A new direction

So I am now a Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant! And no...I'm not giving up CTMH. I can do both since they are not related businesses. I have loved and used MK product since I was 16. A looooong time ago! When I was in my early 20's my MK Rep tried to get me to sign up. Even took me to one of their meetings. I was skeered! Them women were over the top excited! The enthusiasm in that room took my breath away. I decided I was good just being a customer. And so I've been for the last :::mumble, mumble, mumble:::years! Well my MK Rep, Kari presented me with an offer I couldn't refuse, so I am now officially a Mary Kay Rep. So if you're a Mary Kay user and need anything, give me a shout. I will be treating this biz much the same as CTMH. I'm not gonna bug YOU, but if you need or want something, just hollah!

Ahhhh!

And with this layout, Christmas 2010 is complete! This is the other layout design from the "You and Me" kit. And while it's nice, I am not liking it as much as the other one. This uses more of the older than dirt Scenic Route papers and I've still got some left! I don't know why the picture of Kathy and Bruce is so dark. It's not in real life! Printer gremlins must have been having fun!

Susan T. Swap

My wonderful second Upline, Susan did a second swap for our Spring/Summer Idea Book since it's good for 6 months. I decided to do two different cards. The first one uses Bliss paper pack and the second uses Fanfare, and it IS a round card that I photographed in front of a piece of white cardstock. Can't wait to see what all the other girls come up with. This swap just keeps getting better with each one we do.

Wii got moves!

Nothing like being 4 months behind on scrapping pictures! But I have an excuse! My printer was majorly malfunctioning. Every time I'd try to print pictures they would come out overly blue or red or aubergine. We took it to the tech geeks and were told that because it was sooooooo old, it would cost us more to repair it than to just replace it. And they just so happened to be having a "trade in" sale. So we bought a new printer. This one's wireless and we can send pics directly from our phones to the printer. Very cool! Now I have no excuse! So I'm finishing scrapping my Christmas pictures.

This one is brother-in-law John's brother Jim...affectionately known as Unka Him. When Joy was learning how to talk, she had problems with her J's so Uncle Jim became Unka Him. And while Joy can now pronounce her J's just fine, I still do, and will continue to call Jim, Him! After our feast at Jan and John's on Christmas Eve, the kids pulled out the Wii Dance and Unka Him (being the biggest kid of all!) had to show off his smooth moves!

I used some ooooooold Scenic Route papers for this, along with the layout (and stamp set) from the "You and Me" kit again. I just love this layout design! The alpha is a new CTMH product called Newsprint Rub-On's. I did outline it in Cocoa ink to make it stand out a bit more.

Rockin' Hope

I got my Hope For Japan stamp set two weeks ago and had not inked it yet. So sad! This was a CTMH promotion during April. The stamp is normally $7.50, but in order to raise money to send to the earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan, Corporate decided to sell this stamp for $5.00 with no limit to how many each person bought and donate 100% of the profits to Japan. With us having family and friends in Japan, it was a no-brainer for me to order one. I've seen lots of examples done by other CTMH Consultants on our bulletin boards with 99.9% of them being pink. Now I am notsomuch a pink girl! I can take it in small doses! So I thought I needed to do one that wasn't pink and that went against the "norm!" So I pulled out the now retired You Rock paper pack and went to town with it and Hope For Japan and this is what I came up with.

Guard Snake!

Most "normal" people have guard dogs. Not the Waters! Nothins so mundane, boring and ordinary as a dog for us. No siree! We have a guard snake! I started out to do my morning routine of check the pond, check the chickens and see what, if anything is blooming. But this little guy is standing (laying?!) guard at the back door. I am willing to bet he slept where he is and he's waiting for the sun to warm him up. So he can stay there as long as he likes! Because if I go out the front door, chances are, I'll forget and try to come in the back door and while I know the black snake isn't poisonous, he could certainly make ME hurt myself trying to get away from him! Rock on little snake. Rock on!

Kari's Kards

Friend Kari came over the other day to card. She's my Mary Kay rep, so she wanted to make a variety of Thank You cards to be abloe to use for her hostesses. We used two paper packs, Cherry-O and Magnifique. We had a great afternoon and now she's thinking of having a carding party for her teenage daughter and some of her friends. Sounds like another fun day to me!!

Froggy luvvin'

Went out the other day to feed the pond fish and refill the pond and birdbaths. And what to my wondering eyes appeared under the rocks...tryin' to hide...froggy luv! This means any day now I'll have a bazillion tadpoles hatching in the pond. But they make such sweet music at night during the summer nights, especially after one of our "famous" summer late afternoon thunderstorms. Frogs need love too!

More layouts

I couldn't quit with two layouts for the CTMH gal! I had just gotten my new kit for NSM called You And Me and I loved both of the layouts in this kit! So trendy with what is being shown in all of the scrapping magazines right now with lots of open space and just a few photo's.

For that layout, I used the retired Grace paper pack, along with Pennant Alphabet, Chocolate Alphabet, You and Me stamp set, Mocha Opaques, Bitty Sparkles, Cocoa ribbon rounds. I used coasters to back some of the elements to give it more dimension. Chipboard used is all from my stash. I really love this layout and plan to use it for some of my own stuff soon!

And the last layout I used also retired Caboodle paper pack. Stamp sets were Flower Child and Tiny Typewriter Alphabet. Embellies include Big Pinks flowers, Winter Cozy Mini Medleys and Sweet Leaf ribbon rounds.

Outside babies

We moved the babies outside to the new coop in anticipation of getting the Americauna's that the feed store is supposed to be getting. So they've got this huge new home and they are all huddled up together in the back corner under the roost! I think they are still too little to use the ramp up into the roost. It won't take long for them to get big though. I am amazed at how big they've gotten already. The Australorps are losing their "baby" fuzz. Cocoa and Kiss are sprouting wing feathers.

Thhhhufferin Thhhuccotash!

Meet Tweety and Sylvester! The latest additions to the Waters family menagerie! Who knows what color these gals will end up being, but as soon as I saw the butter yellow one, I knew I had to have her and that her name was Tweety. The little brown gal had to be named Sylvester! I may call her Syl for short. They are Americauna's and when they grow up, they will lay greenish-blue shelled eggs. More commonly called Easter eggers!

Oyster-licious

When I was growing up, we used to drive to Cedar Key at least once a season and get oysters and have a feast. Some ate them raw, some ate them roasted, some ate none at all (Kathy and Janice!) John and I continued the tradition for a few years after we got married, but here lately we hadn't been getting any. And I sorely missed them. If I get a dozen or two at a restaurant, all it does is make me want more. I tell people I can eat my weight in raw oysters, and that's a lot of oysters! I've been craving them for a while now. We had some really wonderful oysters from different parts of the country when we were in DC last summer. And I said then that when we got back home, we needed to get us a bunch to eat here at the house. And we never did. Til yesterday. We have a new seafood market that recently opened and I ordered a bag of oysters from them. They get them from Cedar Key, and while it's a nice couple of hour drive north of us, with gas prices seemingly doubling every day, I figured I'd let them ship them here and I'd drive 3 miles down the road and get them! The bag held somewhere between 3/4 of a bushel and a bushel. I pretty much started munching when I got them home. So salty and briny. So good with a cold beer! John got home a little after 4 and we sat on the porch and noshed on oysters for almost 2 hours. We'd eat a few. Take a break and talk. Eat some more. Talk some more. We had a great time. We ate about half of them. We'll munch some more today and then if there are any left, we'll shuck them and freeze them for a fried oyster dinner one night. Somehow, I don't think there will be many left!

Cherry-O

There was a gal on our CTMH bb's who put out a call for help in making some layouts for a friend who recently had a baby. I guess it's the gals first and she is a struggling single mom, so I decided I'd do a couple of lo's and send.

This one uses now retired Cherry-O which I have a ton leftover of! Various stamp sets, including Bowl of Cherries, Love You Forever and Bohemian Alphabet. I also used Pizzaz Irresistables, Eclectic Alpha Irresistables, Kraft Borders that I covered in red glitter and Tulip Mini Medley accents.

The things you see

When we were working on the new chicken coop, I looked up in one of the pine trees to see if I could see the woodpecker that was making such a racket. I never did see him, but I did see this pretty bromiliad growing on the side of the tree. The things you see when you aren't looking for them!

More peeps

Stopped off at the feed store the other day to see what new babies they had in. They had Silkies and ChocolateEgg Layers. Breed unknown, but they will lay dark brown (like chocolate) shelled eggs. Silkies are Bantams, meaning small, and they lay small...really small...brown eggs. I've had Silkies and they tend to get picked on by the bigger girls and I thought I wanted something new so we got a couple of the Chocolate Egg Layers since we've never had them before. And since they are Chocolate egg layers...I thought they needed "chocolate" names! So the brown one is Cocoa and the yellow and brown one is Kiss. John named her, saying she looked like the dark and white chocolate striped Kisses! You can see how much the Australorps have grown in just a week! They are double the size of the new babies. They are doing fine all together. And no, the Aurtralorps don't have names yet. They still look too much alike! Once they moult and get their adult coloring I'll name them.

Drowned Rat...errr...Cat!

Orleans gets to stankin' that MAN smell and we are forced every so often to give him a bath. And we did just that yesterday. He was not happy. And Savannah is even less so now that he's had his bath, she hisses and spits if he comes within a house-length of her. They were in fighters face off mode earlier today. Her at one end of the house giving him the stink eye and him looking at me like" WhatdidIdoMa?!" It will all get better in a day or two. Once he gets to smelling like "himself" and not shampoo! Just like most human brothers and sisters, they aren't happy unless they're fighting!

Buh-bye Man-Ram!

Manny Ramirez's short stint as a Ray is over. He officially retired from baseball today after testing positive yet again for drugs during Spring Training. He was facing a manditory 100 day suspension after his 50 day suspension last season and opted instead to retire. That's taking the man-ly way out! Why anyone who had already been suspended and KNEW what the consequences would be if he tested positive again would be stoopid enough to do the same damn thing again is beyond me. But I've never been addicted to drugs so I wouldn't know. More money wasted by the Rays on an aging has-been star. Maybe they'd be better off sticking with the young kids out of college instead.

Root-less

I now have no roots in teeth 2 and 15 to give me any more troubles! The Amazing Dr Horn did root canals on both teeth this morning. A little over an hour and a half to do both. He was quite pleased with his time! I can't have anything hard, sticky or gooey until I go see my regular dentist on Monday to get temporary crowns on those two molars. It's pretty ugly watching me try to drink! I feel a bit like an old lady or a drunk! I dribble out of both sides of my mouth. And I'm numb all the way to both eyes! I have to take Ibuprofen 4x a day for the next 4 days to help with swelling and pain. Hopefully now I can be pain free when I eat or drink. No more trying to use my tongue to cover both teeth at the same time and not being very successful. Sweet relief!

Another working vacay!

There never seems to be enough hours in the day when John is working to get all of the honey-do's done around the house. Especially the "big" things. So he's on his Spring/our anniversary (22 years!) vacay this week and hoo boy is the list endless!

Our first order of business was to build a new chicken coop. We had a massive loss last month of our flock. They got infested with chicken mites and half of the 10 that we had were dead in two days. At that point we had no idea why. Then the others got sick and once we realized they were so badly infested, it was too late. And we ended up losing 9 of our 10 chickens. Every day it seemed that one or two more died. It was heartbreaking. After doing some research (thanks to Google!) I found out that we needed to pressure wash the coop with insecticide to kill any remaining mites. Can't very well do that with one chicken still in there, so we decided we'd just build a new coop. That way, we can rotate the girls and pressure wash the unused one and hopefully not have this infestation again. We got a bit of a head-start on it last week and have just spent the first two days of his vacay finishing it up. It's so bright and purtty! We still have one more treatment to do on the Survivor, which is what I've changed her name to before we can introduce her to her new home sometime next week. Now we have landscape timbers to replace, beds to put new mulch in, finish re-screening all the windows and hopefully get to enjoy an anniversary dinner at Kazu's Sushi! The weather report for Tue is not looking real promising for outdoor work. They are saying we could see some nasty storms like rolled thru here last Thur. And while I hope we don't have any damage, we sure could use the rain. When John was digging the holes for the corner posts, the dirt about 4" down is pure sugar sand. No moisture whatsoever. So we can always use the rain, just not any damage.

I had to make a Post Office run last week and stopped by the feed store to see what kind of peeps they had in. They had Rhode Island Reds and Black Australorps. I'm not a fan of Rhode Island Reds. They tend to be mean when mixed with other breeds, so I passed on them. I did pick up two of the Australorps though! We've had them before. They are known as a "heavy" breed, meaning they weigh more than most egg layers. People use them for both egg production and meat birds. They have beautiful black feathers that have a greenish irradescent quality when they are in the sun and they lay a beautiful jumbo size brown egg. So the two little girls are currently in a big box in the garage. It will be at least a couple of weeks before they can go outside. And when the feed store gets their shipment of Americana peeps in later this month, I'll be heading back for 3 or 4 of them. They are my favorites! Known as the Easter Egg Chickens, they lay eggs that are blue, green, and even pink shelled. It does not affect the taste of the egg at all, but the shells are great conversation starters! I'm thinking I'll quit with 6 girls. But I may get a few more. So long as we have eggs for ourselves and maybe some to share with family and friends, that's all I want. I enjoy watching them interact with each other (and me!)

And sometime in the not too distant future, we plan to re-do the old coop. We'll tear down the wood on the sides and all of the chicken wire. Re-wire the whole thing and put new wood up. Then we'll will make a "breezeway" between the two coops so they can roam between the two. But we'll still have a way to isolate them in one coop or the other so we can do maintenence on the other one. The best of both worlds!