more Easter stuff....

But first, a video of Gypsy diving into a drink box and being attacked by Jasper.



Next, more pictures of our Easter visit to Granny and Papaw's place. My camera was fine with the indoor shots but none of my outside things came out. I was able to make a few of them usable but none of the 56 pictures of azaleas, wisteria and other beautiful flowery goodness came out. This was all there was.


(Ryan making a catch)


(girls posing with Granny)



(Amy walking in the front yard)


(retrieving the frisbee)

(hefting a fallen limb off the carport roof)


(girls enjoying the view from up top)


(Granny's spring table)


(a different angle)


(and a different angle still)

That Cowboy Quilt...

My last post had a picture of my hexagon flower garden quilt in it and Sarah(The Misadventures of Mama and Jack) spotted the treasure underneath! Its an antique quilt belonging to my dad. His mom made it for him when he was about 2 years old.
When my grandmother died in 2005, my aunt gave me her crochet and craft patterns and the original was among them. You can read in the 2nd photo date on it of 1941. Its at my mom and dad's now but I'd love to take better pictures of all the different fabrics she used in it. Maybe sometime this week I'll get it together and post pictures of my family's other antique quilts.


(this is the envelope the pattern came in)




(horse pattern)






(as you can see, the stains came out for the most part)



And I just had to throw this in for fun. I found these treasures at my in-laws home today. MIL collects the most odd things! Isn't this ceramic owl with tennies just adorable? Its a small planter. And the Tiki vase is a treat!



They also don't know it isn't the 1970s any more. This is their game room. I LOVE this color scheme, I really do! On a serious note, she's suffering from dementia and just general old age and it is harder for her to undecorate from season to season. There were lots of Christmas things still up. She's also started decorating with empty plastic fruit cups(some possibly not washed out), empty tomato sauce cans, and folded up chip bags that have been turned inside out. Yipes!!


(Mark made the coffee table out of an ammo box several years ago, his mom added the childrens chairs)

Sundae

(Sundae with a fat belly)

The girls wanted to add to their piggie herd so we rescued this bit of cuteness from a local pet store. She was in a cage with four males. This usually means that the female is pregnant. Which, of course, we found out to be true about two weeks ago. Once you feel babies moving it is just two-three weeks before they arrive so we are looking for babies possibly by next weekend. I think she's only got one in there. Typically first pregnancies are either one or two pigs. She is a chocolate, cream and white, crested satin piggie.


(Sarah helped me build a new C&C cage, C&C stands for Cubes and Coroplast- the materials used, notice who was NOT helping)


(Jasper and Gypsy were keenly interested)


(Sundae will be sharing the cage with Stella, our black peruvian, also rescued from the pet store)


(eating kale for extra calcium)

(Mucho Preggo)

Isn't she just adorable? I can't wait to see what her baby(ies) look like!

Happy Happy Joy Joy!!

(Boopa, 23 months)

ITS SPRING, ITS SPRING, ITS SPRING!!!! Today is a glorious day! We have abundant sunshine, slight breezes, and mild temperatures. The daffodils are mostly gone, at least the ones in my yard anyway, but there are still plenty of things blooming everywhere. The oaks have leaves but have not yet shed their fuzzy things and the gums are just budding. Tuesday night we had a tornado/tornadoes come through our area. One hit south of Kilgore and traveled 21 miles up to north Longview, touching down on the street where one of Ryan's homeschooled friends lives. He said it was VERY loud. It uprooted some huge trees along their street and took a few roofs off. One passed over our side of town as well. At 9pm the sirens went off so the girls, Mark and I got into the bathroom closet after finding our shoes and flashlights(this took about 20 seconds). After about 10 minutes we decided the coast was clear and it was. We didn't lose power but about 10,000 in our town did. Gotta love Springtime in East Texas.

(homeschool park day-but not this day)

We had park day today too. Ryan had three friends join him so he was extra happy. They spent the whole time in the creek looking for critters. Amy saw a snake, two turtles and two frogs, two pembroke corgis, a cocker spaniel and a great dane. We had tons of homeschoolers, some we haven't seen in months! It was really nice. I got to work on my WiP victorian hexagon quilt. Its a hand-sewn English paper-pieced thing, about 90% done.

(hexagon quilt)

I've got to work on another project this weekend, besides painting. There are 14 of these hearts that will be individual wall hangings for an email group I've been in for over 8 years. I don't think any of them read my blog so I feel safe posting the picture here. Even if they do, its ok. Maybe it will motivate me to get them all completed soon!

(Hip Thinking Moms wall quilts)

I still need to go to the grocery store and decide what to cook for dinner. I'm leaning toward something vegetable-ish. Hmmmm, maybe something out of my vegetarian cookbook.

We've completed the guinea pig cage so now Stella and Sundae have a big space to run around in. Sundae's baby(ies) will be here in the next few weeks, hopefully sooner rather than later. We'll keep them if they are female, sell them if they are boys.

If I don't post tomorrow, I hope everyone has a fantastic and blessed Easter weekend! We have no plans yet, probably just a regular weekend for us.

Filling in the pool...

(I love this picture)
Because of the expense involved with maintaining a pool, and the fact that the liner needs replaced(again), we're thinking of filling in the swimming pool. My parents had it put in the summer I was 14 and it has served us well over the past quarter of a century. The summer that Mark and I got married(1990), dad built two beautiful decks off the deep end of the pool. There was still plenty of yard available and the flow of the yard wasn't disturbed. When Ryan was a baby, dad put up a lattice fence to keep him safe. It didn't go around the decks, just the pool and a small amount of the original concrete decking. This definitely limited the usefulness of the nice decks since they were cut off from the pool area. A few summers ago, after Hurricane Rita tore down part of the fence, Mark and I reworked the lattices to include the decks inside the pool area so we could enjoy them as a family. This cut into a good chunk of yard though and now that we've got 2 more large dogs it definitely feels cramped out there.

(this shows the fence just around the pool with the decks on the outside. This was our first limb disaster when it fell on the house and bounced off, barely missing the trampoline. The limb measured 27 feet long, yes we measured it, and was as big around as a basketball at the wide part)

(after the hurricane winds)

(moving the fence)

(more work)

(these pics kind of show how much yard is taken up by the pool area)

One of the benefits from this would be the gain of 3/4ths of our yard back for the dogs and kids to enjoy. Right now they are in a pretty small space with about half being a cement porch about 20x14ft and a 14x14ft trampoline. We have to keep the pool area, decks, and extra yard inside a fence for safety reasons. The dogs would be in the pool if it wasn't fenced and the kids wouldn't be able to use the yard without close supervision. Right now the fence needs replaced anyway. A few summers ago a large limb fell from our oak tree and crushed part of the fence. We patched it but the spot is very weak and looks terrible. By removing the fence, we'd save the expense of a new one($$$).

(limb damage, I sat in that chair crocheting while the kids swam, just the day before, listening to a whacky creaking in the tree. See how it bent the back leg when it landed on the chair? It actually flipped the chair up onto the glass table, I thought it was a car crash when I heard it. Yikes!)

(girls and B-cup in the small yard)

Everyone's concerns about this are different. Mark is worried about the time and labor that will be involved. His job takes up much of his time, even when he is home so it isn't likely that he'd be able to work as it would require. He thinks we'll have to hire someone to run the jackhammers. He doesn't swim but maybe 3-4 times a summer but really enjoys the challenge of keeping the water crystal clear($$$). Ryan's main issue is that the pool is a status symbol for him with his peers. He rarely swam last year, even when his friends came over he would get out MUCH sooner than they wanted to. It bored him. He likes the idea of having huge pool parties and he got to have one last summer complete with us ordering pizza for about 20 teenagers($$$). That obviously couldn't be a routine thing!

(pool party for Ryan's church youth group)
He'd be in hog heaven, however, if we did THIS with it, and stocked it with catfish! But it wouldn't be safe without a fence either and the dogs would wreak havoc on it, not to mention those $$$$. Amy enjoys the pool but like Ryan, she gets out way before the rest of us are ready to go in. She's a homebody, doesn't like to leave the house, and thinks going to the health club to swim is going to not be "as fun" as walking out the door to our pool. Sarah is mainly concerned with the loss of "fun" too. I admit, they do have a lot of it when they get out there. But, they also have loads of fun playing in the hose or "training" the dogs, or filming each other doing tricks on the trampoline.

I'm hoping that they'll all come to terms with this soon and end up seeing the positive side to it. Obviously it will be different this summer than the previous
ones but I don't think it will be worse in any way.

My Name Means....

Kinda scary how accurate(mostly) this one is. I don't typically knock people down but I do get my way 99% of the time. Because, as my XSIL once said, I'm "Always Right Molly", little did she know! I also don't put much pressure on myself, that I'm aware of. Anyway, the rest of it is pretty much dead on.

What Molly Means

You are confident, self assured, and capable. You are not easily intimidated. You master any and all skills easily. You don't have to work hard for what you want. You make your life out to be exactly how you want it. And you'll knock down anyone who gets in your way! You are well rounded, with a complete perspective on life. You are solid and dependable. You are loyal, and people can count on you. At times, you can be a bit too serious. You tend to put too much pressure on yourself. You are relaxed, chill, and very likely to go with the flow. You are kind hearted and accepting. You don't get worked up easily. Well adjusted and incredibly happy, many people wonder what your secret to life is. You are a free spirit, and you resent anyone who tries to fence you in. You are unpredictable, adventurous, and always a little surprising. You may miss out by not settling down, but you're too busy having fun to care.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

In other news...

We took Daisy and Buddy to the park/walking trail today. They both did very well, in fact the girls took turns walking Buddy and had no trouble at all with him. I was especially excited about how Daisy behaved!! She didn't pull much at all, was VERY happy to be there and didn't bark or act aggressively toward anyone(except a Hispanic teenage boy we passed while we were still in the car). She had a super time sniffing and watching for squirrels. We'll probably end up getting another pinch collar so we can take all three of them at one time.

Tonight I'm making homemade pizza for dinner, I've got a blog post with my recipe somewhere on here...found it! Go HERE to check it out.

Tomorrow Mark has softball practice and we've got to visit Sam's Club for tea bags, toilet paper and granola bars. We also have to make another guinea pig cage. I've decided to divide the girls up and put three of them in the boys' cage(not with the boys, just in the cage they're in now), two of them in a new cage, and the boys will go where all five girls are.

(new baby piggie, Sundae- a chocolate, red and white Crested Satin)

Picture Heavy!...

First, some cute stuff! (and a reminder, click any picture to get a larger version)


(Gypsy and Jasper sure know how to nap!)

And the pretty stuff:

(paint color we are going with is the faint squares you see. As you can tell, it is much more neutral than the larger area of paint-which looks bluish on my monitor instead of the lilac that it looks like IRL)

I plan to start painting next week. I'm almost finished with the decluttering in there. What helped was for me to make a detailed list of what needed dealt with, down to the towels, CDs, hangers, and so forth. It gave me more of a sense of how to go about doing things than a list that said, clean bathroom, clean bedroom, clean floor, clean closet. Worked MUCH better. We hauled 7 bags to Goodwill last weekend, hoping for the same thing this time around.

Now to the dirty stuff. Ugh. My photos are bad because my camera appears to be on its last legs. Sometimes the pictures are ok, sometimes they are really weird. These would be in the weird catagory. Anyway, these are the wrinkles in our pool's liner. We have a leak, somewhere, a big one probably. Ryan walked and crawled all over the shallow end and didn't find anything. He also went down the slope and felt more large wrinkles and bubbles under the liner.


(for reference, the leaves in this photo are about 7-8 inches long)


(this is the weirdest of the pictures but shows the wrinkles all the way across the shallow end)

(you can see the biggest air pocket, or bubble, to the right of the trash can)

Mark is on his way home and we're going to cook hamburgers on the grill, then go walk the doggies again.