Visitors

My brother, Charles and his wife, Alina came to visit today and brought their two children - Kayla and Austin as well as my Mom. It was nice to see them again. Austin is walking now and is a "Drool King" as he has a number of new teeth coming in.

Misty Sunday Morning

Good Morning! It is about 8:30 in the morning and there is a slight mist floating through the neighborhood. One of those peacefully eerie mornings. The cats are sticking to me like glue this morning - somedays they act like I will get away if they aren't in the same room as I am. And they stay with me unless Greg comes out of his room - like just now - they have gone to see if they can score another breakfast from him.

When we walked the other day we got a few pictures of an injured moth that I have combined into one photograph.


Scott snapped a picture of me as we were walking by the River Locke's. You can see in this picture how my left leg stays swollen. It is very visible at night. Kinda creeps me out a bit and has Scott worried and as soon as we get health insurance again I will be going to the Doctor about it. I gained a pound back this week and THAT STINKS! But I am still down 4 pounds from where I was at the beginning of the month and we will keep plugging away at it. If nothing else we are feeling a LOT better these days. The walks/runs really do help improve ones mental state as well as the physical state.

My Mom is coming down today to go through my Aunt's things as she has been moved to a Nursing home and the people she was living with wanted her stuff out NOW! So it's in the back of my truck; I don't want any of it in my house as it's dirty and full of bugs. It's really sad the way someone's state of life degrades as they age. I don't want Greg to have to go through a bunch of crap when I'm gone. I'm planning to thin out "stuff" - sell, give or trash it. Fewer "things" means faster cleaning. I would rather he had memories of me than stuff.

Ecclectic Update

This is a "little of this, a little of that" update.

I got a "spiffy" new pair of sneakers day before yesterday and wore them for the first time yesterday and wore my legs out running. It's nice having shoes in good shape to run in - but it makes it really easy to over do.

Today I walked and just enjoyed the time by the river.

And this morning - with Tesla's help I got a few projects completed and ready to mail. He can be quite a little annoyance at times... but his cuteness makes up for it... I think.

The projects I completed were two Round Robin's and one of the 9 Pastel Blocks that I need to have mailed before the end of May. They are quite time consuming as there are so many smaller blocks that make up the 12 1/2" blocks. But they are quite lovely...

The Round Robins are quite fun and it's always exciting waiting for your's to get back home after each participant has added a "round" (border). Here are the two I added the first "round" to this morning....

A a single photo of the new water treatment plant -It's HUGE!
This is only a small portion of whats going up down by the boat ramp...

A Fun Little Giveaway

Garden chick is giving away some fun little tins with lotion bars inside. Why not join in her fun at: http://thegardenchick.blogspot.com/search/label/giveaway

Pizza

The other day I made a Pizza from scratch using this recipe from allrecipes.com; it was submitted by Gudny Bjorg Kjaerbo. They have more Pizza Dough Recipe's but this one is SO EASY and FAST....

Pizza Dough 1

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 (.25 oz) package active dry yeast
1 Tablespoon white sugar
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup warm water (110*F)

Combine flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a large bowl. Mix oil and warm water. Spread out on a large pizza pan. Top as desired ( I used a can of Pizza sauce; browned ground beef, canned sliced mushroom, sliced onion and mozarella and Parmesan cheese).

Bake at 375*F for 20 to 25 minutes.

Fascination

Scott and I are constantly fascinated by what Nature has to offer. On a recent walk by the River we saw this snake's body sticking out of a hole and watched with amazement as it twisted, rolled and pulled on something within the hole. We watched for quite awhile than went on down our route and when we came back it had finally pulled a very blown up toad from the hole. We had disturbed it enough that as soon as it was free it slithered off into the woods. I don't know how it would EVER get that toad down but it was apparently determined to do just that....











Midlands Water Snake - Non-poisonous.

What Flower Are You?

I just took this little quiz and found out that I am.....

You Are an Echinacea

"You are a health conscious person, both your health and the health of others. You know all about the health benefits and dangers of the world around you."

You can find out what flower you are on the side bar.

A Blow Out and River Creatures

The last time we went to walk/run at the river my sneakers decided to blow out....


BIG TIME! So now I have no sneakers to run in; I can walk in the slide on sneaker things that I have but it would be difficult to run in them so I will be walking fast while Scott is running as there are no funds for new sneakers.











I can't let a "River" post go up without some "creature" pictures... ENJOY!

Projects and a Pig Pickin'

I'll start this post off with some of the projects I've been working on; this post will be picture heavy. I'm working on some pastel quilt blocks for a swap that I am in but as you can see it's going slow as I have this helper that keeps getting in the way.

I've got the piecing done for all 9 blocks except for sewing the little blocks together in rows. Perhaps today I will be able to get in there "Un-supervised" and get this completed so that they are ready to mail out as soon as I get some money for postage.

Saturday we attended Kevin and Ronda's Annual "Pig Pickin". We had a nice time and it was wonderful to see family once again.

Yesterday Scott and I went over to Godly Street under the 12th Street Extension bridge and picked a BUNCH of blackberries. I would like to go back to pick more today; weather permitting. When we got home I decided that I wanted to make some blackberry jam and then I got to thinking about how good it would taste on homemade bread SOOOoooo......

Taking a Blogging Break

Be back in a few days - we need to re-group a bit and figure out where life is going to take us next.

I picked a few blackberries

I've let a couple areas of my yard go to some blackberries and am I ever happy I did. Blackberries cost about $6 for a half a pint; I figure I picked about $20-35 worth today for FREE! These will be excellent with yogurt for breakfast the next 3 or 4 days... YUMMY! I'd love to scope out some more to have enough to freeze for later use.

Tiny Creature

Today we saw a very dead snake - a harmless snake that would only benefit humans but someone decided to kill it. I did not take a picture of it. But I did get a picture of this little guy; saw him on the ground and picked him up on a stick so we could get a good picture. We aren't sure what it is but we will research and see if we can figure it out.

Search Box added

I've added a search box just below my blog title to make it easier for myself and my readers to find recipe's and such in my blog posts. I believe that it will be a wonderful asset to my blog.

I'm Singing in the Rain.......

It's been raining like crazy on and off all day.... YEAH!

Magnolia's - Love / Hate Relationship!

I LOVE magnolia blossoms but HATE the tree - it's a constant clean-up battle. I know you can't have one without the other; but I do not believe that I would purposefully plant one myself knowing the work they create.

These are two angles of the same flower; the blooms are massive.

The Lantana is in bloom by the lamp post and that means that we can expect to see hummingbirds and a great variety of butterflies in our front yard. I would plant a LOT more of this if we were going to stay in this house for the rest of our lives but since we have a cottage in the woods in mind for the future I think that I will wait until we are there and then plant a bunch of lantana around it.

Scott has some little watermelon plants growing on the lower side of the house. He figures that we rarely go down that side and we can just let them spread like crazy. Hopefully they will produce some edible fruits.

The "walking onions" are doing their thing and creating spirals to reach down to the earth and grow anew. I love their twisted forms...

And last but not least a gratuitous dog picture for your pleasure....

She LOVES her picture taken - such a DIVA!