Feeling Special

Tenor

And my birthday celebration continues!

Shout-outs to Sandi and Cathy for sending me actual birthday cards. I love all forms of reaching out, because people are making you feel special, but I have to say an actual card in the mail remains one of my favorites.

Another shout-out to my good friend, Marsha, who means the world to me. I received a box in the mail today containing several beautiful pairs of earrings she made. I keep changing which pair is my favorite – all different colors, stones, and styles – and can’t wait to show them off!

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.~ Sophia Loren

Good News and Good News

Zero to Three

GOOD NEWS ONE –

One of my dearest friends liked the Christmas cards I just finished painting and asked me if I would paint some for her to send to her friends this year. That is the highest compliment, and I’m walking 3 inches off the ground with happiness. I’ll get started on them soon. :0)

GOOD NEWS TWO –

My husband just went to get our mail and check about the trash. THE TRASH IS GONE!!!!!!! We had two weeks worth of trash down there, having been re-gathered by us twice, three calls to Customer Service, one forthright email, and two work orders later – it’s GONE. HOOOOOORAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!

Ahhhhhhhh!

Cheezburger

I just got home from the EXTRA massage that my sweet cousin gave me as a “just because” present. She is – bar none – one the truly NICE people in the world.

I feel wonderful. Relaxed and limp as a noodle right now. Nothing hurts. :0)

I’ll fix us some lunch and then probably spread out and take a nap in my recliner.

This is the life of a truly spoiled lady.

Captivating Creativity

Majla_Art

NoOneCares – Facebook

Street Art – Bored Panda

Hope

When I was taking Molly out for her first morning outing this morning, this sight greeted us. If you look closely, you can see it is now growing WAY UP in the tree on the far side of the actual plant in the brick planter.

 

A little closer view now where you can see the glorious color.

 

There were big, fat bumble bees enjoying it this morning. (I don’t mind them because they need a reason to sting you, unlike the red wasps who hate everyone, but tend to dive bomb me whenever I’m not paying close enough attention.  There is a lovely fragrance, too. Not overpowering, just NICE.

This blooms every year regardless of surrounding circumstance, reliably. Sometimes it is not quite so lush and fragrant, but it reminds us that nice weather is on the way, and the hope that things will get better soon!

Imperfect

Marc Jacobs via 2 STAR art

Two Happy Ways to Start a Day

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We woke up with the red light flashing on our weather alert, telling us we were under a thunderstorm warning. Instead of having anything scary, we just had a nice, but short, soaky rain.  Our doggies cavorted around, clearly enjoying the rain. The rain stopped fairly quickly, and we are able to enjoy windows and doors open to a nice, cool breeze!

 

Broad-tailed Hummingbird (Selasphorus platycercus) females feeding on Musk Thistle (Carduus nutans), Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado http://www.hummingbirds.org

AND, while we were eating breakfast, a hummingbird came to drink from one of our feeders. Just as we were enjoying watching, ANOTHER hummingbird came swooping by! This has been a slow hummingbird season for us so far, so we were really delighted to see TWO at once. It also gives me the motivation to thoroughly clean out the hummingbird birdbath my husband and I built.

Pics later….

One Reason

I got up to refresh my coffee a minute ago. My husband was asleep in his chair, probably not remembering we need to leave for the dentist in about 10 minutes. This is what I found on the divider between the dining area and the kitchen. He had taken the doggies out and cut these to bring in while they were out.  He’s definitely a keeper, and this is only one of the many reasons why.

Happy Birthday!

Today is my husband’s birthday. We’re not doing anything special because he would definitely like to forget he’s getting older. I kissed him and wished him a Happy Birthday this morning, and he said, “Hummmmph”

He got the best present this morning, though, and I got to share in it.

Our son lives and works in Thailand. It’s been over two years since we’ve seen him, though we use a chat program he set up, talking to him most days about this and that. We’re able to send him pics, type in real time at each other if we’re up and available at the same time, so it’s as good as it can be, EXCEPT when we can use a program called appear.in which is like Skype, but infinitely better. The picture is really good, the sound is good. There is almost no lag time, no echoes. It’s almost as if we were in the same room.

He arranged for us to use this this morning! He wished my husband a Happy Birthday. He said, Dad, will you do something fun? I love you.” My husband answered, “Every day is Christmas for me. You were the best present of all.”  I have to tell you I melted into a puddle and couldn’t speak for a while. Then we chatted about everything under the sun. I drank in his face the whole time, delighting when we could make him smile or laugh. I had everything I needed in the world while we were talking.

A wonderful birthday celebration to be sure.

 

Garage Sale Goodies

My husband likes to go to auctions. I hate those because you stand around at least half the day, waiting for the items you want to come up, and then are outbid many times by others, coming home empty-handed. I just don’t have the patience.

I love garage or yard sales. Everything is out where you can see it. You can quickly see the prices, decide if you want it, and buy it or not and leave quickly. What could be better?

We went to a yard sale yesterday and I found several goodies!

The lady having the sale told me that another lady had gathered these handkerchiefs with the idea of making a quilt from them, but then changed her mind. I got them for 50 cents a piece!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love the salad spoon and fork, and the others are ice cream scoops. You can NEVER have too many of those…

 

This is heavy glass, with a light ‘frosted’ look on the outside. I just love it. ($5.00)

 

And this is heavy cut crystal! ($5.00)

I’m very happy with my new treasures!

Painting and Drawing Fun

http://www.lifehacker.com.au

I had a fun afternoon painting.

I did some hand-painted note cards for 8 of my friends. (Those are drying overnight.). Then I went out to the shop to work on the Taylor’s shovel bird again. (I can’t remember WHAT, but something fell on him and broke his head off. We put him – and his head – in the car after we took the Taylors home from bowling Monday night.

Yesterday my husband was able to weld his head back on. Today I touched up the paint and replaced one eye that had fallen off in transport. (It’s drying overnight.) We’ll hope to return him to his new home NEXT Monday evening.

I got a huge surprise in the mail today. My husband took one look at the box and began to grin.

I opened the box to find a HUGE, glorious drawing set!

 

The set comes in a nice box.

 

 

I’m beyond thrilled. There are regular colored pencils, pastel pencils, watercolor pencils, then pastel chalks, charcoal, erasers, a sharpener, and more. When things finally tame down around here, I’m really looking forward to trying things out!  YIPPEEEEEE!