Gratitude

Just a short post today to express my gratitude and share a short little movie with you. Please watch this movie. It is excellent!
http://www.flixxy.com/simple-gratitude.htm

I have an unspoken gratitude today. It's very personal so I won't share it here.

My dog wanted out a bit ago so I stood watching the night sky while waiting for her. How very beautiful!  There was the huge constellation, Orion, dominating the southern sky and thousands and thousands of lesser stars and other constellations.  It is so peaceful and quiet at night in the country and the darkness covers everything that is less than joyful to gaze upon.

Yesterday I finished two little fabric postcards for a swap I'm in. I thought I'd share them with you. Nothing fantastic but these are my first attempt at making postcards so I do have a certain sense of maternal pride in them.

This one is a representation of Mt Hood Or and the Columbia River. It doesn't show well in the photo but I added glitter on the snow and I plan to put just a touch on the water also.

This one is a winsurfer on the Columbia. There is more glitter on the water than shows in the photo.

I see now why people get so addicted to making postcards. They are FUN and use up those scraps I'm too stingy to toss! You can be sure I'll be making more!

Be grateful for the simple things in life that we all tend to take for granted and have an AWESOME day.

Thankful For . . . .

I was just reading my daily email from Mary Hunt . Of course, her theme was on being more thankful for what we have. That instead of just expressing our thankfulness one day a year, we should do it EVERY day.

With that in mind, right now I'm very thankful for:

A roof that doesn't leak. It is pouring down rain out there.

That I'm not in Astoria, OR where earlier this morning the wind was 97mph on the Astoria-Megler Bridge. Does the Happy Zombie still live in that area?

That my oldest granddaughter showed up on my doorstep quite unexpectedly Saturday morning. No, she didn't run away, it was just a surprise to me.

I'm missing my TX family very much this week. Wish I could be there! Wouldn't it be fun if i could fly down for Christmas with them?  Too many snowy roads between me and them to even think of driving this time of year and REALLY surprising them.

Have an AWESOME day!

PS Here is a very interesting site that was shared with me. Have fun!

Bits N Pieces Workshop

I Think I've Been AWOL Long Enough !!

I had a bit of the dreary-wearies late in the Winter, believe me, you wouldn't have wanted to read a word I wrote! I even lost a couple of  "friends" during that time. I THOUGHT they were true friends, bad times teach one the difference. OK, enough of that.

I'm back and wanting to keep myself from experiencing THAT again. My younger daughter got married July 10. It was a beautiful wedding and instead of throwing birdseed or what-have-you at the couple they released Painted Lady butterflies. It was magical! They were spendy but oh so worth every penny.

I'm no longer a Grammie-Nanny to her children as they moved to Texas the latter part of October.  It has taken me a few weeks to come to grips with not having them any longer. I'd move to Texas also, if I could!! My son, daughter-in-law and their two children also live there. I bearly know the other two. So, that's two-thirds of my family down there.

To keep myself busy I've been cleaning and rearranging closets and supboards. I can hardly open the door of the extra fridge out in my storage shed !! But my house is looking less like a storage shed. I've watched too many of those Hoarding programs on TV, and do NOT want to be like that. My Mother is a hoarder although she denies it because you can still walk through her house. Just how many dishes does a single woman in her 80s need? Or computers? (that are VERY outdated) I don't want those genetic tendencies to come to the forefront. Salvation Army is doing well right now thanks to my donation every time I get to town, I'm sure!

I did manage to get a set of appliqued rooster placemats done for my daughter-in-law in time for the DD to take them down. I haven't checked on my camera to see if I got any photos of them or not.

I'm trying to get things arranged so I can make some Quilts for Kids and use up some of my stash. I want new stash and won't allow myself to buy more fabric until this is gone, or nearly so.

Then I'm going to make myself some of those warm fleecy lounging pajamas. This old house is so drafty that I freeze unless the heat is turned way up. In the interest of saving money and natural resources I will wear fleece.  It's either that or become a couch potato.

Saturday Simmering

Would someone please find me a larger home in the Panhandle of TX? You'd be my new BFF!! Somewhere up around the Borger or Stinnett area.

That's the main thing on my mind today! I am NOT going to complain about the cold!

Have a GREAT day!

Cleaning Site

Check out this site. Great cleaning tips.

http://tipnut.com/laundry-boosters-vinegar/

Kids Say The Darnest Things !!

I'm sitting with two of my grandchildren yesterday and my granddaughter who is four tells me that Mommy got a new kind of milk. It's CHOCOLATE, Grammie!! I'm trying hard to contain myself and not let her know that they even had chocolate milk when Grammie was a little girl! So later, when I'm telling Mommy what all happened while she was at work I mentioned this and  she told me that she had been at Grocery Outlet and they had Organic Chocolate Milk, in a 1 quart box so she bought one. Now, here's the best part!! Her daughter loved it. Her son didn't like it at all. Which goes to show that it's not a raging hormonal thing because My Little Princess is only FOUR!

But her mother did release a dragon because now Princess asks about everything, "Does it have chocolate on it?" And I mean EVERYTHING !!

Hope you get as good a laugh from this as Grammie did!

Thankful Thursday

For a beautiful unseasonable warm February day
Jackets in various weights
Fabric
Quilt patterns
BOMs

Hope your day was great!!

Going "Green"

What do you do to reduce the amount of plastic going into our landfills? Today's post over at Not Quite June Cleaver is all about going "Green" and she also has a nice little GLASS fridgie dish as a giveaway.

This got me to thinking. One comment was that individual didn't use the produce bags anymore. I use them, but then I line a plastic bucket that potato salad came in with them and put the kitchen scraps in there, then when it's full I take it to my compost pile. The thin plastic bag thengets recycled the last time as heat in our wood stove!

I use the plastic grocery bags I get when I forget my reusable bags to line my waste baskets. Makes emptying the baskets quick and keeps the basket clean. Again, recycled to the wood stove. Oh, I seperate burnables/non-burnables.

I'm also big on the recycling thing. I nearly get free garbage service because anything they will take for recycling goes there. The main thing they won't take is tin can lids for some reason. So I have a seperate basket under my kitchen sink for those things. I think we MIGHT take one pickup load of non-burnable/non-recycleable garbage to our transfer station a YEAR. And all I have to do is set out my recycle bags every other Thursday and it's picked up for me. And I don't find that it's any more difficult to toss the garbage in one basket versus another.

I also use paper grocery bags the same way. I'm almost out of those plastic baket liners that you can buy but in cleaning out the back of a cupboard the other day found a HUGE supply of paper bags. Wah-la, my new supply of liners. Back to the days before they (basket liners) were available!

So, what do you do to be "greener"? Why don't you share with us? Leave a comment, ok.

By the way, I'm asking my mother for those 1950s glass refridgerator dishes LOL

I could go on and on but I'm trying hard to restrain myself! Have to save something for another post LOL

Have a great day and I hope those in the eastern part of the country are thawing out. Then they'll have to worry about flooding when all that snow melts. Big sigh. Remember, February doesn't last forever!

Thursday Thanks

That I don't live where the snow is.
That I wasn't involved in any rolling blackouts in frigid weather.
That I have a humble but warm house.
That Daisy is feeling better. ( She ate something she shouldn't have
       and her system clean itself out. 'Nuff said?)
That my TV shuts itself off after a certain time with no channel change.
   It's a great energy saver when I fall asleep watching tv in the evening!

Weather!

Right now I am SO thankful that I live where I do! I'm so empathetic for those of you who live further east. I heard that it was forecasted to be 9*F in El Paso, TX  last night. That's cold no matter where it is but those poor people down there don't know how to deal with that kind of weather like those of us further north do. Do they even HAVE anti-freeze down there? And there is SO much snow in the far eastern part of the country. I wish they could ship it out to our Cascade Mountains for snow pack! Wouldn't that be interesting? Seeing train car loads of SNOW LOL

The February challenge in one of my Yahoo Groups is to use at least 5 different red prints, only reds, (can have small amounts of another color but predominately red), and create something.  I have wanted to make a cloth purse like my present one with a few modifications. I wasn't thinking of red, but...

I was on the phone until midnight last night and I'm just very unenergetic today. I have real case of I-just-want-to-be-a-couch potato today.

Today I'm Thankful For:

HEAT!!!
Sunshine
True Friends
The Telephone, to keep in touch
My Little Prince and Princess