April 1, 2014

  • what does this button do?

    Don’t mind me, I’m just messing around, trying to figure out this new xanga…
    20140317_190111
    This is supposed to be a picture of the flowers from the sanctuary for our anniversary last week, but they somehow got turned sideways. How do you fix that? The edit button seems to have no effect. Hmmm…

September 3, 2013

April 28, 2013

  • 2nd Chances

    Because of all the other stuff happening around here lately, it looked like I was not going to get to donate a painting to the George Washington Carver Museum this year for their community education fundraiser. More and more, I have found myself needing to pare down not just our possessions, but some of the activities we do as well. I was quite sad about this since I have been doing this for several years now and have always enjoyed sharing my work for such a great cause. Well, it turned out that the deadline to submit paintings got extended to the end of the month and I got to do it after all. Yay for second chances!

    Generally, I am a pretty traditional artist, but this year, I felt like mixing media and going 3-D for a change. I wanted to use up some nice card stock that I had from sample folders for products no longer offered by Mary Kay and got the idea of cutting it and forming it into shapes. I played around with the shapes, attached them to my acrylic-painted background and got this result:

    Abstract was never a style that I felt really at home with, but somehow, this piece ended up going in that direction. Sometimes, it is difficult to predict how a painting will turn out and other times, it ends up looking just like the the little picture in my head that gave me the idea in the first place. This one was definitely the former and it was also one where I felt much more influenced by ideas and feelings outside of myself than usual. It is titled “Heart Ablaze” and I am still not quite sure how I feel about about it, so I would welcome comments and/or feedback.

     

January 18, 2013

  • What I did on my Christmas vacation

    The holidays sneaked up on me and there is very little “documentation” (though very fond memories!) of the Christmas eve turkey dinner at sis-in-law’s, gift opening at daughter’s home on Christmas morning or the lovely dinner we all shared later that day. The week between Christmas and New Years, daughter and son-in-law signed on for the monumentally intense task of reorganizing our kitchen storage along with transforming our laundry room and spare bedroom from over-sized closets back into rooms to serve their original purposes.

    Work is progressing at a much slower pace now that daughter has gone back to work and many of my usually scheduled events have resumed, but so far, this is what we have gotten done:

    • Four car (or truck) loads of stuff went to Goodwill
    • Our city trash can got filled to the top three times in two weeks
    • The recycle bin was filled to the top twice in two weeks
    • One giant garbage sack of stuffed animals, several coats and a sleeping bag went to the assistance program at church where I volunteer. 

    The storage areas of our kitchen are now a lot more user-friendly and after I finish culling my recipe files, it is going to be such a joy to create meals there! I was too overwhelmed with the enormity of the tasks we were attempting to take “before” pictures, but I am proud to be able to share some of the “after” ones.

    Here is the laundry room with new faucet that son-in-law installed:

    Our spare room closet now houses all the indoor Christmas decorations, art and craft supplies and we can now accommodate a guest, too:

    On my own, I managed to organize/downsize some of the the cabinets in our bathroom, but there is a lot left to do. Our garage, dining room and each of our office areas are all still really begging for some serious attention, but I wanted to celebrate the victories already attained before I dive back in again. WooHOO!

November 12, 2012

  • Hope and Gratitude

    Almost 7 years ago to this date, I wrote the following in a blog on another site:

    Step into any commercial establishment right now and the transition to “Christmas WonderLand” has already happened or is in the process of taking place. With the exception of grocery and craft/decorating stores, who stand to benefit from the effort to promote it, Thanksgiving is nothing but a blip on the radar screen of economic indicators. This is not a new phenomenon–I have a vague recollection of one of my elementary school teachers talking about this many, many years ago.

    Anyway, I felt as though SOMEBODY should say SOMETHING about Thanksgiving–not the turkey-with-all-the-trimmings part but the part where we are given a chance to express our gratitude. The only flaw in this plan is that I find talking about expressing gratitude is a skill which I find myself lacking almost as much as expressing the gratitude itself. This means I will have to call on Fredrick Buechner for some assistance:

    “Some think of a Christian as one who necessarily believes certain things. That Jesus was the son of God, say. Or that Mary was a virgin. Or that the Pope is infallible. Or that all other religions are wrong.
    Some think of a Christian as one who necessarily does certain things. Such as going to church. Getting baptized. Giving up liquor and tobacco. Reading the Bible. Doing a good deed a day.
    Some think of a Christian as just a Nice Guy.
    Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.’(John 14:6) He didn’t say that any particular ethic, doctrine, or religion was the way, the truth, and the life. He said that he was. He didn’t say that by believing or doing anything in particular that you could ‘come to the Father.’ He said that is was only by him–by living, participating in, being caught up by, the way of life that he embodied, that was his way.
    Thus it is possible to be on Christ’s way and with his mark upon you without ever having heard of Christ, and for that reason to be on your way to God though maybe you don’t even believe in God.
    A Christian is one who is on the way, though not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and half-baked idea of whom to thank.”

    Thank, you Freddie! To me, this is as much or more of a message of hope than the Christmas story….

    All these years later, I find myself having to struggle even harder to keep from getting sucked into the Massive Holiday Consumption Machine since I am now myself in the retail biz. I am very thankful to the guest minister who used these very words by Buechner in his sermon yesterday to remind me and I thought I would share those words of hope with everyone in XangaLand today. Enjoy!

     

October 27, 2012

  • Remembering someone very special

    Later today, many of us who knew and loved this special lady will have a chance to share their memories and pay tribute to her:

    I first met her when I came to visit Lake Jackson, Texas in 1974 to spend Christmas with the family there. Hubby (who was not yet my hubby) assured me that I would be welcomed by everyone and they would be glad for the chance to meet me. Having a son myself now, I know that feeling of not being quite what they had hoped for their little darling that I often felt in the presence of the mother of my previous boyfriends was not entirely imaginary since we all want the BEST for our children…and I was just, well…me.

    Before my arrival, dear, sweet Hubby (who was not yet my hubby) sent a little background information about each of his family members so that I might find it easier to get to know them. I do not recall all of the details, but I remember being a little bit intimidated by the data he provided about his mom. Learning about her becoming a Life Master in Bridge tournaments she had played after I arrived, seeing their beautifully decorated home and being a guest at the lovely dinners she prepared and served on the family heirloom china in their formal dining room only made me feel even more more like I might not be all that she hoped for her son, but before my visit was over, she managed to make it quite clear to me that if her son loved me, than by golly, she was going to love me, too.

    Watching her watch her favorite football teams after one of those impressive dinners, cheering loudly, booing the bad calls and crushing beer cans when they got a tough break on the field made me feel a lot less intimidated by her, but her “dominant MOM gene” really helped a lot, too.

    She was all about being a mom and she was there for me whenever I needed her, even before I married her son. After our children were born, she participated in every age and stage of their lives.

    I just don’t know how much longer it would have taken me to figure out a lot of that “mom stuff” without her help!

    Along with all of the birthday parties, music recitals, amusement parks, shopping excursions, carving pumpkins,

     and all kinds of neat stuff like decorating graham cracker “gingerbread houses”

    special occasions of all kinds

    and major milestones,

    she had her own passions and projects, like her volunteer work that she did for 30 years.

    Not to mention the fact that almost up until the last day of her life, she could still dominate any and all of us in Scrabble. She will be missed by many, of that I am sure!

August 6, 2012

  • Warp speed summer

    Hard to believe that it is almost time for school to start again…this summer just FLEW by! Just about the time I was getting used to not having to plan my days around the school year, our daughter has decided that she should return to school. (apparently, ONE masters degree is not enough. who knew?) We are planning one more summer activity for later this week. Cannot wait to see how much has been done since the last time we saw the log cabin and seeing so many xanga buddies together in one place will also be quite a treat!!!

    Hoping that this little jaunt will also provide a little respite from the heat here, but it has only just recently gotten really hot & dry…SO much better than last year when it lasted all summer! Thankfully, I was able to get a little break during the worst of the heat and drought last summer when I was visiting all my family in YankeeLand with my daughter & her hubby.

    We also celebrated some birthdays this summer, beginning with son-in-law’s, then mine, then daughter’s, then mother-in-law’s. Daughter took this one of most of the gang (am I really THAT fat???? never mind, don’t answer that!) celebrating her grandmother’s 90th:

    Lots of changes and distractions have kept me from my master bedroom project, so it is no closer to completion than when I last posted. Business has also been quite brisk and it is always such fun meeting new people. I did take some time last week to go to Dallas with my MK galpals and attend Seminar for some motivation, education, inspiration and lots of fun. Our director took this photo of our group while were at the awards ceremony:

     

    Here is another shot of almost everyone in our group wearing our biz suits with our director on the left:

    Must now pack away the biz suits and ball gowns and fill my suitcase with more appropriate attire for hiking & celebrating with good friends…hope to see many of you VERY soon!

July 4, 2012

May 27, 2012

  • …just checking in

    Ventures into the xanga world have been mighty scarce for me lately. For any who might be curious, here are some reasons:

    In order to take advantage of our city’s generous offer to haul away large brush and yard waste for free, the “jungle” growing in our back yard had to be cleared before the last week in March. That pile in the photo below to the left of the area with the rosemary growing out of the whiskey barrel is not a big shrub, but approximately half of the pile of brush that was eventually cleared from the back yard for the city to haul off.

    Thankfully, the city will take yard trash in those biodegradable sacks that remind me of overgrown paper grocery sacks or a trash can every week, because I am fairly certain that before this photo below got taken, at least a dozen garbage can’s worth of weeds were also hauled off over the course of several weeks.

    April turned out to be painting time. First, I had to complete a painting for the George Washington Carver Museum art education scholarship fundraiser by mid-April. I painted this from a photo that had gotten damaged when we had our water leaks a while back and while I am no Al_son, I thought it turned out pretty well.

    The next painting project was our bedroom, so that it would be ready when the remainder of the flooring is installed. Son-in-law came over one day to help me move heavy furniture and reach the high spots. We also started hanging the wallpaper border I had picked out, but have not had a chance to finish that, so no picture has been taken yet.

    After we we cleaned up the painting mess, I went to put away the supplies and had trouble even getting to the cabinet where we store them in the garage for all of the stuff that was piled in front of it. Getting it opened did not actually do much good, either, since it was also piled so high with all kinds of stuff and there was no place to store the paint we might actually need again someday. I started dumping everything out of it, decided that more shelves needed to be built to help keep everything readily accessible, some more pegboard on the inside of the doors for the paintbrushes would straighten out the warped doors that did not like to close very well and this would also make selecting brushes a lot easier, too. Cleared out a bunch of old stuff (found a couple of cans of paint from art school in the 1970′s in there) and got pretty much all of our paint supplies to fit in there again. The bottom still has a lot of the junk that was piled up in front of it, but it is SO much better now than it was!

    The most recent project we finished was going through our VHS tapes and getting rid of stuff that had been taped off of the air and things we now had on DVD format. Daughter also helped out by taking home some family favorites that we were reluctant to part with, so that was nice, too.

    I am trying to muster up the gumption to cull our book collection next, but not only do I have to have the stamina, I must be in a more ruthless state of mind than usual, or it will not do much good. You see, I have always considered books my friends, and how can you just kick your friends to the curb?

May 6, 2012

  • my home town

    Stole this from one of my hometown facebook friends:

    The latitude and longitude of Midland, Michigan is:
    43° 36′ 56″ N / 84° 14′ 50″ W
    It is the county seat of Midland County.
    Through the influence of a Dow Chemical plant opening in Handa, Aichi, Japan, Midland and Handa have become sister cities.
    Midland was also named #4 Best Small City to raise a family in by Forbes Magazine.
    As of the census[1] of 2000, there were 41,685 people, 16,743 households, and 11,000 families residing in the Midland.
    The record low temperature is 30 below zero.
    The record High temperature is 106.
    The average annual rainfall is 27.4″
    Midland has a total area of 35.0 square miles, of which, 33.2 square miles of it is land and 1.7 square miles of it (4.95%) is water.


    Notable Midlanders:

    Jeff Backus, National Football League offensive tackle for the Detroit Lions
    David Lee Camp, member of the United States House of Representatives
    Michael Cohrs, Member of Court and Financial Policy Committee Bank of England
    Terry Collins, manager New York Mets
    Mikey “Bug” Cox, ex-Drummer of Coal Chamber
    Alden B. Dow, architect
    Herbert H. Dow, founder of Dow Chemical
    Gary Gerould, sports announcer National Basketball Association with the Sacramento Kings and other sports
    Cathy Guisewite, cartoonist known for the comic strip, Cathy
    James Aloysius Hickey, Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, DC
    Robert Jarvik, inventor of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart
    Larry Jaster, former Major League Baseball pitcher with the St.Louis Cardinals, Montreal Expos, and Atlanta Braves
    Nancy LaMott, cabaret singer
    Meredith McGrath, former Women’s Tennis Association professional
    Matt Mieske, former baseball player for the Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago Cubs, Seattle Mariners, Houston Astros, and the Arizona Diamondbacks
    Chuck Moss, member of the Michigan House of Representatives
    Howard Mudd, Pro Bowl offensive guard for the San Francisco 49ers and assistant coach for Indianapolis Colts
    Jalen Parmele, National Football League running back for the Baltimore Ravens
    Bill Schuette, Michigan Attorney General, former District Court of Appeals Judge, former member of the United States House of Representatives
    Kerry Collins, Philanthropist and cycling enthusiast
    Bob Scurfield, former professional ice hockey player
    Jim Shaw, visual artist
    Steve Shelley, drummer of Sonic Youth
    Mary P. Sinclair, nuclear activist
    Cheryl Studer, opera singer
    Tom Vaughn, Jazz pianist and Episcopal Priest formerly at St. John’s Episcopal Church
    Scott Winchester, former pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds
    Craig Kressler, 1980 Olympic Speedskating team
    Jim Kern, 2 time All Star baseball player