Wordless Wednesday

Max's Birthday

A little late, but Happy Birthday Max!

Wordless Wednesday

Quote of the Day

"Whoever is happy will make others happy, too."

Mark Twain

Photo of the Day

Dreams

I had a strange dream last night. To those of you who know me, this is really nothing new, but it had a different quality to it than my normal, run of the mill, someone is trying to kill me dreams. First of all, I was in the Olympics. Which to many of you is not strange at all considering the Olympics are everywhere right now; except, I haven’t seen one second of them. Not because I don’t care, actually the Winter Olympics are my favorite; I just haven’t had the TV on at all in the past week.

I was given a pony, with a saddle that was too small, and my legs were up around my chest. For some reason, I was afraid of the pony (really strange since I grew up on a horse) and then they just sent me out into the snow without any snow clothes. I tried to fix the saddle, but my trainers kept telling me I was doing it wrong. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, or where I was supposed to go, only that I was in a competition and I had better win because all of my team mates were depending on me.

In other words, I was in a race, with the wrong equipment, no protection and no directions – sounds kind of like life and parenting in many respects. How often are we given all of the information before we are required to make life altering decisions? How often do we feel ill-equipped and afraid of the tools we are given? How often do we have other people who supposedly know better, telling us the way we are trying to fix our lives to make it easier or better is the wrong way? How often do we know where we are going? Or how often do we feel the weight of trying to take care of our families, children and everyone else who we have signed up to be in the race with?

I do know that I miss the feeling of being on my horse, running through a field. The sense of freedom. The feeling of the horse’s power underneath me. The feeling of the wind on my face. The smell of the horse and the ground being turned up by her hooves. The sense of just being. When I was riding my horse, I was in the moment. I was relaxed. I was confident. I was happy. I wasn’t striving for someone to like me, or to do it right, or to be successful, or make decisions – I just was.

Joy is my project for this year. Learning to be in the moment, to enjoy every day and every gift God has given me. Not looking to the troubles of tomorrow, but relishing every day. Along with this comes trust. Trusting in God. Learning to trust myself – not spending my time constantly second guessing. Trusting others. And trusting that joy isn’t something that can be taken away.

Before and After

I have been looking for months for new dressers for the boys. Ryan is getting so big, that his pants no longer fit in his drawers very well. But then, they decided to use Max's dresser as a ladder and broke his drawers. I have also been looking for a dresser for my front entry way to help coral the boys shoes, backpacks, papers and such.

Since I want a good quality, wood dresser, I'm trying to find dressers at garage sales or thrift stores. Thus, it has taken quite a while to find even one. Here's the first one I've found:

With the help of the boys, I sanded it down and repainted it:

We painted the insides of the drawers orange and decoupaged an old atlas for the bottoms:

Then, I painted the pulls black and decoupaged the atlas onto the fronts:

Overall, I am so pleased with how it turned out! And Max loves it!

Ryan's Birthday

Ryan turned eight last week!

Ryan opening Rock Hero...which turned out to be broken and we had to take it back to Walmart and had the absolutely worst experience with customer service ever!!! To the point that I will never shop at Walmart agian if I can help it. It took us over 2 hours in the store and even then they wanted us to go back to the same store we got it from accross town. They didn't seem to understand that the other store didn't have any more and that's why we are at this store...Walmart gives me panic attacks...Sorry for the rant!

After we got home with a non-broken Rock Hero and we figured out how to use to use it - that's when the fun began!!!

The next day, we went bowling for his party. It was a blast! Definitely a must do again!

Grandma helping Max.

And here is Shelly and their little sister.

Happy Birthday Andi

Today is my wonderfully sweet, beautiful and talented friend's birthday. She is such an amazing woman!

Here she is with her equally sweet sister-in-love helping to pack up a friends home.

I have already said that Andi is sweet and wonderful, but she is the one I call when I need a quick smile. She is also the one I call when I find out about an amazing garage sale, estate sale or rummage event. The only problem with Andi, is we have the same taste...which can create issues about who saw it first!

Last week, I found a new thrift store and found some absolutely fabulous things to bring home (not that my home needs any new things in it). One of the items was this cake stand/candy dish?

On the way home, I remembered that Target had some very small succulents for sale in the garden department and wouldn't this dish look fabulous filled with succulents? Needless to say, the car veered into the Target parking lot and the succulents left Target and immediately were nestled into their new home.

The entire time I was creating this dish, I kept thinking of my friend Andi and how much she would love this. The next morning I discovered that her birthday was coming up in three days....

School Valentines

I don't like Valentines Day. There are many reasons why it just seems like an overpriced media hype in a culture where we are really don't need to spend even more money on things we really don't need. Besides, it tends to set couple up for failure. All of this expectation, but really shouldn't we treating each other nice every month or even week?

This brings me to school Valentines. Every year it sort of sneaks up on me. I know it's coming. But, I end up at the drug store on the corner, early before school starts, and signing stupid cards that the kids will just be throwing away as soon as they get home in an effort to get whatever candy they can find, as I'm trying to drop the kids off at school.

And every year, I tell myself I will do something fun and cool for the kids for Valentines...hasn't happened yet. Mainly because I don't think the kids would appreciate it. Not my kids, they love it when I do things, but the other kids in their classes just don't get it...Which brings up a good point - do I only do nice things for people who will appreciate it, or do I do nice things for everyone?

By the way, this is what I wanted to do: hot chocolate on a stick...still going to try it out, but probably just for family and friends. It looks so amazing! And if you are looking for some gifts to give, she has an awesome blog all about gift giving...

Story People

Enough Fluid

I try not to cry about everything I've done wrong she said,

because I don't get enough fluids as it is already.

A few years ago, Darrin introduced me to the Story People. They write wonderful little poems, have several books, and he's an awesome artist too! You can sign up for a daily poem...

What's Blooming

Here's what's blooming in my yard this weekend...

The Sad State of My Garden

My garden did not perform well this past year. Actually, to say it was pretty bad would be an understatement! Part of the problem was that I did not give it the attention it deserved - just too much going on. Secondly, I did a huge expansion of the my original space. Because the ground was so compacted and terrible, I brought in loads and loads of compost as well as shredded leaves, horse manure, chicken manure, shredded bills, straw and just about anything else I could find and think of to use. Not sure the plants like this very much.

And the plants themselves just acted weird. I would get blooms, but no fruit set. Both the tomatoes and potatoes ended up with blight, and even the over producing squash just languished. I had one tomato plant that gave me one tomato. And three plants that didn't produce a single ripe tomato all year! The grapes weren't happy campers either.

The surprise star of the garden was the lone eggplant planted next to the driveway - It produced at least two dozen nice sized eggplants if not more.

I was going to plant a cover crop this fall and turn everything over and try again this spring, however the possibility of losing my house has me not wanting to put much effort into something I might not see.

As I'm writing this, I am reminded of a book I recently read, Farm City. It was a great book, full of humor and city-bound, homesteading insights, where the author farmed an empty plot next door with the constant threat of having everything torn down. But she did it anyway, for the love of growing and harvesting and seeing living things thrive.

I love to garden. That's why I became a Master Gardener. But lately, it has become just one more thing that's not getting done right. I guess that is my perfectionism/procrastination coming out - if it can't be done perfect, why do it at all?! And after all that hard work, to see everything just fail...

The state of my yard and garden is atrocious! But last weekend I got out there for a while and pulled all the dead plants out of the garden, cleaned out the chicken coop and spread it over the top of the beds and let the chickens in to scratch and claw away...I got out my seeds and garlic heads which I will plant when this deluge stops...If I get to harvest - that's just a bonus!

Brightening Things Up

I have been trying to brighten things up a little in my house. When I originally decorated it, I was married and everything turned out very masculine. Not on purpose, but I didn't want it too girly. I love dark woods and warm colors. Well, that combination tends to be fairly masculine...

After the divorce I started lightening up a little. I replaced the gold curtains with white, I made bright happy pillows for the couch, I have a beautiful white duvet cover for the spring and summer. But, a lot of my furniture is still very dark and probably will be for quite a while - mainly because I have two growing, active, dirty little boys. A white couch is not conducive to anybody's sanity...

A few weeks ago, I found a pretty, light colored, cheap quilt to use as a table cloth. There is NO WAY I could have used one of the many (as in hundreds) of quilts in my family since my mother is a hard-core quilter and quilts are heirlooms and need to be protected...e.i. she gets mad if the boys use their quilts off their beds, as in dragging them around the house or any of the other things that boys do with blankets...

I painted some candlesticks that I have had for about 5 years white and moved them together with some white containers I have bulbs growing in.

I'm finding that I have been very attracted to romantic, peaceful looking spaces...maybe my imagination is trying to tell me something.

New Camera and Strap

I've been wanting a nice camera for a very long time. I used to love photography and my dad was always very encouraging. He bought me used darkroom equipment and a nice, used camera when I was about 13 and it was something we shared together. However, after I found boys and moved away to college, photography sort of went by the wayside. Though I never lost my love of beautiful pictures and always "see" pictures wherever I am.

To say that digital photography has revolutionized the way we take and view pictures, is an obvious understatement. Both my father and I still have our film Minoltas and my dad has several very nice lenses to go with his. But all our photography stuff has been sitting in a corner unused.

After some research on new DSLRs, turns out, Sony bought out Minolta and their new DSLRs take the old Minolta lenses!!! But, I haven't been purchasing anything new. I have been thinking about this camera for the past 8 months or so...

One of the advantages to purging, is selling. I usually donate all of our unused stuff, but this time I decided to list my old books and textbooks on half.com. And they have been selling! Add that money to the unexpected money I received from Christmas, I had enough money to purchase my new camera.

Strangely, I think I might actually be a reformed shopaholic, because I have felt a little guilty about this purchase! Usually after purchasing something I really want - I'm completely excited and happy...

I've been trying to play around with my new camera when I have any spare time (which isn't much, unless it's after 10 pm and then I'm usually horizontal and mindless...)

All of this rambling is to say that I am embracing my new camera and will no longer feel guilty for buying something nice for myself...

Soon, I will be posting pictures! Hopefully, even some good ones...

So, look at the the beautiful strap!!!

I saw this tutorial a while back on Design Sponge, and I promptly made this while the battery was charging before I could even take a picture...