Look What Happens IF...

you're nice to the lady at Lowe's who is stuck with unpacking all the Christmas Stuff out in the Formerly Garden Stuff area...thatttttt's right...faboo cardboard stars...that I have no idea of what to do with...Lord help...I mangled that sentence, didn't I? but I don't care...I've been under the weather and I'm claiming, um, Recuperating Editing Rights...

she had them in the trash bin! I had to save them...naturally, I'll move them about for maybe 5 or 6 years and then they'll end up in the trash anyway...or at least the recycle bin...

the following day I will be struck by a brilliant idea of what I could have used the things for...

because that, friends, is the Way of the Universe...

Miss Julie over at Gingerbread (yum) Pumpkin (yum, again...because I bought some Pumpkin Spice coffee this past weekend...that I just found when cleaning up the pantry...we'll have another talk some day about so called "deals" with spouses about putting up groceries in exchange for escaping toilet scrubbing duty...and then having to revamp the pantries/cabinets/fridge/freezer every time you use the "deal"...but like I said, that's another day) tagged me to throw 6 Random Facts About Myself Into the Universe...I know the Universe can hardly wait so here goes...

1) I'm absolutely in love with David Suchet's Poirot...the Poirot from before they cheapened the series with the new episodes...I'm sorry but you do not have to Sex Up Agatha Christie...whose idiot brilliant idea was that?

2) I will clap along with a crowd at just about any gathering...and I'll sing along and I'll dance along...now ya'll know to get seats far away from me...

3) I Heart Me Some Grey...I love grey weather, grey clothes, grey cars...I even can't wait until my hair that I unfortunately coloured an unfortunate shade of dark reddish brown goes completely silver so I can, snap, WearItWithFlair...I have not, however, ever seen an episode of Gray's Anatomy...probably because they spell "grey" all wonky...and considering Henry Gray was British, I totally don't Get It...

4) I never met the jar of jam or jelly or marmalade or curd that I didn't like...or chutney or pesto or whatever funky mix you can put in a jar...along as there aren't chunks of animal parts floatin' in jelly or something equally disturbing...

5) I have a Secret Desire to wear house dresses and chain smoke...this may be tied to the fact that I'm sick of perennially dieting, exercising and having to wear things with fitted waists...or at least the illusion of a fitted waist (the things they can do with elastic these days!!!)

6) I am Not Always Right...just enough of the time to Make It Seem That Way*

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*the rest of the time I just keep my mouth shut...that is the secret to not bringing your batting average down and appearing to have a FGGOE (Fairly Good Grasp of Everything)...hah...

Take It Easy, Ya'll

Sheila

Pardon This Interruption...

of a blogger who primarily likes to rattle on about little mundane things...

by a blogger who is simply fed up with A Whole Lot of Things...

(click to enlarge...created at wordle.net)

and let's not go into finger pointing...we're so far beyond that that we can't even see that in the rear view mirror...

so all I'm askin' is: Do any of ya'll have a couple of Middle Schoolers who might be available a couple of afternoons a week to help all the grown-ups get this mess straightened out? or even some 4th graders good with long division, multiplication, addition, subtraction...ya'll know...the basic stuff* that we all use to balance our piggy banks...

...because surely the little ones couldn't do a worse job than the bunch currently runnin' the show have...

actually, maybe we should just check the zoos for primates with drinking problems**...

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*basic stuff=apparently unimportant stuff once you enter certain job arenas

**better known as a barrel of drunk monkeys

OOOOOOOhhhhhhh the Shame...

of it all....

what are these?easy enough, right?

these are magazines...

but what kind of magazines?

old magazines, she said with a hint of defiance in her voice

what kind of old magazines?

old magazines...bought off of ebay...

that's right, people...I've hit a new low for magazine addiction...

I'm buyin' them off ebay...

...and I just won the complete 1990 and 1991 issues of Country Living [hooray...$4.99 plus shipping]...

can I tell ya'll how much I'm loving these old magazines?

a whole bunch...they're a really cheap thrill...keep me amused and out of trouble for hours on end...

several months ago, our bet-ter Goodwill started keeping magazines in the book area...I was thrilled...I grabbed up a handful and practically trampled children on my way to the register to enquire the price (I'm thinkin' to myself "couldn't be more than 50 cents an issue")...

after the check-out ladies looked at me as if I had more than 1 screw loose, one trotted off to the back room to see how much to charge the insane person at the register for the crummy old magazines...

BUT THEY WEREN'T FOR SALE...

just for "customers to browse"...

what? people, this isn't Barnes & Noble...until ya'll start up a coffee bar and sell over-priced slices of cheesecake too, THERE IS NO SITTING AND BROWSING MAGAZINES (that I want to buy)...

I expect I was a pitiful sight, slowly trundling back to the stupid book area to return the stupid magazines to the stupid bin where nobody was going to do anything with them at stupid all...

But I feel, with time, I've moved on...recovered a bit...found a new way to feed my addiction...

next, please...wicker furniture found at the Habitat in Rincon...settee $30, chair $20 and end table $10...the only flaw is that little broken band at the bottom of the chair...easy fix...

I've been wanting wicker for the front porch for a while but refused to get up off at least a cool $300...because I'm frugal like that...

Life Lesson: eventually, all things pass through Goodwill, the Salvation Army and/or Habitat for Humanity...like a good pitch...you gotta waiiiiitttttttt for it...SWING!

a nice coat of olive green paint will perk things right up...a nice coat of olive green paint that will be applied when the heat and humidity back off just a touch...come, say, November...
and a long bloomin', late blooming daylily...that I cannot recall the name of for the life of me...

most daylilies in our area have long since stopped blooming...actually around here, a lot of blooming perennials hang up their hats by June or July so I love having these pretty orange blooms in late August and on into September...

Take it easy, ya'll :)

Thanks for...

the award, Deb...
it is tres cool...

and since my foreign language skills are, well, horrible, I used altavista's babelfish translator to see what the award says...

it says, according to the babbling fish: this blog invests and credits na proximidade

so...I imagine that letter I sent to the vet in St. Martin using babelfish was a bunch of incomprehensible gibberish...

no wonder I never got a response...

sigh...it is hard to make a whole nation look bad, but I think I did a pretty bang-up job of it with that pitiful letter...

but Deb says the award means "My friend Sharon informed me that the award celebrates how lovely someone is! That's a pretty nice award and I'm sure it means inside.

Mrs. B also found a translation of the award on the post below to be. THIS BLOG INVEST AND BELIEVES IN THE PROXIMITY ( proximity> noun nearness in space, time, or relationship)"

we're going with that...

and now I pick 8 bloggers who I think are lovely...

let's see:

A Girl Named Timi's, um, Timi (she's a funny mess...with a cool car)

Bay Side to Mountain Side's Darla (she's just so funny too...and funny counts for a lot)

The Berry's Patch's Brandee (she is just plain sweet...)

Gingerbread Pumpkin's Julie (another sweetie...and I love Gingerbread & Pumpkin)

Lavender Hill Studio's Penny (Penny is just pleasant and friendly allll the time...plus she likes brown transfer ware too...and I love her roosterchickenpillow)

Rabbit Run Cottage's Susie Q (another funny lady...with a really cool dog co-blogger)

The Pleasure of Homemaking's Manuela (I'm so glad you're blogging again!!! you have a lot to offer :)

Southern Hospitality's Rhoda (because the woman can decorate a house on a dime...& do it well)

there...all done...

Remembering 9/11

for many Americans, for several generations, September 11th is going to be one of Those Questions...

each generation has some of those questions; sometimes the questions overlap generations...

society-altering, soul-shaking moments that make people say "I remember where I was when..."

like when people say where they were when JFK or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were assassinated or when The Bomb was dropped...or when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up...although, sadly, now there are 2 of those instances to recall...

Too young for the first two, I do remember when Challenger and her astronauts blew apart in a fiery explosion...

and I remember the utter shock and disbelief taking over my emotions...

and now I also remember when a man ran up to me at the hospital where I was working on 9/11/2001...

I cannot remember his face but I can remember him saying "a plane just flew into the World Trade Center" and I remember some of the thoughts that raced through my mind...

the ones I voiced were "a little plane? it was an accident, right?", thinking some poor hobby pilot flew horribly off course and lost control of his plane...

but it wasn't, was it? patients and staff gathered around as we could to watch the tragedy unfolding, hoping that somehow those people would be rescued...we knew those on the airplane were beyond help...

then we watched in disbelief as the second plane flew into the WTC...

I will never forget watching people fling themselves from those buildings, tiny dark figures hurtling down through the air...

...then those towers came down before our disbelieving eyes...

and as that grief-filled day unfolded, we learned of more victims...the victims of the attack on the Pentagon, both the passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 77 as well as the Pentagon staff, and the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93...

My heart still hurts for the victims of 9/11...

the people who died, their families and for the rest of us too...

9/11 wounded us all...

I believe time heals wounds...this one will take a long long time to heal all the way...


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Deb at Deb's Country Kisses has gifted me with a Sweet Award...

Deb, I promise I'll pass this award on tomorrow when we all aren't feeling quite so blue...

A Little Christmas Gift Thriftin' Love...

for my favourite SIL who is absolutely bonkers for PINK! the woman (and her husband) are just finishing up building a great big pink house on the water...that is how much she loves pink...

we're a lot alike in our decorating tastes...but I go with brown/olive green/gold/burnt orange/brick red/black...she goes with turquoise/kelly green/sunshine yellow/pink/turquoise/white...

we love the same stuff, we just choose different palettes...

given the love affair with pink in all of its shades, I know SIL will love this for her Christmas Gift...

The bowl is Polish Crystal (still has the label...actually still had the price sticker on the bottom) with no chips or cracks, stands about 10 inches tall and is about that wide across...and weighs a ton...I love the cranberry colour of it and the beautiful cuts in the surface of the crystal..

and I'm going to fill it with Christmas ornaments...not the ones I was thinkin' about that are pictured above...those don't really fit the bill...I think I'll go with ones I custom make by filling clear ornaments with craft paint, swirling about it all about to create a beautiful look ornament with SIL's palette in mind...

Don't worry...I'll tell her I thrifted it* because we're both into thriftin' , we've a history of exchanging thrifted gifts** and we're both l-o-v-e getting something fabulous for a song ...well, not an actual song because my singing voice would scare anybody who still draws a breath...not encourage the generous bestowing of great things for no cost...

this is a Home Run in the gift department...

so....do any of ya'll Thrift Gift? (I am going to feel so bad if I am the Only One in the Whole Wide World...just keep that in mind...)



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*no, I won't be all uncouth about it and blare it extra-real loud right when I hand it over...

**the most important part of receiving a gift is when a person knows you well enough to just pick out a Perfect Something...doesn't matter to me if it is second-hand, third-hand or picked out of the Free Bin at the thrift shop...it is the thought that counts...I have friends and family I'd gift with thrifted items without a second thought...but I do have friends and family that I know that wouldn't sit well with so I Never Go There...

moral: Know Whom to Gift with Thrifted Items and Whom Not to Gift with Thrifted Items :)

As Promised...

the bed, the goblet, the new office door...plus my new Mass-Produced-But-Adorable Pumpkins and Crows and our mantel...

lookin' better...but not there yet...I'm going to do some type of glaze...I'm leaning towards a barn red...honestly, I'm going through some type of decorating midlife crisis...I've always mixed rustic with modern/cottage/french provincial...whatever is at hand and works...but I'm a little unsettled that I seem to be heavily gravitating towards a prim feel...this is somewhat new territory...

no, not going out into the back 40, harvesting saplings and lashin' them together to form our kitchen table (although I have given serious thought to doing that for a bed frame...wouldn't the cats just pass out from sheer hysterical delight?) but definitely tilting towards a home with more rustic leanings than before...

although some of my friends would say that seed has always been there, just waitin' to burst into the light...

invariably, when we were going through our auction stage, the worst looking Piece o' Junk that came onto the bidding floor elicited excited whispers of "Sheila! did you see that?!!!! that looks like you! you have to get that!"...

now I know what is meant by that...but still...

movin' along...

new goblets intended for the Thanksgiving table...very excited about these...let's see...new office door...lovin' this...our home is a ranch-style house built in the early 70s...love the layout...mostly...but all of the bedrooms are on one end of the house, opening onto a shared hallway that gets dark as a cave when the doors are shut...and my office door always stays shut because the cats love to knock my stuff off the shelves...

(what can I say? have cats? don't drag it home unless you can put it up and away or don't mind it being wrecked)

solution: french door picked up from Habitat* for a song...$20, I think...

still in the primer stage while I decide what colour I want to sling up there...leanin' towards black, but red is a strong contender...

and this is our mantel "stuff"...do ya'll know how hard it is too find black tapers?! welllllll, pret-ty darn hard it seems...at least in these parts...($1.99 a piece at Grand Harbor)...

my poor swan...I bought him offa e-bay and the seller did such a CRAPPY job of packing that he arrived with his neck broken in 2 places...I could have filed the insurance but by the time the cost of shipping was deducted I would have been out $20....plus I didn't like the idea of Swan being thrown in the junk pile just because some Knot Head is a slacker...

yep, I'll throw that harsh talk right out there and I'm not a bit sorry...unlike that seller...

one of the few bad experience I've had on e-bay...actually, one of two...oh well, I guess I'm batting pretty good...

anyhoo, I decided "HEY! my speciality is decorating with stuff that has been wrecked in some fashion or another" so I glued Swan back together, placed him on the mantel and call it good...Swan gets dusted around...

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*always always always check your local Habitat shop for building/renovating supplies...it keeps stuff out of the landfill and helps others at the same time plus, generally, the prices are easy on the wallet...a visit to Habitat can be hit or miss like any other thrifty shopping so make yourself a list for any future projects and just get into the habit of swinging by...

just this past weekend, DH and I wandered over to look see (we need 2 nice big windows for our garage rehab) and while we struck out, the big find this time if we were in the market was beautiful wood doors with leaded glass inserts that probably came from one of the local home improvement stores who were discontinuing those styles and didn't need the display items any longer...sweet deal if you could use them...

Where There Are None...

we must create our own...

Traditions, that is...or Hallmarks, if you prefer...

now I love the Big Holidays...I start anticipating Christmas on December 26th...

and Minor Holidays are fun too especially if we don't get all anal about them*...

but there are places in our lives where we need to create Tradition for ourselves...

Traditions not necessarily addressed by a card at the stationery store or in an aisle at your local Wal-Mart**...

My September 1st tradition is, roll that drum, please, to re-read allllllll of Ms. Karon's Mitford books...yep, that's right...livin' large in the 'Boro...

and can I tell ya'll just how excited I've been about doing this?! look how dog-eared my copy of At Home in Mitford is...I love it...

last year, I actually set a Begin Date of August 15th...but somehow I feel that September 1st, the first Official Fall-Like-If-You-Live-Some-Other-Place-Than-Here-Month, deserves a bit more fanfare than being just the Extra Month of Summer around here...or One of the Extra Months of Summer around here...

next year I need to come up with something to add to the mix...maybe bake a Marmalade Cake and eat it alllll up...

The best part of creating our own Hallmark Days is we can add or subtract as we go...whatever feels right...no rules already so entrenched by Generations of Somebody Elses that our own ideas or inclinations are verboten...planning to dress up like a pirate and rent a parrot for Talk like a Pirate Day...cool (please send me a pix)...or just want to answer your cell "Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum" and call it good? great...whatever floats that proverbial boat...

I may tire of my current September 1st celebration at some point and cancel it...or it may morph into something else...who knows?

the Days roll around come what may...we may as well have a good time while they do...
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*My favourite Minor Holiday has to be Talk Like a Pirate Day...how hysterically funny is that? and how irritated people get over it...oh well...arrrrggggghhhh...I love Captain Barbossa...even if he does need a good wash...I do have a confession...I have never made it through an entire day talkin' like a Pirate...like I said, people tend to get irritated by it pretty rapidly...

I think for Talk Like a Pirate Day we'll watch the At World's End and eat something Pirate-y...hmmmmm...maybe shrimp something-or-another...I have to write this on the calendar...

**don't get me wrong...I can spend lots of time reading cards and laughing out loud over the funny ones (I think greeting card writers must be a fun lot)...and I have actually been known to shell out $3 or $4 for a card...I'm especially weak-willed when it comes to Glittery Cards...those are the best...you actually get to wear some of the glitter for the rest of the day if you're lucky enough to receive or shop for Glittery Cards...My Granny always gave the Best Glittery Cards...


Next Post: the Bed Gets Its Second Coat, my new Office Door and Thrift Christmas Shopping