Random 365 Pictures

I have been participating in the 365 Project, as I mentioned in an earlier post.  Have to say, I'm not doing too badly!   I do forget occasionally and have to quick take a pic of something from the day before I go to bed....or I'm setting up a picture like a still life cuz I forgot to take one while out.   But I am pleased with myself that I've managed for nearly 2 months now.   Here are a few random pics from the past two weeks.

Do you know what kind of fruit this is?   Its called "Cherimoya" and we saw it for the first time this morning.  The produce manager gave us a taste and hubby had to bring one home.  Kinda tasted like a combo of banana and mango or maybe banana and papaya...definitely banana in there.  

 We were hit with snow again this week.  This time it didn't stick around too long...but enough for me to click this pic of our cat's little paw print. 

We have an old fashioned hand crank coffee grinder.  One morning during a visit, Liam ground our morning coffee.  Such concentration!  
You can see all my 365 Project pictures at my Picasa site.  

Feet Friday

Ahhh...a lovely February day at the beach.  Only thing better would be if it was July and warm!   :)

ABC Wednesday

F is for Flower Arranging

 Who doesn’t love to get flowers?   Isn’t it great that there are folks who love to make bundles of beauty?   I know I do.  When Jenn was growing up my Mom would send her a bouquet of flowers for her birthday with the same number of flowers in it that she was turning.  Here’s a pic of one…can you guess which birthday it was?

The next pic is of my nieces when they were little and on a visit to our house.  Dress up is a must for little girls.  The kids picked flowers from our property to make just the right bridal bouquet.  

F is also for Four-H   (hee, hee….4H)

 I started a 4H rabbit club for my kiddos when they were 8 & 6.   We had a great time for many years and learned so much.  After a time we added other projects but rabbits will always have a place in my heart and will always define 4H for me.  

The kids would come to my house with their bunnies and we would groom, practice our fitting & showing and learn rabbit facts.   Most of the kids competed at the county fair.

It was always a treat to qualify for the state fair.  This is Jenn with her red Satin bunny….the silly boy who kept standing up instead of staying politely in the position he was suppose to be in.   He made everyone smile with his table antics.

Check out ABC Wednesday for more “F” posts.  It’s fun!

Spring is around the corner!

We have crocuses that come up randomly in our front yard. Cute little harbingers of spring! I am known for my black thumb when it comes to bulbs....dunno why......I just can't seem to keep any alive. Years ago we heard about someone who planted crocuses in their yard cuz you can mow over them when they are done blooming. Around here there is no need to mow yet. Sounded like a great idea and perhaps one that wouldn't require any bulb care...which maybe would mean they'd live. And they did. February is when we start looking for them. Beautiful.


Miss Bonnie loves nothing more than hanging outside with her "pack". She's enjoying her sticks while I'm laying in the grass trying to get good shots of that crocus. :)

Feet Friday

My step mom sent this sweet card to me in the mail in honor of Feet Friday! Thanks, E!

Friendship and Vacation

“Life would get busier and more varied, populated both by beautiful things and unfortunate circumstances. If their friendship demanded exclusivity or solitude, it couldn’t work. If it required everything to go as planned, it would turn brittle, and ultimately it would break. On the other hand, she knew that if they could be flexible and big, if they could encompass change, then they would make it.”
Ann Brashares

I have always loved this quote from “Girls in Pants. The Third Summer of the Sisterhood”. This last year with the Yaya’s has been one of both “beautiful things and unfortunate circumstances”…marriage, separation, birth, moving, cancer, retirement, college graduation, children leaving home, parents ailing…and we have encompassed change (some times with a bunch of kicking, screaming and tears!) and we have made it.

This year’s vacation was such a wonderful time of renewal…of choosing to grow together…to love together…to be together. What I enjoy most about our time at the beach is the level of intimacy we gain by not having to go home and do life. We have many uninterrupted days to talk. One day flowing into another.

We were blessed by waking up our first morning to snow. I have never seen snow on the coast before. We took just enough time to run onto the beach, get our pictures, then back to the warm house and a warm drink. It was seriously cold with the wind blowing like it only does at the coast.

Our group project this year was aprons. I only made one while the other girls each made two. They all turned out so dang cute!
Dancing was on the agenda for each night. One does have to do something to burn the immense number of calories consumed! Toga night dancing was the best.



The weather turned clear and nice after the snow. That meant beach walks. I was “challenged” to get an artistic shot…which resulted in getting quite wet as I couldn’t get up fast enough!

Pacific Beach has a couple of cute shops to be explored. Although we certainly didn’t need to find the fudge place!

Time to start putting away our pennies for next year! :)

ABC Wednesday

This was one of those weeks (of which I think there will be many!) when I wondered why I decided to have a theme for ABC Wednesday! It’s hard enough for me to even remember to do the posts, let alone have to come up with ideas under the theme of hobbies. I may not make it to Z! Anyway….here goes....late but done.

E is for Equestrian

We have never had horses, nor have horses been our hobby! But we have many friends who do. I have no pictures of them, though. But I have been on a horse and have pictures to prove it. :)
Hubby and I went to Glacier National Park in Montana for our honeymoon in 1980. We took a horse ride on one of our days there. We wanted to do the 6 hour ride but it was cancelled due to snow along the trail. All they were doing were 2 hour rides. We were thinking 2 hours was lame…but thank you Jesus the others were cancelled! We were sore, sore, sore. Who knew sitting in a saddle would be so hard on one's backside? What did we know at 19?!

Fast forward 26 years later. We are back in Glacier on vacation. Staying in the hotel we couldn’t afford on our honeymoon…so fun....and decide we *have* to ride horses again. There was no question about how long of a ride we’d go on….give us the shortest one! Age brings wisdom, huh?


Check out ABC Wednesday for more blogs participating. It’s fun!

Feet Friday

I enjoyed sharing a different kind of Feet Friday post a while ago. I’ve been surfing inspiring stories on the web that involve feet in some manner so I could post more. The story of Aimee Mullens was the very first one I found…and it fits…so be sure to read about her here.


David Puckett, working with PIPO (Positive Image Prosthetics Orthotics) Missions, has brought freedom of movement to many people in Mexico who otherwise wouldn’t have it. I first heard of him during the CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute show a while back. I knew I’d want to share his story here on a Feet Friday post.

ABC Wednesday -- D

Dancing would be an obvious hobby for me to do on “D” week! But I actually don’t have any good pictures of hubby and I dancing. Boo hoo. Instead I give you:

D is for Doll making

Jenn made these two dolls while we were with hubby on a 6 month business trip in another state. She had to make them both by hand as we didn’t have a sewing machine with us. I believe she gave them to her young cousins for Christmas that year. I was really proud of the work she did.
Had to include this pic, even though it’s not very clear, because Jenn was always making dolls out of sticks and leaves when playing outside. Both our kids have always been imaginative and clever. Awwww.

Many ladies I know make dolls…quite impressive to me. I love the story behind this friend’s doll....read about it on her blog. I wonder if she used to make dolls when she was a little girl? :)

Be sure to read about the “Comfort Doll Project”. I love this.

Check out ABC Wednesday for more blogs participating. It’s fun!

Yaya's on the go!

Us Yaya's vacation together every winter. I think this will be our 8th time to the beach. It's a much anticipated time away to just chill....and as Y has recently said "not wear our big girl panties"! We started our beach vacationing at a house in Pacific Beach....not nice enough. Moved to a different one the following year...too noisy. Then we found our perfect get-away spot in Moclips...where we've stayed. Until this year. Our numbers dropped to 4 + various life happenings made money not quite so flowing...which meant we couldn't afford the perfect house any more. Unfortunately there wasn't much out there that we could afford...except that very first house. We are going back. I'm confident that the fun of yaya time will out weigh the stuff we didn't like.

Knowing that money was tight, we had a garage sale last summer to raise money for our trip! This is soooooo going to be a tradition from now on. Who doesn't love lowering the cost of things by raising cash?!!! :)

Here's to another week of too much food, drinks, dancing, sewing, making fun of American Idol, chillin' and laughing till our sides ache. I love you girls. Can't wait to get started.

Feet Friday

Working out at Curves! So far I've been disciplined in going three times a week like I wanted to. Sure hope I stay consistent!

With the new computerized workouts you can know how many calories you burned each time. Like today I burned 344. Nice, huh? Except my silly brain tells me that's more than a plain cake doughnut (my favorite) so I can eat one and still be ahead of it. LOL! The justifications. Just so you know......I resisted today. Yeah, Cindy! :)

ABC Wednesday - C

“C” hobbies were hard to decide on…I thought of several that we have dabbled in. Coins collecting, cross stitch, camping and caving were some. In the end I chose two. One for the long history of it and the other just cuz the picture is so dang cute.

C is for Crochet
My mom taught me to crochet when I was young. First was finger chaining…any crocheters out there do that? I would make yards and yards of chains….take them out and do it all over again! I don’t remember the first real project I made back then. Probably a pillow or something simple like that. In high school I made several afghans that I gave to friends. Luckily for me one of those friends was my boyfriend…..who I married so I still have that afghan! After I had my first baby my mom came to stay with us for a few weeks to help out. She was still crocheting and made three afghans in that time! She has always been fast! I made toilet seat covers, towels, coasters, bags…everything but clothes. Never got into clothes. Baby blankets were my favorite and everyone I knew who was pregnant got one. I continued to crochet until the quilt bug hit me. I did decide when the grand babies were coming that I *had* to crochet them a blanket along with making a quilt. Tradition.

This is hubby’s afghan from high school and Jenn’s baby blanket:

Jenn took to crochet just like I did. Loved being able to pass that down. And she is still doing it. Here are some of her first projects...doll clothes for her American Girl Dolls.

C is for Clowning
Our 4H club did a clowning project one year. Dan and Jenn both participated. Had to include this one so y’all could see this cute picture.

Check out ABC Wednesday for more blogs participating. It’s fun!

Red Hat Valentines

"We cannot tell the precise moment when a friendship is formed." - Boswell

Today was Red Hat luncheon day and we were having an old fashioned Valentines...which meant we were exchanging valentines like we did in our younger days. This year I decided to make some special cookies I'd seen at the Better Homes & Garden web site. They were white chocolate cherry shortcake cookies. Yummy sounding, huh? I knew there was trouble with the recipe once I started....no liquid of any kind. I improvised and went ahead with them anyway. They taste fine but the texture is not the least bit shortbread-like....boo hoo. So I didn't finish them (they were suppose to be dunked half way in melted white chocolate). No special cookies for my Red Hat sisters. A quick trip to Albertsons for some Hersheys kisses and I was ready to go with a new plan.

Hubby and I will have to endure and eat them all ourselves! LOL!!!

Here are Tink and I all dolled up for lunch at the casino -- not exactly a Valentines type of place in my mind. :)

Our bags of goodies.

Love my Red Hat gals!

ABC Wednesday -- B

Time for “B” hobbies….and I’m late in posting, as usual. Guess my ABC Wednesday posts will really be Wednesday night posts! I’m trying to use my own photo’s for these posts…thankfully we’ve dabbled in many things over the years.

Basket Making

This is Jenn and Dan’s first basket making attempt. They turned out nice. Jenn made more later when Tracy, her 4H leader, did a basket project. Those were much nicer. Helps when the person teaching actually practices the hobby and isn’t just reading directions off the internet.

Here is a tote she made that I still use:


Bird Watching

We put up our first bird feeder when Jenn brought one home from a class she was taking. It was a plastic milk jug! The birds didn’t care so long as it contained food…and thus began our delight in watching birds. We had our trusty Petersons Guide and binoculars handy so we could keep a journal of what we saw….sure wish I had kept that. Besides the little visitors to our property we also hiked in many places in hopes of seeing more species. On one hike we actually were able to feed some wild jays – too fun!

Groovin' to the Music

What better way to enjoy cooking dinner than to put on some Three Dog Night and groove to the music! Do they teach this in culinary school? They should! :)

Feet Friday

Dancing, listening to poems and singing for a Burns Night celebration! Go Robbie!

Banana-nana

Came across this cartoon while surfing one day. I loved it, of course, since I'm a "Nana". It was even funnier to me cuz Liam has always loved banana's and when he was younger you couldn't always tell if he was asking for me or a banana when he said "nana". The boy still loves us both. :)

ABC Wednesday

When I first started blogging back in September I enjoyed finding challenges and those postings themes that you could participate in on a regular basis…not sure what they call that….like JennyOnTheSpot's “Make Me Laugh Monday”. At Katney's Kaboodle I saw “ABC Wednesdays” and always made sure I checked in cuz she was doing a quilting theme. I also wanted to participate once they got back to “A” with a new round. Well, they started another round and I didn’t realize! Today was “A” and dang, I wasn’t ready. I had to make a quick decision on what I wanted my theme to be (*HAD* to have a theme!) and try to get a post in while it was still Wednesday!

My ABC Wednesday theme will be hobbies. I believe in hobbies…we all need one! Over the next 26 weeks I will introduce you to some. It’s been fun tonight to search the web for “A” hobbies. Here are three:

Astronomy - My hubby was the star watcher in our family. Many nights he'd call us outside to look at something. The kids enjoyed it, but I wasn't into it as much. I do remember once when we borrowed a really nice telescope from an enthusiast and spent a month watching the sky and phases of the moon. That was cool.

Amateur Radio - This is another hobby we tried, but it was very short lived. I was all set to learn all the in's-n-out's but once I started listening in I got bored too quickly. We ended up returning the equipment. I'm too much of a TV gal, I guess.
Angling - so who hasn't enjoyed an hour or so doing some fishing? While never a hobby I pursued with passion, I do have fond memories of time spent on the lake and the excitement of the catch.

There you go. My first ABC Wednesday post....late but here. Be sure to check out the site where you can see all the ABC posts.