Gilding the Lillies (and daisies, and roses...)

I am working of getting ready for a friend's wedding. Since the rule of life is "you can spend money or you can spend time"--I am spending time. This friend, Miss A, is beautiful, creative and fun, and she is marrying a great guy. I am excited to create a wedding that is as beautiful and fun as they are!

Last week I made her bouquet. It turned out adequate. Lots of daisies and white roses and lilies (her flower choices). Beautiful, but...lacking. So pulling inspiration from and old copy of you-know-who (Martha Stewart, darn it all!)--who in keeping with her usual ratio of one good idea every 40 pages (truly, in her books and her magazines, that is the usual!), I carefully applied glue to the edges of a few of the flowers and dusted them with superfine ("diamond dust")glitter. They look awesome! And they perked the bouquet up, and made it sparkly and bright (along with some well placed gems in the centers of a few flowers) just like Miss A!

I have also glittered the cut out letters for the hanging banner with their names on it, paper tussy-mussys for the bridesmaids bouquets, more flowers for the corsages and boutonnieres. Lots of glitter!

The down side is:

To quote my brother in law: "Glitter is the herpes of the craft world. Once you have it, you can never get rid of it!". And I have glitter everywhere.

Winter Wonderland

Today, I dropped off the car at the mechanics for an oil change (which reminded me of my favorite sign at a quick lube place: "How long has it REALLY been?") and I walked home. It is so beautiful today--the sky is a bright clear blue, all the sunlight is gold and it reflects and sparkles on the snow diamonds and all the shadows are blue/purple/gray. The time and temp sign at the bank says it's 21 degrees, which explains why it is so sparkly--it has to be fairly warm (relatively speaking!) to snow, but when it gets really cold it crystallizes all the surface snow so it is bright reflective prisms. It is very beautiful--although the wind was a bit brisk.

That last storm (the one where I could hear the flakes) was an ice storm that dropped ice pellets for hours and made a thick crust over everything. Walking across it is an adventure! SmallDaughter LOVES it--but she can easily walk on the crust--not so for me--every few steps I break through up to my shins!

Also, it froze the barn door shut, so I have to wait for the sun to warm things up a little before I can go feed the chickens!

Winter Wonders

It appears to be snowing again. That in itself is not surprising--we are supposed to have a pretty major winter storm (although we only got about 4" last night, which is not even close to the horrors they were predicting--of course!) The surprising part is the direction the flakes are coming from, and the noise they are making as they hit the house. Hmmm.

Inside the cozy house, we are enjoying our quiet snow day. BigGirl has been inspired. Over the weekend we had some of our favorite people stay over, and Miss V and I went through our fabric stashes and combined our fabric to make tops for Humanitarian Quilts. BigGirl helped me cut pieces on Saturday night, and on Sunday, she asked if she could work on a quilt by herself. In keeping with my "what the heck, why not tell your children "YES" and see what they can do" parenting, I gave permission--and by Sunday evening she had ironed, cut and layed out all the pieces for a twin size quilt! On Monday, she got it sewed into strips. I will post pix when she gets it done--it is very cute, and I am very impressed with her (I am still working on the quilt I started when I was expecting LargeBoy--so like, 13 years ago!).

SmallDaughter got to put on her snowsuit and boots and go out walking around and kicking snow for about 40 minutes. I had to force her to come back inside. She does not care how horrible the weather is, she just wants to be out in it.

LargeBoy has completed 2 Merit Badges. He was the awesomely cool big cousin/entertainment unit over the weekend. He is researching lots of exciting things that interest him.

I spent several hours on the phone, and paid the bills in bed--I find bill paying is a whole lot less stressful when I am in the softness of my cozy bed with the wonderful electric mattress pad on high!

I also read a really excellent book last week--"Coop" by Michael Perry. I just love the way he writes (I also loved "Truck--A Love Story"). I have a lot in common with him, but his humor--it just sneaks up on me, and I find myself suddenly laughing till I fall off my chair (the part about his dad joining the choir--priceless!)

I am whiling away the winter evenings by designing my dream retirement home. Not what people would expect, I'm telling you. More on that later.

Redecorating the Living Room

Know what is delicious? Pop-overs. Yorkshire Pudding. Cream puffs, Eclairs, German Pancakes, Crepes. I love all of those things. And, they all have variations of the same recipe: milk, eggs, flour, blend.

I do NOT love having those ingredients combined together on my living room carpet. If someone (not to name any names, but she is the youngest!) broke half a dozen eggs across the carpet, poured out the rest of the milk and then poured a 5 gallon bucket of flour over them, then played in it...well, you can imagine.

It does make me think about the argument of evolution versus intelligent design. Even if you have the right ingredients, without the knowledge of how to combine them correctly--all you end up with is a mess.

Growth

We are so busy. Yes, I know that we are ALWAYS so busy, but as the kids get bigger, the schedule gets--busier. I did calendaring for the year, and every week is already full. We have the usual stuff--Scouts and Young Women, our beloved Fiber Arts Friends group, Church stuff. And we have the other stuff like Youth Conference, Scout Camp, 4-H Camp, Girls Camp, 2 major hikes with Dad...the list goes on and on. It is exciting to see them grow.

SmallDaughter had her neurologist checkup on her birthday--which meant she had to have a blood draw, poor thing. She was very brave, even though (for the first time ever at our wonderful children's hospital) they had to poke her twice and use both arms. The good thing is she doesn't really comprehend abstract ideas like "today is your birthday", so (even though this is the second year in a row with a Dr. visit/blood draw on the day) she didn't mind. She was very excited a few days later to have a combined birthday party with Grandpa, with LOTS of candles on the cake for her to blow out (with a little Grandpa help!).

This week she got to go see the eye doctor (the specialist at the childrens hosp., who is set up for non-verbal children). Thankfully, her eyes are healthy and we don't need glasses or anything else. I can not imagine the horrors of trying to keep SmallDaughter in glasses!

LargeBoy is making wonderful smells emanate from the kitchen. As much as I miss how freakin' cute they were when they were little--they sure are a big help to have around now!

For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I threw my back out quite badly--which wouldn't have been much of a problem, except my awesome Chiropractor had a heart attack and triple bypass surgery in December. So, painfully waiting for him to come back, life still had to go on. We went grocery shopping while SmallDaughter was at school, and not only did LargeBoy and BigGirl do all of the bagging/loading at the store, once we got home they did the unloading/putting away and sent me to bed with an ice pack! They are truly becoming awesome people, as well as sweet children!

I am happy to report that Dr. S is back in business, and my back is, too!

PANIC!! or not.

I am getting pretty frustrated with news reporters--especially television news. "Now is the perfect time to PANIC!"*

Every time clouds move in they predict "THE STORM OF THE CENTURY--from 30 to 96 inches of snow! Highly dangerous conditions!!!! More snow than you can imagine!!!!!"

And then we get a little bit of winter. Yep, it can be dangerous to travel in snowy weather. Ditto hot weather, rainy weather, you name it. What is needed is more thinking and less panic mongering.

Just Sayin'.

We got about 3 inches of lovely white snow. SmallDaughter's school was canceled and she was out playing in it every time I turned around. She just likes to kick it and make tracks. I cleaned the sidewalk off with a broom, which indicates to me that it was not a blizzard--just winter!


*Monsters, Inc. quote

Big News!

I am officially jumping in and doing all the prep work to (Trumpet Voluntary, please)...go back to school. Specifically to get my Bachelor's Degree (side note--anybody else think it is a little odd for the married mother of 3 to want to be a Bachelor?). Anyway, I am currently up to my nostrils in scholarship info, etc.

Apparently I just hate boredom, and will do anything to keep my life from being calm. OK--there are actually lots of other factors going into this decision, but I think that is the main one I am admitting to!

While this is huge and scary at this point in my life, it is also right and feels so...right!