cataddicctsanony-mouse – http://www.facebook.com/cat.addicts via Cindy Basnett Thurman
Filed under Funny Signs - Humor
Kela’s Glass Gallery-Tom and Julie Bloyd
Peggy Collins Photo Art-Etsy
“Roots” – Catherine Van Der Woerd
Filed under Gorgeous Glass
Orangutan_Eng Siong Yeo-www.nwf.org/PhotoContest – The Nat’l Wildlife Federation Blog
We are due for ‘intermittent downpours’ this morning, making it a wet trip to and from Lunch Bunch today. (We leave in about an hour). I’m HOPING that we will get enough rain to give my poor tomato plants some stress relief and MAYBE encourage the plants to make more tomatoes. We have had a wonderful harvest this year, enjoying ripe tomatoes as part of our lunches and dinners for several weeks now, but around here, greediness abounds. We always want MORE. :0) Even though the weather website said today’s downpours were not supposed to be severe, we just jumped in our chairs at a huge bang of thunder. We checked things out, and all seems to be fine. (Amber was happy to be let in.)
Amber – our 3-year-old, 95-pound yellow lab
I have found a new author. She was recommended by my husband, an even more avid reader than I. We both like strong female lead characters. The author is Auryn Hadley. I have started Book 1 in the Rise of the Iliri Series, Blood Lust.
“Bloodlust, and the Rise of the Iliri series as a whole, will blow you mind, break your heart, and build you back up, new and changed. It’s one of my favorite reads of all time, and Auryn has a place as one of my all time favorite authors.” -Kristen Banet, author of the Amazon bestselling Redemption Saga series.
“Auryn Hadley’s groundbreaking Rise of the Iliri is the most riveting fantasy series ever! Up all night for 3 nights.” -Zoe Parker, Amazon bestselling author of the Facets of Feyrie series.
I was finding it difficult to bring myself out of the “In Death” series by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts), having just finished book #50 in the wonderful series. Since the next paperback in the series isn’t out until the end of December, I downloaded the book onto my Kindle.
I’m having trouble putting the book down now. I’m already planning to get the next one when I finish. Auryn is describing a complicated Science Fiction fantasy scene well. My husband thought I would like this series because the emphasis is not on action as in most, but on the characters and feelings. I love it.
I hope that your day – whatever the weather – is filled with good people and good fun.
Agape Pet Services
artfulhome.com
FusedGlassCornwall-Etsy
Garden Centerpiece-Scott Johnson and Shawn Johnson-artfulhome.com
Filed under Gorgeous Glass
from my sister-in-law
Molly
Molly will be right with the pack, chasing the truck, licking her lips in anticipation.
We got Molly over 15 years ago. I wanted a ‘lap dog,’ – a sweet, dainty loving dog.
I got the sweet and loving, as well as fun-loving, but NOT the dainty. She LOVED to stick her whole snout into the most awful stuff, coming home really disgusting.
There was nothing to do but pick her up, put her in the kitchen sink, and scrub her down.
She was a companion dog for our other dogs over the years. Two pit bulls and then Amber, our current yellow lab.
She got along with our cats, too.
She was fierce (for her size – or THOUGHT she was), happy, and curious.
Here she is trying to see the squirrel in the feeder at the window.
Sometimes she was sleek (spring, summer, and part of the fall) and then we let her go natural for the winter. (Fuzzy Molly)
She was such a HAPPY soul. She loved her people and her fellow animals.
She loved to sit on the stairs and look down at everyone.
She was adventurous.
She could be stylish.
But this was Molly at her happiest, looking like a very small sheep dog.
We were lucky to share her life for over 15 years. She will always be remembered with joy.
Catch that ham truck, Molly!
Filed under aging, Amazing Animals, Family
unknown
Hahahahahahahaah! I love this picture. :0)
Our South Beach orders for Month #2 arrived yesterday. I have been DIYing most of our meals, since we were out of most everything, using up the dregs of what was left in our boxes from Month #1 when possible. So we started in with lunch yesterday on our renewed supplies.
I called in and cancelled our subscriptions/memberships/auto-delivery orders yesterday, once our delivery came. She tried to change my mind. Asked me how much weight we had lost. Why we were quitting. I didn’t want to list the reasons, so just told her we needed a reboot, and were pleased that they provided it for us. I got confirmation emails that our subscriptions had been cancelled, and there was a chance to do a survey. I tried, but it wasn’t working.
I know the coronavirus has caused big problems for everyone, and that this will continue. I’m assuming the problems we experienced were due to that:
CONS –
PROS –
I am happy that my husband will have probably met his weight goal by the time we finish this second month. (He only has about 10 lbs to go.) I wish he would exercise, but at least he is encouraging about MY efforts.
My goal is another 30 or so. I’m also using this ‘reboot’ to remind myself that just because something is in the pantry does NOT mean I have to listen to it call to me or eat it. I’m HOPING that my husband won’t go back to putting a lot of frowned-on foods into the cart, but if he insists on it, I don’t have to give in and feed my face. I will make it a priority to keep DIYing what I SHOULD be eating – including some good snacks – and hopefully that, plus my exercises will make ME healthier, too as I pursue my goal.
I love the recipe book Simply Keto by Suzanne Ryan. She doesn’t use a lot of ingredients you need to scrounge to find. The recipes are simple – and to me, the less time spent in the kitchen, the better. They taste really good. My husband’s reaction when he learns I’m cooking one of our favorites, or trying a new one for us, is “GREAT!”
Here’s to Month #2!
Nat’l Wildlife Federation
We returned awhile ago after relocating Raccoon # 10. Saying this is a record-breaking year for raccoons is a vast understatement. We are hoping they meet up at the creek and continue to live happy lives elsewhere. We also sincerely hope this is the last of the bunch.
Our tomatoes have slowed way down. I only got cherry sized tomatoes yesterday when I harvested. We can’t be greedy, though. We have been enjoying wonderful ripe tomatoes with lunches and dinners for weeks now.
We are at the time of year here where, no matter how much you water, the sun is so strong it just boils the plants. I checked on my garden yesterday. There are still a lot of plants, and my onions are continuing to grow, but there was just ONE, lone ROUND zucchini. I’m not even sure this will be edible. I’m about to give up and pull the plants for the season. I’ve had a fun year in the garden, growing lettuce and spinach, tomatoes, and some celery (though I’m not sure if we’ll get actual stalks or not – or just leafy plants.
While I was out, though, I gathered some Rio Samba Roses to enjoy in the house.
Today is a sad day for us. We are having to say goodbye to Molly, a canine member of our family for over 15 years.
She was diagnosed with malignant cancer of the jaw several weeks ago. We have had her on antibiotics and pain/inflammation meds since then to try to give her as many happy dog days as we could. She has milked all the extra attention for everything she’s worth – demanding to go outside, then demanding to come in again – with a treat, of course. I have made sure we had enough treats that she could have all she demanded, and even a few more. Up until a few days ago, she was still having fun, even trying to play with us in the yard. She has given us over 15 wonderful years of her happy personality, cheering up her people and fellow dogs and cats alike. For that, we will be eternally grateful.
Filed under Amazing Animals, Challenges, Changes, Family
I am enjoying reading book #50 “Golden in Death” by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts). I finished re-reading the 49 previous books in the series yesterday and am delighted to add another one to my collection.
Finding authors that not only entertain me, but introduce me to characters I would love to actually know – enjoying their world again and again – is truly priceless.
I particularly love reading about strong, resilient, intelligent women. Nora has created many, many of them over the years.
I hope that you, also, have found authors that can provide stimulation, entertain, and escape.
Filed under String Art
Early Morning Showers
I’m feeling good that I am “back in the saddle again” on my efforts to get the lard off and get stronger. I fell off, using everything excuse from the pandemic, to my husband going to the store with me, and back again, but the fact was I had stopped exercising and I had gained some of my lost weight back again.
We signed up for the South Beach Diet Plan, deciding we would try that for two months to get back on track. It was the closest to our keto eating plan and would remind us how we are supposed to be eating, hopefully giving us a boost. The second month’s order should arrive any day now. It’s a good thing. We are down to meat sticks and some shakes, so I am DIYing a lot now.
To date – since my lardiest – I have lost 36.6 pounds and 40.45 inches. I’m working my way back down to where I was before, and I feel really happy about that.
My exercise regimen – motivated by gold stars on my desk calendar – is helping me feel stronger, a bit more energetic, and definitely looser and more flexible.
Penn Fitness Warehouse
I’m trying to do my elliptical in the mornings, since my trainer is in the garage. I won’t get it done in the morning today, but I can do it when I get back from errands. I started a couple of weeks ago, at 10 minutes. I’m doing 20 each day now.
You Tube
I am doing about half an hour of yoga stretches plus abdominal exercises each afternoon. I have no clue why I tend to ‘hunch up’ during the day, but I’m almost looking forward to my yoga sessions now, where the first thing is to lie flat on my back, trying to get my back muscles to relax. Thankfully, this is accomplished more quickly now and I am seeing progress in my ability to push a bit farther into the positions, breathing into them. I feel relaxed when I finish, and pleased with my efforts.
By the end of this next month on South Beach, my husband will have probably met his weight goal. I would like to lose another 30 pounds. I am seeing progress on both the scales and the tape measure, plus I feel more in control.
taolife.com
Unique Teaching Resources
The weather is beautiful here today. Right now it’s sunny and 66 degrees F. Just couldn’t be more perfect. We’re enjoying low humidity today, as well. I will make sure I spend some good time outside. We have doors open and ceiling fans on. It’s SMILING weather!
I will leave in about an hour to take the trash down to the bottom of the driveway, get our mail, and go to Rags & Roses Collective, the wonderful local Greenwood shop where I share a booth, Blasing Bright, with my friend Carla. I will change out some stuff, pay our rent, and visit a minute with the owner, Joanna Brandt.
We are having a quiet day so far, for which I am thankful. Yesterday brought a couple of ‘episodes’ where my husband was unable to speak, but he seems to be fine today. He is calm and seems to be upbeat. We will do the best we can each day, thankful to HAVE another one.
My exercise efforts are going well. I am feeling better – a bit more energetic – and looser. I am earning two stars on my desk calendar daily, one for my elliptical trainer in the garage and the other for yoga stretches and abdominal exercises.
I will see how our garden is doing later and check if we have ripe tomatoes to gather.
I’m not sure what my project for the day will be yet.
I hope that YOUR Tuesday is a nice CHOOSE-DAY. :0)
African String Art-Etsy
ArtStudioLEVITANA-Etsy
Baby Elephant-Blocks and Knots-Storenvy
StringKits
Filed under String Art
tvoydosug.com
We are about to begin Month # 2 on our South Beach Diet. We have not yet received notice that our orders have shipped. We are down to meat sticks and shakes, and we will use these up while waiting for our new food. I did the DIY meals in the program (2 dinners, 2 lunches, 2 breakfasts, 2 morning snacks and 2 afternoon snacks each week) but I will be doing a lot more until we receive the next shipment.
One good thing is that my husband appreciates my cooking even more now, since we are eating strangely most of the day. :0)
Another good thing is that I am VERY aware of portions. Example: I cooked Suzanne Ryan’s “Bacon-Wrapped Cheesy Chicken” (Simply Keto) last night. We each ate one half of one chicken breast and some fresh tomatoes on the side.
A third good thing is that my exercise efforts are going well. I have done my elliptical trainer every day this week, plus a session of yoga stretches. I will finish off the week today, earning two more gold stars for my desk calendar (a total of 14 stars!)
On the 5th I will post a progress report on my efforts to lose the lard. Hopefully, we will have our new food order, and I can post some good results!
Annie’s Catalog
“Eden” – Michele Howell
Exclusively Annie’s Quilt Designs
YouTube
Filed under Embroidery/Sewing Art
Source Unknown
Hahahahahahhaha! I love this. :0)
Today is a nice day.
I just finished chatting with our son, who lives in Thailand. He is such a good communicator it’s almost possible to forget how far away he is. The last time he came home, the trip took 24 hours, with the flights and layovers. :0( We talk almost every day, chatting about this and that, and it adds so much quality to my life. I’m very lucky to be so close to him in all ways except geographically.
It’s cool enough that we still have the doors open, front and back, creating a nice breeze. We will have to close up soon, but I love to air the house out!
Today’s project is gathering more things to donate to Veteran’s Thrift Town in Fort Smith tomorrow. I’m hopeful that we can make several more donations as I try to go through the house with an eye to getting rid of stuff again.
I hope you have a wonderful, relaxing Sunday.
We call this the “Go Out Table” because we stage things we need to take with us for errands, etc. It also houses my husband’s diabetic supplies. Under it is a bin with stuff going one way or the other from the booth in town I rent with my friend.
As I’m embarrassed to show you, it becomes a catch-all for a lot of other ‘stuff,’ to the point the stacks may decide to topple and slide off any minute.
This was today’s project.
(I had to slip my work on it in because my husband’s project was in the basement and he wanted my help there, too. )
My husband’s question was, “Where did everything GO?”
Now we can pick something up when we leave the house without an avalanche. :0)
doyouyoga
Tomorrow I will finish three weeks of doing a 30-minute-or-so session daily. I think it was last year when I discovered SixtyandMe.com That led to me finding and ordering the “Gentle Yoga” DVD with Cat Kabira teaching basic stretching techniques for ‘mature’ women – even though who had never tried yoga before. I wasn’t interested in trying to fold myself into a paper airplane or tie myself up into a pretzel shape, but I WAS stiff, sore, and feeling pretty brittle. I worked through it, and then decided to simply do the poses that seemed to help me the most rather than having to find time to play the DVD. Cat stressed that it was the PROGRESS that mattered – not whether you actually aced the pose to PERFECTION. I did well for awhile, and then just quietly stopped doing it. My reasons are stupidity and lack of sufficient motivation.
Three weeks ago, when we had decided to do the South Beach Diet plan in order to ‘reboot’ our efforts to commit to the keto eating plan, relearn ‘portions,’ smarter choices, etc., I also decided that I would get back into my yoga.
After three weeks, I am starting to feel some progress! I am 73 and RELAXING is a difficult thing to do. Just lying down flat on your back on the mat doesn’t sound like much. It IS – when several areas in your back are clenching. After a minute or so of CONSCIOUS focus on relaxing and breathing, the discomfort and clenching goes away. I am also seeing progress in several of the stretching positions. One came just yesterday. I’m lying on my back with my arms on the floor above my head. I pull up my right leg, bend the knee, lay my leg to my right side. I can DO that on my left. On my RIGHT, that was really uncomfortable. I’ve been doing it anyway daily for 3 weeks, breathing into it and not pushing myself, just breathing into the discomfort and trying to relax. Yesterday I was able to let the leg down almost completely onto the floor without pain! HOORAY!!!!!! I feel better when I finish my stretches, so that’s a wonderful thing, too. Even my husband is trying to encourage me, asking me if I’m going to ‘yoge’ today.
I’m giving myself a gold star for every practice. Likewise on my elliptical trainer session in the garage. I’m going for stars 11 and 12 for the week today.
Filed under DIET!, exercise, quality of life, taking care of yourself
HuffPost
Jessica Long Embroidery
The Polka Dot Chair – Cutesy Crafts
UnnatiSilks
Filed under Embroidery/Sewing Art
August-Kane and Uki
Thanks to the Australian Firefighters’ fundraising calendar, we can welcome August with a big smile.
We trapped raccoon #9 in our humane trap overnight, and just returned from driving out to relocate him farther out in the country. This has been a bumper spring and summer season for raccoons. Last night’s raccoon tore up the cage, so had to do some repair work. We filled up the feeder this morning, so the birds and squirrels will have at least a day to eat all they would like until ‘someone’ cleans out the feeder again. We are HOPING this is the last of the bunch. We will see if the feeder is empty again tomorrow. We have been lucky that none of the critters have damaged or ruined the feeder.
On our keto diet, we are almost out of the prepared stuff from South Beach. We got confirmation of our order, but no notification of shipping yet. They said it would be 1 – 10 days. It was even longer last time, due to their holding our orders, doing their best to fill most of our choices before substituting. I hope they can ship ours this time ASAP. I’m doing more and more DIY as we run out of things. We have one more breakfast, and are down to candy bars and a few shakes for entrees for lunch, dinner, and snacks. I will cook a recipe from Suzanne Ryan, Simply Keto, today for bacon-wrapped chicken breasts. This will be enough for several meals, thank goodness.
The coronavirus is wreaking havoc everywhere. I don’t know if the suppliers of South Beach are having problems, or if the company itself is, at this point. We are on a program where we choose what we would like for our order. I don’t think I’m exaggerating that at least half or more of the entrees for lunch and dinner were either unavailable or discontinued this time. Frustrating for everyone.
I have always liked the calendar on my computer, but now I will be relying on it even more. Last night I was able to input recurring reminders for changing the three parts of the new filter system on our aquarium. The directions say to never change all three at one time. The charcoal filter is supposed to be changed monthly. The foam is changed once every two months, and the biomax pebbles once every three months. The calendar makes it easy to input the information. I would never be able to keep up with it otherwise. I really hope this allows us to keep the fish water clean and sparkling for a MUCH longer time.
Since it’s August 1st, we have a list of first-of-the-month stuff to handle. I will finish bookkeeping records for July, and set up for August. I haven’t chosen a new ‘project-for-the-day’ yet.
It’s still muggy here, but not quite so hot, and for that I am grateful. We had the windows on the truck open when we relocated the raccoon, and it was a very pleasant drive.
Happy Saturday AND August 1st!
The cleaning out of the aquarium today resulted in its designation as ‘project of the day.’ We changed from a more regular filter system, like you can buy at Walmart, to a more expensive, fancier type filtration system. It came in a lot of parts with three different things acting together as the filter. I got a bit intimidated while reading the directions, so I asked for my husband’s help.
At least half an hour later, we finally had the filter ready to go into the tank. We put it aside while we did the regular clean out. I like the fact that the majority of this filter system is on the outside of the tank, giving the sweet fish more room to swim around. If you look carefully at the top of the picture above, you can see (above the blue) the outside of the filter.
This picture gives another view from the other end of the tank. You can also see the filtered water going back into the tank. When we got it back together, the top didn’t fit anymore, so my husband took it out to the shop and cut off part of it to make it fit. There are three filters in this one: a foam piece on the bottom, then activated charcoal, and then a bio filter of a bunch of pellet like things you put into the provided mesh bag. You have to work to get these rinsed and into the filter. This filter is made to handle tanks from 5 to 20 gallons. Since ours is a 5, this should be MORE than adequate to do the task.
You change out each part of the filter at a different time. We’re supposed to replace the foam filter every two months, the charcoal every month, and the bio filter every three months. (I have the directions on the table beside me so that I can mark my calendar with when each thing is supposed to be changed.)
So far, I haven’t seen any reaction from the fish – yea or nay. I really hope that this new style of filter keeps the water cleaner for longer.
So the aquarium clean out and filter installation turned out to be the project of the day today.
Filed under Amazing Animals, Family, Housekeeping - Maintenance, I'm a slob
Amazon.com
Bernita Broderie-AwesomeInventions
Colossal- Embroidery incorporating Clay Shapes to create 3D.
Country Living Magazine
Filed under Embroidery/Sewing Art
creativeartworksblog 