A Taste of Spring

I have truly enjoyed having a snowy winter this year. I've made snow men, thrown snow balls, and taken tons of beautiful photos. But now I am done with winter weather.

Because it's March and that means Spring. The crocuses are blooming and the daffodil leaves are 5 inches high. Tulips are peeking out. And I'm seeing some mystery bulbs coming up too. Don't you just love flowering surprises!?

Yesterday really gave me a case of "Spring Fever". I spent the day at the Nashville Lawn and Garden Show. Oh my! I am so ready to dig in the dirt. The show is held at the State Fairgrounds (which I heard yesterday has been sold for development!! How sad it that!!!). There was building after building of landscaper displays, flower shows, garden clubs, and booths selling yard pretties and gardening equipment.

Some of the landscaping displays had ideas that I will modify and use in my yard.

I have several display stones in my yard and I love this presentation. I know just how I'm going to use the idea.


This rustic pergola is perfect for our fire pit area. And I shouldn't have too much trouble finding the cedar logs in areas they are bulldozing for building on. Have chainsaw... will cut!

This idea with the logs will work for up there too. When they eventually rot, it's cheap (free) and easy to replace.

Isn't this the cutest little display idea? I'm seeing something like this in front of my shed.

I just love this sweet little sitting area. I have several places where I could use this idea.

This fountain garden is a bit European formal for my home but isn't it elegant?

This checker board of ground cover mosses is such a neat idea. It can be modified to so many different designs.

There was a lovely orchid display and 4 or 5 booths selling them. I love orchids but don't think I could keep them alive. I have to settle for silk orchids and photos.

Another display was of beautiful and unusual floral arrangements.

This one was different!

This tropical arrangement made me want to book a cruise to Hawai'i!

Now this feels like SPRING! I could do something like this. The base is a wide clear bowl. Then the blooming branches and tulips are in individual clear glasses set in the bowl. I think the flowers were held in place with clear glass stones.

Pretty as a picture!

Traditional. Love the orange and purple.

This one makes me think of an old abandoned farm house.

Love the orchids and feathers!

This one caught my eye.

And I just couldn't resist snapping this photo! No one was going to tell him what not to do!!!

Where Did THAT Water Come From!?" - Laundry Room: Before and After

My Dad came down on the 25th to help me remodel my laundry room. He's great at that sort of stuff. I was just going to put in new adhesive floor tiles and paint and hang some art. Easy...right?

Naiveté is so peaceful...

Bright and early Friday morning I hauled everything out of the room and thought I was all ready to go.

Dad came downstairs and looked over the situation. That's when he mentioned we could pull out the deep sink which would make painting and flooring easier. Well alrighty then! I headed off to find the proper wrench so he could undo the drain pipe. Only took him a few minutes and the deep sink was setting out in my office. How cool is that!?

Oh no... there was water dripping...

The cold water cut-off valve was dripping onto the floor. Twist it a bit tighter. Still dripping. Since it was a very slow drip we stuck a bucket under it to deal with later. Good to go!

My happy bubble was popped when Dad told me I had to pull off the baseboards to lay the flooring. -sigh- That is when we noticed that the previous owners had used THREE different baseboards (in a 10'X10' room)... and had left a 2 foot gap where they ran out. (They've done some real hillbilly stuff to this house which I keep finding with every renovation I do.) Now I had to go buy enough baseboards to match the largest good section - and stain it to match.

We took down wire shelving that had been put up with the darnedest assortment of screws you ever seen; there were some big holes in the wall. But that's OK; I went out to the shelf in the garage and pulled off my tub of joint compound.

It sloshed when I moved it. Hmmmm... that sounded bad...

Dad confirmed it.

Now I had to buy baseboards and joint compound. So we made our first trip to Lowes for supplies I hadn't anticipated. When we got back to the house, Dad filled the holes and we called it a night.

Saturday morning we started painting. There was a silver lining to my cloud. No baseboards means you don't have to tape and a floor you're going to cover means no drop-cloth when you paint! However, you do have to wash down the walls and tape around the door.

I used paint from Lowes - "Dahlia" from the Valspar Eddie Bauer collection. It's a golden honey color. Very Tuscan. I like it even more than I had hoped! With Dad doing the cutting in work and me coming behind with the roller, it didn't take too long to get it finished.

Next step was to put the floor tiles down. Again from Lowes I used the self adhesive 12X12 tiles. The color is called "Sand Stone" by Crystal. They look like limestone (go figure how they named them!).

The first step to installing tiles is you have to clean the floor. As I scrubbed behind the toilet, I felt... wetness...

Oh no... there was a water puddle...

It didn't come from the leaky sink valve. Further investigation found it came from the base of the toilet tank. Yet more investigation revealed that the toilet had seen it last days. Time to call the plumber... which was easier said than done. I reached the answering machine. I left a message to call back. A half hour later no call. And no answer when I rang them back. I finally got thru over an hour after I made my first call. (I was so persistent because it was Friday afternoon and I wanted to get on their schedule for Monday.)

Dad removed The Puddler. No tears about that since it was on my "replace in the near future" list. Outside of the toilets in my Mom's kindergarten classroom, that was the lowest toilet I'd ever seen - 13 inches from seat to floor!

After we finished washing the floor we put a fan on it and called it a day. Beside, we needed to go to Lowes...

Not so early Sunday morning we started again. The ol' bones were starting to get tired.

Taking the baseboards off does give you a fudge factor for cutting, so that's a good thing. We got busy laying the tiles and soon we were done except for the edges where we had to start cutting. I measured and marked, Dad cut and brought them back. We clipped right along.

Then I noticed Dad giving the door jam the stink eye. It's not too long before he said that has to come off too. He wanted to cut the bottom so we could fit the tiles under it. So while I was sitting in a chair giving my poor knees a break, he pulled the door jam down. Sooner than I was ready to start again, Dad had the jam down - nails of every imaginable size pulled - and the base trimmed.

By the end of the day we've finished the floor, reinstalled the door jam, put the new baseboard down, and my knees were saying very ugly things to my brain. I was so happy that we didn't need to go to Lowes!

Monday morning we're up and at it pretty early as we expected the plumber at 10am. Dad went downstairs to check on something and the next thing I heard was "Te-RI!!!!!"

Oh no... there was a water pond on the floor...

During the night that innocent little drip............drip...........drip.......... drip had turned to drip,drip,drip,drip,drip. The bucket overflowed and kept overflowing. We cleaned up whole bucket of water off the floor. I was so worried that those newly laid tiles were going to lift up. But they didn't!!

We put the fan back in and waited for the plumber to show. 10am came and went. I'm used to service people being late because they under estimate the time it takes to drive way out here. But at 10:45am I was done waiting. I called the office and got their receptionist chickie on the phone (the one who took the hour long break Friday afternoon). Me: "Good morning. I'm wondering when I can expect the plumber out for my 10am appointment?" Chickie: "Oh! I forgot to call you. He's out sick and won't be there today. I need to reschedule you for tomorrow."

Have you ever wanted to reach thru a phone to smack someone?

I rescheduled for 8am - the first appointment of the day.

I went back downstairs to let Dad know the situation. We moved the washer, shelf and deep freeze back plus a few other things. We also came up with a way to cap off the leak. Wasn't elegant but it worked.

From there we decided we deserved a break. We got cleaned up and took in a movie and dinner out. Nice...

Since just about everything was now new in my laundry room, I decided to replace the deep sink. The old one was scratched up and pretty tired looking. So on the way home we made a stop at - guess what - Lowes! Once back home, Dad reinforced the legs so it wouldn't come apart on me. Then we called it a night.

(If a Lowes rep reads this... I think I deserve a customer appreciation coupon about now!)

Tuesday morning the plumber showed up bright and even a bit early. He installed everything I needed installed, changed out some parts in all of the cut-off valves (my preventative maintenance) and left me a happy camper. Worth every penny not to have to do that stuff ourselves!

Shortly after that Dad headed back up to MO. I am SO appreciative of all his help! I love my new laundry room.

What do you think of the before and after shots?


BEFORE:

The south wall where the washer and dryer hook up. Notice the 5" missing piece of baseboard in the corner? You can also see the brackets for the hanging wire shelves that I'd already taken down.

Mini toilet and the filthy floor that was under the sink supports. There's the rest of the missing baseboard behind the bucket.

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AFTER:

The east wall as you come thru the door. The paintings are all original pieces we have collected in our travels or from friends living overseas. The rug you can just see the corner of used to be in my kitchen. It works better down here.

South wall. A bit more needs to be done - I've got to spray paint the TP holder metalic black and put some sort of backing on the candle rack next to the dryer (the rack will hide the ugly behind the appliances). The flower arrangement belonged to my grandmother. The painting is from Home Goods. Only thing new is the shelf my laundry goods are on!

Nice new 17" toilet and new deep sink. Still need to hem and mount the sink skirt - which is made from a flat sheet (I'll hem it this weekend - I just wanted to show how it will look). The basket is from Bosnia where Himself worked in '03 and stores extra rolls of TP. The crock came from Himself's family home - a homestead farm in ND. The mirror is a hand-me-down from my Mom. The three hanging shelves are all ones I used in my other home.

North wall. My repurposed bookshelf will hold extras of canned and bottled foods. Above the laundry bin will be a 2' section of wire shelf that I will be able to hanger dry clothes on (it was still tacky from the black spray paint when I took the pics). My clothes baskets will be stored on top of the freezer.

Reality TV Too Close To Home

Tonight while I was channel surfing, as I crossed the Discovery Channel, two words stopped me instantly with a wrenching feeling in my stomach.

"Alaskan Ranger"

In the next instant I was seeing an old friend as he told about surviving the sinking of his ship in the Bering Sea on a program called "Mayday! Bering Sea".

I felt sick. For the next half hour I watched with tears streaming down my face as that friend, Jim Madruga and another, Chief Ed Cook, told about that terrible night. Easter Sunday of 2008.

My upset was more than just seeing my friends tell their stories with such pain on their faces. You see, I was there too. Not right where the ship went down but close to Dutch Harbor coming thru the storm between Unalaska Island and Akutan Island on the Independence - the ship Himself works on. I heard the radio chatter as other ships who were closer and able to respond dropped what they were doing and headed off to help search.

It wasn't much easier to hear it 2 years later.

I was surprised to learn that one of the Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers volunteered to stay in the water while the chopper left so there would be one more place onboard for a survivor. Unless you've been there... you can not imagine what the Bering Sea is like when it's storming. That man is a hero. No question.

If you would like to read my blog on I wrote about that night, it's here:

http://teri-gonewalkabout.blogspot.com/2008/05/alaskan-ranger.html




Third from left - Chief Dan Cook, lost at sea. Second from right - engineer Jim Madruga - rescued.

Guest Blogger: Himself - “A Woman Named Grace”

Please enjoy this story my husband wrote about a happening during our trip to Kenya.


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Sometimes things happen that you can’t anticipate. This happened to Teri and me at a most unusual time—when we were broke down alongside a road. Actually, we weren’t even on a road; we were in the middle of nowhere in some semi-desert scrubland in the Rift Valley in Kenya on our way to see a Maasai child we sponsored thru Compassion International.



In the more remote places in Kenya, you don’t drive on a road—you just drive. And it usually isn’t you driving. You are driven by a Kenyan assigned to a vehicle who seems to know where he is going, at least in theory. Good thing he knew--I swear we passed the same anthill and wildebeest herd a dozen times! Driving along the bumpiest terrain I have ever been jostled along, we rode along in our Land Rover hanging on tight.

Too dry for mosquitoes, the land was prime for dust. No matter how clean you started out, you arrived at your destination dusty. Not that ‘your’ family would notice—they live literally...in the sticks. Their African huts were made of sticks, grasses, ashes and cow dung. (In some of the drier areas, you can’t even get mud...hence, sticky cow dung which helps hold things together.)

Moses

Besides our driver, we had a Compassion representative named Jim, and an older man named Moses who had been our driver to see another Maasai child from another organization. Though a native Kenyan, Moses was a city boy who had never been ‘out there’ seeing such stuff. He indicated he wanted to go—stating that ‘it was like being on vacation’ being out in the wilds at the bottom of the Rift Valley. All we had been requested to do was to pay his employer Moses’ daily wage of $7. We did.

Somewhere along all this we broke down. Great... Don’t recall just what went wrong but soon there were Kenyan butts sticking out from under the vehicle. All of them saying the Swahili word for, “Hmmm...” Not a good sign. Teri and I? We found us an acacia tree to sit under to get out of the sun. Once cooled off we would walk around looking at exotic rocks, plants, and things that slithered. Off in the distance we saw a small family settlement called a ‘boma’--an enclosed camp of Maasai natives and their animals—(Maasai families slept with some of their animals right in their hut.) From this boma we would occasionally see wide-eyed curious kids—but they mainly stayed hidden and would not come near us.

Running out of things to look at I fished out the soccer ball that we were to give our Maasai child, ‘Ntikoisa’. Compassion rep Jim was all for booting it around with me because one, soccer is a bigtime sport for these people, and two, he was as bored as I. A city boy also, he left fixing the vehicle to Moses and the driver, who were still going, “Hmmm...” Teri? She watched Jim and me for a moment...then her eyebrows started going up--which is ‘hmmm...’ for her. Why? Because nearly every bush on the ground had thorns. Informed by Teri that, ‘if ONE thorn punctures this brand new soccer ball, an American AND a Kenyan would be in trouble’; Jim looked between Teri and me. Recognizing the universal sign of ‘woman-with-hands-on-hips’ as trouble already arrived, the soccer ball was soon put up!

After awhile Teri noticed a Maasai woman who was slowly approaching our broken down Rover. She had being walking ‘back and forth’ for some time, finally stopping a good distance away—watching us intently. Teri had watched her just as intently. Then Teri waved. That was all it took and soon she and her infant son were over to visit. A short time earlier help had arrived from the nearest village and with the help also came the headmaster of the Compassion center. He soon found himself translating as these two woman from two different worlds...shared.

This Maasai lady explained that she had seen our crippled Land Rover and had felt helpless to do anything that could assist us. Initially seeing only men from the distance she was afraid to come closer. She then explained that she did the only thing she could—she prayed for us. However, when she saw Teri wave and realized there was a woman with the group, it was then alright for her to come over. Their talk continued on to families, children (including the baby she had strapped to her side), goats and husbands.

Too soon the village mechanic had the Rover fixed and it was time to move on. But before we left, this woman removed a beautiful beaded bracelet from her arm and, catching Teri by the hand, slipped it onto Teri’s arm with the words “remember me”. With the same words in return, Teri removed the bracelet she had put on that morning and gave it to her.

As the Rover chugged back to life, Teri quickly gave her an additional present for her husband... a red baseball cap. It was something he would proudly wear because he had been honored. As we drove off, this Maasai lady full of grace waved good-bye.

This woman’s name? Grace. A woman named Grace. Fitting.

March Goal - Tame the Paper Tiger

Month Three of my 12 Goals for 2010. I am really pleased at how this is working for me.

This month relates back to my January decluttering goal. A very large and ferocious tiger lives at my house. While March is better known for his cousin (In like a Lion...), this March the Paper Tiger will be going out like a lamb.

In my earlier decluttering, I did not mess with anything "paper". Any and all paper was stuffed in a box and put on its own pallet in the shed. It was already planned to be done later.

It's now later.

There are the old files to go thru and new things to be filed. Some papers I won't be dealing with in a traditional file folder way. I will be making notebooks. Ideas for our home and yard remodeling. Ideas for my crafts I do. A personal notebook to keep "Remodel Me" notes and ideas in. A home record notebook. All paperwork will have a place it belongs.

Books are paper. I'll be going thru them with a heavy hand. I just purchased book shelves at the Habitat for Humanity "ReStore" shop. They're ugly now but repainting them is a March project too. I'll keep ONE shelf worth to list up on http://www.paperbackswap.com/

Magazines are paper. I'll go thru my back issues and pull pages I want. Those will go in a file or notebook. The spent magazine will be tossed in the recycle bin.

Cards are paper. I have more greeting cards and note cards than a Hallmark shop! Those will be sorted, culled and the keepers put in file boxes.

My head hurts just thinking about it all. But it's going to happen and it will be a good thing when it's done!

Just gotta keep telling myself that...