Garden Surprises!

In the month of Sept we had a surprising week of wonderful "rain all day long and everyday" kind of rain. It led to wonderful surprises in my backyard garden.

First off are my pear trees that I planted in August. Most of the leaves fell off due to plant shock. But during the rains it bloomed all of sudden from the bare branches. They didn't last long due to the returning high temperatures the following week.  But it was still a nice surprise:

Then there were mushrooms popping up all over my gardens:

The small mini rosebush that disappeared under the mint plants, I thought it died away due to the scorching summer. The rains brought out new stalks and white roses peeking out above my peppermint plants. What a nice surprise:

The bougainvillea bush I had in the corner was nearly 5 feet high and 4 feet wide. Then the deep freeze in February nearly killed all of my plants in the backyard and killed the large tree in my front yard. The rains brought out tender new shoots from my bougainvillea bush! I left the rootball in the ground in hopes that it would grow and bloom again. It took 8 months for the rootball to heal, but here it is finally growing back:

Funny mushrooms sometimes starting merging together as they grew, into like one fat mushroom:

Also my lemon trees are coming back from the original trunk that was cut to the ground when it died in the February deep freeze. (not pictured) The one you see above is my grapefruit tree that survived.

My kids found a nice surprise hidden under the peppermint plants. They pushed them back and found 4 single mushrooms bigger than their hand! They are still there in the gardens:

My gardens are bringing tons of fat happy lizards everyday to a big feast. I rarely spray pesticides in my gardens so it turned into a major toad and lizard cafe in each raised garden bed. This lizard hitched a ride on my son back into the house:

And finally sometimes if we look beyond our gardens we will find an interesting cloud. This one was on a clear blue cloudless sky, except for this huge cloud merged from smaller clouds. My younger kids thought it was a tornado cloud:

September brought such nice surprises outside despite the lingering heat. What surprises have you found in your garden or backyard?

My Stoopid Hair

This is a story about my stoopid hair.

Yes, I said "stoopid." That's so you can hear me say it as "stoooop-pid."

Somedays I just can't stand it my hair.  Dark thoughts of running clippers through my hair has entered my head too many times to count.

Once upon a time I was born with NO HAIR:

I stayed bald for a very long long time.

Then I had wispy thin fine blonde hair barely past my ears for a long long time. This is me at three years old. My daughter already had hair down to her bottom with at least 4 trims since she was born. I probably had no trimmed hair for a few years:

If my mom got lucky, she squeezed in a few of those tiny plastic purple curlers. I hated them so much because I had to sleep on them at night:

Then one day my hair darkened up and got a little bit thicker. I had my first perm in the 5th grade. It got permed every single year until my senior year. The picture below is from my big hair days in the 7th grade. The curly hair is from the perm, and my bangs were super straight. I used a hot curling iron on my bangs and tons of Aqua Net to get them standing as high as I could:

Then at age 17 I decided I wanted no more bangs and no more perms. I used hot rollers on my hair nearly every day to make soft waves. If I didn't, my hair was super straight on top, and slightly wavy underneath.

This is me at 19:

I kept using hot rollers on my hair if I wanted any kind of body or waves to my hair. I had soft wavy SMOOTH shiny hair, running my fingers through it kind of hair. This is me at 20:

Then got married.

Then I had kids. Beautiful hair days are OVER.

Then I had my CRAZY MOM DAYS hair. I got sick of my long blonde hair getting covered in spit up, throw up, and all manner of nasty ups you can think of. And I had no time to make my hair beautiful. So I chopped off my hair. And my husband mourned its death for months:

Thankfully I did grow it out, much to my husband's relief.

Then after my 4th pregnancy my hair got thicker, darker, and started getting curly out of the blue. I had no idea how I was going to control my crazy hair. Most days in the early 2000 years I kept it simple with a bit of cream gel and a shorter bob:

It's now 2011. I swear someone stole my hair and I am wearing a permanent wig. I have to keep it super short.  I don't know where all this increased super duper stoopid curls are coming from. It's driving ME INSANE! Every night I wash my hair with SLS free and organic products. I needed something to control the frizz and curls: I got the frizz down for the most part.

But I have to wet down my hair by sticking it briefly in the shower EVERY.SINGLE.MORNING.

If I don't wet my hair in the morning, it stays up and high like a curly lion's mane sticking every which way. Don't even think of coming near me with a brush. No woman wants to walk around with a dark blonde afro.

Then I have to use about 2 TBS of castor oil hair cream every day to keep my curls together, relaxed somewhat to my head and defined. Or else I have crazy big hair sticking up in all directions.

So here it is, such stoopid STOOPID hair before wetting it:

So very stoopid and I hate it most days:

It's a major rat nest sometimes:

I can pull off the swanky preppy 80's male model look, but no woman wants to look like that:

Big Hair Days are SO over, it's never coming back. Except for me unfortunately:

I think I am related to Cousin It. I think he stole my soft long blonde locks and gave me his crazy curly hair:

Hair. It's like dead skin, right? I should just get rid of it.

Or get a wig.

Or steal yours.

Hmm..I should like a certain shiny redhead's hair that I see at church from time to time. I am stealing hers.

Heather Crafts: Blue Bell Jars

So I totally spazzed and flipped out on this craft blog link and then came up with my own ideas for a beach sign and decoration:

http://www.thesinglenester.com/2011/07/handmade-blue-ball-jars-and-floral.html

I am always saving spaghetti and candle glass jars because I know I will always find something different and fun to do with them. Vintage Blue Bell jars are very hard to find, and usually are pricey at about 10 dollars a jar. Then ones I have now: I got lucky and scored 6 of them for 3 dollars each at a flea market last year and 1 at Goodwill for 99 cents.

I made 3 of my own "blue" jars to make a grouping of three jars with my beach sign.

Then I found an old beat up square of wood at about 10 by 10 in my garage already painted cream and chippy from last year from a project that I didn't finish. I thinly added some of the leftover bluish glue mixture to tint it.

Then I dug up a seashell from the family beach trip last year. I hot glued on the seashell on the wood sign on the side purposely hanging off a bit, and a clip I had around the house in the middle.

Then I added a beach picture to the clip from my stash of beach pictures.

Then I digi created this photo from digi scraps and elements from my photoshop files into this:

I glued the beach picture I made onto the wood sign and sealed it with clear matte spray paint.

Then I tore a strip of white cotton from an old shirt in my fabric stash and tie it around the center of the frame.

So this is my total result, a fun beach memory in the foyer:

So what do ya think? What Blue Bell or vintage Bell jar projects do you have around your house?

Heather: How I Learned to Read Before I Could Talk

It took me 13 years before my teeth, tongue, and throat could work together and speak in intelligent words and sentences in a consistent manner. This was especially true if any emotion was involved, and my words got mixed up in mumbled flurries of frustration. It led to constant belittling and teasing by my peers. In a world where "normal and everything in working order" is where you fit in, I often turned towards books as my friends.

The first book I learned to read was Walt Disney's Cinderella in 1978. I was four years old. I taught myself. I was barely saying a few words, and could only lipread a few words. Reading books is the only place that made sense to me. The best way I can describe how I was able to do this is that one sense was missing, so my other four senses took over and got stronger.

My favorite book to read over and over every single day was The Rand McNally Book of Favorite Animal Stories. I got it for Christmas in 1980 when I was 6 years old in 1st grade attending a deaf class in Provo. I already learned how to read before going to kindergarten, but it was mostly from the same Cinderella book as there was only a few books on the shelf at the time. Sometimes I would leaf through encyclopedias that my mom had just to look at the words.  I learned a lot about words, vocabulary, sentence formation, and how people would speak to one another through this RMB Animal Stories book. I remember that reading wasn't promoted in my deaf class, we didn't have story time, or reading time, or even reading groups. They were too busy helping us learn to talk and work in a classroom environment, and learn to follow the instructions or rather the ineffectively shouted commands from the teachers. There was no sign language available as Utah promoted "speaking and lipreading only for the deaf" kind of environment back in the 70's and 80's.

A couple years ago when I was visiting family in Utah in 2009, I was poking around my Dad's garage. There was a shelf filled with old books, Bell jars and even a briefcase I recognized from the 1970's. The more I poked around, the more I thought about the book I got in 1980 when I was 6 years old. I got excited and hoped I would be able to find that book. To my surprise, I did find it under several old books covered with dust and cobwebs:

The book was missing its red front and back cover and half the book was torn away. I lovingly went through each dog eared page and remembered all the lovely stories with the beautiful and colorful drawings. My favorite story was the Mailman From Bayberry Lane. I brought it home with me and showed it to my kids and talked about my experiences from this book.

Fast forward 2 years later and I found the original book in near mint condition at Goodwill! I was SO excited and snatched it right up. Now I was able to read all the stories about the animals that were my friends when I was so little in such a confusing world:

My children are already too old for this book. I plan to read it to my grandchildren. Every now and then I take out this book just to look at the lovely drawing of my animal friends and read a story or two. Every single story in this book had a wonderful moral and I remember as a kid trying to apply it often to my own life. In fact I can still draw life long lessons from these stories. The good news is that I can speak pretty well now and it won't be such a burden to talk aloud about these amazing animals in these wonderful stories.

Here is a 1980 Christmas picture of me with my favorite book:

Here is me at age 2 looking at the children's encyclopedias from the shelf of books at left of the picture, I would sit and read on my kitchen bumper seat all the time: 

Here is me at age 3 taking a nap with my favorite blanket after looking at the Mr Men books by Richard Hargreaves: 

What was your favorite story as a child?

Thriving with Food Storage

A friend of mine, Amy, runs a program called Thrive Foods. I like this program for the many choices and options she offers, plus she offers tons of information and gentle reminders to work on  personal food storage for the family, which I am currently working on.

Check out her blog and all about her food storage and emergency supplies program that she works for:

http://myfamilythrives.blogspot.com/2011/07/free-give-away-drawing.html#comment-form

My Vintage Pyrex Treasures!

I grew up with these pyrex bowls from the 70's and 80's:

I have wonderful memories of helping my mother make homemade brownies in these bowls, red jello with whip cream and bananas, putting in peas and carrots for the Thanksgiving table, and making chocolate and banana pudding for pies, and so much more.

These bowls remind me of happy memories from home.

Imagine my surprise last month when I discovered that my Mom still had these bowls, and then she gave them to me. Such a precious treasure to me. I hope to give these one day to my daughter when she grows up and is the queen in her kitchen making brownies for her kids.

This vintage style is hard to find. Some I have seen on Etsy between 55 to 75 for the set.

I hope to find this one someday to help complete the set. I just need to keep looking at Goodwill:

I found the middle two bowls at Goodwill. I also hope to complete the set, which is called Spring Green Blossom, I would love to have the plates set as well:

 The reason I want these Pyrex bowls? They have held up well over the years. All the other bowls have broken and fallen apart on me. These bowls were built to last a long time.

Plus you can't deny the cuteness factor.

What Pyrex styles do you have hiding in your cupboards?

Decorating: 4th of July

Again keeping to my theme of simple, here is my 4th of July decorating this year.


I finally made a banner of leftover fabrics in red, blue, white, and canvas that I have been wanting to make since last year:

This is something I made on the back of a wooden puzzle that lost all its pieces, a string of a red broken zipper to hang it up, leftover canvas and red ticking, upholstery ribbing (i have a huge roll of it that I use on many projects) and a star I cut out of leftover denim jeans. I painted the board cream and hot glued everything else together:

Simple star decorations placed in containers here and there:

Took out one of my antique table clothes that is sewn in 4th of July colors and draped it over my kitchen curtain:

What have you done for the 4th of July decorating?

Fourth of July Decorating 2011

Here is the so-so but thrifty decorating for July 2011:


I used the three triangle pendants as a mini banner. It is leftover from the long red white and blue banner I made with leftover fabric (which I forgot to take a picture of):

I put in game pieces in the jars. Thought it would fit the "game and movie nights" theme that happens often during summer breaks:

Red strawberries also speaks of fun summer days. I found the card from my scrap book stash:

I made a banner with coffee filters and leftover cupcake polka dot lines in red and white, I didn't really care much for it though, and left it up for only a couple weeks. I will probably repurpose them into something else another time:

Spring Decorating

Better late than never, but I finally got around to posting about my Easter/Spring and month of May decorating:

Every month my antique cloche has something new in there. For April I had plastic eggs and twine wrapped balls. Thrift stores always turns up the cutest junk to be stuffed somewhere fun:

My antique ball jars has wheatberry seeds and bunny tag that was saved from an Easter toy last year:

My antique gum ball machine has a little plaster bunny with Easter Egg candies:

My soda crate gets changed every month. Here is the Easter version with scrappy stuff I had around the house:

The month of May I picked up moss balls and fake green apples at 50 percent off from Fry's. I spread the green apples around the house for fun hints of green:

So that's it. Just changed a few things here and there in different containers. That's my style of decorating lately: container decorating.