Feeling Blessed

We've had a lot of rain this May in Seattle. So when the sun came out the other day it coincided with the second storm to hit Oklahoma. It's hard to understand how we can be enjoying a perfect spring day and people thousands of miles to the East of us have a wind so strong their houses are being blown apart.

I said to my husband, "I don't want to feel guilty about being so happy today." But I think it's important that we take stock of what we have now at this moment in time. The attitude of the people in Oklahoma instills in me what's really important.



They have lost everything, but they are grateful to be alive. Some of them have experienced this before, they rebuild, they come back stronger.

It's a long road that's for sure. But after all what they really lost is "things".

I look around my house and I see a lot of things. Some have lots of special memories attached to them. But the memories are also in my mind and I can still share them without having the things.

It's a sunny spring Sunday afternoon. For the last two days we have been able to work in the yard. I have beautiful flowers blooming. The plants have enjoyed the rain. The winter here was mild. Things bloomed early. And I love looking out the kitchen window into the back yard. Better yet I love to go out there barefooted with the dog.

No matter what is going on in your life right now, take a look around you, relish the good, be grateful, be content, but keep growing.

In the last month I lost two friends, one suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 60 and one on his 41st birthday after a powerful 7 years battling cancer. Also this month my niece had a beautiful baby girl.

This is life, we are smack dab in the middle of it, every single day. We are blessed.

Do-Over Part Two

First my daughter corrected me. Her wallpaper wasn't polka dots it was small pink hearts. Here is the room now with a bed, the quilt is temporary but does fit nicely in the room.

The four wall plaques were a bargain at Kohl's. Retail 21.99 each, on sale for 10.99, then add my 30% off coupon and I had to get them at that price.

The giraffe sculpture was given to my by my sister years ago. We had it in our room for quite awhile. This is a perfect location for it.

The doll buggy was given to me in 1963 or 1964 by our neighbor lady who had a family of all boys. She had it when she was a little girl.

The Do-Over

This is a story about a room. The room that started out as my daughter's bedroom when she was in grade school. The walls were painted half pink with wall paper on the other half. The wall paper was white with pink polka dots (it was the 80's okay?). And was there a border in the center of the wall you ask? Why of course, it was a wide border with unicorns on it, yes unicorns, grade school, 80's remember? It was amazing. Then she went away to college. She grew up, she got married and she didn't return home.

We boxed up her things, put them in the attic. Then her brother moved from his small bedroom (the youngest gets the smallest room, that is just the way things are) into the room. By this time the wall paper had already come down and the pink walls had been painted over. Just an off white with green trim around the window and the center of the walls.

The walls got plastered with posters, mostly car posters. And stereo speakers and more posters. There he stayed for years. Stayed at home and did college locally in Seattle. Then he too decided it was time to go out on his own. I gave him the opportunity to pack up his own room since he was there and he had time.

The room was packed up. Boxes were stored in both bedroom closets and in the garage. We packed his car full of clothes, computer and necessities until nothing else could fit in. And then he drove away.

Fast forward now to a year and a half later. No need to talk about how the room became a large space to store extra things, such as clothes, fabric, boxes, fabric, books, magazines. For awhile it was a home office, a sewing room and always a guest bedroom. That is why every house should have at least three bedrooms. One to sleep in, one for guests and one to move the junk from the guests bedroom into before the guests arrive.

In the last three weeks, mostly weekends, my husband went along with my idea to redo this room. I have had the colors and design in my head for many months. I knew exactly the feeling I wanted to create in this room. It is now finished. There is no bed in there right now, which is actually really cool. Lots of room to hula hoop!

We will be buying a new mattress for our room and our "gently used" queen mattress will then take up all that nice floor space in the room and I will be relegated to hula hooping in the backyard and on rainy days in the living room. But we like company (one of us does anyway).

To start with we moved all the furniture but one cabinet out. The old mattress was picked up by Salvation Army. The table came into the dining room for a few weeks.

All the green trim work was removed and the walls were patched up. And I mean millions of nail holes of all various sizes. If you have any questions on how to patch nail holes just ask. I think I put in enough hours to become certified at spackling. I thought back to when my son moved into the room and it just seemed so natural that he would put up a few posters and things on the walls.

Well, let me tell you that I now have a deep appreciation for walls. And I will think three times before putting a nail into one.

Here are the details of what we did and an estimate of what we spent. It's an estimate because I'm on a roll typing and don't want to go find my receipts.

Wall paint - Glidden from Home Depot. Colors - Walnut Bark and Antique Silver. We had to buy a gallon of both, plus a quart of semi-gloss for the window trim. Two quarts for the brown wall would have been fine but two quarts costs the same as a gallon. I do a lot of baking and I'm pretty sure there is a lot more in a gallon than in two quarts. The paint and a few rollers and tape for masking came to about 95.00.  Another trip to Home Depot was to buy outlet covers, five at 5.97 each. Probably could have gotten less expensive ones, but they were what I wanted. We left the ivory outlets alone and put a darker cover plate on them. Not crazy enough to have to change the actual electrical outlets.

The window trim was reused. It was primed and then painted over. The stool in the photos was built years ago by Wally and was navy blue. It was sanded and painted with the trim paint. The night table is a new piece of furniture that Wally designed and built for me for the room.

The butterfly canvas prints are three 18 x 24 canvasses purchased at Hobby Lobby for about 12.00 each. I used the wall paint for all of it. I used the stencil and put putty in some of them to raise them up. I painted the canvas brown and over a couple of days I stenciled the butterflies using two different stencils. One I already had and the other I bought at Michael's for 5.99.

The wall  mirror, clock, candle, candle dish, and (empty) picture frame are all from Ikea. Less than 40.00 for all of that together.

There is one more thing we will be putting on the wall above the table and later I will add some pictures to the brown wall. I have beautiful batik fabric to make a bed quilt this summer.

The cabinet with the doors on it belongs to Wayne and was built many years ago by Wally. It is my favorite piece of furniture he has ever built. Wayne will eventually take it with him, but for now I am happy to store it and use a drawer for my gym clothes.

Enjoy the photos. I just discovered that if you double click on a photo it will open the picture full screen and you can scroll through all the photos.


The room earlier this year.



Sister's Trip - Minus a Couple of Sisters

April is my regularly scheduled annual trip to Utah to visit my son and daughter and my sister and her family. Normally, my two sisters from Idaho come at the same time. This year however they were unable to go at the same time. But sorry sisters, fun was had anyway. And let me know when you decide to go later in the year and hopefully I can join you.

I left Seattle on Wedneday, April 17th. Natalie picked me up at the airport and Wayne met us for lunch. It was my first time eating Pho (I'm not counting the one time at tried it at the office cafeteria, they just aren't the same as a restaurant). It was very good. Natalie went back to work and Wayne kindly drove me around to visit friends.

Our first visit was with Gloria at her office. She is from Utah but lived in Kent for some years then moved back to Utah. She lives with Multiple myeloma and had her second treatment a year ago. She is now working full time and enjoying her grandchildren and she looks and feels great.

Our next visit was to my friend's Mom's house. I took a piece of luggage to Utah for her. She is moving the end of May home to Utah after having sold her house and retiring. Her mother lives in a beautiful home they had built 56 years ago in Holliday.

Our final visit for that day was with my friend Susan (and her husband) who I met in 1976 at college. We were matched up as room mates. She came from Michigan and stayed in Utah. Some years after college we roomed together again for a short time. It's been fun staying in touch with her all these years.

For dinner Wayne and I met up with Natalie and her husband and my cousin Russell at Mimi's. From there it was a short walk through the parking lot to the The Sweet Tooth Fairy for some cake bites and cupcakes.

Wayne then drove me to Springville to Nancy's house where I would stay until Saturday evening. Wednesday night I could barely keep my eyes open and crashed by 11:00 p.m. Thursday morning was the start of cleaning day and laundry.

We had visitors in the afternoon which was fun. Thursday evening I got a chance to go visit more cousins in Orem. Michael and his wife Lluvia have a singing/performing group and they were rehearsing that night and then leaving to go on a 9 day tour the following week. I hadn't seen them for quite a few years. It was very fun to visit and catch up on everything. They have a son serving a church mission in Long Island and he has learned Haitian.

Nancy and I hung out and played games, talked and ate. Emily was in and out, busy with work making corsages for prom weekend. Wayne came over off and on as did Scott.

Friday afternoon Natalie drove down to spend the night. Wayne's friend came over and met us all and stayed for dinner. My cousin Mara and her husband stopped by for a visit and blessed us with some of their bounty from the Peppermint Place Candy shop.

Emily did Natalie's hair Friday night while we watched movies. Over a couple of days we watched Parental Guidance, Frank and the Robot, and People Like Us.

Saturday Natalie, Scott M., Wayne and his friend and I went out to lunch and had pizza at Nicolitalia Pizzeria in Orem.

Saturday evening, Natalie and I headed north to her place via a trip to Fashion Place Mall for a little shopping and then a late dinner at Iggy's Sports Grill at Jordan Landing. We had salads and split a burger and fries and had ice cream/sherbet for dessert.

Sunday Wayne drove up and met Natalie, Scott and I for brunch at Brio Tuscan Grille. I had the absolute best brunch ever. It was egg's Oscar with a shrimp and crab cake. Interesting thing about Brio's is that in February 2012 when I was on a business trip to St. Louis two of my coworkers and I had dinner at a Brio Tuscan Grille. So to see it again was pretty cool.

After lunch Natalie, Wayne and I hung out at TCBY, talked, took pictures and ate a little more. TCBY was one of our favorite frozen yogurt places near our house when the kids were younger. Wayne headed back home and Natalie drove me to the University Hospital where we visited one of my Aunts.

Then it was off to the airport to return home to Wally, Missy, the home and work. It was another great April Utah trip.

For pictures go to the Camera Capture tab at the top of the blog.

Impressions

A couple of weeks ago we were at the eye doctor's. Before checking in for the appointment we made a stop at the restroom in the hallway. There was a man with his wife and the wife was using a walker. She went on into the women's bathroom and I was talking with him. He was frustrated that she was losing her vision. They see the same eye doctor that my husband sees.

He commented that they were thinking of trying a different doctor. He referred to our common doctor as not being easy to talk to and of being arrogant.

We've been seeing the doctor for about 5 years now and don't really have any problems with him. The frustration comes from having a spouse who is losing his vision to damage from glaucoma and at this time there isn't really anything that can be done to correct it.

We then went in for our appointment. A week before our scheduled appointment we received a call saying our doctor was out sick and would we mind seeing his associate. That was fine with us. When we were in the exam room before the doctor came in the assistant was talking with us. She was telling us how sick the doctor was and said, "you do know he has leukemia, right?" We did not know that. She says he's been battling it for years and usually when he has problems he does chemo and then comes back to work.

With tears in her eyes she said to us, "he was here at work one day and then unable to come in the next day and we don't know if he'll be coming back". That was very sad to hear. We had no idea he was going through those struggles.

Just goes to show that you never really know what someone else may be going through. If their behavior isn't up to your standards, give them the benefit of the doubt.

Spring

Something to look forward to.

fo·cus

Focus:

8.	to bring or come to a focus or into focus
9.	to fix attention (on); concentrate

 

Synonyms
1. center, heart, core, nucleus.

 

I'm thinking this is my word for 2013. I caught myself on Saturday saying to my husband, "I'm going to try to stay focused on this project and try really hard not to get distracted." A couple of hours later he was moving a chair around and I told him I could come and help him and he reminded me that I wasn't supposed to interrupt myself. So true. I am my worst interrupter.

 

And if you were wondering, definitions 1 through 7 were related to physics, optics, geometry and geology. I really like the synonyms for this word; center, heart, core, nucleus.

 

Focus takes practice and concentration. It's an awareness of what you are doing at a moment in time. When I am not focused I don't do my best. When I consciously focus on a task, whether it be cooking, exercise, a work project or sewing, I do better if all my thoughts are on that one task at hand.

 

This is my goal this year, to focus on what I'm doing at the time I am doing it. To finish something because I have put my heart into it and I have focused on seeing it through.

 

As to my Saturday project, it took me many hours and a few breaks. I cleaned up and organized fabric and magazines in a spare bedroom. I'm very happy with the results. One thing I learned is that I keep too many magazines. I will try to read a magazine then pull out the pages I want to keep and put them in a sheet protector and in a binder. I'm mainly talking either quilting patterns or cooking recipes.

 

I love to take pictures and sometimes I have to adjust my focus to get just the right shot. Same with other things, I can adjust my focus to make the best of what I'm doing.

 

Here's a picture I love which I took one or two winters ago. It's a great example of focus.

 

 

Behind the Times

I have no idea what happened to me. An entire month of the New Year is gone. Tomorrow is February, it's unbelievable.

Christmas was low key but nice this year. A little quieter than usual with less family coming home. Being on vacation for 11 days was wonderful. This time I didn't have a big to do list, I just rolled with it and did a lot of relaxing.

It's been cold here, foggy, rainy, quite a variety of weather in the last month - reminder it's January in Seattle. What do I expect.
There have been numerous times I have sat down to write on my blog. But I have excuses, like I get sucked into Pinterest, the computer is too slow and it takes forever to type something, Facebook pulls me in, I'm too tired, I don't know what to write.The list goes on but I think you get the picture.

However I have enjoyed keeping up with blogs that I read. There are some amazing writers out there. One of my favorite blogs is Nothing But Bonfires. Holly please write a book, we are waiting for you to write a book. Read this. And now I have the song The Roof is on Fire stuck in my head, because I Zumba, I know that song!

I'm going to go see what kind of photos I might have taken recently and post a couple. With this winter weather and darkness I haven't been out taking pictures. I look forward to better weather (or a really good snow storm) so I can take more pictures.

 Here is my favorite Christmas picture with Wally and me.

Missy - she'll be 14 this year.

I made this adventurous cake.

The inside is supposed to look like an ornament.

12-12-12

December 12, 2012, or 12-12-12, will be the last date of its kind (a day when all three numericals in a date are the same) for the next 88 years. The next time this will happen is on January 1, 2101, or 01-01-01.

The number 12 has great significance in many cultures. In western tradition, it is commonly associated with completeness and seen as a perfect and harmonious unit. As such, it has found its way into religion (e.g. the 12 apostles), mythology (e.g. the 12 gods of Olympus), and everyday life (e.g. 12 hours on a modern clock face) a dozen donuts.

 
The number 12 has interesting mathematical properties as well. There are few small numbers that can be evenly divided by so many subsets.

And if this works for me this blog will be stamped 12-12-12 12:12 p.m.

(I don't plan on being around for 2101 and I'm okay with that.)

December 2012

Oh how I love the lights at Christmas time.There is definitely a lot more work to do in the month of December. The tree is up, the house is decorated and the decoration boxes are even put away in the garage. Now it's on to more shopping, wrapping and shipping. And then the baking and candy making.

December is such a special time of the year. And just last night we got a new addition to our family. This is my great niece baby Elsie. She is named after my mother who was born in 1922. I have now heard of two other little Elsie's recently. It's just so sweet and certainly makes me remember my mother.

Welcome to the world Elsie Norah Madson 12-9-12

Christmas is such an emotional time of the year. It's the memories, the lights, the traditions, the music, the gifts, the loved ones no longer with us, the new ones joining us, it all just comes together this time of year. 

Christmas is like a warm embrace, a friendly reminder at the end of the year. A reminder that lets us know we are thought of and loved and remembered. And that a new start, a fresh year is just around the corner.

IGNITE

I have had this word stuck in my head for a few days. Ignite, ignition.

ignite  (ɪɡˈnaɪt)

—    Vb

1.      to catch fire or set fire to; burn or cause to burn

2.      ( tr ) chem  to heat strongly

3.      ( tr ) to stimulate or provoke: the case has ignited a nationwide debate

[C17: from Latin ignīre  to set alight, from ignis  fire]

It started when I was cleaning off my desk at home. I seem to accumulate books, magazines and pieces of paper. I was thinking of taking a bunch of my diet books and giving them away. I am that person that buys the latest diet book, the newest fad, the one book that will save me from ever buying another diet book again. And how did that work for me you ask? I'm skipping that question.

That got me thinking about all those books I have collected over the years. Here are a few things I have learned:

1. I skim read diet books, I do not ever read the entire book, they make them too big.
2. They say the same thing in different ways, eat less, move more. I know that, I get it that.
3. You buy one book, you've seen them all.
4. It's really easy to read about it, to learn it, but I haven't figured out how to get myself to actually DO IT for more than about 3 days.

And that is when I started thinking of the word ignite. I know what to do, I know exactly how to do it, I just can't seem to ignite. My ignition key is stuck.

What is it that makes a person want something bad enough that they will change their eating habits? And if you are not willing to change your eating habits does that mean, you don't want it bad enough? 

I talk mostly about eating habits because I am a regular exerciser. I love to go to the gym, I wish I had more time to spend at the gym. But I also like sweets and carbs and all that white processed stuff I'm not supposed to eat.

I know that if I could get my ignition working I could retrain myself to eat healthier food. It would make a big difference in my life.

I'm almost there, I'm thinking about it. And I'm stoking the fire and eventually it will IGNITE!