…where would Xanga fit on this chart?

Not that it matters all that much–I am just curious…

Details from my recent travels:

Last month, I went to Galveston for Mary Kay Career Conference with a bunch of my MK galpals and it was GREAT. There is never a shortage of motivation, inspiration, education and amusement at a MK event! If you are curious, I am the one wearing the red jacket that isn’t on the end or in the middle: 

After the conference, we attended a pizza party, hosted by our national sales director, Yvonne Lemmon and I got to show off the necklace and earring set I won at the conference:

We all decided we could not leave the island without at least sticking our toes in the Gulf of Mexico, but we did little more than that since the Man-o-war were washing ashore that day. They look like cute little blue-ish baggies, but they can sting and it really does hurt when they do. There is one near the center of this photo:

Some brave beachlover souls built this cool sand castle despite the risk of getting stung:

Last weekend, I got to pack up and leave home again, this time with my donkey guy. We went to church camp for the weekend! It was out in the hill country where cell service is spotty and the cable TV companies don’t even bother to offer service, but the donkster did figure out that building where we were staying had WIFI, so we were not completely disconnected from the rest of the world–though a break from it once in a while can sure be a good thing! Here is a view from the chapel on the hill, where we had services that Sunday morning:

There were some younger folks attending that apparently did not think that even the last rows were up high enough for them to see everything, so they found more suitable seating:

 This weekend, I got my painting for the Carver Museum silent auction turned in and also delivered a big box of our daughter’s old darkroom equipment to the photoigraphy teacher there to use. For those who have not seen it on facebook, here is my painting:

For the rest of the weekend, I am trying to get more of those bazillion little things scratched of that ever-growing “to do” list, because it feels SO GOOD to be able to that. The oak pollen has been making it a bit of a challenge, not to mention that it is WAY more fun to play at my computer, so wish me luck…

While a lot of our stuff was being stored in boxes so it could be moved into rooms that were not being painted or getting new floors, we decided that it was a good time to go through everything and send at least some of it on to someone who might get more benefit from it than we had been getting up until now. So far the following items have found new homes:

• 1 large garbage bag of useless stuff to trash
• 1 computer desk to Mary Kay buddy’s garage sale
• 1 old CPU to Mary Kay buddy’s garage sale
• 1 keyboard stand to Mary Kay buddy’s garage sale
• 2 file cabinets to Mary Kay buddy’s garage sale
• 1 recycle bin filled with paper from file cabinets
• 1 garbage sack of stuffed critters to church charity Christmas party
• 1 large sack of bows and boxes to church charity Christmas party
• 1 large sack of Christmas décor items to church charity Christmas party
• 1 large box of JLynn craft items to church charity Christmas party
• 1 large box of Mary Kay items to church charity Christmas party & volunteers
• 1 small box of games & software to church charity Christmas party
• 1 large box of odds & ends to church charity
• 1 large box of games to charity
• 1 grocery sack of toiletries to church mission project
• 1 garbage sack of mens/childrens clothing to church mission project
• 1 garbage sack of ladies clothing to church mission project
• 1 large box of craft items to church Sunday school
• 1 large box of china to daughter
• 1 small box of china to daughter
• 1 large box of memorabilia (including Muppet lunchbox) to daughter
• 1 mini vacuum to daughter
• 1 framed mirror & my original art to daughter
• 1 very large box of games to daughter

One of the reasons I wanted to post this was because there is still a lot to do and although things are looking a bit less crowded & cluttered now, sometimes it is hard to see that anything has been done! Just the other day, daughter & I finally decided these pathetic looking homecoming mums (with dark green ribbons that have faded to brown) had to go:

Next up on the chopping block: more clothing & (yikes!) media/books…

This is what things looked like this morning when we woke up:

The back had a bit less, even though the storm came in from that direction

The pink flamingos survived…

and the deck got its usual dusting

There was even snow on the roof!

I thought this would make a neat picture:

Donkeys might be able to build snowmen…

…but they do NOT know how to accessorize!

Hoping all of you get to have some fun today, too!

Update Edit: Thanks to all who offered their opinions here–I was glad to know that my color choice is not quite as potentially offensive as I originally thought. I have decided that the color will stay, but anyone who has worries about how it might appear to others has my blessing to repaint it.

With all of the excitement of getting our wood floors installed that I shared in the previous post, I forgot to mention our spiffier-looking front door. I filled the cracks that were letting in daylight (and cold air, too) with polyurethane caulk, then gave the door a fresh coat of paint. We also replaced the amber colored sidelight with a clear glass panel to let in more light to our entryway. I was going for a rusty brown to go with that color in the stone, but it came out more of a pumpkin color:

I kinda like this color, but several other family members have raised objections. Should I repaint the door with a quieter, rusty brown color, or stick with the pumpkin color?

 Ready for the before and after pics?

This rather large, very open room wraps around the kitchen and forms a hallway running nearly the length of the house, where it intersects with a shorter hallway on either end leading to the bedrooms and it also kinda morphs into our front entryway (off to the left in this photo), too. It’s hard to see with the pretzel jar where it is on the bar top next to all those photos, but that bar top required that a chunk be removed from the door frame trim when it was added on and that has always bothered me. The other thing that bothered me about that thing was that the ONLY electrical outlet on that wall was covered up when that cabinet was added on. Before we had the painting done in there, my “demo crew” (one is seated at the bar in the kitchen eating area) removed that cabinet from the wall and we had our contractor replace several door frames along with that one when they replaced the baseboards. (If the baseboards and door frames had not been originally stained very dark then painted over with white latex paint, I might have tried to salvage them.) Not wanting to waste any good storage space, I then had them remove the ugly brown bar top and the toe kick base and hang the cabinet on an empty wall in our utility room…

So we now have this:

We used the darker wood planks in the doorway between the existing and the new flooring and we also changed the direction of the planks so it would not look like we tried (and failed) to match the wood in the kitchen area. The floor around the fireplace turned out especially nice, too. Our contractor used some sort of really heavy duty (and noisy) saw to undercut the masonry and the floorboards just fit underneath so we did not have to rig up some sort of trim for the curved fireplace. While they were cutting, he had one of his helpers follow his path with a huge shop vac and that really kept the dust down a lot. You can see a little of the great job they did behind the Christmas tree. I also love the way the colored lights reflected off the new floor:

Of course, it looked even better after Santa came!

The front hall was probably the biggest challenge of all, but our contractor guy was up for it! We decided to use the contrasting color of wood around the sunken entryway to call attention to the elevation change from the tiled area and our contractor did the plank direction change thing again, which turned out really nice:

If we zoom in on the manger scene, you might just get a glimpse of a familiar face:

Not his best side, but what can you do???

EDIT UPDATE: We now have flooring stacked in a HUGE pile in the middle of the family room, but work will not begin until Monday, December 6th…

Blame it on Thankee, she wanted to know!

After spending a good bit of time rounding up my pre-floor paint/cabinetry/prep crew and getting everything all synchronized and scheduled, I called my Floor Guy to order the wood flooring we selected several months ago so that it would be available when we will be ready to install it. Floor Guy tells me that the one we picked is no longer in stock. ARRRGH!!!! Floor Guy then tells me he will research the stuff that has come in since we made our original selection for a suitable replacement and he finds something with an even longer warranty for less $.15 per square foot difference in price. Flooring and supplies are now ordered and will be available for our original start date. Yay for Floor Guy!

We already have some natural colored oak planks in the kitchen and since a lot of the areas that will also be getting new flooring are in some rather low-light regions (hallways with no windows and bigger rooms with only one window) of our home, I wanted to stick with the same sort of light, natural coloring and a shiny finish to reflect even more light, but I was worried that it would look like we tried to match and failed in the areas where new and old floors would meet. I decided that the new flooring would run crossways from the planks in the kitchen/breakfast area to make it look more like we meant for it to be different and then Paint/cabintry/prep crew Leader had an awesome idea, too. Just in the areas of the threshhold of the two doorways where the two different floors will meet, we are going to use a much darker color. He also suggested that we take a little more of the darker colored wood planks and use them around the perimeter of the entryway where we have an elevation change to call attention to it for safety purposes as well as adding visual interest. Brilliant! Yay for Paint/cabintry/prep crew Leader! 

This is the wood flooring we already have in the kitchen/breakfast area. (Daughter’s dog, Rigby is on food clean-up detail here.) It looks a bit darker in this picture, but you get the idea.

I still have some painting to do and wallpaper border to hang in our bedroom before the floor goes in there and our Paint/cabintry/prep crew will be handling the work in the family room area before that floor gets installed, so things around this place will be pretty messy and quite busy for a while, but I am really looking forward to showing off our much spiffier home when we finish!

Blessings to All…

I have not been doing much cyber-socializing lately, so I decided I would try to catch up on that. When I went to log onto xanga, it was no go, no matter what I tried and I sure did not have time to troubleshoot AND get caught up, too. After several days, I figured out it was the firefox browser on my computer causing the problem. I think this is rather odd, because firefox does not present a problem with other computers in this household, but if I want to log on to xanga, I gotta use explorer now. Oh well…

Our floor project is still in limbo, but hopefully the details will get worked out soon. Other stuff is finally getting done around here in the meantime. For a very long time now, I have wanted to go through cupboards and closets and find new homes for the things that have been occupying space around here but not really doing us much good any more. Since we had to drag everything out of the closets to repair the water damage from the leaky a/c hose in the closet and also to do the floors in several rooms and hallways, this just seemed like the perfect time to tackle this job, but I was not even sure where to start and the task seemed a bit daunting to me. Our daughter and her sweet hubby helped launch this massive project a few weeks ago when they came over and helped to empty out the closet in her old room and sort out what needed to go where while son-in-law gave the closet and the walls above the chair rail a fresh coat of paint.

We discovered even more water damage from a leak in the roof as I was getting ready to hang more shelves in our son’s old room, which I have pretty much claimed as my office now that our son now has his own place, too. Ever helpful son-in-law returned to help me repair the walls in that closet, too. I was getting a bit impatient for those shelves so I could work on getting my business supplies and inventory better organized and rearrange the room so that my computer, which is currently living at the other end of the house from all my business things, could be moved into that room, too. The kidney stone saga had already slowed progress on this project, then my car needed to go to the shop, we had some cable/phone/internet issues that needed to be resolved that required TWO visits from service guys, my broken tooth was demanding immediate attention and our truck needed to go back to the dealer for some recall work, all in the same week! The shelves are FINALLY up and I can return to the business of sorting, downsizing and streamlining in preparation for our floor project–except now daughter has asked me to help her make Halloween costumes for her and her sweet, helpful hubby…

I recently posted a link on my Facebook page about WalMart. Everyone seems to have very strong feelings one way or the other. Some folks would not know how they could manage if they did not have them to get everything they need as cheaply as possible, others are convinced that WalMart is to blame for many of our society’s ills today by doing things like threatening our environment, exporting jobs overseas and overburdening our government assistance programs by referring their associates to them when they demand living wages from their employer.

The choices about where we shop all come with consequences, but it seems to me that there is very little difference in the ultimate cost of each choice. For example: If I decide that I do not feel like going to the trouble of cooking dinner tonight, I have lots of other choices. Purchasing food that is already prepared is going to cost me more than something that I need to cook, so I will pay a bit more money for this choice. I am also giving up some of the options about which ingredients that food might contain if I purchase prepared food, unless I take the time, trouble and expense to locate and trade with a company whose nutritional philosophies mesh more closely with mine. If I am low on cash, don’t have a lot of time and do not care that much about what is in my food, there is a McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Taco Shack all right around the corner, so I have lots of choices.

With each of the choices we make, there are consequences for those choices. The relationship between our choices and the consequences for those choices are little like those energy laws in physics. You can convert it, burn it, store it and maybe even do stuff we haven’t even figured out how to do with it yet, but the equation has to balance in the end. You can’t make up energy from nothing and you cannot get rid of any that already exists either, no matter how clever or devious you are. No matter what you decide to do with it, the equation still comes out the same.

I see very little difference between these widely varying choices that I have for dinner. Why? The “ultimate cost” is the same. Home cooking meals is a lot of work, but I would save money and not have to worry as much about what might be in them. Places like TerraBurger are awesome with organic meat and gluten-free buns that rock my socks, but $5 for a burger and having to drive to one of the only two locations in the city is not too cheap or easy. Eating junk food may be cheap and easy, but there will be more “cost” to pay later as my health declines and I spend all that time and money on doctors and medicines to try and undo the damage to my body. The only real choice here is pay now or pay later.

When we shop at WalMart, eat junk food and take out a sub-prime mortgage to purchase our home, we are opting to pay later. In some circumstances, that choice makes sense, but we must always remember that the initial cost of each decision may not be the ultimate cost. If we are not willing to meet all of our own obligations for our choices and leave them for future generations to pay for us, that is also our choice and that choice says a lot about us. Every choice we make reflects our values. Where and how we spend our resources (time, money and energy) is a pretty good barometer of what we value individually and as a society.

What is it that your choices say about what YOU value?

Each of us must travel along our personal path on a faith journey. I love learning from others about theirs, since there seems to be so many paths from which to choose and no possible way to take them all. I had a delightful time this last weekend learning about the directions my children have been traveling recently. I will treasure those moments!
This devotional reminds me of a book our study group did a while ago about an anam cara, the Celtic “soul friend” so I thought I would share it today:

Today’s Scripture

Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul.

-1 Samuel 18:3 (NRSV)


    SHORTLY after I became a lay preacher, a member of our church described me as one of his spiritual advisers. Hearing this, I was filled with a great sense of responsibility.

    Members of the ancient Celtic church looked for an anam cara — a “soul-friend.” This could be a man or woman, lay or ordained, experienced in the ways and teachings of Jesus Christ. The soul friend was someone who could give needed guidance, especially at crucial points in life. Legend has it that Saint Columba’s soul-friend suggested that Columba win as many souls for Christ as were lost in a battle he had caused. To do this, Columba left his native Ireland to found a Christian settlement on the Island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland.

    Today, in our own church or Christian community, we can find a soul-friend. Such a friend is someone to whom we can speak openly and honestly, someone who will accompany us on a journey of discovery and help us to follow God more faithfully.

    Bill Findlay (Glasgow, Scotland)

Prayer
    Thank you, Lord, for those who walk beside us, those who help to keep us on your path. We thank you for always walking beside us, leading us forward from morning light until the end of day. Amen.

Thought for the Day

    God often guides us through the words of loving friends.

Prayer Focus

    My guides and helpers on my faith journey