Scrapbook page - Sisters are like Cherries

Amber and I went to a crop over the weekend.

If you don't know what a crop is, it's where scrapbookers get together and do their thing... crop pictures, glue it on pretty paper. Probably unbearably boring to most.

If you don't know who Amber is, then YOU DON'T READ MY BLOG MUCH. lol. Amber is my little sister, the littlest one. But don't call her your baby sister because, man, she's not a baby. (Although I have cellulite older than Amber *sigh*) Also please, do not call her fat, or over thirty, but really, that just clarifys that she's a female - nothing more.

So anyway!
We had fun, although the crop was a bit craptarded. Weird giveaways, kinda bleh food. Come to find out, the women that put it on have been bickering amongst themselves over petty things like what kind of food to serve, and such. Ladies... we're all adults here. *smile*

Nevertheless, Amber and I did have fun on our own. We both had some major venting to take care of, and I hope that the nearby tables didn't have to hear us bellyache too terribly much.

I even brought my laptop, and we watched a movie. Only one of the greatest theatrical masterpieces of all time.....

Ratatouille!!!





I actually did scrapbook too, and got quite a bit done. More than I think I ever have at a crop! So I have a lot to share with you this week.

This was one of my favorites, mainly cuz it made me laugh, and because it's kinda true.

Except for Amber.
(unless it's Christmas day, and then she's an angry elf)

Paper: Diecuts with a View - Market stack
Diecut paper was made on the Cricut
Cherries - Cricut Hello Kitty cartridge
Letters - Storybook cartridge
Border punch - Loopy border - Martha Stewart Crafts and also Fiskars Threading Waters
Sisters bling - MAMBI ??? I think, I didn't write it down! (sorry, I was distracted by sparkly things)
Ink, and EK success zig writer

Honk Honk! You silly goose!

I might have shared this story before.
But I'm going to share again, just in case :p

When I was in High School, I worked for a summer job program in the state of Iowa. It was a pretty cherry deal. 40 hours of work, at minimum wage, but because I was under 18, I didn't have to pay any taxes. This is pretty good cash if you're 16 years old. I worked washing laundry in a care facility, which is kind of like a nursing home, but not exactly. It was a pretty interesting job, and many days of my summer I got to spend outside hanging a million sheets on the line. At the time I hated it, but now I long for warm days that I can hang our sheets outside.

sigh.

Our area had a regional coordinator, and at least once during the summer, she would find something related to the career field you wanted to go into and you'd job shadow one day.

I wanted to do something in the art field - so she set me up with a flower shop. It's a jump, but I can see how she made it. Keep in mind, this is Iowa, which is not known as being the mecca of artistic minds. Also, forget the fact that at the time my mom was a painter, and I saw that every day. It wasn't all that glamorous.

Anyway, we're in her car, on the way to the flower shop when she drops a bomb on me.

She'd lived in Iowa over 15 years and had never ever seen a deer.

I wanted to immediately open the door and jump out doing 55 because I was obviously in the car with a psychotic nut job. Who lives in Iowa and doesn't see a deer before their 2 week "birthday"? I think I said something to the effect of "Do you ever turn your head to the left or right?"

So the rest of the trip, I hyperfocused on finding a deer so I could point it out at her, and laugh at her. No luck tho.

So you might laugh when I tell you that 20 years later, I confessed my own "thing" to my mom and sister.

I live in Missouri, and had never seen a wild turkey.
Ever.

Mom obviously wanted to open the door and push me out, because she was apparently riding in a car with a psychotic nutjob. "Do you ever turn your head to the left or right?"

Good try mom, I'm younger, faster and stronger. Plus I make a cute pouting face. She was tuck with me. Mom then instructed Torrie to find me a turkey... which she did.... not.

Then literally, several YEARS later, we're driving along and I see some black blobs in a harvested corn field. wth? Oh wait, that was a turkey!! yay... apparently I was not a moron after all! (shudup)

So now I've turned into a turkey spotting machine. When in the car, if you think I'm looking out the window, deep in thought contemplating life and the universe. It's not so, I'm really looking for turkeys.

Which really gets me to the point of this post. Something else I've never seen....

Ever.

Not once......



I've never seen geese actually flying south.



What I've noticed about geese, and maybe it's where I'm located, but I never actually see them flying south. I mostly see them flying "around", and it's not just in the fall, it's all winter long. North, east, west, all the time, all winter long. Whether it be November or March, they are flying "around".

I've even seen one batch flying north, and another batch flying east and they "bump into" each other right over our back yard. Much chaos insued. There was a lot of distressed honking, and I'm not sure ever everyone kept sorted with their respective groups.

I imagined some conversations going like this:
"Watch where you're going!"
"You're going the wrong direction moron!"
"Hey nice rack."

Finally each group headed off in their own "directions".

There is a lot of activity lately, and a lot more flying back "north". Which I don't know why because it's definitely not anything close to "warm" yet.

If I were a goose, I would set up camp in Cabo and just be done with it. That's why God made text messaging and opposable thumbs - so I can keep in touch with my friends and family.

However, I saw something really crazy last week, it made me literally do a big laugh out loud belly laugh.

Here we were sure we'd met spring. You can hear a collective sigh from everyone, even the earthworms. But like most springs in Missouri, there's always a little surprise, and we had a day of snow. Approximately a full inch fell, which was a drop in the bucket compared to the winter we had, but it was still a shock, and an annoyance, and not just to me.

Finally, in the middle of a snow storm in March...
I saw a flock of geese flying *south*

I have a feeling they were a little shocked and disappointed at the weather too. I also imagine the conversation went something like this, "Gee FRANK, that's the last time we're going to let YOU lead. You dragged us ALL the way back to Missouri, to find a snow storm. You know we go SOUTH(ish) for a reason right? I'm going to Cabo, who's with me!?"

Tastes like chicken

I have this secret desire. It's no giant mystery that I suck at gardening, and I don't consider myself much of a farmer. BAH! I do however, love critters. All kinds, even the stinky or scaley ones.

OK, I'm not fond of Voles, even tho I love Tanner's mice. I am obviously not fond of racoons, but still think they are cute, behind bars, or stuffed in a DNR type display. Other than that, I'm an animal lover.

Anyway, I've kinda been wanting some chickens. Oh, and a duck, but Gene won't let me have a duck... he's mean like that. So I'm hell bent on having some chickens. Tanner and I have been talking about it for a couple years now and in that process, Tanner started to get excited about it too. He's turned into my research man, and he's been looking at coops, and chickens, trying to determine what we "need". He even used some Google CAD program to design his dream chicken coop.

How many people can say that "dream chicken coop"?

Traditionally, the first few weeks in March are an exciting time if you happen to like chicks, and ducks.... and even bunnies. This is the time of the year when our local farm and home supply store has "Chick Days".

Each year we go at least once and I have to pick up the chicks from the big water tank filled not with water, but lots of baby chicks, chicken feed... and chicken poop.

My favorite part tho, is the ducks. I like to chase them into a corner grab one or twelve and love on them.

But I can't have a duck. Gene's mean like that and won't let me have one.

He sucks.

Tanner and I kinda put our foot down. We said "We're going to chick days, and we're bringing home chickens!" Gene said "You are not!" and I said "Am too!"

And then I said "AM SO!" as I ran out the door. Knowing full well I wasn't, but I sure wanted him to worry for a couple hours while we were gone.
Cuz I'm mean like that.

Seeing the chicks only solidified that we want chickens.

I even bought a chicken book.

I said I was serious!

So I've been learning about chicken hatching, feeding, building a coop, how to pick the right type of chickens, protecting them from predators...

But mainly I keep looking at how pretty they are:

Quite possibly the most beautiful chicken in the world.

"I say, I say, I say ... wellll."
(that was me doing foghorn leghorn)

OMG, I want to kiss them all. But that'd probably be bad. I bet people lose an eye like that.


Then last night, we had an epiphanie. A chicken cam! Tanner said the set up would be difficult, and then I suggested a wireless cam. Within minutes he was doing research on cams to buy, and I was doing research on chicken cams.

I'm fairly confident it will be a comedy of errors - on film - for the world to see

But that's ok, there'll be chicken love all around.
And eggs.

And thighs and drumsticks if I can bear to let Gene kill a chicken while I'm out of the state.
*sobs*

Scrapbook Page - Bound Forever

When we went to Branson, Amber and I started talking about how we should get matching sister tattoos. The more we talked about it, the more everyone else started to play along. By the second night we were there, we pretty much had everyone playing along, even mom!

As we walked into the 3rd tattoo shop, I thought that we should get the harley davidson #1 for our dad that passed away last year. (He loved his harley). My sister Chris, wanted to get a daisey on hers, and so that sort of started the personalization of each person's tattoo.

Chris got a purple daisy
I got a Swallow (swallows are good luck!)
Mom got Wings
Torrie got a touch up to an existing tattoo and had the banner and #1 added
Amber got a pair of hair shears

I split the layouts into the tattoo artist. Jim did mom, Chris and my tattoos and Mikey did Torrie and Ambers.

Paper: I don't know! I think Amber gave me this paper for Christmas.
Stickers: 7 Gypsies
Ink and a brown zig writer.

Paper: Creative imaginations (very old stock)
Stickers: 7 Gypsies
Metal rimmed tags, pop dots, zig pen, ink

Did I ever tell you about how I single handedly killed a redwood tree?

I'm not much of a green thumb kinda gal. Never have been.

As a child, it was forced labor to get me to go out into the garden. I hated it. There's a perfectly good reason for that, I think it has to do with pheromones, which at the time, all I knew back then was that bugs loved me. In fact, they still do. So while everyone else was digging potatoes or picking strawberries in 90 degree weather, I was doing it in jeans.

My family made fun of me for it, but it beat getting eaten to death by bugs.

I still suffer from this, but have grown more stubborn and tolerant. My husband loves that quality about me.

I vowed that I would NEVER tend a garden in my life. So far, that's pretty much held true for me. I was pretty much burnt out on snapping beans by the time I was 9. I remember thinking that when I was a grown up, if I wanted green beans, I'd work 4 extra minutes at work, and go buy a damn can.

So far it's totally been worth it.

Every once in a while, I get a bee in my bonnet and am hopeful and optimistic that I can grow something. Anything. I once did really well at petunias for about 3 months, but grew tired of pulling weeds and watering daily and let them expire on their own.

This really does pertain to redwoods, I swear.

So anyway, one time when Gene was living in California, I went to visit him for a few days. It ended up being one of my favorite trips of all time. I'm not a fan of California as a whole, but I fell in love with northern California. We took a weekend, rented a car, and started driving to the redwoods.

We ended up in a town called Garberville, which can only be described as Cicely, Alaska from Northern Exposure. If you've ever watched that show even once, you'll get what I mean when I say that all the locals we met were odd, but quite loveable.

This is also where I picked up the phrase "Sing me a song cowboy" ... As a very odd local saddled up between Gene and I and asked him to sing her a song on karaoke night. This is also the place where Gene picked up that low cat growl noise I make.

This is where I had my first and only Calamari steak. Yes folks, that's squid, a huge slab of it. It was actually pretty good - for being a girl from Iowa that didn't have mexican food until she was in high school.

Anyway, this place was magical, and if I only had 2 places left on earth that I could ever go to again, this would be the second. The first would be England - but that's another post someday.

We travelled through the Redwoods, and I really wish we would have carved out 3-4 days for this, as you spend the first whole day looking up in amazement. If you've only see photos, or seen this on television, you will never understand it until you see it in person. I said many times, that I completely expected bigfoot or a dinosaur to walk out between two trees at any moment.

Now, it seems obvious that when you go someplace that you fall in love with, you want to find a way to take a little piece of that home with you right? Well, I did. I found a redwood. A tiny, 1 foot tall redwood that was for sale in the redwood gift shop. It was $2.00

Now I know, that Missouri is nothing like northern California. Duh. I KNOW that well. However, I read while I was there, several reports of people taking them home, and growing them successfully for years inside their homes in a big pot. Heck I knew I could do that!

So I carefully carried it home in my purse, with the little twigs sticking out of the top. Every once in a while, checking to make sure that it wasn't getting bent, or broken or twisted out of shape. Quite frankly, I babied it. When I got it home, I found a huge pot that I'd once planted something in, but now couldn't remember what I'd killed in that process. I got some potting soil and did my thing.

He wasn't doing well over the next few days, even tho I did all the things I thought I should. It might have been too much of a shock. Finally, on a very gray and drippy day (much like the middle of a redwood forest), I took it and sat it outside for the day, and that was it. It was too much, and it died.

*sad*


So yesterday, i kept all this in mind as I sat out on my latest attempt at killing some of God's creatures.

In the past few years we've lived here, I've really tried to improve it a little at a time. Most of this work as happened inside, and the outside looks a little neglected and a little too ghetto for my liking.

I'm trying to go for the "no, hobos really DON'T live here" kind of look.

I'm also cheap.
Did I mention I'm cheap?

So I decided to try my hand at raising some of my own flowers from seed. Having no experience in this department, I felt a little like I was in 4th grade again, waiting impatiently for my potato to grow leaves as it sits in the window.

Did I mention I'm impatient?
I'm impatient.

I picked up this tray at walmart for $6.00 I thought it was a good deal, and also quite polite that they gave me some easy to follow instructions. Look at these little interesting compressed pellets.

Interesting.

Wondering how they compress fancy dirt. And how do you tell your family that you work on the line, compressing dirt disks for a living?


Following directions, I figured it would take maybe 15-20 minutes to make my little peat pellets expand.

I never thought I'd say that dirt was pretty.
Look at all that pretty dirt bokeh.


4 minutes later...
I had a pile of uncompressed dirt.

It was good entertainment for 4 min.

And this is what I've decided that I will kill this spring:

It was chosen because of:
Location
Light availability
Purdy colorsssssss


$1.00 each:

I paid $1.00 for that! That's anticlimatic!
Delpheniums first. 2-3 seeds per pot. Really? They are the size of a flea! I wear acrylic nails.
It was "interesting"

Don't eat these.
Noted.

This is fox glove, also known as dust.

Don't eat this.



It took me approximately 1/2 hour to plant 71 pots (I was shorted one!!!) I'm anxious to see if this actually works, and if it doesn't I'm out only $8.00

But before I plant these, I have to wrangle with some voles. Yep, I have a vole farm out here. I'm selling dead voles 10 for $1.00

You can mail cash and money orders to......