I found the work of Karin de Haas yesterday on Pinterest, and I’m simply fascinated. Her subjects exude absolute joy and make me feel happy, hopeful – even joyful – looking at them. How can you be sad looking at this wonderful lady and her cat? I want to hug them both.
Filed under Favorite Things
This photo makes me happy just looking at it. Just LOVE the happiness of this dog who loves his companion.
The sun came out and it’s supposed to be windy and 69 degrees F. this afternoon. I’ll take it! We have had a lot of rain the past two days. I’m not sure if I can walk in our yard without getting sucked down into the mire, but I’ll try it later to check on my veggie planters.
I made it to a 5-pound increment on my efforts to lose the lard this morning! I have a long way to go, but setting and making it to interim goals helps me keep my focus. I now am down 25 pounds since my heaviest.
I hope your Thursday is wonderful.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
I love these images of people being really creative with food. It frustrates me that I find many of them on Pinterest, and not only do they not list the creator, but most of them don’t have the name of the person who pinned them. I would love to be able to give credit when I find creative things to share with you. I’ll provide all the information I have.
Filed under playing with your food?
As you can see, the lettuce and spinach in this planter seem to be happy so far. I’ll need to do another lettuce harvest soon. :0)
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
I wish I could meet the person who came up with this.
Update: My husband is healing well from his sudden encounter with our brick planter brought about by our dog, Amber, getting excited while on the leash for her last outing of the night. We are now just letting her out now – no leash – and waiting for her to do her business and return. We do learn from our experiences. He reports no pain in either his ear (7 of 8 stitches removed by the nurse practitioner yesterday morning, and the last one ‘snipped’ so it will come out easily over time as the scab finishes healing and falls off.) When I asked him about his previously dislocated little finger, he held up the wrong hand to look at it. :0) Amber is looking quite innocent about all this, just enjoying life.
I just went out to check the veggie planters. All seem to be doing great. I’ll show you some pics in another post this morning. Since we’re supposed to get a lot more rain today, we’ll go down and get our mail and drag our trash can back up the driveway to its resting spot before lunch.
I hope that your Wednesday is a pleasant and happy one.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
Filed under Awe-Inspiring Photography
3 Little Piggies – 2 of 3
Tony O Conner – @Tonys_Ponies on X
Filed under drawings
We got up at 0-dark-thirty this morning and were waiting in front of the clinic at 7am, since the lady I talked to yesterday told me it was first come, first served with a limited number of patients accepted, so it was best to get there as early as possible. They opened a bit early. We filled out paperwork and were called after only a few minutes.
The nurse practitioner removed 7 (of 8 (!) stitches) from my husband’s ear. She snipped the last one, saying she didn’t want to disturb it because it was embedded deeply in the rather thick scab there. She said it will now come out on its own as the scab heals and falls off. We are supposed to be careful not to bump it a lot, but it looks like it’s healing well.
We treated ourselves to breakfast at The Dari in town before coming home. As we checked for mail, the mailman drove by and handed our mail to my husband. We are in for the day now, and he’s taking a nap.
I’m still very happy that we got to see the eclipse yesterday. It was different than I expected, in that we didn’t see the whole sun blocked by the whole moon surrounded by a corona, but we saw the sun disappear bit by bit until it was ‘gone’ leaving us in a twilight state for several minutes before starting to appear again, bit by bit. It was the first one we’ve ever seen, and the last one since it won’t happen again for 20 years, so we’re happy that we actually got to see something this time.
Later on today, I’ll check my veggie plants to see if they made it through the night. The forecast said we might get hail. By the time they said that, it was already dark and I decided the heck with it. We’ll see.
I’m feeling pretty groggy since it seems we got up in the middle of the night in order to get to the clinic today. If I do my yoga and my elliptical trainer today, I will decided I have done well.
Have a nice Tuesday.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
We’re going to the Walk-in clinic this morning at 0-dark-thirty to get my husband’s stitches out, and then will try to get breakfast at The Dari, one of our favorite restaurants, if he feels like it.
I’ll write when we get home.
Filed under taking care of yourself
I’m awe-struck. I’ve never seen a solar eclipse before. I set out two chairs in our back yard and got out our glasses. I decided not to try to take pics. I noticed it was getting darker when I looked out the window toward the front yard, so I grabbed the glasses, yelled at my husband, and headed out the back door. It had already started, with a small chunk out of the bottom right side of the sun.
It was amazing to us that even when the sun went completely dark, it was like dusk in our back yard. We could have seen to drive. We didn’t see the corona around the round sun. Our view was such that the crescent kept getting smaller and smaller and then there was just a bit left at the upper left of the circle. Then it was completely gone.
It was dark for several minutes and then a small bit of light showed to the right side of the moon. It’s still getting lighter as I type, but we saw the magnificence of the whole event. My husband is even mowing again right now, being upset that he missed an area on the first mowing.
ALWAYS in the past, when comets are supposed to be giving a showy, showery display, or the planets are in alignment, or something else wonderful is happening, WE get storms or clouds or flying hairballs – SOMETHING that makes it a non-event here.
Today, when we likely won’t be here anymore for the next one, we got to see it. What a sight!
Filed under Delightful Surprises, Mother Nature, WOW
This simply makes me drool. I WANT this in my yard. I want it for my own. I want to spend a LOT of time here.
If you’re old enough, you’ll understand this – Close your eyes tightly, hold your breath and wish, “Clap if you believe in Tinkerbelle!”
Maybe it will work on getting this for ME!
Filed under Dreams
Filed under playing with your food?
Here in Greenwood AR we are in the ‘path of the totality.’ We are supposed to see our peak at 1:45 this afternoon. It’s sunny and bright right now, but the forecasters say that clouds are coming in for tonight’s rain. :0( I’m hoping that they hold off until I get to see my first and only eclipse. It’s supposed to start here about 1:45pm. I’ll be out there before that with my glasses and my camera, just in case. All appendages, including my eyes, are crossed that as many people as possible will be able to stare, awestruck, at one of the world’s miracles.
We will stay completely clear from town today. We’ll go to the bottom of the driveway in a while to take our trash down and get our mail, then we’ll turn around and come back up. The news people are ASKING people not to stop their vehicles in the middle of the street, on a dam or bridge, or just sidle to the side of a road in the middle of this. We don’t need to be on the road at ALL, so we won’t be.
Saturday was was a zombie, not doing my exercises or much of anything else after a really poor night of sleep. Yesterday I was a ‘good girl,’ doing 11 minutes on my elliptical trainer in the garage and then my half hour or so of old lady stretching yoga. I put TWO stars on my desk calendar. :0) Today I’ll do my exercises for my arms with my dumbbells and then my yoga.
I bought a beautiful beef roast at the store yesterday and got it in the crock pot a while ago. We haven’t had one in a long time, so this will be a real treat. My husband immediately said he would make the mashed potatoes. I had to tell him that would be fine, but to just make enough for him, since I wouldn’t eat them with my keto eating plan. He looked at me and said, “___ the potatoes. I’ll eat whatever you’re eating.” (He’s definitely a keeper.) So we’ll have a nice tossed salad – with some lettuce included from OUR VEGGIE GARDEN and some steamed broccoli.
I wish you a Happy Eclipse Day. I hope we can all see at least a piece of it.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
Filed under Agathe Moisden Mosaics, mosaic
Things are starting out quietly here this morning. I actually got some good rest last night, so I’m feeling almost human this morning. My husband is sleeping in.
We plan to run errands today, getting the mail we didn’t yesterday, plus hitting a couple of places for supplies.
We will only be going down to the bottom of the driveway tomorrow for mail and to leave our trash for pickup, since our small town expects viewers to arrive for viewing the eclipse. The schools will be closed, too. We have traffic jams twice a day (around schools opening and letting out – hence, the bypass that is being constructed) so – even with the schools closed – if three people come to see the eclipse, we’ll have a mess on our hands… :0)
Our skies are due to be ‘partly cloudy’ which probably means we won’t be able to see much at all here. I’ll be out there with my glasses to see whatever I can see. I have a pair for my husband, too, but he tends to scoff at things such as this, so I don’t know if he’ll join me or not.
Yesterday was a complete wash-out since I had gotten very little sleep. I did a bit in the veggie planters and some cooking, but did not exercise, except to get into and out of my recliner. :0) I’ll make up for that today, doing my yoga and the elliptical.
Have a wonderful Sunday wherever you are today.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
I told you that she has been getting into trouble lately and causing us a bit of grief. I am taking her out late at night as her last outing of the night NOT on the leash, as my husband was doing, since she pulled him into the planter and caused a lot of grief plus an all-nighter in the ER. I am simply letting her out, telling her to ‘hurry up’ and hoping she won’t be gone long, if she leaves the area. So far, so good.
The other problem is that we had taken down baby gates, leaving only one between the tiled areas on the first floor and the carpeted ones. She has a nice bed in the utility room right next to the garage. Suddenly, she was stealing food off the counter in the kitchen, or grabbing not-yet rinsed dishes and taking them to her bed, etc. We finally re-installed the baby gate between the dining/kitchen/pantry areas and the utility room.
The problem THEN was we installed it so the gate opening part got in the way of the door to the garage. We go in and out of that door all day long, so we were TRYING to adapt to the difference. We finally decided today to turn the baby gate around so it opened the other way – AWAY from the door to the garage. It took us a bit of time but we just accomplished it. This will save us a bunch of problems, as I found myself with the gate part open, the door to the garage open, the dog trying to bull her way past me to get OUT and the cat trying to sneak past me to get IN – all at the same time with me right in the path.
Hopefully we can now separate Amber from any food that needs to be out to thaw, or the chance to take a breath after dinner before cleaning up the kitchen. I’ll be able to let Amber out without getting trapped between the doors and the cat streaking her way in.
Life gets complicated sometimes, but we – as our animals’ people – are supposed to be smarter than they are…
Filed under Challenges
Dorky Dogs – Liucija Adomaite – BoredPanda.com
Filed under When Wood Comes Alive
Filed under Cork Art
I won’t say I have built a ‘habit’ of doing my approximately half-hour of old lady yoga stretching daily, but it HAS become a grudging ‘responsibility to myself.’ I highly resent that I don’t get a flood of endorphins, or whatever you’re supposed to get that makes you happy to be alive, raring to go, climbing Mt. Everest in the morning, and what not. I just do my stretches the best way I can, usually feeling a bit ‘looser’ than I did when I first got down on my mat, and put my sparkly star on my calendar.
Yesterday I started a new thing – a few exercises to strengthen my arms with 5-pound weights. I only did 5 reps of each movement, but it’s a start and I’ll build up from here. I’ll do this M-W-F. (I put TWO stars on my calendar yesterday.)
Today I’ll do 10 minutes or so on my Elliptical Trainer in the garage – after cleaning off quite-a while’s-worth of dust off and finding my MP3 player. (I just FOUND it – plugged into its charger behind my computer screen, along with the earplugs that go with it. :0) ) I’ll plan to do this right after lunch, and the plan is to do this T-TH-S and increase the time as I can.
Since I’ve already been out weeding and harvesting my veggie planters this morning, the yoga and the elliptical will round out my day nicely on moving the bulk.
Filed under exercise, getting the lard off, taking care of yourself
I THINK I’m functional this morning, but I’m sleep-deprived. Last night was awful. My husband was constantly moving – an unusual thing for him – intermittently snoring – NOT as unusual. He was actually cross-wise in the bed at one point and I had to wake him up to get him to move so I had a spot. Then I had a bad dream, so I went downstairs to read until about 2:30. I was just dozing off again upstairs when Amber started barking. I went downstairs to ask her firmly to stop. I caught about 45 minutes sleep, I think, and she started in again. AND, of course, I was up twice to pee…. So I’m feeling like a zombie, trying to get what I need to do done anyway.
I checked on my veggies and actually had my first lettuce harvest!
I hope that your Saturday is more ‘alert’ than mine and that you feel really good this morning.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
Dorky Dogs – Liucija Adomaite – BoredPanda.com
Filed under Agathe Moisden Mosaics, mosaic
I wanted to share more of Laney’s animal portraits from wood with you. I think this is super-creative and different from anything I’ve seen.
Laney – PineandBirch.com
creativeartworksblog 