Valentine's Day

 As I post these pictures, I am thinking: "Lady, you have way too much time on your hands!"

 It has been a little boring around here recently:  Husband sick, grandchildren all left town, only working 24 hours a week. I am just happy that sick husband felt like going to the lake and walking a little!

 This is the spillway at the end of Fisherman's Road. I don't know why I had never seen it before.

 I told a friend a work: " I lay on the couch and watch netflix or HGTV, then I get in the recliner and read until I fall asleep, then I get on facebook and 2peas, then, if I am really ambitious, I scrapbook a little!"

 Husband has been taking an online course on Macro photography.

Lake Nasworthy, "Toe 2"

More Macro practice

 Sunday, I walked by the river instead of going to prayer with husband before church. (I do better walking and praying and  by myself).

 Reminded me of Cades Cove.

I turned around after I climbed these stairs by the church front door.

I know I watch way too much HGTV and I have too much room in the closet to store stuff like this. (And we already figured out I have way too much time on my hands.)

Snow on Rocks

I never thought I would do this, but after our years of drought in West Texas, our yard was nothing but dead weeds. We can only water for a few hours a week and may not be able to water at all if it continues.

So we had rocks put in a few weeks ago. Today we have a little ice/snow. It is not snowman snow. It is hard and slippery.

When it melts, and he gets his "Texas Rock" out here, I will get a photo without snow. All I can say is, "It's better than dead weeds. I kind of feel like I live in Phoenix.

and thank Him for all He has done

I found this in my mailbox at work last night. A co-worker remembered that I collect nativities. Another gesture of love and comfort  for which to be thankful.    "Don't worry about anything, instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank Him for what He has done. If you do this, you will experience god's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:6-8

If your heart is broken, are you willing to allow this hurt to serve as a softening agent? Gratitude plows up the ground for God's peace to grow.     from "The One Year Book of Hope" by Nancy Guthrie

Walking to Garage Sales

We have a lot of garage sales in our neighborhood and sometimes I like to put some quarters in my pocket and walk to them on Saturday morning. Here is my haul from this week.     Ike is the first president I remember and I just read his autobiography.  The pink stuff is for my "Brides and Babies" display and the frame is going on the shelf with my mother's day gifts when I get a picture of my daughters and me. All this for $3!

I like this blog: http://apronthriftgirl.typepad.com/apron_thrift_girl.            She buys at garage and estate sales and thrift stores and resells them. You can also post a link on her blog to your thrifty blog, and I love to see what everyone bought.

Got this for .50.

I am becoming a clutter collector since I replaced my piano with a bookcase.

I have found several places to display my clutter in my house and I like to change them on dusting day.

I  am really enjoying displaying my scrapbooks.  I turn the page sometimes when I walk by. I counted scrapbooks last week and I have 118.

My Decluttering Project

This is my car trunk today, but we made 5 other trips to various donation places. Today it was mostly books. Some were my husband's grandparents' and they were in German. I kept most of the antique books, though.

This is where we started several months ago. We called it "the library". You can only see one bookcase here but every wall, except the windows were completely covered with bookcases. It doesn't look too bad  here, but most of the time it was a mess of piled up papers on every surface.

We call this the computer room. This is where we put everything from the library. There is another wall of bookcases that you can't see in this picture.  We had to remove a desk, and many pieces of junk and clutter before we could move the library in here. My husband still has about 5 boxes of papers to go through. Some of them are 44 years old. He was surprised to look at some of his papers from seminary and find them graded down because they were turned in late. Yes, he has all his papers and notes from seminary.  If he writes on a piece of paper, he keeps it. He writes a lot. I do not believe he will ever look at them.

This is the library now.You can't see it, but it still has one wall of bookcases. I have 2 empty bookcases now, an empty iris cart and only one set of sheets and blankets for every bed. I was able to get all my Christmas decorations in the guest room closet and still have empty shelves in there. The closet in the library is storage for my husbands camera and photography equipment.

Then we took our piano to Lubbock to our  #2 daughter.

Here it is at home in Lubbock. We had a tire blowout on the trailer on the trip, but we got it changed with no problems and an electric company employee even stopped and helped.

We moved this bookcase from the library into the piano spot. I was very happy that my husband went through all his books and categorized them and donated of a lot of them. We had 3 copies of one book and 2 copies of several others. None of these books are mine except one shelf of children's books. The cost of this project was less than $150. We had to hire someone to help us move furniture after my husband hurt his back ( the first day) and we bought new linens and frame for the bed in the library.

I made a new tablescape in the foyer. This is a picture of my husband, his teddy bear and another one of his  toy he calls a noise maker on some of our German antique books. His grandparents were born in Germany but I don't know if they brought them on the boat. They emigrated in about 1902. I want another table or shelves for the foyer. I am watching one at Hobby Lobby.

I was concerned about where I was going to put my daughter's wedding pictures. They were on the piano and  are my favorite things in my house. Here is where I have them for now. I'm not really happy with the balance of these items. I will probably be tweaking them. Any advice welcome.

Chirstmas Day Home Alone

I know my kids are worried about what we did on Christmas.(It was our first time alone.) We sat in our Mother and Father places and had Cornish game hens.

We moved some bookcases into the den where the piano was  (we took it to our grandchildren who want to take piano lessons) and I put all my nativities on it except the new one I got for my birthday. It is on the mantel. I'm not going to do this next year, but I just wanted to see them all together.

Here is the one Jenny sent me. I want to get some candles for it for next year.

Then we had to rearrange the furniture in the guest room after we took the bookcases out. I still have 8 boxes of books that need a new home.

Courtney and I were alone one year on Christmas.That was a while ago..1993.

OCD and Me

I wasn't happy with my Easter tablescape so I have been working on it again. I like this one better, but who knows what tomorrow will bring. I have been obsessing about this tableau for a week now. How could I go so wrong with pink, purple, flowers, bunnies, and little girls?

Bathroom Makeover

Every year at Christmas, my husband asks me what I want and I ask him to do a project in the house. This year, we did a bathroom makeover. I don't have a before picture. but it was hunter green and cranberry red plaid with a map of the world wallpaper that we put in there over 20 years ago and was very 80's. I did find a couple "before the before" pictures, though and I knew you would love to see them. Here is daughter #1 getting her hair done on her wedding day. She is going to celebrate her 25th anniversary this year. This wallpaper is original to the house. I had forgotten what it looked like. I like it better than the green and cranberry.
Another before the before picture with daughters #2 and #3. They think it is a prophetic picture. Daughter #2 last name is now Morris. Oops, actually this is the other bathroom. That wallpaper is still there! Well, at least the carpet is gone. Maybe this will be for next Christmas.
I think the rug may be too small for the space. It is the only size available that matches the shower curtain. Since the walls had never been painted, we had to texture it, then painted it grey.
We got a new light fixture, and painted the mirror frame.
This is one of our photos of the trestle near Cloudcroft, New Mexico after a snow. I can exchange it for a different photo in the spring.
With the map of the world gone, I had a space for another one of our photos. This is a lake near Tampa, Florida where Jenny took us when we visited her.
I started with the shower curtain and choose my colors from it.
I found this trash can at Ross for $8. The regular bathroom trash cans are $20.
We got new towel racks and paper dispenser and made this little shelf. I need another something to put up there. This photo is the "Overseas railroad" in Florida.

Help me choose colors for my bathroom makeover

It seems the colors this season for bathrooms are #1: grey and aqua or

#2: brown and beige. The colors are a little off in the pictures, but in real life they match. This shower curtain is described as a chenille stripe.Or #3: aqua and beige. This is the same shower curtain in aqua instead of beige. The towel looks darker in the picture, but it is really the same color as the curtain.

This is me today. I wore my socks to the mall to shop for shower curtains.

I am happy to report I started back to weight watchers 3 weeks ago and have lost 6.8 pounds. Even lost 1 during Christmas week. A big thank you to Jesus! Now I need to put those socks into some shoes and hit the street.

Nativities

Last year, after visiting The Arboretum in Dallas and seeing the thousands of Nativities displayed, I ordered some for my house from ebay. I had fun decorating with them this year. This one is in the kitchen on a bookcase. This one is on a little shelf above the bookcase

with this one.

These are also on the bookcase. (My Native American heritage overcomes me at times.)

I have my old, childproof ones on the bookcase, too, with the books I want to read to my grandchildren.

In the den on the piano

and on the table This one I bought in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

and the entertainment cabinet...this is another old one That is my digital photo frame with pictures of my family in the middle. I need a larger picture there. Maybe I will make my family dress in pink and blue for our Christmas photo this year and enlarge it for this space next year. I know they would be happy to do that for me.

The mantel

This one really needs to be a little larger for the mantel. Maybe I will look for a larger one for next year.

also on the mantle This one is a music box snow globe.

This one is in the window but I had to move it to get the picture.

I found a little strand of battery operated lights, too.