Living Life Beautifully

Yesterday I spent the day with my husband shopping in Fredericksburg, looking at all the new craft ideas, meeting people who are vendors for a living.  It doesn't look like the most glamorous job, but the people are so very nice.  The amount of work that goes into setting up the huge booths at the outdoor market, is amazing.  Being someone who has always been crafty since learning to crochet at 7 years old, I am always appreciative of the work that goes into the things that others make.  Nothing pays you for the time you put into it.  You are basically sharing something you created for a little above the cost.  Every time we make the trip, I try to support a vendor.  I used to go up once a year to buy a handmade purse from an elderly lady and her husband who sell them.  (Now we go whenever the large bottle of vanilla runs out) The husband would cut out everything and the wife would sew them.  That was how they made their living.  I loved...

I was blessed with some sort of virus for the weekend that kept me in bed for a couple of days.  I feel much better now.  It's funny how a virus that keeps you in bed when you are a mother and housekeeper, feels a little like a vacation, as long as you don't feel like throwing up. I was blessed with the fact that our TV plan gave us free premium channels for the weekend, making it much nicer to be stuck in my room. :)  I was blessed with the fact that it was raining all day on Sunday, making it nice to chill out in bed and listen to the rain.  I love the rain.  I can just hear the trees celebrating. I watched a few movies that based their theme on enjoying life and not spending your life working so hard for material things.  Spending so many hours a week for a home that you have very little time to enjoy because your working so hard.  Money is like fire.  It can warm you and can destroy you.  I'm reading a book called, "the time keeper" by ...

I went to lunch with my husband on monday to celebrate the first day of school.  We went to the Grist Mill and ate way too much food sitting in the dining area over looking the water.  As we were talking I noticed a couple walk through that obviously had money and were married.  The woman was a perfectly manicured with makeup and not one hair out of place, she had her expensive clothes and purse, and the grumpiest look on her face.  The husband looked exactly the same.  They probably live in a beautiful home and drive amazing cars, just based on how they looked and acted.  I felt kinda sorry for them. I have lived a huge chunk of my life thinking i had to be one way and trying so hard to make myself what other people thought I should be.  You are raised by your parents to be like them and they fuss and mold you and judge you if you aren't up to snuff.  They want you to be the best for your sake and so you won't embarrass them. I remember when i ...

I'm sitting here on the back deck with my hot tea, and about three cookies that I will allow myself   ;) , reading a journal by a woman who, at the time, was finding herself through a midlife crisis. (if you want to call it that) I'm reading her words, and how familiar they are to some of my thoughts in the past few years, and I read "holes are holy. Miracle vessels were you go in one thing and come out another."  That one line is so very powerful to hear. It is so true when you think about it. Life takes you through things and changes who you are. If it's a huge hole, then you learn a lot, if it's a small hole then you learn not to step in it again, if it takes a LONG time to get out of the hole, then you are probably going to be forever changed. THAT.... WAS THE FIRST PART OF A VERY LONG BLOG POST I TYPED UP EARLIER. SIGH...........   Now....... after this paragraph, I kept typing up this "Im doing much better now" page of self analysis...

I was talking to my cousin this evening, over e-mail, about what lessons God wants me to learn with some of the things that have happened in my life.  I am pretty hard on myself, so it's not hard for me to imagine all kinds of issues He would want to correct about me.  If I were to write my own list, I would say that I wish I were less sensitive. I wish I didn't break down into tears as often as I have in the last 6 years, since my parents divorce. I wish I didn't feel I had to fix things. I wish I weren't so hard on myself. I wish I was more outgoing. I wish I was not so scared of situations and people. I like that I think people are good. I like that I forgive quickly. I don't like that I take everything personally. I think I talk too much. But I love that I listen well. I love to hear someones story.   When I say, "how are you?"  I want to hear the truth.   I've been through a lot of things and maybe something I've experienced can h...

It's pretty late at night.  My brain won't slow down so I can sleep.  Last night I was up til dawn trying to sleep due to my mind racing and my legs crawling. It's been a difficult week. I could write all these things down in my journal next to my bed, instead of typing it into a blog for everyone to read, but I remember being a young girl, and young wife, thinking I was the only one who felt this or that.  I remember wishing I could have learned from someone's mistakes instead of making them myself.  I wished someone would have told me.......... and then maybe this or that wouldn't have happened. My blog posts are not always fun to read, and they usually don't make me look too great, but I post them because I know they might help someone else. Sometimes it feels like God is unhappy with me, that he lets me go through so much in my life.  And then I think of some of the things that other people go through that is so much worse, and I feel bad for comparing ...

 It is so hot outside.  The deer are panting from the heat.  This morning I put out a second large metal tub full of water because I can't keep fresh drinkable water in the first one for more than a day or so. I'm feeling so much better now that I'm not on any bad medications.  I'm eating healthy. I just wish things weren't so overwhelming here.  I accept the fact that keeping two and a half acres of land and a 100 year old home is not going to be perfectly done.  I am fortunate I didn't get that super perfection gene from my mother's side of the family.  The paint of the house is falling off because there was no paint left on it when we moved it here.  When we painted it, the wood was damp from huge amounts of rain.  It would have taken 6 months to dry out.  Given the fact that we have never gone 6 months without rain, we went ahead and painted.  But now it has this lovely crackle finish, and this not so lovely, "fall off t...

  After a long day of work,  my husband is showered and putting in his invoices... with a little help from Maggie. I went thrift store shopping yesterday.  I love going through thrift stores.  The tea cups, in the back of the picture, will be made into  a craft for our booth at the farmers market.  I collect white dishes, so several of these things will go into my china cabinet.   This was my favorite find of the day.  So cute and very little damage to it.  I paid all of $3.00.   Lace I found at a church thrift shop.  Most of it has damage, so they weren't too expensive.   I end up cutting them to make crafts, so I don't mind.  Here are the purses I made on Tuesday.  If the weather holds up, it's not too windy, and my husband isn't too tired from the week..... these will be in the booth at the farmers market on Saturday. Father's day is on Sunday...

I was talking to my husband this morning about our life and asked him if he ever thought about how different things would be had we made different choices.  I asked him if he thought he might have been more successful had he married someone else, who pushed him in the right directions.   He probably would have had a modern home with a lot less maintenance.  He would have probably had two kids and a minimalist home with very little clutter. Then again...he might have married someone who didn't push him at all, had 10 kids, and lived with his parents because their home was so full of junk or they didn't have a home at all. It is amazing to think of how many small choices we might make in life that turn things in a totally different direction.  I wonder how many times I made a choice, said something, or even gave a look, that changed the course of my life and the life of my family.  I don't think I ever THINK about how something I might say, blog about,...

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So far my experiment at regrowing veggies has been a success. The green onions are doing great as you can see and because they are in the kitchen instead of in the garden, I seem to remember to use them.  The avocado pits are doing well,  They rooted much faster when I put them in a dark cabinet than when I had them out in the open. The plants in the white bowls from left to right are romaine lettuce, leaf lettuce, and celery.  It was so easy getting them started and they are doing great.  Now I need to get them outside into pots.  The leaf lettuce has only been sitting in the water for a day or so, that's why you can't see much going on in the picture, but it already has little sprouts growing.  I didn't know if leaf lettuce would work since it was not on the list of plants you can regrow online, but I thought it was worth a try. The tomato plant is from a friend.  I'm waiting for it to get large enough to plant outside. ...

I ran into some very nice people at the doctors office while waiting to have some bloodwork done. We got to talking about the house we moved.  I gave her my card and told her I would post some photos on my blog.  So.... here we go.  This is all you could see of the front porch of the house before we cleared the trees.  The house had been vacant for approx 20 years and was used by the San Antonio SWAT for practice one day, causing all windows, doors and some floors and wall to be destroyed. The house was built in 1907 by my great grandparents on my mothers side and was then sold to my grandparents until they moved shortly after the death of my great grandmother. After that it was rented for a very short amount of time and then left vacant. My grandmother and most of her siblings were born in the house. I believe even some of my aunts and uncles were also born there.                 ...