Some Eastery Random

Oh my gosh.. first of all.. the button this week for the Random Dozen is so cute.  I love it! And now.. on with the show!

1. How do you feel about the marshmallow Easter Peeps? I love them. But I only like the chicks.. in yellow or pink please.

 
2. Chickens are notoriously nervous creatures. When you are nervous, what is the best way to calm down?  Step away from the moment and pray.

3. People say, "April showers bring May flowers." Do you enjoy Spring rains?  Not really. The only redeeming thing they do besides water the earth, is give a brief break from the pollen. It has been a doozy with the pollen this spring though!

 
4. When I was randomly flipping through TV channels this week, I saw a show in which tattoo parlor employees received tattoos of a co-worker's face on their bodies. I can't imagine having a portrait of a colleague tattooed on me. But if someone forced you to receive a portrait tattoo (face only) of anyone, who would it be? Why?  Probably our son.

5. Would you rather have a tattoo (any kind) or a nose ring? I would rather have a small tattoo.. NO nose rings for me. And make it a cute little butterfly.

6. Do you have any special plans for Easter? Nope. 

7. Cadbury Eggs or Reese Eggs?  Neither. They both have milk in them. *sad face* If I could eat them, I’d love both of them equally. 

8. What was the last thing/person you took a picture of?  I took some snapshots of some old pictures that belonged to my parents.

9. What book are you reading now, or what was the last one? I haven’t been reading very many things of late because of doing BSF.  But I’ve started reading the new Lysa TerKeurst book and an old book by Sandi Patty.

10. What do you think is the most difficult task when it comes to Spring cleaning? Window screens.

11. How many pairs of flip-flops do you own? One. I use them when we go to the water park. They are the same ones I broke my foot in. I’ve kind of lost that lovin’ feelin’ about flip flops after that unfortunate incident a few years back. But I’ve been toying with the idea of giving them a second chance.

 
12. Which color makes you happiest? PINK. I know you’re shocked. :  )

To check out everybody else’s Random-ness, hop on over to Linda’s place at 2nd Cup!

the elephant

I feel like the countdown has begun.

It starts at Miss Boo’s birthday and continues on until April 5 (plus a few days afterward).

It’s the countdown to Bub’s home-going anniversary.

The mind replays everything in those last days. Happy moments. And the hard days want to push themselves to the front of my memory as well. Sometimes begging to be played out like a movie in my head. Except I know the ending.

Somebody asked me recently if we do anything special on that day. 

I told her…no, we both just go through the day giving each other knowing glances, all the while not discussing the elephant in the room.

And I think that’s how we feel right now..yep there it is.

Sigh.

I’m sure you never…

…. wait entirely too long to sweep the kitchen floor.

Yeah, me neither.

some SouthlakesMom random!

1.  What is your favorite sign of Spring? WARMTH. I am actually wearing shorts and going barefoot today and I’m loving it!

  
2.  Did you remember to spring forward on March 14?  If not, how did it impact your day? It didn’t. I went for an errand later in the day and I had forgotten to change the time in the van and thought I was doing really good on time until I remembered about the time change,though. duh.

 
3.  If soil, time, talent and climate were no problem, what vegetable would you plant in a garden this year? Tomatoes. Oh wait, is that a fruit also?  Well to me, it’s a veggie, so I’m still going to say tomatoes. 

4.  If soil, time, talent and climate were no problem, what fruit would you plant? Cantelope.

5.  What is your least favorite insect?  Roaches and flying stinging things.

6.  March 22 was World Water Day. To celebrate, here are some water questions. Do you drink bottled water? If so, what brand? Sometimes. Ozarka,  Dasani and Sams Club. They’re both done with reverse osmosis. I don’t like carbon filtered water. It tastes yucky.

 
7.  Have you ever been somewhere that it was not safe to drink the local water? If so, how did you handle that?  I haven’t.

8.  How many glasses of water do you drink per day? I drink 8 glasses of water every day. For a long time, I didn’t drink enough and I could definitely feel it, so now I’m pretty militant about it and I feel a lot better. OK.. so I mix in tea every now and then, but my total is still 8!

9.  March 24 is the birthday of Harry Houdini.  Have you ever watched a professional magic show? Share. No.

 
10.  Have you ever been a participant in a professional magic show (up on stage!)? No.

11. March 24 is also the birthday of Steve McQueen and Clyde Barrow. Do you like Westerns or gangster movies?  If so, what is your favorite? I don’t like that kind of movie.

 
12. (Really random)  What U.S. state that you've never visited would you like to visit someday?  Hawaii.  Or maybe an RV trip to the Rocky Mountains.

This week’s Random Dozen is being hosted at Southlakesmom/I Didn’t Know That, so click here to visit other participants. 

a new discovery **updated**

Updated:

This is the link to the program I bought. It costs $39 at Target and $10 online. Hmmm, which one will she choose? I'm also researching printing sites to see if I can get a good deal on something worth having. I enjoy holding and looking at my books too! I'll keep you informed, but for now, here is the link.

Original post:

Spring break is over.

We didn’t do as much ‘fun’ as I had planned for us, but it was a restful week.

I bought a little program (a cheap download of something more expensive if you buy it in a box) that does digital scrapbooking.

Oh my word.

I had a digi-scrapping kind of program that worked on my old computer. I never liked it. It was hard to use. And may I add, the papers and embellishments etc were, for the most part, ug-leee. So I didn’t do much with it. Well, my header is made from it, so there is a little bit of ‘the cute’ but it’s hard to find.

This new one is very easy. It doesn’t have a zillion options, but it has enough. I made almost a dozen cute pages in an afternoon! That’s a lot compared to ‘real’ scrapbooking.

So now I’m trying to figure out what to do with this newfound ‘hobby’ and decide if it’s worth it to use it more often and have the pages printed. Still researching that.

And making my Walmart list. After all, it IS grocery day Monday.

spring break ‘fun’

Yes, it’s spring break. Yes, I’m sort of taking a break from blogging and commenting very much.

But for pete’s sake, why can’t we get a break from the cold/allergy season??? Please!

My poor girl is all sniffy and ended up on antibiotics only to have a nasty reaction to them. She felt sick as a dog for a day and a half. Bleh. About to come out from that and start another antibiotic. Another bleh.

Yesterday was her birthday, but the poor thing felt awful. Not much of a birthday. Not much of a spring break. But not her worst.

We tried to go shopping yesterday morning before everything went south.  Ended up coming home because she just felt awful.  Had a strange moment when I wondered if I was going to be able to get my van out of the parking space.  A very very large black king cab pickup truck parked beside me on the driver’s side…well over the line into my space. I had to get in on the passenger side and CRAWL OVER into my seat.  I’m too old for this.  Aaaaand there was somebody parked in another big huge truck behind me that didn’t pull up far enough into the space and I just about didn’t have room to back out between the two of them.

Dear big pickup driver(s),

Dude(s)..what’s the deal??? This isn’t the ER. It’s JC Penney.  If you’ve gotta drive something that crazy big, then at least learn how to park the stupid thing.

Hugs!

~me

Kind of reminded me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin is ‘selling’ swift kicks in the butt tail end and can’t figure out why nobody is buying because everybody needs what he’s selling.

Ain’t that the truth!

****If you drive a big huge truck, please don’t be offended. I’m sure you are wonderful and park it perfectly all the time.. like any of my wonderful readers would. *smile*

new wheels

I got me a new set of wheels the other day.

She’s a hot little number.

Kinda sleek.

Jet black.

Compact but still enough room for all my stuff.

And you know us girls got some stuff!

It holds all my scrapbooking junk.

We went for our first spin today. 

A crop with some girlfriends.

And there was still room to spare for a box of chocolate covered cherries, some Peeps and a book I was loaning to a friend.

Love it. Fun day. : )

Random-nyness

1. How old is the oldest pair of shoes in your closet? I have a pair of shoes in my closet from my early 20’s. That’s about half my life ago. crud.
2. Did you buy Girl Scout cookies this year? If so, what variety? I never buy GS cookies.
3. Do you know how to ballroom dance? If not, would you like to?  No. Aaaaaand no.
4. Were you a responsible child/teenager? Yeah, I think so. I got my first  job when I was still 15 and from then on bought my own clothes, cars etc. I could buy a new car without a co-signer in my very early 20’s.
5. How many of this year's Oscar-nominated movies did you see? I don’t know which movies were nominated and I haven’t seen many movies anyway. Come to think of it, have I seen any movies?
6. If you're going to have a medical procedure done, such as having blood drawn, is it easier for you to watch someone else having the procedure done or have it done yourself? I can watch all day. I hate having blood drawn. But if the person I’m watching is my child, I would have blood drawn all day long if I could protect them from the pain. But as I know all too well, it doesn’t work like that.
7. What is your favorite day of the week and why? Friday! The work week is over and we’re FREE for the next couple of days. 
8. Do you miss anyone right now? Not really.
9. Do hospitals make you queasy? Not really. I always feel better when I’m with somebody at a hospital… because someone else is doing the bulk of the caregiving instead of me, and it feels like a load off, to some extent that is.
10. At which store would you like to max-out your credit card. Not that you ever would, you responsible person, you. Gosh. I have no idea. How about a store that carries things that I would like to wear and would fit me, especially jeans… I have two pairs that I like right now and nothing in the stores seem to fit… now, you tell me the name of that fantasy store and I’ll fill in the answer. : ) Or maybe just Hobby Lobby!  
11. Are you true to the brand names of products/items? Not for clothing. But for things like toothpaste and such, I am if it works. I am a big generic person when it comes to groceries though. I bought some generic deodorant recently and it works better than my old brand name stuff, so you can’t always tell a book by it's cover.
12. Which is more difficult: looking into someone’s eyes when you are telling someone how you feel, or looking into someone’s eyes when he/she is telling you how he/she feels? Gosh I dunno. I’m an eye-looker anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter. But perhaps it might be harder to look at them in the eye if I’m talking.. ya know.. insecurities and all that jazz.

To check out some more Random-nyness, hop on over to Linda’s place at 2nd Cup of Coffee.  ps… tell me.. do you like me to skip lines in between my Q&A’s?  Which way is easier for ya?

lazy girl’s way to get prints from slides

I’ve had a huge stack of ‘stuff’ sitting in my entry way since last year.

I got enough done that I only had this one stack.

But it’s a big stack. See.

Boatloads of slides.

I told myself that I was going to scan them at some point during the winter ‘when there isn’t anything else to do’. When exactly does that happen?!

So now at least they say spring is coming and before long it’ll be creeping up on one year and I’d really like to get this stuff dealt with. There is the time element, but also I’d just like to have my entry way CLEANED UP.

Crazy talk, I know.

But the longer I thought about scanning hundreds and hundreds of slides, the longer I waited. I knew it would take forever. And I just wasn’t up for it.

Last weekend I got an idea. I wondered if I could take a picture of a slide? So here’s what I did.

I pulled down the shade in Miss Boo’s room and moved the twinkle lights out of the way. Then I set up the projector and put in a reel of slides. And turned out the lights and grabbed my digital camera.

Oh yes, I did. I snapped a photo of each and every slide as it shone on the makeshift screen. And it worked. Oh yes, it did!

See.

This is me slaving away at the ironing board. I remember my mother ironing evvverything when I was little because there was no such thing is wrinkle free anything way back then. And she hung everything out on the line in those days too. I remember when they got their first dryer.

Vacation in Colorado. Very pretty.

The black edges are just the empty screen area since most of the slides are square shaped. But it works!

I was very impressed with myself for figuring that out and sticking with it long enough to snap shots of over 700 slides!

I hope to tell a few of the stories contained in these slides. But I also wish I knew more… like how/why on earth this picture was taken?!

Maybe I don’t want to know about this one. *shudder*

I'm linking this post to Works for Me Wednesday at weareTHATfamily!

some Random on the new computer

 

It’s Random Dozen time… and I’m using a new computer. Just arrived in the mail yesterday. And my fonts and sizes are all weird and the keyboard is different and we’re still working on the settings and all that stuff. We can’t figure out why my fonts are different on my blog… very weird. But anyhoo..here we go!

1. Do you prefer even or odd numbers? Any particular reason?  Even numbers.  I can add them easier. I’m not exactly a mathematician.

2. On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being "not at all" and 10 being Carly Simon-worthy, how vain are you? I would say 1 but I don’t like to go anywhere without fixing my hair… I’ll go without makeup, but I don’t leave with sloppy hair. And I’m so not a stylin’ chickadee as far as clothes go…. so maybe a 4?

 
3. Among these Irish stereotypes, with which do you identify most closely? Talkative, Proud, Inquisitive, Love to party, Hot-tempered How’zabouit talkative… I think my husband would agree to that one.  Aaaaaand inquisitive. Also known as nosey around these here parts.  Reeeeeeeal nosey.

 
4. How lucky do you consider yourself?  Not very. I don’t believe in luck. But if there is a contest or something on a blog, I always think it’s silly of me to enter because I won’t win. So maybe I believe in bad luck! Dunno. LOL Hubs entered a contest online one time and won a pretty nice camera… now totally obsolete, but it was nice in it’s day.  35mm WITH A ZOOM.  I have many close ups of my toddler daughter’s drooly face because that’s when we got it.

 
5. What is the subject of your favorite post that you've written? I like most of the posts I’ve written about relationship with God and I’ve enjoyed (?) working through my thoughts on grief here as well.

6. Describe March weather where you live in three words.  Sorta getting better.

7. How apt are you at detecting blarney when you hear it? (Smooth talk, flattery) Pretty good. It gags me.

8. How "green" are you, environmentally speaking?  A little. We recycle here, so I’m always breaking up boxes and rinsing out two liters. But I don’t have those nice little reusable bags for going to Walmart etc. And I don’t buy all ‘green’ things. So maybe I’m in the middle on that. 

9. What is your favorite song this week? I found myself savoring the words of What a Friend We Have in Jesus the other day just out of the blue and it is already one of my favorites. I’m not a ‘hymns only’ kinda girl, but I do like them.

10. You are walking along and see a coin on the ground. What denomination does it have to be before you will stop to pick it up?  Hmmm a dime or a quarter.

 
11. Complete the sentence: "Every time I look outside my window ...." ….  I wish it were warmer!  Spring is coming on the slow train this year and I am READY for it to get here.

 
12. What was the #1 song on the day you were born? See this site to find out. Help! by the Beatles. I have no idea what that song is. These questions make me giggle because I am so not into music… at least not popular culture music.

To see everybody else’s answers, hop on over to Linda’s place at 2nd Cup!