MISSED IT!

GRRRRRR......

Every Memorial Day in our town there is a wonderful tradition where our local veterans group goes to each individual cemetery in our township and has a ceremony including 5 gun salute to celebrate our veterans.  They put flags on all of the veteran's grave sites and select one veteran in specific to honor, inviting the family to participate in the ceremony.  I love these special, small, intimate ceremonies.  We've been going to the cemetery where my brother is buried on Veteran's day for 10 years.  Last year we didn't quite make it so this year we looked in the newspaper for the time.  All the other cemeteries were listed but ours wasn't listed.  So, we made an educated guess based on the last ceremony listed and the distance the whole group had to travel and showed up at the cemetery for the ceremony and MISSED IT!  We got there just as they were dispersing.  I was sooooo upset.  We looked at the flyer posted @ the cemetery and found that the newspaper even had it printed wrong.  They had everything off by an hour.  Grrrr.....

So we missed the ceremony.

but....

we did get our traditional family pictures.

the group's much smaller this year than in the past.

note the delighted look on teenage daughter's face:)

We'll try again next year.

I have some REALLY happy birds!

I have some REALLY happy birds!

So, my title has 2 meanings.

1) the birds in my backyard seem very happy since they've found such a ready food supply in my garden.  So far they've demolished what was left of my cucumbers AND started on my zuccinni.  My super problem solving hubby has come up with a possible solution.  I will post a pic later to show.  Time will tell whether it will work!

2)  My friend Melissa is on vacation with her family.  She asked me to 'bird sit'.  So, I have two cockatails, Mooch and Spice.  We're trying to decide if we like the extra exuberant noise in our quiet household or not.  Hmmm.....

I think I'm OK with failure

We have had a vegetable garden before.  We've had several.   They've been small but relatively productive.  I've always bought nursery plants. This year we decided to learn some self sufficiency and built 5 raised beds and started many of our plants from seed. At first this was a tremendously successful event.  I loved watching my little seeds come up, all lined up on the bookshelf in front of our windows in the livingroom.  It was so satisfying and beautiful.  May first I planted my garden.  I felt such a tremendous sense of pride looking over all my little baby plantlets and freshly turned soil.  Several days later it HAILED!!!!  Nearly everything with the exception of my cucumbers wich were seeds and my peas wich are tremendously resilient little buggers were smashed and frozen.    My poor beautiful little tomatos, spinach.,..gorgeous little peppers....all decimated in about 60 seconds.  I grieved and waited to see if anything survived and came back. Some came back.  Most didn't.  So, I started a few new starts inside and they're thriving.  Problem is, I can grow them but I don't know if they will have enough time to produce...  So, I have three choices.

first choice:  buy some starter plants so that I can have a garden this year

second choice:  keep growing from seed and see where it goes

third choice: buy some starts and keep growing from seed and see if they end up in the same place or not.

I think I'm going to go with choice three.  I think I just need to experience the whole process for myself...even if it fails.

So right now I have about 9 pea plants, 1 spinach, 1 carrot, 8 or 9 cucumbers,  3-4 teenie tiny little tomato plants, 1 cilantro, some dill......... Let's see how they do??  Can they help supplement the food for a family of 3?  We'll see....

By the way.  Yesterday I had about 20 cucumbers (1/2 pickeling, 1/2 eating) and today it HAILED AGAIN!  TWICE!!!!! about 1/2 of my little cucumbers got totally smashed and a few others just have some significant dings. 

It doesn't usually hail this time of year in our part of Oregon.

I Want a Silhouette!

 OK...so you already know I'm a little crazy when it comes to my crafting.  Several years ago my darling hubby bought a Cricut for me and it's been my favorite tool EVER.  I use it constantly.  It's just a little 6x12 model (the smaller one) but I can do so friggin much with this thing.....BUT being me....I hate limiations.  When I want to create whatever is in my head I want to just DO IT and not be slowed down by technicalities like only being able to access certain fonts, or certain sizes, etc....

Soooo..... then comes the Silhouette machine.  I've been drooling over this fabulous machine for a while now...drool...drool....drooooool.  CAN  NOT AFFORD IT:(

So, this blog that I follow called How Does She is having a contest to win a free Silhouette and other cool free stuff with the Silhouette.  I NEVER enter these things but I did today!  Check it out!  You could enter too and if one of us wins maybe I could use your brand new toy! Unless you live far away......

check out the silhouette here @I Want a Silhouette!!

Thoughts on mother's Day.

Mother's Day is not one of my favorite days.  For a long time I avoided mother's Day if at all possible. i hated being chased down the hallways of church by well meaning youth to take flowers and such for mother's day.  It was an oppressive day.  An example of where I failed in life.  Now, I know I didn't really fail but logic doesn't really enter into certain matters of the heart.  Then, we adopted Peekaboo.  For several years I was able to slough off that negative feeling surrounding mother's day and just experience it.  I am a mother and I took comfort in that.  But, after a while I found myself dreading mother's day again.  I try really hard to enjoy it.  My hubby and beautiful daughter try so hard to make it special but I still struggle.  Maybe I always will, maybe eventually it will fade away....

I had an interesting experience a week ago.  My Co-leader was teaching my Activity Day Girl's Group about Mother's and one of my girl's looks up at me and says "I bet you're so excited."  and I said "for what?"  She said "for Mother's Day" and I asked "why?"...genuinely baffled by the direction of this conversation....and she said "because you've got a daughter".  This is a girl who lost her mother young in life (and she's still so young).  She has a step mother who loves her and guides her as if she is her own but I think she still feels the loss of her mother.  To her it was exciting that I got to spend Mother's Day with my daughter.  I thought that was such a pure, sweet notion.  I tried hard to feel more on Mother's Day than I usually do.  It was a struggle but I was definitely grateful to spend Mother's Day with my daughter.

this is my Peekaboo

Why does she look so bored?

I'm taking pictures....again.....

I just want one really cute picture of her.

I love the yellow dress she's wearing.

We bought it in Portland a couple of weeks ago.

It's yellow eyelet.

She's one of the few people I know who looks beautiful in yellow.

When she was little I used to dress her in yellow all the time.

I called her Sunny Sarah.

She would smile and laugh

while tearing apart my house!

This is my mother-in-law JoAnn.  She came down and spent Mother's Day with us.  John and Boo made us dinner and served it on our back covered patio area (wish I had a picture).  It was really sweet.

Here is John and his mom Jo. JoAnn came and spent a large portion of the day with us.  She brought old home movies that are still on the old projector reels.  We set up a screen in our livingroom and watched old home movies.  John had to keep fixing the projector but by the time he finished it was working really well.  WE found old home videos of his Uncle Joe and his family.  Uncle Joe and his wife and 3 kids were killed in a plane crash 36 years ago.  JoAnn didn't know that they had these videos so it was a big find!

Since we got photos of everyone else we had to get one of me and Jo.

WE had a lovely mother's day together.

Happy National Scrapbooking Day!

Ok,

so I know my blog mostly gets read by my mom and Sisters and a few close friends so I know All of you know I scrapbook and that I love it!!! Today is National Scrapbooking Day! Did you know scrapbooking has it's own day? I learned it recently. I think it's GREAT! Why does scrapbooking have it's own day? Is it to shame us to 'catch up' on our scrapbooking? Is it to promote scrapbooking projects and companies? Is it to remind us to take one day to document our personal lives? It's probably a bit of all of this!

Here's my take. No one should be ashamed for not being perfectly caught up in their scrapbooking or not having a super cute book out for display or to give children or grand children. Scrapbooking is for me a creative way of showing my family my feelings for them. I say in pictures what I don't say so well in words. When I first started scrapbooking it was in the early dawn of acid free photo albums. There was not much available. The techniques were to basically cut out a picture, mount it in an acid free album with acid free glue or adhesive and decorate with cute stickers. The message was to get our photos out of dangerous 'acidic' albums and into a non-'acidic' album, and to lable our picutres for future generations. Today the techniques are worlds more sophisticated, and our supply options are endless. The main message hasn't changed much. Now the message is to get our photos off our computers, out of our boxes and yes, our old acidic albums and get them into a nice acid free environment (most everything is considered acid free now since rules have changed) and to lable our pictures.

So, today in honor of national scrapbooking day I dare you to make one scrapbook page today. You can do it on Heritage Makers (even if you do not publish!!), you can do it with craft paper, I don't care. Do one page that expresses something you want to share with future generations!

I have here an example of a page I did recently. I love it! I want thought it would be helpful for you to have an example to copy. Please feel free....

I did!!

(this is the same layout i used for my Kara page. I used "almost amusing" and paper shapers - basic (read: FREE) digital art in Heritage Makers, on an 8x8 individual scrapbook page - $2.95)

HAVE FUN! SCRAPBOOKING IS NOT A CHORE!!!!