Have Broom, Will Travel

Is the slogan of my newest Tee-shirt. And my kids wholeheartedly agree that it suits me to a Capital T.   I only wear it on house cleaning days.

Today was one of those days.  The weatherman said that Fall was finally going to arrive this week in the form of cold weather, abundant rain, and frisky wind - so that meant one last sweep of the garden of weeds to see what I could harvest.  It was a little scary.

Yet, with Hope’s eagle eye (I guess it helps to be closer to the ground), we were able to pull in a nice last haul.

Yikes, now I’ve got to plan a couple of days just to process all of this food for storage.

Will someone tell me why I planted beets?  I don’t even know how to cook them.  I guess it will just have to be another Fawn first moment in the making.

Now for the update on my Holiday List.  See I remember that I was supposed to make a list and read it.  And I deserve a gold star for actually completing most of that list.  I’m still digging up a couple of addresses on my Christmas mailing list and there are still some Halloween decorations I need to finish making.

The kids and I had a hoot making several super-fun crafts:  Including  some Potions Labels for an odd collection of different shaped bottles.  You can check out my Mommy Blessings Blog to see how we made them.

I’ve also been working on repurposing some vintage looking books into something enchanted.  

Shhhh, don’t tell hard core book lover’s that I’m cutting up books, or they might not let me in the second hand bookstore any more.

 

From the ’Joy of Words’ to ‘The Joy of Wands’.  And I’m turning the old fall-aparts into Magical Books that hold secret compartments, fairy quotes, and magical goodies.

Can’t wait to show you how I made them.  Of course I’ll post the instructions on Mommy Blessings when I finish.

So, as you can see, I haven’t finished decorating for Halloween so that’s back on my list for week 2 as well.

What’s up with my Holiday Countdown.  Well here’s Week 2:

1.  Um – Complete Halloween Decorating – Still.

2.  Sew at least 1 Halloween Costume.

3.  Cut out patterns for some Christmas Presents

4.  Design a Christmas Card.

and that’s in addition to preserving all those goodies from the garden,  and keeping my sanity in check.

On a side note:  The blessing keep coming.  My good friend Ethel stopped by and helped me clean up my sticky floor today - Just because she had nothing better to do than earn saint points from on high.  Maybe she was just disgusted that you couldn’t walk through the house without something gummy glued to your shoes or socks – or maybe, just maybe, she might be an angel in disguise.  I’m leaning towards the notion that she’s an angel.

Building Dreams – One Block at a Time!

So I’ve been keeping myself hauling over the past week or so. The energy is finally back and I’ve a lot of ground to make up after the silly bout with sickness.

I surprised myself on the big project I decided to undertake. Only because it seemed so big and out of my league. But what’s the point of having dreams if they are going to sit around waiting for you to do something about them. I decided to move!

I’ve always wanted a little patio off the house where I could sit and enjoy the yard and garden. Last year I was blessed with most of the stonework for the walls – free! A friend just needed me to haul them off. Then they became my pile, just sitting in my yard waiting for me to haul them into place. It finally happened.

Enough blabbing. I just can’t wait to show you what the kids and I did over the past day and a half. Prince Erik didn’t know about it. He’s not the yard type of person so we just had to keep the first half days work a secret and hope he wouldn’t go out back. Our luck held and today I’m ready for the big reveal.

Here’s my big boys helping me dig out the base.

The part that took the longest was the leveling, and leveling and shifting, leveling, pounding , oh and did I say leveling.

But I wanted to do it right the first time and not always look at the wall and think – darn I could have done better.

Of course the weather was perfect – upper 60’s low 70’s. And cloudy! Yeah! Great for taking little breaks with the kids and lay in the grass and look for shapes in the clouds.

It’s been way to long since I last did that and I’m going to make sure to do it more often it was too fun!

But the wall was calling so back to work. The boys even recruited some help. Wippie!

And finally I ran out of stone. I would have loved to have made it one level higher but I’m tickled pixie pink at how well it turned out. Using recycled stone made it look like the walls been in place for years and not hours. And those blasted time-consuming stairs – I LOVE!

Yes, Prince Erik was happily surprised. He didn’t even give me grief about how messy the house was.

I let Evo-man and his friend build a fire-pit (until I find something to lay out the patio portion with). And this evening was perfect, smores, tired achy muscles, and the satisfaction of a job well done! Wow if the kids and I can do this in a day and a half – just imagine how much more we can accomplish this summer. All it cost was a little good old honest labor. You know building dreams can be quite the rewarding adventure.

The Busy Slacker!

No I’m not really a slacker. I’m too busy to be one, yet. However I unwisely let some distractions put some of my dreams on a back burner. Like my quest to conquer the clutter monster took a back seat to the stupid Sudoku puzzle book I got on vacation. I’d been meaning to finish a room so I could do the customary Before/After shots but it didn’t happen. I started several different projects but didn’t really finish anything. So I was a little disappointed that I let so many really unimportant things distract me from some of my dreams that I really want to accomplish this year.

So this week I’m back on the clutter dream – full on. Might even manage to pull off tackling two different areas to make up for my slacker de-clutter dream of last week.

We also have visiting with us our cousin (a few times removed, but somehow still related), and Abners best friend Owen Zenos or OZ for short. OZ will be gracing our home with his absolutely wonderful model teenager temperament. He is the baby of his family and the only kid living at home with his parents, so our houseful of wild crazies might just send him into therapy when he goes back home in a week and a half. Abner and OZ are now brainstorming all the amazing movies they will be creating over the next so many days. Who knows maybe some will be post-able..

Now that summer is half over I thought it might be nice to hang a little color from the front porch. Our local grocery store had some plants on clearance and it was way cheaper to buy the plants than to buy a planter already decorated. I had these cute little metal baskets that have been sitting on the front porch for a few years just waiting for my brown thumb to attack them.

So I did. Evo-man helped me too.

I can’t even tell you the names of the plants or if they are shade or sun plants. I’m not a plant person and I expect they will look nice for a couple of weeks until I get to busy to remember to water them. Then they’ll die like all the other plants and I’ll rip them down and store the nice metal containers on the front porch until I get another sad urge to try and keep color around.

But until then I’ll enjoy them and try to remember to water them and hope they survive me for a little while at least!