Showing posts with label daily digest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daily digest. Show all posts

9/13/2010

giddyap! {there's really no point to this post}

We love us some horses here in this town! 
Each year we all line the streets for an hour-long parade of the state's finest equestrian blood. 
This was the weekend for it.

Saturday we spent in front of the college football game and eating cake for my sister in law's birthday and Sunday we spent at church, up in our junk room, at this parade, 
and at the kitchen table for dinner with friends.
It was a great weekend, full of beautiful weather, good food, and extreme productivity! 
Yesss!!!

That room upstairs is nearly empty and I'm faced with the exciting? challenge of incorporating that deer head and two birds into my quirky, whimsical, IKEA-inspired playroom design...Yikes!

This week I hope to decide on paint, order fabric, and come up with a plan for those animals...I"m thinking painting the sky on a wall and hanging the birds on it? Hmmm...it can't be too serious...but not too funny or my dear husband that shot them will be quite dismayed.

I'm also faced this week with a decision to make about attending this semester of our homeschool choir~ we don't do well with an overload of structured activities, and our full day of classes at the homeschool co-op seems like it's enough. I"m torn, though, because choir is fantastic, and our teacher is even more fantastic and it's so good for the boys...

Oh, I did forget to mention that on Sunday we also hauled one of our area rugs out to the backyard, put it on a piece of plastic over a piece of plywood, and I cleaned it with our carpet shampooer.
That was some fantastic people-watching for our perpetually out-of-doors neighbors, I'm sure!

I struggled with that stupid, leaky behemoth for nearly two hours...leaves and bugs falling on the rug, dirty water puddling everywhere, wet carpet slipping on wet plastic...
The carpet was cleaner, but much wetter than it should have been and VERY heavy!
We clumsily dragged it to the back of the yard and heaved it over a couple sawhorses to dry only to have the sawhorses collapse...
After baking in the sun for about 5 hours, it's not as clean as I'd like it to be, but at least there's no question that the dog fur and fleas are totally gone!

And finally, I got my long-awaited steam mop a couple days ago! Yipee! Come and enjoy a meal on my kitchen floor sometime! This baby heats up to over 200 degrees, hot enough to sanitize even the dirtiest, pee-encrusted bathroom floor...AND you can clip on any dishtowel, etc. if the two included mop pads are in the wash...NICE!

Now I leave you with a quote from one of my favorite vintage children's stories, 
The Gingham Dog and The Calico Cat (Eugene Field)

The gingham dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat;
'T was half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
Nor one nor t' other had slept a wink!
The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate
Appeared to know as sure as fate
There was going to be a terrible spat.
(I wasn't there; I simply state
What was told to me by the Chinese plate!)
 
{Something about this story reminds me of my children tattling on each other...}


7/31/2010

Seriously??


I have this thing for Jelly Belly jelly beans. 

When I was in junior high school, a favorite weekend activity for me and my gal pals was to have my parents drive us to this certain far-away mall where they sold Jelly Belly beans in bulk. 

Oh yeah. Umm-hmm. Party on!

I still love them, for their intense flavors, 
the way they feel when I reach in the bag, like smooth, sugary pebbles, 
and the way they look so amazing nestled in a vintage glass jar on my window sill.

As I found out yesterday, I have one more reason to love them...
they look beautiful scattered across my black and white tile floor amidst bits of said sparkling vintage glass!






7/30/2010

Yesterday...


my pet bunny and I sat on the bed for a while 
and made some laundry soap



she stirred diligently
but I took the bowl away to measure out the other ingredients
just in case


despite my carefulness, 
we had a soap spill 
and 
Daddy and I had gritty sheets last night!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
update: 

Here's the recipe I use: 
1 bar Fels Naptha soap (grated), 1C washing soda, 1C Borax 
and
here's a website with more recipes using variations of the same ingredients.

and yes, I like it so far!



5/03/2010

1000 words

I don't have a picture, so I need 1000 words, right?

Monday is here, and we have a very fun week ahead!  
Ava starts her ballet/tap/tumbling class tomorrow, we have our last choir rehearsal before the concert, we have a field trip to Dawes Arboretum with our homeschool group, we have the first of two choir concerts on Friday, creeking at a local park with my parents (my dad is a volunteer guide and knows all the "good places" to play!) a birthday party for a darling little girl, and another mother's day celebration on Sunday with my in-laws

The Weather Man promises mostly sunny weather and temperatures in the low 70's

Is there an Attitude Man that promises mostly sunny dispositions and tantrums in the "low occurrence" zone?



4/29/2010

4.28.10


Today was beautiful outside, but windy and NOT warm. I'm soooo ready for the heat of summer. I feel like a lizard; I need to lay on a sunny rock to soak up some energy!!

I pushed aside other things to finally work on Ava's clothing situation. I do a little shopping ahead throughout the year mostly at thrift shops, and then when that particular season rolls around, I augment with a few brand-new items.

For some reason there wasn't a whole lot that I had for her this summer, so I ended up spending more than I would normally.  We got some cute stuff, though, and she had fun trying it on today while I made outfits with her old stuff and sorted out donations and too-smalls.

I also made bread, tweaked the recipe a little again, and was NOT disappointed! We'll see how it tastes tomorrow; that's always the test with homemade bread.

Benji had a really good attitude today while we worked on reading, and is progressing nicely all of a sudden. I have a feeling that by the end of the summer he'll be off and rollin'. That will be a big relief!

The kids ended up outside most of the day (when they weren't eating or doing math and reading), and played exterminator, filling the carpenter bee holes in our play set with silly string from the dollar store!!

I skipped my workout this morning, trying to give my poor shins a break. Since I"ve stopped running, they feel a ton better, but are still abnormally sore throughout the day.  I'm also still freaking out about my hair loss.  It seems to have tapered off in the past couple days, but now I'm left with about 1/3 less hair and it's making me quite depressed. My hair is one of the few things I actually like about my physical appearance, and never took for granted, since I had been a hairdresser and seen how awful thin hair can be. I guess now it's my turn!

It will grow back, and no one can tell (or maybe everyone is lying to me!), so I probably need to just suck it up and make the best of it till it's back to normal...Kick in quickly, B vitamins and thyroid supplements!!!

I played around with my new Speedlite flash today and made some progress...I'm a self-teacher, I learn best by trial and error. I have had some help from a friend's husband who is a photographer for our big-city newspaper, and that has been great to get me started. I'm looking forward to getting a better grasp on how to adjust everything.

It's late now, I really should be in bed, and the old drafty windows by my computer are letting in the cold night air and my hands are freezing!!

~till tomorrow

4/23/2010

4.23.10

Today was beautiful!  I started it by waking up even earlier (WaHOO!, I'm slowly working towards my goal of 6am) and doing a really great 40 min. cardio session on the treadmill.  At my chiro's yesterday, she said she was worried about stress fractures in my shins because I was continuing to have pain when I was running, so no more running for me for many months! *sigh* So I resigned myself to an extra long workout of power walking.  It was actually great and after about 10 min. of reminding myself not to run, I actually (sort of) enjoyed it.

Then we had our women's group at church. We have a couple sweet girls that babysit for us, so it's unadulterated adult time, with good teaching and prayer. It was great today, we were wrapping up our series on the power of words, and we all shared testimonies about encouragement.

I'm going to head up a team to remodel the three bathrooms at our church building, and so we had our preliminary meeting after group. That also went really well and I am totally psyched about turning our drab,dimly lit, stinky bathrooms into welcoming retreats!! High hopes for a lowly bathroom, right? Something involving re-claimed chandeliers!

Afterward, I had to lay on a chair in the backyard while the kids played because on came another headache. It lingered through a dose of Tylenol, a siesta in the sun, an impromptu visit from a friend and her kids, and it's threatening to stick around for our bible study tonight.

I did not have the productive day I had hoped, but it was a beautiful day nonetheless, filled with sunshine and Sonshine!

I'm off to snuggle with an ice pack!

~till tomorrow~

4/22/2010

4.22.10

{I'd like to post a little daily journal this summer}


This morning we all woke early for a 9:30 appointment with our beloved holistic chiropractor, Dr. Jen, about 50 minutes away.  The appointments went well, I'm needing some B vitamins and thyroid support to stop the alarming amount of hair loss that's been occurring lately. Benji is still allergic to eggs, oats, wheat and dairy, but is still testing OK to eat corn. Whew! I'd like to procure a duck egg from someone and have her test that on him to see if he can eat those.

Afterward, we went to a nearby health food store so I could get our organic oats, organic popcorn (grains are VERY heavily sprayed with pesticides- a very important item to get organically if you need to pick and choose), goat yogurt, raw milk cheese, and raw honey for the honey/garlic cough medicine I make for the kids.

Then I dropped the kids off at my parent's house and went to Target (LOVE that store!) and Old Navy to finish up Ava's wardrobe for the summer.  Got some good deals, but would have preferred to find it all for 1/2 price at the Goodwill store! They just didn't have much for her this time.

Now we're home, it's after 6, and I have dinner cooking. Free range, organic chicken drumsticks, fresh organic baby salad greens, and strawberry shortcake (from scratch, of course!). Yum!

After dinner, we're going outside to start spreading the 45 bags of mulch we got last weekend for our playground area. Alec's birthday party is this weekend, and we'll have 8 WILD boys using it like  monkeys at the zoo!

~till tomorrow

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