Owls in a tree

The flooring guy is here pulling up my old floors.  He came in and said that he heard a sound when he was putting some of the old floor out in his van.  He looked up in the live oak tree by the driveway and saw a little owl.  I grabbed my camera and lo and behold, there was an owl!  He made the sweetest sound for a couple of minutes and along came another little beauty.  There were actually two owls up in the tree!  They are small, about 6 or 7 inches tall.  I told hubby about them and he said he thinks he may have been hearing them talk to each other for a couple of days.  I don’t know if they are taking up residence somewhere close, but I am sure happy they dropped by my front yard today!  They are beautiful.

In bloom!

I planted a lot of hanging baskets this spring and they are now beginning to bloom.  This is my favorite, portulaca or moss rose.  When I was growing up, my Grandma always had moss rose growing out of strawberry jars.  The multi-colored flowers would fill up the pockets and grow like crazy in the Texas summer heat.  Grandma was at my house for Easter dinner and noticed that I had moss rose planted, so for Mother’s Day, I planted her a big hanging basket full of moss rose.  Mine hadn’t bloomed out as of yesterday, but this morning, when I went out on the patio, my baskets had bloomed!  Hopefully my hanging baskets will look as good as Grandma’s moss rose filled strawberry jars looked when I was little.

Mother’s Day

I had a wonderful, restful Mother’s Day today.  Hubby had breakfast and Starbuck’s for me when I got up.  We spent some time with my Mom and Grandma and had an ice cream cake at my Grandma’s then lots of vegging on the couch.  Couldn’t have gotten any better!

New Laptop!

 

So today I received may Mother’s Day gift early!  A brand new Dell laptop.  Woo Hoo!  Can’t wait to get aquainted with it.  Lots of cool new software.

Hubby has been asking me what I wanted for Mother’s Day and I didn’t know what to tell him.  Today, I took my mom to pick up a new laptop that she had ordered and they had some deals that were hard to beat.  I called hubby and he approved the purchase right away!  Mom and I both walked out of the store with cool new laptops!

Painted Bathroom Cabinets

I got the cabinets in my master bathroom painted, was ready to hang the doors and realized that I only had the ugly old antique brass hinges that matched the old door handles. So...a trip to Lowe's later and I have now hung the doors on the cabinets over the potty. Woo hoo! I haven't decided whether or not I want to distress the doors. I may wait until I have all of the cabinets painted. This is just the part no one can see, back over the potty. It was really difficult to get a picture that did them justice because this spot is a little crampt, but I am very happy with the results. I used Valspar satin latex in Dark Kettle Black. Love it! Now on to the rest of the cabinets (which is significantly more work).

More Master Bathroom work

So I have finally started back working on my master bathroom. Work ceased around July of last year and never picked back up. I did manage to paint one cabinet last week, and hope to do the rest sometime this week. I've told a few people that I was painting the bathroom cabinets and most of them said "Black? Are you crazy?" I did get one "You go girl!" from someone. So far, I like it! I will try to post a picture this week.

New Fireplace Set!

Our fireplace hasn't worked properly since we moved into this house in 1998. Yesterday, I had fireplace technicians here all day to fix it! Oh boy am I loving this new fireplace! We were iced in again today. School was closed along with my hubby's office. We had a fire for most of the day. I was just giddy. Silly me. Having the new fireplace, reminded me of when I was a kid and my sister and I used to sit in front of the fireplace at Grandma's house and see who could sit there the longest without getting "fireplace burn". You know that feeling when you sit on the hearth for a little too long? Funny how this new fireplace brought back some forgotten memories.

Mini Valentine's Day vignette

I've been checking out all the cute Valentine's Day vignettes on all the blogs and I wanted to at least do one or two cute little sump'n sump'ns. I saw this darling Valentine version of the subway art over at eighteen25 and decided it would be perfect. It was easy to print out and frame in this shadowbox frame. Then I printed out a little heart from one of my scrapbooking programs. Last but not least, I put one of my dollar store love birds in a pedestal and surrounded it with rose petals. Not quite the bang I had at Halloween, but I like the little touch of red. Now I must prepare for another round of snow and ice that is expected tomorrow. The fireplace repair guy should be here anytime and hopefully, during this cold snap, I will have a beautiful new ceramic fire!

Snow Days 2011

Well, it's the end of the weekend and the end of an unprecedented week in Texas. The school district in our town was closed for four days! We had an extreme ice storm followed by about 5 inches of snow! I have lived here all my life and I don't remember being out of school for snow or ice for more than three days in a row. My husband's office was even closed all four days. During our snowcation, I finished two rather large novels and caught up on every imaginable reality TV program I follow (and even those that I don't follow). I made some cute little fabric flowers and a great zippered pouch/purse. I did not however, clean or organize (with the exception of the necessary kitchen cleanup after each of the three meals my family ate EVERY day). My daughter had a friend over yesterday for a sleepover and we ventured our way out to the dollar store and an accessory store that they like. It was so crowded, you would have thought the dollar store was having a 50% off sale! Today we are off to Grandma's for a much needed visit. My husband proclaimed today that he had cabin fever and was off to an electronics store and possibly a home improvement store. He really must need to get out, he hates to shop! Tomorrow starts a new week, hopefully with better weather.

Getting Organized!

The new year is here and I really need to get organized. Ask anyone who knows me and they would probably say I am a very organized person. Currently, I'm not feeling that organized. I guess I'd better get busy. I have already tackled the master bathroom cabinet and the pantry and I think now I will get after the pesky junk drawer in the kitchen. Not too big of a project, so maybe it will jump start my organization drive.

Halloween Decor

I have been enjoying my time at home and have been busy working on several decor projects; the most recent of which were Halloween decorations. Most of the stuff I used came from the dollar store (Love me some Dollar Tree!). I haven't decorated for Halloween since Sarah was about 4 or 5 years old. It was lots of fun!

It's a koozie!

I love this! A teacher friend of mine asked me recently if I had ever made any koozies. I hadn't, but wanted to give it a try. After some research and a little pattern adjustments, this is what I came up with. It's lined with a coordinating fabric and an insulated layer. I'm definately going to make more.

I got a Cricut!

I am so excited. I got a Cricut die cutting machine for Mother's Day and I can not wait to get busy. I have so many things I want to use this machine for in my crafts. I have already used it in my daughter's Teacher Appreciation Gift for her teacher. It is so cool.

I love Facebook! Not really. Yes I do!

Don't get me wrong. I like being able to keep up with all my friends and family, their new photos and happenings. It's just that my husband has his very own Facebook account and has taken it upon himself to upload each and every unflattering photo of me that he has been able to find on the hard-drive of our home computer. He means well..."Oh honey, I think you look cute." The photo is of our family sitting on the edge of the Palo Duro Canyon. I am holding on to Max, our dog, for dear life and may hair looks like a small tornado has just taken up residence on top of my head. Then there are the pics he takes of Sarah when she has crashed on the couch. Nice! Just wait. I know there is a goofy picture of him on the computer somewhere and I vow to post it.

Of course, this is all said, tongue in cheek. I think he really does feel like the photos are "cute". Gotta love him.

Easter Table Pretties

I have been working on a bunch of projects for future use. Hopefully this summer we will be remodeling the master bathroom and in anticipation of that I have been makin' stuff. I wanted to go ahead and use some of it in the house, so I decided to make a display for Easter. I put the birdhouse and the cloche together with spare parts and found the topiary at Salvation Army. The Easter sign was just a bare wooden sign I covered with scrapbook paper and aged to get that shabby look. I found the eggs at Hobby Lobby, but had to tone down the paint job on them; the nest was made from a disassembled grapevine wreath and moss leftover from one of my other projects. Anyway, this is the result of pulling something for an Easter display out of my already finished projects.

Starting out small

Most days I do good to get all of my email accounts checked and maybe make a glance at facebook, so I may be getting a little too ambitious in thinking that I will be able keep a blog current. With that said, here's to my new (ad)venture into bloggingland, bloggerville, blogmania, whatever...