You need to smile

It’s late at night and I’m sitting here thinking about smiling. I’m sooooooo tired of people telling me I don’t smile anymore. I’m also tired of people constantly asking me why I’m mad. Truthfully, I’ve been asked that my whole life, and I’m just really tired of it.

First off, who walks around with a smile on their face all day, every day? The answer, no one. I have these weird frown lines. I don’t know why. Have you watched tv? There are some actors/actresses that have smile lines. I swear, even when they are upset their face looks like they are smiling. The two actresses that stick out to me are Leighton Meister (aka Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl) and Erin Krakow (Elizabeth Thatcher Thornton from When Calls the Heart). I swear, they always have a smile even when they are supposed to be sad. (more…)

Thoughts 6 Days Post Lockdown

I’m not here to debate if opening up was the thing to do or not. Not even going there. I don’t know the answer. I don’t get paid the big bucks to have that answer. Now that we are clear on that…

I can’t remember if it was late last fall or early this spring, the time really doesn’t matter, just know it was more recent than not. The hubs and I got into a huge fight. We’re talking, one of the worst fights since we’ve been together. It was a bad night. Reason for the fight I won’t divulge because truthfully I don’t remember what sparked it. I know some of what was said, but I’m not airing my dirty laundry on the interwebs.

But, the part I do want to share were some of the results. Truly, just 1 result. So, we agreed that we were going to say no a little more and yes a little less. Our relationship and our family were lacking some quality time together. Right after we came to this realization, things seemed to go back to normal. And I was frustrated. (more…)

What Started Out As (Part 1)

What started out as mowing the lawn… quickly ended into a project that wound up looking like this…

Let’s start at the beginning.

So, last summer my I went to mow our lawn. I had been borrowing my parent’s lawnmower… My lawnmower sucked. Dad’s lawnmower had a flat tire, so I started ours up. I got pelted by rocks. I cried. It was a bad ordeal.

Hubby had been wanting to buy a zero turn mower since we bought our original mower (back in May 2011, just before the Joplin Tornado hit). (more…)

I’m a Jerk… Coronavirus Day 49

I’m a jerk and here’s a picture of a load of bricks. Scratching your head yet? Well… Here’s the story…

My hubby (and I…) bought a camper just before all this coronavirus stuff hit the roof. The sad fact of the matter was, we had discussed this last fall, but then nothing more was really said. Then come January, I was told by a couple of different people (none family members or him) that I was buying said camper. I got a little annoyed because we really hadn’t decided one way or the other.

Then he bought the camper, hauled it to our house, and parked it. The goal was to remodel it and have it ready to go by last weekend when we were supposed to have our Trails for Kids fundraising horse ride. Well, the ride had to be postponed as we all know. And the camper wasn’t ready anyway. (more…)

Book Review: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Hubby used to drive an hour to work and an hour home. Because of that, he used to listen to books on the drive. This was one of the books he “read” and he just about “ran off the road” laughing. Not really, but something just cracked him up. He told me and told me I needed to read this book. Since we had it in audible, that meant I had to listen to it. Listening to books isn’t quite my strong suit, so it took me a while to get through it. I started it in September of 2018, then didn’t touch it again until February 2020. I finally finished it.

This is such a good book. Seriously.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

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Book Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I started reading this book. I never made it all the way through. It’s interesting. I didn’t remember a lot of what I read… nor do I remember watching the movie. What the heck? I remember Professor Umbridge and I hate Professor Umbridge, but… oy! I couldn’t even remember watching this movie. Hubby would say, oh yeah, or this and that… but not me.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

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Planting the Garden – Coronavirus Day 42

This weather has been nuts. I swear, it goes along with this year. This year has been nuts. Wow! So weird, in fact I put my sweatshirt on backward this morning. Oy! But, it’s the perfect time to plant a garden since we’re all sitting at home with nothing to do. And that’s just what I did yesterday. I started the garden, planted it once, that didn’t work, so I’ve proceeded to grow seeds in the greenhouse. Update on that to come shortly. But, when the first set of seeds didn’t work, I added more soil, tilled it up a couple of times… AND… now we’re ready! Ready to plant. Except the weather isn’t cooperating.

It has rained at some point every day this week. Yesterday morning included. BUT then…

So first off…

My friend Janet talked about planting corn on her Instagram stories the other day. She mentioned an Earthway Precision Garden Seeder. I went on the hunt to do a little research and kind of fell in love. I was trying to find one locally so that I could get my corn planted… I might be itching to get my corn planted. (more…)

Let There Be Light… Coronavirus Day 41

The weather is getting nicer outside. It makes it perfect weather to go outside and dance in the water hose. Oh, wait, no, I’m not 5. We have well water and that stuff is cold. If you’ve never played in well water, it’s friggin cold. I got the opportunity to hold the water hose while the 5-year-old in my house danced in the water hose water. It was her idea, not mine, just for the record.

Hubby was recharging the AC unit so that it could keep up cooling the house. After he got that done, the next thing I knew he got out the drill and was removing boards from the side of the house.

Now if you remember, a year and a half ago or so we bought our house. Then we demo’ed it. We got the inside done. (more…)

Homeschooling 101: Planting Seeds… Coronavirus Day 38

Once upon a time, we were in a science class in grade school. We planted beans and corn from seed and watch the germination process. Jump forward 20+ some odd years (I don’t know how many) and I decided to do that with the little. It was a time of the Coronavirus Pandemic when schools were closed for the rest of the year and we had to homeschool. And when I say homeschool, our school district wasn’t prepared for that. Eventually, they sent out daily work, that wouldn’t harm the kiddos grade, but would help it should they do it. But after we did that work, we did our own education as well. This time… science.

Since this spring we got into gardening, why not do the germinating thing, right? I had seeds waiting to be planted in the ground. Mainly corn and green beans as I attempted to start other plants in the greenhouse.

Corn prefers to be started directly in the ground. Beans on the other hand don’t mind being started indoors, but in my luck, they still do better directly in the ground. (more…)

My New Greenhouse… Coronavirus Day 36

Some days I have great ideas… and other days I have ideas that make you scratch your head wondering where on earth I came up with this. Today’s project might be one of those… WHAT?!?! moments. So between the gardening and landscaping this year… I’ve really gotten into plants. I bought a lot of the flowers that I’ve used for landscaping, but the vegetables for the garden are a different story. I really wanted to grow my own plants. After garden planting #1 went awry, I decided to try the little miniature greenhouses. You know the little starter kits you buy at Home Depot (<– I used that one… not an affiliate link, just a link to what I used) or Lowes and I even found them at Dollar General.

Those starter kits are addicting. So I accidentally took over my kitchen table. Whoops. That was when I went on the hunt to see how much it would cost to make a greenhouse. There are kits you can buy but this was a DIY Greenhouse that we decided upon. This round anyway :).

My New Greenhouse

First things first… you need to decide how big it is going to be. Where you are going to put it. And buy the materials. Since I already had the trailer on from taking scrap to the scrapyard, it was the perfect time to get the materials. We decided on a 12×16. So here’s the material list: (more…)