Living Life Beautifully

Some days I wish I had no outside responsibilities. I think life would be so much easier. Dealing with others can make us nuts because we are all human and made differently. Between worrying if I upset someone, or what to do when someone upsets me.......I'd like to just run away. I guess it's what we must do, but sometimes I wish I could take a break. This year has been a difficult one. It's funny when I look back at my almost 21 years of married life and count up the huge mountains we've had to climb. Between, financial struggles, a difficult twin pregnancy, financial struggles, raising those twins, a remodel of our former home in which we had to do most of the work ourselves and live in the mess, financial struggles, a miscarriage, our home flooding when I was 6 months pregnant, did I mention financial struggles, two years of my mother in law being incredibly sick, taking on our current house project, my parents divorce, and church issues, not to mention all the lit...

The Christmas season is here. I love it!!! I love the music, the food, the decorations, the shopping, and the celebration of it all. I absolutely LOVE tradition. I guess the only thing I don't care for about Christmas is the business. It's going by so fast because I'm always running from one thing to another. I don't like being busy. I love my home and time vegging out with my family. I try to make the house look as nice as I can, though it's unfinished. I put on the Christmas music and light up the decorations. I have the wood stove going if it's cold. I love when it's cold. I light the candles to try and make it smell nice. I have Christmas tea to drink, egg nog and ice cream to eat and spiced cider. We have st nick bring treats on the night of the 5 th of december so the stockings are filled on the morning of the 6 th . We open one gift on Christmas eve and the rest Christmas morning. We usually have Bruce's family on Christmas eve, ou...

Wow, what a day! Alex is home sick. He's had a fever for two days and sleeps all the time. I'm having to really work to get some fluids down him. I don't want to end up in the hospital again for dehydration. I put him in the living room so I could check on him easily. His bedroom is on the other side of the house. Because I put him in the living room, and because he was sleeping, I had to find something quiet to do. So I decided to work in the kitchen. I thought it would be pretty cool if I could take the oven door apart and clean the drip lines from inside. It was a long chore but it looks great. Yay me!!! During the week I got a call from a friend. After the call I spent a good part of the day thinking about the conversation and wondering if I said something wrong. I beat myself up about it all day. I hate that. Sometimes I wish I didn't care. I will torture myself with what others think about me, and here they probably don't think about me at all. ...

Last night I had the job of dealing with the kids on my own, since my husband was playing the country music show in town. It was a smooth evening, if I do say so myself. :) The funny part of the evening is when I told the youngest to go take his shower. With the reply "Oh man". A little later I came across this same child in his pajamas and slightly wet hair. The hair was wet only at the top of his head. The Mom instinct kicked in. I bent down to smell his hair and....low and behold.....it didn't smell like shampoo. Hmmm...... I said, "Nice try. Now go take a shower". Don't ya just love kids? After his shower he decided he wanted to hang out with me in my room for the evening. He came in, now smelling of soap and shampoo, dressed in his flannel pants and an over sized cartoon shirt down past his knees, hair sticking up from being towel dried. We decided to watch loony tunes, recorded from earlier in the day. He asked me if I wanted eggnog and ice cream in a ...

I've been listening and reading about a new fad in Christianity that has become very heart breaking for me personally . It seems there is a growing number of people who don't like what they call the "institution" of the church. You know what? Church is not perfect and never was. That's why there are so many letters in the bible to churches telling them what they need to change. It's not going to be perfect but that doesn't mean we walk away. What concerns me about great Christian people who give up on the church experience, is that, in giving up and only gathering with a small group of Christians, they are losing the experience of fellowship with people that have no other place to go. Christians who need loving people around them on that Sunday morning, to help get them through the week. What I LOVE about church is that I am accepted even though I'm not perfect, wealthy, popular or whatever. I LOVE that when my children come to church, they are...

The last few years I've been obsessed with recycling. I love nature. This morning I walked outside in my pj's and went looking around the garden. I have to go out and pull all the caterpillars off the plants so they don't look like swiss cheese. I throw them in the pond for the fish to eat. YUM! :P While I was out there I went looking for worms for my worm farm. I know what your thinking, (crazy lady). But you know, even when I was little I would wait til the rain stopped and go looking for worms in the puddles and save their little wormy lives. I've been trying to raise worms for a year with no great success. When I thought I was doing really well, they all died, or so I thought. I'm now thinking they escaped. Anyway... What I've found really interesting is that worms collect under a rabbit cage. So if you have a fascination with worms, get a rabbit, or go find a friend who has a rabbit. I've been composting for a year also. It's very cool. ...

I'm so glad it's Friday. I had absolutely no energy today. The plan was to go to lunch with a friend and do nothing else. I think I accomplished my goal. When I walked into the living room this morning, there was a partially eaten shoe on the floor. I looked over at the chihuahua (peanut) and his tail was already between his legs and he was headed over to his protector, my husband. He kept looking at me, but was pawing at my husbands leg, as if to say, "oh please pick me up and save me from the crazy lady". I kept looking at him, which was making him incredibly nervous. Finally he stood behind my husbands legs to hide and only peeked around them on occasion to see if I was still there. After that didn't work, he headed off to the oldest son's room. He jumped up on the bed and looked to my son for protection. Little did he know that my oldest son was the owner of the partially eaten shoe. So, he got his little chihuahua bottom swatted, a little too lightly in m...

Beautiful day outside. I love this time of year. It makes you feel good. It's not too hot and not too cold. The sun is shining and yet your not feeling like you have to take a shower after your walk to the mailbox. :) We had a busy weekend. Bruce and I took the kids to the airshow on Saturday. It's a family tradition for us. Including the fact that I always get a sunburn and Alex always wears earplugs. We have a joke we call the air show salute. We watch the huge crowd as all the hands go up to block the sun. After the air show we couldn't find our car. We kept walking to every white expedition thinking it was ours only to find out that we were in the wrong parking area. I thought I would be smart and hit the panic button on my remote. It turned out to be pretty funny as I was turning on the alarms to several cars and none were mine. As we were walking to one of them thinking it was our car, I noticed that the people had the hood up and were trying to figure...

My brain is wanting to shut down on me today. With Bruce's tooth issues, a busy schedule, unfinished home, being a month away from our business down season (after a year of droubt), Christmas coming up and the dramas of having 3 teens, I think I'm living at my limit. Every year I wonder how we got through the last year. God always provides but it seems this last couple of years have been a true test of patience with provisions coming in only at the very last minute. We work hard, try to live right, are careful with our finances and every single time we finally feel like we're digging our way out.....a truck breaks down, an apliance goes out, a tooth needs filling......etc....etc. I long for a break in the storm. To have just a few months of financial peace, comfort....luck. Do I believe in luck? I hate the hold that money has on the world. I put no stock in it, and yet I have to have it to survive. That old saying that money can't buy happiness...... I'd ju...

Wow! What a day! I accomplished a lot, but man I'm tired. It was a busy weekend for us. My house paid the price. You know those days when you walk around the house and it seems like everything is overwhelming? I had a list of things to do that was forever long and they had to get done TODAY. It was one of those days when every room I walked into was destroyed, as if the kids had just given up trying to clean up after themselves. Then I walked outside and the oldest and my husband had both decided not to bother throwing their trash IN the trashcan, instead it was easier to throw it on the compost pile or one of the many brush piles. So the day consisted of going from room to room, collecting cups, candy wrappers, socks, tissues and every kind of odd trinket. I washed dish after dish after dish for what seemed forever, I loaded laundry non-stop from washer to dryer to basket and folded on and on. I went through papers, paid bills, balanced checkbooks, cleaned the bunny cage, sent out...

Happy Halloween!!! It's beautiful outside. Makes you want to spend the day doing something outdoors. Our neighborhood is doing a hayride this evening. I don't know but a few of my neighbors, so we'll probably skip it,but maybe we'll have a little fire pit going and hand out some candy when they come by. We've only lived in the house for about a year. The properties are large so your not that close to your neighbors. I LOVE that! Although it makes it hard to get to know people unless you go to the property owners association. :) We haven't been yet. The boys have a game this evening where the band is going to do their version of "Thriller". Sounds like fun. Alex has the sniffles. It got pretty cold last night. When the heater finally shut on there was a burning smell in the house and the fire alarm went off. Bruce got up and walked the house looking for a fire. I had started the woodstove earlier so he went outside and looked at the chimney ...

HAPPY almost HALLOWEEN!!! This is Mr Gretta. (Thought he was a girl, turned out to be a boy) You can do just about anything to this sweet boy, and he just soaks it up. Some days I wish I had that magic bewitched nose. Oh how wonderful it would be to twinkle my little nose and have all the mess cleaned up in an instant. After an hour or so of each person in my home going through every cupboard and container trying to find the perfect part for their halloween costume, my house is a wreck. No matter. I head for the kitchen and, as flylady would say, I shine my sink. Or rather, I did my dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. It's amazing, when everything is a mess and incredibly overwhelming, all you have to do is clean up the kitchen and it gives you hope. :P I didn't have a clue, when I chose to have children, that it would be as difficult as it is. You go through those baby years of waking up at all hours of the night, smelling of spit up, and getting that bath routine down ...

I just got back from lunch with my cousin Candy. We always have fun hanging out. Lots of laughs and stories about our lives. I feel pretty fortunate to have a close friendship with at least three of my cousins. We all understand the genetic pool of stuff each other has to deal with. Good and Bad. Always makes for a laugh. I have a headache today. Seems to be getting worse as the day goes on. I'm suposed to go to our church this evening for something called trunk or treat. I'm thinking a cup of tension tamer tea, lots more tylenol, a good movie, and a soft bed sounds wonderful. Yesterday I started on one of my large rag dolls. I think I've made a total of 6 of them in all my years of crafting. This is a photo of the one I made for myself. The one I'm making now has more blue in the quilt, is tea stained, and has a lot more lace. I never know how they'll turn out. I guess that's what makes it fun and why I don't like making any two alike. I tell ya,...

It's a beautiful day, I've done my chores, and I have about two hours before I have to pick up the 10 year old. So I thought I would update my blog and then work on some craft projects. I've got two doll bodies ready to go. I hope to complete a rag doll and a Santa by the end of this week to post on my Etsy page. That's the goal. I've made quite a few dolls over the years and kept some of my favorites. This is one of my Santas. He's made from an old quilt that's seen better days. They take a while to make but their a lot of fun. As you can see I'm into the shabby chic look. Just about everything I have is imperfect. I love the history behind some of the things in my home. I have things that are so beaten up but have a great story behind them. Even my home itself has a wealth of stories. My Dad was working on the door to our kitchen, and he put this great trim piece right under the window. Well, when I looked at the door, all I could see was an...

Hey there, I'm really excited about starting my own blog. I've been writing in a journal since I was a child of 12 or so. It should be pretty easy for me to post often. Although my spelling can be rather interesting. Bare with me. :) For over a year now I've been on a mission to find joy in my life. That kind of joy that makes you feel like your actually LIVING your life, not just letting it pass by unnoticed. I thought it would be fun to share my journey with others and maybe get some good ideas along the way. I am an open book. That can be considered a flaw, however I find it helpful for others when I look like a fool. So, don't be surprised to find yourself laughing at my expense. If it's one thing I can do for your day....I'm good with that. :) I am a wife of almost 20 years, married to my best friend. I am a Mother of 4 wonderful boys and 7 great furry friends. I am a Christian, a crafter, a decorator, a singer, and the type of person who loves...