Water barrel to compost barrel

Been busy with all the regular old stuff. Grocery shopping, laundry, studying, cleaning house, planning what to have for dinner, brainstorming on my next sewing project. The usual suspects.

I'd like to brag for a minute about how crafty Mr. Skronky is... My granddad gave him 2 old plastic barrels since they were in the way (and not in the newest condition) to try to convert into water storage containers to catch the rainwater off the roof of his house (Skronky's original idea that trickled down until it reached Grandpa who miraculously had such barrels available). Well, we hauled the barrels to Skronky's where his distracted girlfriend managed to bust the bottoms of the barrels even worse while unloading making them even less useful for water. That was several weeks ago. This last weekend (Saturday was his birthday!) he put into action the idea to make one of the barrels into a compost bin. Some drilling, cutting, adding of hardware and the compost barrel was done! Ta-da! Kudos to his craftiness as well as his thriftiness!

Instead of my normal sewing kick I've taken a forray into cooking again. And not just cookies my dear friends. Shrimp fettucini alfredo with a side of green beans followed by a dessert of bananas foster. That's the menu for tonight! Tomorrow is looking like baked herb chicken on a mixed greens salad with feta cheese and olives. Later in the week sometime lasagna will pop in to grace our table. Those are as far as I've gotten for this week...
Skronky and I even enjoyed some sushi again this last weekend. Did California rolls (avacado, cucumber, and imitation crab meat) and a mushroom variation (mushrooms sauted with olive oil and basil with the cucumber and avacado as before). Very yummy!

Marie (my goddaughter as those of you in the know... well, know.) stayed with me last Thursday and we had such a blast at the park, making cookies, visiting Grandmum, and watching cartoons that we're doing it again this week! Four and a half year olds are the best entertainment value-wise. Keep ya busy anyway...

Well, I do hope everyone is enjoying a lovely week with all this warm weather.

"Life is a festival only to the wise." - Emerson

Grace to you and peace...

Welcome to today! We've been expecting you for quite some time now...
Life's been busy and fun.
Attended a beautiful wedding Saturday for a wonderful couple - Blessings and warm wishes! (They planned everything well, kept things moving, and were just down-right adorable to boot!)
Have recently discovered several things on the "internets"...

• How to make your own worm bin... Which would be awesome to keep that whole reduce-reuse-recycle movement going strong.
• Kvetching open letters that crack me up - They're, frankly, addictive and I find myself composing letters in my head that would take hours to write out completely.
• is wonderful to search around. I haven't posted or replied to anything yet but LOVE the idea that every one's sharing stuff to keep from sending all this "junk" to the trash heap.
• Last and best, I've been thinking on religion a bit lately and was concerned that perhaps I was straying from the way I was raised since I haven't been attending a regular worship service in, admittedly, several years. Not that such would be horrible but would require much more thinking, you see (also not a bad thing). So I hopped over to The Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) to refresh my mind on what I'd been taught growing up in a Midwest Presby family. I was amazed and awed to find out that I'm still very much Presbyterian in my beliefs. It's terribly reassuring to discover anew that there are other people who believe the same things you do. Granted, I don't necessarily fit in on EVERY point but very much the majority of them. Yay! I'm very hopeful that such new found knowledge will inspire me to take the next step toward finding a new church home...

Rainy day

In the search for the "next great thing" it can get difficult to always remember that *this*, here and now, is great too and worth the keeping, treasuring, and eventually remembering.

I attempted to update my blog with a nice, new template but didn't find any of theirs that I liked enough to modify for myself just yet so stuck with the same old look for now. Playing around with the html code just isn't as fun as it once was and has even turned into a bit of a burden so I'm hesitant to change around too much that I wouldn't want to have to fix a second or third time. Argh!

Cory and Jillian's wedding shower last weekend was great! Lovely, simple, and modest - it was everything a shower should be but often isn't (we even played xbox Rock Band -too much fun). Love & best wishes to the darling couple who will make their vows this next weekend!
Hope all are well and enjoying today! (Prayers for those in the flooded regions of the Midwest would be more than appropriate!)

Inspiration and influence

Inspiration. Where does yours come from??
And what influences you to do the things you do, pick that shirt this morning, grab that coffee at the shop, have that dream last night, create that new masterpiece?
It's amazing to think on those things... With the world so "small" now everything is available to swarm over your head in a matter of seconds and what sticks in the mind is so variable it seems.

I hope this day sees you well and enjoying those (things, people, foods, places...) around you. Blessings, hope, & love.

How you treat the waiter = matters!

Have been meaning to link to this article for a while now...

How you treat the waiter says a lot about your character

I think it's very true... So be kind to the waitstaff!