A Quick Post

 

I just thought I would stop in for a quick post. My feverfew is blooming. Isn't it lovely those little white daisies against the green. They make me so happy. They do look pretty this time of year. When I have a headache I do try to work around them and brush against them. Other that that, I think they stink.

I managed to finish two rugs this week. Both are patterns from Cathy at Orange Sink. She is one of my very, very favorite rug designers. When I hook her patterns, I forget what ever problem I may be having and just get caught up in her patterns.

This first rug is called Long May She Wave.

The second rug my very favorite, The 1820 Sunflower.

Both are going to stay home with me I think. Not my original plan. I was going to put them in my Etsy shop, but for some reason I just can't seem to make my rugs square. I can't figure out what on earth I am doing. Sometimes when Sasha runs in that pasture she runs sideways. It has something to do with her brain. I think I am having the same malady. I can't seem to make my rugs square. I measured these too. It has to be the problem with me.

Bottle Brush buds

I also wanted to give you a heads up. My dear friend Kim at Millie's Mats has started a new blog  Glass Half Full. She never fails to make me laugh and be entertained. If you are looking for a blog to follow along. I promise you will be glad you started following her in blogland. If not for her, I don't know if I would still be hooking rugs or blogging. She really was and is and  continues to be an inspiration for me.

I did a little painting and sanding today on a table I am going to use here in my office. I hope I can show you it soon. It has been a while since I did any thing like this. Ron let me use this sander he has. I had no idea he had this nifty piece of machinery. I was looking around for something else to sand when I was done. Hopefully now that it is warmer I will be playing in the woodpile again.

Have a delightful weekend,

~Kim~

"If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles."

---Doug Larson

Just Thinking

All flowers in this post are from last year.

I have been AWOL from blogging for a while. Have you noticed that if you aren't blogging every week, it gets easier to just not blog? That is how it is for me right now. Also I am having that malady that Thumper was warned about in Bambi, the movie not the book. If you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all.

 

 I am going to write about something today that is on my heart. When I was little and I would play,"When I grow up" I loved playing house. I loved cleaning and arranging and my favorite things to play with were stuffed animals and Raggedy Ann and Andy. I did have fleeting ideas of growing up and being a mother. Then when I did grow up and began this lovely part of my life as a mother. I can tell you the one thought I never had in my whole life was that I would be a mother-in-law. Not a single one! Ever!

 

I remember the morning when it dawned on me. I was one. There aren't too many books written on that.
I realized that I had two choices, I could be a good mother in law, like my grandmother was to my Dad. Or I could be one like Agnes Moorehead in Bewitched. I pondered that.

 

I am now a mother-in-law four times over. Here is the best advice I can give to those of you have not entered into this phase of your life. It isn't hard I don't think, it is just a matter of choice. Be nice.
Don't give advice until asked. Bite your tongue off if you have to. Love your new family member with your whole heart. See only the good and keep your eyes firmly shut to the things you don't. But most of all.
Love them, and love them and love them some more. Do not tell the mate the shortcomings of the other one.
Its their life, a new family. They will do things different from you. ITS OKAY!  They are learning and growing and trying new things.

When you get your feelings hurt, and you will. Go into your shower and cry your eyes out, and put on an happy face and forgive. Open your hands and don't hang on to your child that is now a man or a woman. They are grown up and they need to be treated as such, not a child any longer. Most importantly, the person God has brought into your family is a gift. They are a gift to your son or daughter and they are a gift to your family. Treat them as that, not as a enemy who has stolen your child.

 

I can tell you from experience now. It is so much easier for me to act like a A** That just comes natural to me. Being nice on the other hand is not. I make mistakes, and say things I shouldn't. Most of the things I stumble at are when I stop taking my own advice. Just ask Kessie and Ryan at Thanksgiving. My Mom part was in overdrive. I did and said things I shouldn't just because I was like a Momma Bear. When my girls have babies, I get pretty bossy. The one thing I have found, is my lovely family by marriage, is so forgiving and loving and understanding to me and my foibles.

Well now that I have that off my chest, I will get back to this mundane stuff I do around here. Like I have three rugs I need to get bound.

I hope your day is lovely, thank you for stopping by. I keep learning these things, and I just thought I would share them.

~Kim~

“She turned to the sunlight
    And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
    "Winter is dead.”
― A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young

A Grateful Heart

 

I didn't wake up this morning with a grateful heart. I just wanted you to know that right from the start.
I woke up sore, tired and sort of grumpy. You see, yesterday I decided it was time for spring cleaning. So I cleaned upstairs and down stairs. Even the stairs. I mopped and straightened. I was busy yesterday from sun up to sun down. I even managed to cook dinner.

Today though, is a different story. Then I read this. "It seems to me that my "cross" is each particular occasion when I am given the chance to "die"---that is, to offer up my own will whenever it crosses Christ's"
From A Lamp For My Feet, p. 118

 I was outside this morning,  reading of course. I was watching my hens wander around the yard, enjoying the freedom they have by not being in the chicken coop. I watched the cat sleep in the rocker next to me as she would every so often set the chair to rocking slowly. I came in the door to put my things away and the golden morning light was making a warm glow to all of the rooms. I looked around at my clean and straightened house. The quiet pressing in as I listened for sounds that someone was up. Then I was filled with a grateful heart.

I thought to myself, having a grateful heart is more about choosing instead of being. I can be grumpy. I don't have to stay grumpy. I can enjoy my work and look forward to the wonderful day filled with all kinds of good things. I have this beautiful, and lovely spring day ahead of me.

I realized I have the whole day today to make it a great day.

Happy Tuesday!!

~Kim~

“Happiness of heart can never be measured out and bundled up, it's intangible. We keep running after it, grasping for it, and the heat of our running so seldom brings it closer. But now and then there may be a moment. We look at something and know it is good and beautiful. Those moments are happiness.”
― Gladys Taber, Harvest at Stillmeadow

After The Weekend

 

Did you have a lovely weekend? I think the weekends just seem to fly by and I never seem to get even half of my to do list done. Last I checked it was 90 degrees. I thought I would go put my feet in the swimming pool.

 

I was expecting to have ice cubes for feet, but the water is already up to 70 degrees! The ground is really warming up.
Have you notice the fighting and stuff going on with the birds? One night I watched two mocking birds fight to what I thought was to the death. They fought out into the street and I was scared they were going to get hit by a car. Then in our back tree, a dove and a bluejay go at it all day long.

This is the tree.

See how bright the sun is today. How dark the shade. The grass is lovely to my bare feet.

They start fighting in the pine  then move over to the tree behind the porch.

It is so warm today the little pine-cones are popping like popcorn in the tree. It is such a nice little sound. I never knew pine-cones did that until we planted that tree.

I thought I would show you a picture of my pretty sweet peas. They smell so loud. I think in the morning I will cut a bunch and put them in one of my old Ball blue canning jars. One that I have that will never be used for canning.  Not in the new blue jars. It has to be the old one because the blue is a prettier color of blue. I am picky that way when it comes to flowers.  I am so glad I remembered to plant sweet peas in the fall.

Here is a rug I did manage to finish this weekend. That hit and miss border drove me crazy. It is a nice fat chicken though. I like fat chickens.

Its different I will say that.

I wish you the best of a new week. I was reading a book this weekend. One of the characters was telling the story of her life. How when she was growing up, she said, " She was cut from suck-it-up cloth." I have laughed about it all weekend. We had the same kind of childhood. I love writing like that.

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Thirty-Six Years Ago Today

 

Today is the day! Thirty-Six years ago today. I said yes. Not quite kicking and screaming but pretty close to it. I am so glad Ron always manages to talk me into things. My life is much happier, better and more exciting because of him. I am pretty boring I think. What I wanted to share today is our very first wedding anniversary story.

 

By the time we got to our first Anniversary in April 1981, we had our first little house and I was three months pregnant with our first baby.  Somewhere I got this bright idea. I wish I could remember why I got this idea but I don't.

I decided I would fix a romantic dinner for two. I would make Beef Wellington. Never mind that I didn't really know what it was but it sounded wonderful. I must have read my cook book over and over for days.
I did one thing that I finally brought it up the other day. Finally after all of these years, we can finally talk about it.

I got the bright idea to send a clown to his work. Why? All I can say was I thought it would be fun. At that time he worked for an oil company. I just shiver when I think that I did that. All of those men. Poor Ron.

I kept thinking he would call me after the clown came and laugh about it. The phone stayed silent. I thought to myself, maybe he is really busy. I fixed dinner and got the table set with candles and everything was perfect for when he walked though the door.

 

I watched anxiously out the windows waiting for his car to pull in the driveway. Dinner was perfect and ready. Finally he drove up. I met him at the door. He barely looked at me. He just brushed past, and went and put his briefcase up. There are very few times, I have made Ron mad. In fact, I could maybe come up with three. This has to be the maddest he has ever been at me and I was just shocked. He didn't like the clown. I don't think he really liked the dinner either. Now I know there must have been no end of the ribbing he got.

 

We made up I am sure but it has taken 35 years to talk about it. Until the next year on our anniversary. I showed up at his office to go out to lunch, and my hair was purple. Oh so purple,  purple as purple can be. No telling what ribbing he took from that.

I am so thankful that we didn't just live together as I begged him the night before our wedding. Not because I was afraid of him but what I was afraid I would do to him. I always have known I got the better end of the deal. I hope the Lord gives us 36 more years. I hope I am older and wiser. Well I know I got the older part down pretty good.

 

So today on this day, I am still the luckiest woman in the whole wide world. God has been very, very good to us. Happy Anniversary Ron!

Thanks for reading along,
~Kim~

I am a lineman for the county
And I drive the main road
Searchin' in the sun for another overload
I hear you singin' in the wire
I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita lineman is still on the line

I know I need a small vacation
But it don't look like rain
And if it snows that stretch down south
Won't ever stand the strain
And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita lineman is still on the line

And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita lineman is still on the line

Out and About

Boy!! Did we have a spring storm last night! The thunder and lighting was so intense that the doors sounded like someone was breaking in that was how close and loud the thunder was hitting and never stopped like the last part of a fireworks show. Lots of amazing rain though.

Our anniversary is next week. We thought yesterday would be a good day to not work around here and just go shopping and look at things. We went to a nursery that I have driven by but would have never known was there, but Ron did so we wandered around and looked at plants

Aralia Ming

Lemon Scented Geranium

  Finding Bonsai pots for his little trees is a bit of a challenge. The pots are sometimes worth more than the plants that are in them. We found this one which I thought was a pretty color.

Bonsai Pot

One Friday, Megan sent me a phone picture of this Hoosier Cabinet.

 

All of our married life, I have wanted one. Ron said that we would go look at it in person. It was only three hundred dollars, and I had just sold a rug, I knew it wasn't too far out of my budget. I also knew, I could double my money with just a little work to it.

There is just this one problem. In some cases the biggest problem. Me!!! Here is a secret. I don't do yard sales, I don't really like to go to antique stores nor do I ever go to an estate sale. I can go to one antique store in town, that I don't have a panic attack. I really wanted to see that cabinet so I made myself go.

We pulled up right in front. Great for a easy get away. We are having rain storms at night, but it is warm during the day so the air is humid. We walked to the front door, and the smell hit me, and if Ron hadn't been with me telling me I could do this, think of the cabinet. I would have turned around and got back in the car.

see how full the flowerbeds are this morning.

We walked in and I haven't seen the movie, but I know who the man is from it. Have you ever seen the movie Shawshank Redemption? There is a big guy in it and his eyes do this weird shaking thing. As soon as we walked in, there was a guy that looked just like that standing like a bouncer. It was weird and kinda creepy, but I pressed on toward the cabinet. We passed a older gentleman sitting in a chair, who looked like the bartender from the Shining. I was really starting to feel like I couldn't breathe. I could feel I was getting closer to the cabinet as I was walking past all of the displays. Faster and Faster.

I walked to it and just stared. Every thing in me was repulsed. I knew though, I had to look at it closely so once and for all I could say, I do not want one ever again. We looked it over. Really, it could be fixed up and sold as a really nice example and it has the flour sifter, but that person just can't be me. Anymore.

I kept telling myself, " ignore the feeling, you are in an antique store, you might as well just look around. So Ron and I power walked around that store, glancing around at things, then I saw the basement sign. Why I ask myself, do I do the things I do? Ron and I went down the steps to the even smellier basement. I should back up just a little, in this store the music is that old 40s kind of music and it sounds like it is being played through the store from a old record player. It is really starting to get to me too. Down in the basement, there is music playing, but I can hear voices. ( Is it ever good to admit to hearing voices?)  Ron is behind me some where as I am following the sound. I can't see anyone but I know they are just ahead of me.

I walk through a room, filled with old clothes, and shoes and the smell is worse, of old clothes and just old.
I turn to my right and there is this window, but it has wire over it. I kind of lean in and look and there is a very old movie playing in this room, like an old early talky movie. I sort of lean in a bit, and jump back as there are two old women sitting in rocking chairs watching the movie. One of the old women is holding a box of popcorn. Something doesn't look right to me, and as my eyes adjust, I realize they are manikins. But all I can think in my mind is they look like the Mom in Psycho. I just shiver and move past.

 I walked to the back of the store, there is a gate, with a sign that says "The mine is closed." I lean over and I can see a tunnel. In our downtown area, it is filled with tunnels. Supposedly they were built by the Chinese because this was China town long ago. All of these really old buildings interconnect. I have talked to people who have gone down in them, but had never seen one until yesterday. I think you could go in it if it was open. Not me though!!!

I am about finished. I am beyond hyperventilating. Ron and I are just about as creeped out as we ever have been. We go outside and I stand in front of the store right on 19th street taking deep breaths breathing in nice fresh air.

But since we are out and about, we went driving around looking at other things, but that is a story for another day. We did have a lovely day just being together and talking about these weird adventures we seem to have all of the time.

I hope you have a lovely day. We have some more storms in the forecast. It is so lovely. I realized this morning, I guess I am not really an antique furniture kind of person, I have become a reproduction kind of girl. I like things that look old, just not old. Does that make sense?

Have a lovely day,
~Kim~

“Who shall compass or fathom God's thought profound?
We can but praise, for we may not understand;
But there's no more beautiful riddle the whole world round
Than is hid in this heap of dust I hold in my hand.”
― Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden

Spring Days

This is the apricot tree, with fruit. Already. I hope they are hanging on tight as there is some wind coming in the next few days. We will have a day in the 90s this week. I am always looking at weather patterns. In 1989 it hit 97 so it isn't too bad. Then maybe some rain.

We are approaching the weed free zone. I wouldn't have even thought it was a possibility earlier in March. One thing that is interesting this year. For years and years, we always had a boy at home to do our yard work. Ben started our yard work when he was about fourteen. After he started working full time, the yard work passed on to William, Elliot and Peter. Now of course, Elliot and Peter are working which leaves everything to Ron and me but not mowing or weed eating or edging or using the blower. I am the handy hula hoe person and weed chopper. I also clean up the piles of debris. I don't drive the tractor either.

 

I admit to getting a tiny bit panicky at times. All of the work seems huge. Now though, since we have got a handle on it I am feeling bit better about things. This year, is paint the inside of the house year. Or better still, if it doesn't move paint it year. I see so many things I need to be painting. We are going to start upstairs. I am going to make our loft into a library. In our house before this one, we had so much storage and so many walls. When we moved here, we had windows and no storage.  We built this  house to live outside. Now with only two of the boys at home, it is time to transition into a different, "Us." It is time to see if I still know how to decorate a house. I have been in raising people for so long, my decorating skills have fallen into disrepair. Just standing in front of the paint color place at Home Depot I got heart palpitations.

 

So as I clean house, I wonder what will be the colors I choose?  Will I get rid of my books? What I would like is to make everything clean and bright, and get rid of so much clutter. Some of the kids think we should down size and move to a smaller more manageable place. It is hard for me. We worked for twenty years to make it here. I like my big house. I like all of the room. Maybe I will change my mind at some point, but for now, I want to live here. When I was young, no matter how upside down my life was, my grandparents were the consistent unchanging influence in my life. They never moved until they went to heaven. I hope that Ron and I can remain that kind of people my grandparents were, consistent, solid and secure. Giving people a place to come home too, is what I want this place to be for whom God brings to our door.  

Some pondering going on today as I vacuum, and clean and putter around here. I hope your April is off to a wonderful month.

Blessings from me to you,

~Kim~

“There is often a good deal of the child left in people who have had to grow up too soon.”
― Willa Cather, O Pioneers!