday evening, once the kids got home from school. I had better success this time compared to the last. We hit the basement first. The wooden item shelves were quite full! I have a system where I scan over the shelves quickly (they are the entire length of the wall) and grab all the bigger things that look interesting. Then I check prices (rarely do I find something that is too expensive) and check the item over, and put back what I decide I don’t want. Then I go back over the shelves, more carefully, and look at every item one at a time. Most I can tell from just a glance that I don’t want. A lot of times, I find stuff that I really do like and I just missed it the first time through. Last night, I had a pile on the floor! I love it when they have that much stuff, but I also hate it. I can’t hold on to it, and I have to set it aside to be able to look through the rest of the shelves. All the while, I am keeping an eye on it, trying to see what else I missed, nervous that someone is going to raid my pile and take it! lol Tonight I had the boys with me, so I kept asking them to ‘watch my pile while I look at this’ and ‘Calvin, are you watching my stuff?’ and ‘I need to go over there to see if there are any lamps- DON”T walk away from this..” which they were. Finally, Calvin asked me, “Why don’t you just put it in a cart?’ I told him they don’t have them down there, and he walked over to the other side of the room, which I couldn’t get to b/c I was guarding my pile, and brought one back. lol Why didn’t he tell me that in the first place? I filled it up with my stuff and actually got to relax enough to look around the rest of the room. Then when I was done, I just had to find an employee to take my cart into the back room and up the elevator for me to meet them upstairs. It’s amusing. Here I am, thinking that this stuff I find is a total treasure and that other customers would probably fight me for it, and I’m sure they look at my cart and wonder ‘What the heck is she going to do with all that junk’….or probably more like, “Man! That chick has some baaaaad taste!” LOL

This was the first thing I grabbed up. It was $5. I was wishing it was half off, but it wasn’t. I loved it anyway and thought I could find a place for it here somewhere. I’m not sure I am even going to make this over right now. It has a pretty nice finish on it.

Not exactly sure what this next item was supposed to be. It has a drawer on the bottom and right above that is a slanted piece…almost like a letter holder, but it’s not that deep. There are little holes at the top that something else was attached to, a plaque or something? Maybe it even had hooks screwed into the top for keys?….I have no idea, but I did have an idea of what I could use it for. The little soaps were tucked into the drawer. I told the cashier they were stuck in there and she told me to just leave them there. For $1.50, I just could not pass it up.

I found this bench for $2.50. It’s pretty big and reminded me of a little church pew.

The older boys picked out these items for their room- which will be getting an ‘outdoor’ makeover soon. The duck ‘peg’ rack was $3. I thought that was a bit high, but they really wanted it. I had to remind myself that if I would pay $2.50 for a church pew, lol, then I could pay $3 for something for them :-) The fish paddle was 90 cents-they are really learning to spot a bargain like their mama :-)

They had several baskets- which surprised me since Easter was just last week. There were more than usual. Anyway, I always look for ones that look handmade. I paid $2 for the one on the left which was my favorite- definitely handmade and it’s dated on the bottom- and the other 2 were $1 each. I liked the buttocks basket, but not crazy about the handle. Not sure if I will keep it.

I found this big popcorn ‘barrel’ (with removable liner) and snatched it up right away. I didn’t see the word on it at first, but I know I can sand it off. This was $1.50!

This big wooden box with a hinged lid was only 90 cents!

(in case you don’t already know, or can’t tell, I have an extreme weakness for wooden items! lol)

I LOVED this next box. Not so crazy about the heart on top, but I can fix that if I feel I need to. It was also $1.50!

And this desk top secretary-type box was something I almost put back. I wasn’t real sure about what I would use it for, but I really liked it and it was very sturdy. I turned it over and saw it was also $1.50! Use it or not, that was a steal!

So, now you can see why I practically run down the shelves grabbing the bigger items. Most of these were probably considered ‘junk’ to the people pricing, so they just slap $1.50- $3 on them to get rid of them.

So I know it goes like this…sometimes I am willing to pay $5 for one thing, because I will always get a steal on a few others. I think I paid right around $22 for all those wooden items and baskets. Pretty good deal, I think. Way better than anything I ever find at GW- which is practically nothing. And it should keep me busy with makeovers for a little while.

My next stop after the basement is always the glassware/houseware shelves on the back wall, upstairs. This was my big splurge for the evening. I saw it and was disappointed that it was not half off, but I had to have it-I loved it too much to pass it up. I just can’t make out the mark on it though.

Anyone recognize it? It looks huge in the picture, but it’s 6 inches tall and I paid $8 for it. Good deal?

This next item was also a surprise. You probably don’t remember, but the last time I went up to that store (a month ago), I had bought a blue banded crock urn that was missing a lid, for $2. I mentioned that they also had a blue banded crock behind the counter for $15- someone had painted geese on it. I regretted not buying it and I told myself that if it is still there the next time, I will get it. I love the Roseville Pottery items, and have collected a few blue banded pieces already. I figured $15 was probably an okay price. The last place I always check is behind the jewelry counter shelves up by the checkout. That is where they put the pricier stuff, collectables, fancier dish sets and pieces, etc. That is where I saw the crock the last time. I was well prepared to buy it for $15 now that my kitchen is done. I scanned the shelves over…no geese crock. Bummer. Then I stood there and scanned them over more carefully, and I saw one…waaaay at the end. I walked down to the end and saw, not the geese crock, but this smaller one…

Wooo Hooo! So I had to lean over the counter to see the price….

WHAT???

When I realized it said $5.5o instead of $15.50, I about peed my pants right there. BETTER YET- it was an orange tag! Half off! And I would have gladly paid the whole $5.50. You can see through the clearance price that it was $12 before! 10 years ago when I was into ‘country’, I would have loved that darn chicken…but tonight, I came right home and took a few cotton balls and nail polish remover to it and scrubbed it right off :-)

And that is how it goes. Sometimes I will pay $8 for a little jug that I love, only to find a crock that I absolutely adore for $2.50. I can’t tell you how much I love that store :-)

Detour

2010-04-09T08:10:00.001-04:00

…in my plans this morning, literally. I had made plans to run up to my favorite thrift store this morning after I got all the boys off to school, but as I was watching the news a bit ago, and they were reporting an accident on the interstate- right at the exit I needed to get off of. A truck overturned and there was a spill, and the hazmat team is there cleaning up. What are the chances of that happening on the one day I wanted to go that way? I really don’t know if it is on the north or south side of the interstate, but I don’t want to go all the way up there to find out. They just said it was better to avoid the area and go another route. I tried that once. I THOUGHT I knew were I was going. Got lost and ended up in a not-so-nice area of Ytown. Had the boys with me. It wasn’t fun. Lesson learned. I guess that is where one of those TomTom things would come in handy. I feel like I’m probably the only one who doesn’t have one :-) I’ve always told myself that I never go anywhere that I don’t already know the way, so why would I need one? Now I know why. lol

SO, I guess the new plan is to work around here this morning, run some local errands, and maybe hit the thrift after school. I was hoping to be able to go by myself for once, but the boys like going there too. I’ve decided on what I want to do with the top of the refrigerator, so I can work on that. I have furniture to prime and paint. My stairs and upper hallway need desperate attention. I have a few items I need to make for some customers. I need to get to the fabric store to get osnaburg to finish off my summer curtains for the kitchen. I have flower seeds waiting to be planted into trays. The list goes on and on. Why do I even think to pretend that I have nothing to do sometimes? lol All I did at work yesterday was make a list of all the things (and projects) that I need to get done. I am an excellent list maker. Now I just need to start getting things crossed off that list and all will be right in my world.

Isn’t it funny how you can look at something everyday, and not really notice it until you see it in a picture- how other people would see it? I was just looking for a picture or two to put on here for today and I came across this one. It’s (yet, another lol) shot of my sink that I took the other day and I just noticed something. See that post outside the window? It’s out in the flower garden off the patio. It’s in between the little blue glass bottle and the Williamsburg pottery bowl on the window sill.

How cool would it be to see a big prim birdhouse sitting on the top of that? I’ve always had plans to get one for on there, but have never found one that I liked the price (I’m cheap! lol). Now that I am such a ‘highly skilled’ woodworker (laughing at the extreme sarcasm in that phrase) I may have to put some of the lumber I bought the other day at HD to good use. It’s now on ‘The List’.

Before I go (Jillian is screaming at me from the DVD player…I’ve ignored her for a few days and she is not happy! lol) I will show you a few more shots- examples of my ‘professional photography skills’ – ha ha ha ha….

He did catch one :-)

New Addition to the Kitchen

2010-04-07T16:28:00.001-04:00

This is my second post today, so if you missed the first one on my Peg Rail Tutorial, keep scrolling down after this posting. My new kitchen pics are just below that one, from yesterday, if you missed those :-)

I mentioned that when cutting the boards for the peg rail, I messed up on a few and cut them too short. I ended up with several pieces of 1x4 in various shorter lengths…which I planned to make a few signs with. Well, after posting the pics yesterday of my newly decorated kitchen, something was bugging me about them, so I decided to do something about it.

Here is one from yesterday

And here is one from a little bit ago…notice the difference (besides the grapes being in my sink board instead of the strawberries lol)?

I have a ‘coffee house’ on my counter now!

It’s open on the back and I can just slide it forward to fill the pot before bed. All hubs has to do in the morning is open the door and push the button to turn it on! It does have a timer you can set, but for some reason, even though it’s digital, it does not keep the correct time! I’ve never heard of that happening with a digital clock- it loses about 10 minutes a day?

I had to go to Home Depot this morning to get the hinges, but wouldn’t you know? This was as small as they sell! I was really surprised that they didn’t have a larger selection of small decorative hinges…very disappointing. I figured these would be too big, and they are, but I wanted this done (like yesterday) so I got these for now. I may have to order a smaller set if I can’t find them elsewhere. I’d like them to be half this size and maybe even a different style- and I’ll just have to fill in the screw holes and redo it. I love the little knot hole on the door- I left that there on purpose!

No tut on this project though…I’m lucky I even squeaked this one out :-) I measured the size of my pot, and went down to see if I had enough 1x4’s to make it…I did but just barely. I made all 3 sides separately and then had my husband use the nail gun to fasten them together and put the top on while I squared it and held it. It turned out pretty good. I didn’t tell him at the time, what he was helping me make. When he saw it later, his response was, “ That looks like a pain in the a** to mess with.” lol I reminded him that HE is not the one who fills it in the first place so he didn’t need to worry about it! I think, overall, he was pretty impressed with it cause I caught him looking at it a few times. He later called it a coffee house…which was his compromise between an outhouse (which he also said it looked like) and what it was actually supposed to be. I thought that was rather nice of him. :-D

While I was building this, I started thinking…what if I find out that it IS a pain to deal with every day? I decided that I could just put a back and a bottom on it- maybe even an inside shelf- and use it as a cupboard elsewhere. Then I had an idea and discovered this…

SO…I can always move it. (until I make a cover for this! lol)

This morning, I started staring down my toaster….he’s next :-)

A few quick pics of the boys yesterday….I loved this and took several before they realized it. We don’t see this kind of ‘peace’ too often around here with them :-)

I was finally caught :-)

Thanks for stopping by!

Peg Rail Tutorial

2010-04-07T09:44:00.001-04:00

Thanks for the wonderful comments on my kitchen re-do yesterday! I had a few comments asking about the peg rail that I put up, and yes, I did make it. It was my first time making one, but it wasn’t hard at all. I did take a few pics along the way. I am not an expert builder here, and there may be ways that are more ‘right’ than this, but this way worked for me and I learned along the way. I will try to explain it out best I can from a beginners stand-point.

I just used 1x4 inch pine for mine, but 1x6 inch would work great too. I bought 1/2 inch dowel rods. OAK ones. (You could also use pre-made pegs from the craft store if you want the shaped ones. They were somewhere around $3 for 5 or 6 pegs- I wanted to go a cheaper route- lol. I also liked the ‘simpler look’ of the dowel pegs) I got my dowels at Home Depot and picked the regular cheaper ones up first and they literally felt like they were made of styrofoam! I never noticed how light they were when I have picked them up at craft stores. I even asked one of HD’s workers what the heck those were made of and took one of each in his hand, and even he seemed surprised at the weight difference in them! I knew those regular ‘wood’ ones would not last if I wanted to hang anything heavy on them, so definitely, go with the oak! I think they were $1.24 each- still pretty cheap. IMPORTANT- Even though they are oak, you still have to check to be sure they are straight. There were some VERY bowed ones in that bin. I figured I would need 3 for the project, so I pulled 3 out and held them up to see how straight they were. Some are very obviously bowed, some are not. When I had 3 that I thought were straight, I then laid them next to each other on the floor and rolled them back and forth- you will be able to tell which ones are bowed by how they roll. That was the best way to tell. I spent probably 10 minutes digging around in the bin and rolling dowels on the floor to get the straightest ones! lol

When I put backer boards on my shelves in the living room last week, I had a problem finding the right sized drill bits in my husband’s tool boxes. So I went out and bought a set of ‘wood bits’ like this at Walmart for around $11, because I knew this peg rail was going to be my next project.

(please excuse the spray painted paper on my workbench! lol)

I used a scrap piece of wood to practice on b/c I had never messed with this kind of bit before. They work so much better than a regular drill bit! If you have never used this kind of bit, here are a few things I learned.

#1 use a hard surface to put your wood on. I put my boards on my workbench- do not drill them on your counter tops. I do a lot of stuff on my counter tops b/c they are close and handy. Don’t be tempted. lol Luckily, I didn’t have to learn this the hard way, lol. The point on the bit should just barely come thru the back of the board and I could kind of tell when drilling, when it hit the workbench surface, and then I pulled back out.

#2- use the same motion every time you drill. I was really afraid that my holes would end up all crooked and my pegs would be too. When I practiced, I was able to settle into a motion that seemed to work and then I put a few pegs into the practice holes to make sure they would be straight. There was a little ‘play’ in them, so if one seemed to be pointed down a little more than they others, you can just push it up into line with them. I was comfortable with holding my hands at my right side (I’m right handed), with the drill handle right beside my breast- drilling the holes by bending slightly into it from the waist. I was able to get the right angle and pressure on the drill that way. It will all depend on what the height of your work surface is…that is why practicing is important!

#3- this kind of bit will make a 1/4 inch deep hole. I didn’t realize this at first- I was putting the dowel in the drilled hole, marking it how far in it was, and then taking it out and adding 2 inches to it, marking that and then cutting it. Duh. It took me about 5 pegs to realize that all the holes were drilled very close to the same depth and it was right around 1/4 inch! lol I wanted 2 inch pegs, so I cut all my pegs to 2 1/4 inches long. Now, I still had to measure, mark, and cut each peg separately, b/c my saw blade cuts about 1/8th inch wide, and well, I’m not that good at using a tape measure and math! lol It was easier for me to just measure 2 1/4 inch, and then cut, measure and then cut, instead of marking off the whole dowel at once.

Hope I haven’t confused you so far! lol

I started by measuring my walls and cutting my boards to length. I had to miter my ends a bit b/c our house is old and the existing trim is not even on the edges and the peg rail would end up sticking out.

You could also miter the corners for a more professional look, but I’m not a professional, and double ended miters are too tricky for me at this point :-) These pieces fit pretty tight, so I was able to wedge them up there to step back and look at them and decide what height I wanted them at.

I took the boards back down and measured to find the middle line where my pegs would go, and made a little mark. I did this on a few spots along the board, and then took a straight edge and connected them with a pencil line all the way along the board.

Now I had to figure out how far apart to drill my holes. This is where I had to get creative. I am a visual person, so I needed to see where my pegs would go. All four pieces of backer board were different lengths, so I had to play around with how far apart the pegs would be. I had some of these in the drawer, so I did this…

(This was not one of the boards I used. I stuck these on a piece of wood this morning as an example for the picture) These ‘holes’ were really helpful for me b/c I was able to wedge those boards back up and step back and get a ‘visual’ of what it would look like- these ‘holes’ also happened to be 1/2 inch- the same size pegs I was using. Tip: you can use little pieces of masking tape or whatever, but if you use these, just lightly stick a little part on the board. Do not rub the whole thing down or you will have to scrape them back off- they stuck down really well! I did learn that the hard way. lol I had 2 corners to work in, so I had to adjust my measurements for those. I didn’t want the pegs to be touching at the corners.

I also had this little short wall, and I knew I wanted a peg here, so I had to adjust the other side of pegs accordingly. Your peg spacing will all depend on what size walls and corners you have to work with. You don’t want your first peg on one end being 5 inches away from the end of your backer board, and the last one being only 1 inch away from the other end. You want them pretty even on each end. It will take some figuring and measuring to get it right. Mine ended up being 5 inches apart and the spacing on the ends seemed to work out fine that way too. I googled ‘peg racks’ and looked at how far apart some were spaced. Most seemed to be somewhere between 4 and 6 inches apart. 4 seemed a little too close to me, and 6 wasn’t working out quite right. I made a little pencil mark at 5 inches all along my boards, and then took them down to the work bench and drilled the holes. I made sure to push a peg into each hole after I was done drilling to be sure I had each one opened up b/c when you paint wood, it swells just a little bit.

How you attach your rail to your wall is up to you. I’ve seen where they drill holes in between the pegs and counter sink screws and then use the little caps to cover. I also considered putting a few screws into the peg holes and then putting the peg over them. We decided to just use the nail gun to attach ours right to the wall, and then I filled the marks in from that. I held the board up, set the level on top to be sure I was holding it straight, and my husband nailed them for me. I painted my backer boards first and my pegs separately, attached the boards to the walls, put a little wood glue in each hole, and then put my pegs in. I then took a long piece of board, put it under the end of the pegs and then slightly pushed all the pegs up just a little (so nothing would slip off the ends when hanging), so they were all in line to dry overnight. I then went back the next morning and painted over my filler holes from nailing them up, and did any other touch up work that was needed.

I hope that was easy to follow for you! Sorry if it is too elementary, but like I said, it was my first experience at making these. All in all, it was a pretty easy project and I just had to get over my fear of messing up- it’s just wood. And trust me- I did mess up- I had a few miss-cut lengths of boards in the basement to prove it! lol BUT-if I would have waited for hubs to help me, I would be waiting forever! Just make sure you have extra wood on hand when you start. It’s not perfect, but it’s darn close :-) and I am proud of myself for doing it all on my own. It was a real confidence builder for me. If you have any questions, just email me and I will try to help you out :-)

AND since I had the miss cut pieces of boards, I jumped into another project yesterday! I don’t have pics yet- I need to run to the Depot to get some hinges to finish it. I can’t wait to show it, so I better get going! Pictures later!

Kitchen Pictures!!!

2010-04-06T13:03:00.001-04:00

I’ve decided not to delay these pictures anymore. There are many more things I would like to do in here, but who knows how long it will take for me to complete them! Instead, I guess I will just have more pics to show along the way with ‘improvements’ that will come with time.

I searched back in my blog, and I swear I put pics on here of my kitchen after I painted it gold. Can’t find any and I don’t have any on my computer either. So you will have to use your imagination to imagine what it looked like as a whole with the old color. Here is one corner that I do have a pic of…

Okay…so the whole thing was THAT color. That was my little ‘farm shelf’ lol. It was quite bright. Now it looks like this…

You can see, I still have not decided on a curtain fabric yet! lol Part of the reason I have been delaying! I’m enjoying the sunshine right now though :-) I put up a peg rail on this end but have not gotten it decorated yet. Still moving things around. The bakers rack (regrettably) had to come back in. I will be on the lookout for a cupboard to put here or I will have to add ‘build one’ to my to-do list. The shelf by the backdoor, for now, looks like this…

I tried to work on it this weekend, but my building skills are not up to par. lol I need more wood to make a built in cupboard under this shelf. I don’t have the right sized boards I need to complete this project the way I want it to look. A trip to Home Depot is on the agenda soon.

Here is the sink area…

It is too hard to get a good picture right now b/c it’s so bright outside and my camera will not use the flash in this area. My friend Sandy, made this shelf that I hung beside the sink. I put the beeswax sugar cone that I won in a giveaway on it for now, but once I thought about it, I realized that with full sun there, it may start to melt. I’ll have to tweak a little more :-) I moved the little candle shelf that Sandy made me and hung it on the other side of the sink…

I also want to get a witches hat light for over the sink. I’m in no hurry- I’ve kind of grown fond of this fixture through the years :-) but it, like all the light fixtures, does not match the feel I want in there. Especially the ceiling fan. That will NOT be coming out- we do not have central air so it is a necessity in the summer. I’ve been thinking of ways to help that blend in a little better, but haven’t tried anything out with it yet.

I’m pretty happy with how the cupboard decorating came out. I love to come in here and look up at these things I love.

Not thrilled with the top of the fridge, but that’s what tweaking is all about! lol I also haven’t decided if I am going to keep the canisters or not. I am not using them for anything up there. They will probably go.

Here is the pantry door and the basement door which also needs a curtain. That walk thru leads to the bathroom and my t.v. and craft room. The pantry door was wood colored to match the cupboards and I just could not decide if I should paint it to match my trim or not. I emailed a few friends and they helped me decide that it needed painted to bring the trim color around to this side of the room.

Here is the cupboards above the stove side of the kitchen. I only took a pic of the tops b/c the rest of that side is not quite finished yet. (another reason for the delay in posting :-)

I was trying to decide if I should stencil around the top of the room or not, but decided to live with it like this for awhile. I kind of like the simple look of it all. Looking at it now, I can’t believe it was all once that mustard color! It is quite a difference and OH SO much more pleasing to my eye now :-) What do you think of it all? Suggestions?

I never got around to posting for Easter, so I hope everyone had a good one! We had beautiful weather and the kids really enjoyed the annual egg hunt at my mom’s on Easter day. Calvin made the decision not to hunt eggs this year. *Sigh* at 14 he is too old for that now. He did help hide them amongst my mom’s yard and gardens for the younger ones….

Above, Gannon has his serious ‘egg hunting face’ on. lol My sister’s boyfriend’s son stuck close to Gannon- it was his first egg hunt with us.

Brady, below, is getting too good at this. His bag was half full within the first few minutes of hunting- I had to make him slow down so the younger ones got some!

My nieces…

My mom and sister giving my niece some clues for where to look…

Time to check out the loot!

That is my mom’s cat and her dog Coco on the bridge…they were having a stand-off with my grandma’s dog, Pebbles.

(Valerie…this one is for you)

Here is Coco in her ‘spot’, under the egg tree, looking pretty :-)

That’s it for now. I went to the local flea market on Friday and bought a flat of strawberries that are sitting in the refrigerator, waiting to be made into jam. I also have been working on my 3 year anniversary giveaway! It’s coming up on the 16th, so keep an eye out for that in the coming week!

One Project- Complete (and a ‘diet’ recipe)

2010-03-31T08:35:00.001-04:00

I worked on the list I made yesterday and got one thing totally checked off! It was the shelves I had taken down the other day. They were nice before, but they just needed….something. So I took them to the basement, measured them up and started cutting some wood. Now I have to tell you, I absolutely STINK at measuring! I always hated math in school, so reading a measuring tape is just something I never picked up on. My Hubs is a machinist, so he deals with it every day and is very precise about it. I wanted to show him that I could do something by myself without having to ask him ‘what’s the line right before the half-inch mark?’ lol He’s explained all those lines to me before (a hundred times), and I THINK I know what they are, but I am never sure if it’s 1/16th or 3/8ths or whatever. lol He can say them spot on with just a glance where I have to count. So when I am measuring, I have to remember it by ‘it’s 2 little lines past 11 1/2…” lol So anyway, with that being said, I DID get this project complete! I know I just showed the shelves yesterday, but I will go ahead and post befores and afters…

Before

After

Before

After

What do you think? (Sandy also sent me the cute angel bust that I hung on this shelf) I wasn’t as concerned about the large shelf because it is above our humungous T.V. and it seemed to fit that space pretty well, but the smaller shelf just kept bugging me. It just seemed to be out there on it’s own and needed a little something more. That corner/wall is a pain for me- I’ll have to get a better picture of it later. I began the project by cutting the backing boards, and when I went to drill the holes for the pegs, I discovered that #1- I couldn’t find the needed bits for the drill no matter how much I dug through his toolboxes. and #2- when I found something that I thought would work, do you think I could get the darn bit that was already in the drill out? Nope. Not when ‘Hulk Man Don’ puts one in there. And I’m not kidding. When he came home at lunch I was very irritated about it and he just laughed. He said he did the same thing to his friends drill the other day when he was helping him. Not funny to us weak people. I showed him the bits that I found and he proceeded to tell me that they wouldn’t work-one wasn’t the right size, and one wasn’t for that kind of drill. He said he thought he had a half inch wood bit somewhere….never mind. I headed out to Walmart to buy ME some wood bits. I got a whole set for $11 so I have them and won’t have to search for them.

So the rest of the afternoon was shot with that trip to Wally-world. It’s only 10 minutes away, but I did need some other things while I was there. With my delay in being able to drill that morning, I was able to cut some more boards to get a jump on my next project- which I needed the half inch bit for, so I’m glad that I actually went and got the proper bits after all. That second project took a bit more measuring, and I made a few ‘oops’s’ along the way, so it was a good thing we had some extra boards (now I have pieces to make some signs later, lol). It’s for my kitchen, and when I am done with my morning workout, I will be drilling holes and painting so I hope to get it done today. If it works out okay, I will be doing the same thing in my dining room…soon.

One more thing. I HAVE to show you what I made for lunch yesterday! I was so proud of myself that I made it again for dinner! lol

Now you tell me…does that look like diet food? And that is a dinner sized plate, BTW- not a salad plate. It was delicious! And very filling too for something was came out to around 350-400 calories! I layered it like this:

1 Multi-grain wrap ( I buy the Aldi’s Fit & Active wraps)

I spread a few drops of olive oil on a baking sheet, rubbed one side of the wrap on it, flipped it over and put it under a low broil setting in my oven for a few minutes to crisp it a little. Then I took it out, turned it back over and layered:

2 spoonfuls of tomato sauce

season that with with a bit of oregano, basil, thyme, majoram (I don’t have measurements for these, just kind of dusted them on after the tomato sauce was spread on the wrap)

3-4 ounces of cooked shredded chicken breast

1/2 c. of heated frozen spinach

3 black olives, sliced (for good fat calories)

3 fresh mushrooms, sliced

6 very thin tomato slices

1/4 c. mozzarella cheese (I just used the regular cheese I always buy. It came out to 75 calories for the low moisture part skim- there may be lighter cheese out there if you want to cut a few more calories)

I then put the whole thing back under the broiler checking it every few minutes till the cheese was melted and started to brown a bit. I didn’t really need them, but I also had a serving of beets b/c I had already planned to, and they are really good for you anyway. My kids laughed at me for taking a picture of it, but I was so proud of it, I had to share! I cut a piece for Hubs (a.k.a Mr. Anti-Diet/ Mr. Meat and Potatoes) to try and he was pretty impressed with it also. I’ve discovered that I am really loving this new way I am cooking for myself, and I hope to be able to keep it up. I am trying my hardest to incorporate some of these healthier versions into our family meals ( I made turkey meatloaf the other day and although they didn’t LOVE it b/c it wasn’t slathered with the brown sugar and ketchup coating I usually put on meatloaf- they liked it), but I live with all guys, and I can’t expect them to eat like rabbits- I’m not even eating like a rabbit. They require more calories than I do, so I have to take that into consideration. It is seeming to rub off on them a little. I bought 2 of the big tubs of yogurt last week, and they were both gone the other day! Hubs said he likes that better than ice cream (which we’ve had a carton of that in the freezer for a week now and no one has even asked for it!), so I am going to experiment with yogurt making today if I have the ingredients. I saw an easy method using canning jars and a cooler, so I will try that if I have the right stuff. If it doesn’t work, then I will have to look into getting a yogurt maker.

I’m sorry if I am boring you with my ‘diet talk’. I’m trying really hard not to :-) I promise, this blog will not turn into that. I will be sharing as many prim goodies that I have before, and if the food part interests you, then great! If not, just skip it! lol

Thanks for stopping by!

Some changes, and a package came

2010-03-30T09:36:00.001-04:00

Hi all! Another week has passed and I still can’t show you my ‘new’ kitchen. I know…promises, promises… but it will be soon. I think I am done with the cupboard tops and I love them! I never have put a whole lot up there, just a few things. I don’t know why I have not discovered before, how nice this area can look and just how much it adds to the whole room! I love looking up at them when I come into the kitchen now. I have been very busy this past week with other things, and just have not gotten around to getting much else done. I feel like I am just spinning my wheels and not getting very far. I keep adding projects to my to-do list before I finish things already on it. I started painting a chair last week that sits in my kitchen, and there it still sits- in the basement, unfinished. I don’t know what is going on with my mind lately, but I feel a bit scatter-brained. So I decided that I need to start my days out with a checklist and aim to get a few things (and hopefully ALL things) accomplished and checked off by the end of the day.

Part of the reason for my absentmindedness my be that I decided last week that I just couldn’t stand the way I feel anymore and I need more energy. I’m sure that the 15 lbs I put on over the winter (and since I quit my over night job) has something to do with it. And I tried to put on a pair of capris last week on a warmer day…uh, yeah. Tried is the key word there. So I went to something I tried before www.sparkpeople.com and signed back in and spent HOURS over the last 5 days reading up on getting back into the whole ‘diet’ thing. They have where you can track your nutrition, loads of healthy recipes, and you can set goals for yourself. I love reading over the recipes and getting ideas of what I CAN actually eat while eating healthy. They all look so good! So on the tracking your nutrition, I’ve been doing that on there, and I have realized that for now, I’m just going to have to write it down in a food journal instead of going online to do it- it’s just been too time consuming. I’ll look up the values of the things I need to know and try a few recipes if I need something different. If I don’t see some changes soon by writing it down on my own, then I’ll have to start tracking online again to see where I’m going wrong. It wasn’t so much that I was seriously overeating before, but that I wasn’t eating the food that was better for me, and not paying attention to what I was eating and how much. Skipping meals is something I did a lot too. Which reminds me…I didn’t write down to eat breakfast on my to-do list today…lol better get on that one. I do have to say, that for it being day 5, I’m feeling pretty good. I have not been starving either. I’ve actually been eating more food than I was before and it tastes so much better because I have been putting more thought into it. I just made a bowl of oatmeal and put chopped up cooked apple in it with cinnamon on top- yum. I hardly even miss the 2 spoonfuls of brown sugar I would normally put in it. Okay, I said hardly, but this is a great substitute. lol I have been doing Jillians video- 30 Day Shred- which killed me the first 2 days, but it’s better now. I went for a walk in the orchard the other day but had to have Gannon come with me on his bike- he wanted to stay at the house and play in a dirt pile, so I couldn’t walk as long as I wanted to. It rained all day yesterday, so no walk then either. Pretty soon, I can be hunting for morel mushrooms on my walks! I’ll have to have the boys and Hubs show me their ‘secret spots’ first, so I know where to find them. Maybe even as soon as this weekend we can be eating morels with dinner :-) Supposed to be getting into the 70’s by Wednesday!

Okay, enough about that ‘diet’ stuff. I got my package that I won in the giveaway that Anne from Seasons of the Past held! Here is what I got!

A coverlet (which I now need to make a crane for it- another to-do list item), a sweet little pillow that I LOVE the colors and print, a blackened beeswax cone (that smells GREAT!) and a bag of fixins that smell soooo awesome! Here is a closer shot of the fixins…

Check out the little wax bird and boy cutouts! So cute!

Thanks Anne! I love all of it!

I showed you one shelf that I tweaked in my last post-

here is the other…

My friend Sandy Schutt sent me the little old coot that I put on the shelf in the first picture. Well, after I took these, I ended up taking the shelves down. I had a project planned to redo them, and well, they are still on my table. Don’t worry- they are on my list for today :-) I have a few projects lined up that require using the miter saw that my husband got me for Christmas. I needed a new blade for it before I could start them, and I got it the other day. I’d better get off here and start crossing things off that list! I’ll be back tomorrow- hopefully- with some finishes!

Breakfast…..check!