Lampshades

Before I went to work this evening I did my other job - clean the house. I would prefer to get a poke in the eye with a sharp stick instead of doing these thankless chores. I pretty much side with the idea that dust is a protective covering for furniture, and I have been protecting my nice things quite well.

The leader of our childrens' ministry had asked if we would host a meeting at our home on Sunday after church. Since we don't have a real church building yet, it's hard to corral little ones once all the ministry equipment is removed and packed away, hence the need to meet somewhere convenient for everyone. It was a pretty good deal for me. I cleaned, my husband and daughter pitched in, and the ministry leader shows up with paper plates, prepared food and cold drinks. (and a good meeting too.)

We have an antique pie safe near the front door. Over it hangs a beautiful print of the Lion and the Lamb and on top of the cabinet is a sculpture of a lion and a lamb, a house warming gift from my sister. About a week before the meeting my daughter had left a lampshade on a chair and I thought it would be funny to put the shade on top the lion's head and see if anyone would notice. Well, after the meeting on my way to the next event that evening, there it was, the lion with a lampshade on it's head, sitting on a nice thick layer of furniture protectant. Then I gave myself the gift of humility and laughter.

Time Well Spent

I picked up my five yr old grandson today after preschool and went out on our own field trip to my favorite store, Leftovers, Etc. This is a recycle store for teachers/scout leaders and artists. You never know what's there so I go about once a week. You can fill, I mean STUFF, a large grocery bag for only $7, and a kid can get a lunch bag for just a buck.

So off we go, first to get gas, which is still going down and is now at $2.24 per gallon, and helped ourselves to Cheetos and root beer to snack on during the 25 mile trip to the store.

He is learning sounds and how they go together, but hasn't really learned to read yet. He asked about every truck logo, every billboard, every thing...how do you spell ____, how do you spell ___ backwards? How would he know? He can't spell yet!

Well, we get to Leftovers and he immediately fell in love with the place. He filled his bag in no time and then began to add interesting things to make platforms and things for his super hero toys to jump from. We had a delightful time and though I could easily have spent another hour in there I knew he was getting tired.

He wanted to go to El Magueys and have his favorite, a "cheese-a-dilla". The menu said cheesy quesadilla, but the waiter translated just fine. We were in the middle of dinner when he asked how to spell "ortreat". I thought I missed something so I asked him to repeat and yes, he said "ortreat". You know, as in trick ortreat.

We were then 12 miles away from home and he quieted down quite a bit, then at the quarter mile mark from home his little head tipped to one side one last time and he fell asleep. That's the moment you know you have received much, much more than you could have ever given.

Tomorrow we'll be working on that Super hero platform.

Smoke in my eyes

We invited our home team and my daughter's home team from church to have a bonfire at our house last Sunday evening. Ron worked to get two utility carts to hook up to his riding mower so he could give little kids a ride around the pond while Jenn and I made fresh apple pies and potato salad to add to the feast.

Friday night our youth from church had rented a big bungee-run blow up thing for their lock-in. Our pastor that oversees all chilren's and youth ministries, brought it in on Sunday morning to play games with the kids between services. Then someone thought, since we already had it payed for we could bring it to the bonfire too. So that's how we got this super big blow up toy for everyone to play in/on. Mostly the older youth and the adults could put on the vests and see how far they could run before being slammed back to the starting point. I know about that "slammed back" part as I was one who went flying back by the seat of my pants. The children mostly jumped on it and climbed all over it and a good time was had by all.

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I found some children raking leaves (hmmm...we live on three acres here with lots of trees) up to the slide on the swing set. Then they were taking turns sliding into the leaves. This way they only had to rake a small pile and use it over and over. Clever children. Wouldn't you know, this summer my husband and daughter built this great swingset/fort and spent a small fortune for it, and look at what the kiddos liked the most...yes, that's a home made tire swing.


The train ride around the pond was a lot of fun too. When Ron would come back with a load of kids you could hear them chant "one more time, one more time". I asked a friend why she thought the kids were having so much fun in a cart that only went 5 mph, and she said it wasn't a video game! It was something out of their daily routine.



I'm already working on a plan for next year to be able to roast the hot dogs without melting my eyebrows. The fire was so hot that even with Ron's 5 ft. long hot dog poles it was hard to stay close to the fire long enough to get those dogs warm on the inside without being burned on the outside. Though it was hot, it just gave us something to talk about...like the smoke getting in our eyes no matter where we stood.

We have been having people over for bonfires for years and I do believe we have never had weather as nice as we did for this one. There was just enough chill in the air when the sun went down to put on a jacket, and some kids even put their shoes back on!

The 100 Things I Love Challenge

On SnaggingStampers Kay challenged us to record in any way we wished, "The One Hundred Things that Make Me Happy". I decided I would record my 100 in photographs. This has been a bigger challenge (it usually is) than I expected. Here are a few pics I took this week:


I love fence rows. This one is down the road from our house.


When I opened my pictures there were these strange ones of my hand. I moved it around at different angles, then opened the next one and the next and then realized I was using my hand to block out some sun to catch a glimpse of the spider web in our window!!! So there's what my hand looks like and there's a spun web - another thing that makes me happy. We all love to watch spiders spin, and this year they have not disappointed us in the least. We had two huge webs in our family room windows and we couldn't bring ourselves to destroy them when we were having company over.


I was delighted to run across these BlackBerry Lilies when we went apple picking. After the lily flower blooms and dies, a pod forms then these little berries appear looking a lot like blackberries! I had some of these growing at our old house, but forgot to bring along some roots when we moved. Now I'll have to see where I can buy some to plant.

29-Day Giving Challenge

This week I joined a group called 29-Day Giving Challenge. Check it out here: http://givingchallenge.ning.com/

The idea is to give something away every day for 29 days. There are lots of caring people on the site and many of them (as do I) have blogs of their "gives" for each day which range from spending special time with their family, sending a card to a friend, or doing a Random Act of Kindness to a stranger. It's full of great ideas and of course the whole idea behind it is to change the world by changing people.

Some of the members are on their fourth round of 29 days of giving! It's been real fun for me and it would be great to see you join up!

Thrifty Thursday, September 18

Thrifty Thursdays

About once a week I visit my favorite place, Leftovers, Etc. For $7.00 you can fill a grocery bag with whatever is in the store. The concept of the store is to provide free/affordable resources to educators, artists, scout groups,etc. The store is supplied by donations from it's own shoppers, and from corporations and businesses.

One never knows for sure what will be in stock, although you can always count on finding the usual items like pringle cans, coffee containers and such recycleables. My favorite areas are in the stationary and domestic departments where you can find all sorts of things pertaining to paper/art supplies, and fabric and crafts.

Because I work with children at church as the Craft Coordinator I'm always on the lookout for things that can be used in future projects. In the Spring I found a box of really good heavyweight paper and the whole box was $4. I have a cool die of a 3-d angel that the children will be making as give-a-ways at the Nursing home at Christmas. All summer I have been collecting things that can go on the angel's dress and wings.

If I went here to get something specific I would probably be somewhat disappointed, but I have learned to let this be my few hours of quiet time and my big $7.00 splurge on myself for the week.

Spring flowers in my yard

An Art project I got suckered into

I belong to a group of wonderful women who PIF (Pay It Forward) and Snag items related to scrapbooking, rubberstamping and altered arts. There are three levels of trading,Low Level value $0-$4.99, mid level value $5.00-14.99, and High Level value, $15 to $25.

First you decide the value of the item you want to trade off and place it with a good description on the right level database. If someone "snags" it, they pay 1 creditfrom their account and you earn 1 credit for your account on that board. Then you can use your credit to snag something of interest to you perhaps pif'd by a completely different person.

Ok, that's not too hard to understand. Well, one week we were having a game called Hand Made Hoopla sponsored by one of our members, Kay. She's a real live wire! Everything she does is done with excellence, and she urges us to do things like PIF with generosity, and do Random Acts of Kindness. Well she Piff'd a 26 day journal of what she called her ordinary life. Well, I snagged it before anyone else could! What a great way to learn more about a new friend.

Well, what I quickly learned about her is that she is really sneaky. Right after I snagged her journal she writes back and says, "well, you know, now you have to keep a journal for 26 days too." It didn't sound so hard. I've kept spiritual journals before so I thought this would be pretty easy, but I was wrong. I don't do anything easy.

The book had to be at least 3x5 inches. I'd been wanting to make a book using tabbed index dividers so that's what I settled on. I also found a tablet of paper by K&Company called Classic K Margo, and used these papers to give the book a little continuity.

Above are a few pictures of the journal. The first is the cover and an idea of how thick it is. The next is an entry about procrastinating on my Crow pages for a Fat Book project, and the third one is a fun quote I found after seeing some beautiful rainbows this summer.

Finding Free Flowers for your garden

Two summers ago while my sister was visiting we decided to dig up some Black Eyed Susans from across the road in an otherwise empty field. It is always hot in Missouri during the summer, but in August the humidity added to the heat makes being outdoors a real challenge. Also most educated people know the odds of transplanting anything in August and seeing it grow are somewhere between slim and none. We didn't let this bit of information get in our way. We waited until dusk to start the project.

We pushed our wheelbarrow full of bright yellow flowers across the road, down the long drive and arrived at the prepared destination in the large back yard all ready to plant and water. Excited about our new flower bed, the following morning we strolled out to check the progress, fully expecting to see tall stems holding up cheerful flower faces, only to find a single flower had survived the transplant. It was a sad moment in time. Just about as sad as when my sister and I both discovered we had also walked through poison ivy and had it everywhere. EVERYWHERE. There were doctor visits, prednisone prescriptions, and topical creams times two, and that's all we had to show for our efforts...along with a single standing, albeit pitiful looking, Black Eyed Susan.

August came and went, then fall and winter set in and sometime in April my husband hired a man with an earth moving machine to come grade the back yard. He even questioned me about the flower grave yard and I told him I didn't believe there was a chance of resurrection, so the man scooped up the soil and spread it around the yard.

In May my dear husband took his mother on a week's trip to visit her sister and I took a week off work to work some more on my perennial garden. It was during this week that no one was home to cut the grass and our entire back yard began to bloom in little yellow Black Eyed Susans. In one day I dug up and moved over 50 plants. This is the second season the flowers have come up in my garden...and they are still popping up in the yard!

Ecclesiastes 7:8 says, "The end of a matter is better than its beginning"