Music To My Eyes

I've always found musical instruments to be somewhat mysterious and beautiful. I've never played any, so I think they have double mystery for me. I am trying to learn how to play the guitar, but it's like some kind of secret code that I can't figure out. It's like my brain only has a certain capacity for such information. I'd have to "empty out some files" to make room for the new info, or something.

I found that old, broken violin in the attic at the farmhouse. I thought it might make a nice spring decoration up above the front door. I'll take a picture of it when I'm finished with the display later today. I had it for almost a month before my dad came over and asked me if it had any labels on it to tell how old it was. I hadn't looked before then! I peeked inside and here's what I saw (plus some other close shots of it):


















About the only thing I can find on the internet about him is found here.

It's very interesting, but I doubt it has any real value. Since the date on the label is 1699 and Jacobus Stainer died in 1683, it is probably some sort of copy. It sure would be nice to know HOW old it REALLY is. I will keep it as a decoration and maybe bring it into a restorer to see what they recommend someday. I'd love to have an actual, working instrument for the kids or to figure out how to actually play it someday...but that will have to wait until after I can figure out how to play the dang guitar!

3 in 1

Beach Party

I took Weazy, Bocker, and Mari to my friend, Megan's house for a "beach party" on Friday. I finally met Kelly (her sis in law who comments here quite a bit) in person and we had a fun time with the kids. It was a very nice way to beat the cold weather and a good time catching up with friends. The kitty in the pictures wasn't real but it looked SO real! The girls enjoyed the shells that Megan's daughter had strewn about (beach party!), and Bocker enjoyed the juice and hot dog lunch. I enjoyed the "Smog Story" poster that traced the lineage of the can't-be-defined-by-genre, TC city bands of the late eighties/early nineties.









Purse Post For Paula

Here I am on Friday night (after we got home from the party) taking a picture of myself in my lumpy hat. Full disclosure: I applied lipgloss that I had on the counter, before the picture. SO, I did "gussie up" a little but I've posted enough pictures of me with no makeup on my running blog, so I figured a little lipgloss was real enough for this post. I don't carry a purse unless we are in church and I remember that kids need distractions sometimes. I carry a wally world special purse (never pay more than 10 bucks EVER for a purse...FREE is even better)that has diapers, tissue, my wallet, fingernail clippers, my keys (on a curly wrist band thingy so I can slip them on my wrist and they don't get lost), some books, some toy cars, some crayons and a notebook (church distractions), a sippy cup or water bottle, misc. candy, a pen. Most of the time I just carry my wallet in my pocket (the ONLY good thing about winter and having to wear a coat all the time) and all of my misc. items. Here, I have Mari's pony scrunchy that she got tired of wearing, my keys, and I think there might be a coin or two under those. That coat I got a couple of years ago for free from one of Mom's friends that hands down stuff to us all of the time. Come to think of it, I think that wallet I have right now was a Mom hand-me-down too. I like free.



Craft/Game Closet

I am going to be babysitting some neighbor children starting in two weeks so I really want to pare down and get this house in order. The closets are out of control and the craft closet was starting to drive me bonkers. Nothing was organized and things started avalanching on us every time we opened it, so it's the first thing to get gutted. I took some pictures AFTER I started to clean it out and one after it was all cleaned and organized. It started with Weazy asking me if she could make a necklace with me for art class today. She found some old "make your own apron/smock" things I got for free from The Children's Place a long time ago, so she spread the things on the dining room floor and made some for her and Mari...who found the paint box and asked if she could paint "Sure, after I get the closet cleaned out!"...which inspired Trina to make popcorn that the kids were practicing tossing up and in their mouths but ended up all over the dining room floor...which I had to sweep about 10 times today after putting the closet back together...where I found the game "Perfection"...which I had to show Bocker who really wanted to learn how to play...which I did and he abandoned the Lite-Brite that he and the girls had found...which I had to find a new bulb for and get set up for them while cleaning the closet...you see where this is going?

Anyway, after all of that, and reassembling the closet, I was BUSHED! They painted pictures, did lite-brite, made the aprons, played Perfection, Analise even found an entire kit of scrapbooking and made a really cute scrapbook for herself (I'll show pics of that on the art blog later).

Then, at around 8:30pm she whines, "Mooooo-oooom, you said you would help me make a necklace!"

!

Oh My Gosh.


I can't win.











That scrapbooking page was one of TWO that represent some lame attempt I had at one time to start the lovely hobby of scrapbooking. I discovered blogging and scrapped the scrapbooking. I don't have the time, the energy, the money, the will, the space, or the organization to ever attempt scrabooking again so I am taking a picture of it and then I will probably junk that scrapbook page.

I tried to take a picture of the cute haircut I gave Mari the other day but the camera doesn't do it justice...oh, I ALSO trimmed Weazy's hair this morning.

I didn't have time for a run today. Hmmm, go figure.

Long Winter Nights, Lazy Winter Days

Weazy gave Bocker her DS and he's been really busy with it. He bought Monster Truck Rally with his Christmas gift card from Grandma Sue and Grandpa Harold.

We've been making lots of blanket tents and finding new ways to be as lazy as possible!
Tommy has learned how to escape the bounds of the living room and explore the rest of the house. Here he is "helping" to do the dishes about a day before the dishwasher died forever. It went all defunct right before I was to host Christmas Eve for my family. With our past dryer troubles, oven troubles, and refrigerator troubles, and now dishwasher troubles...I've had it with this junk! All I need to poop out now is the microwave. Oh, the sump pump clamp loosened and sprayed water all over the utility room last week too. The last time that happened, it sprayed water on the water heater and shorted it out. THAT was a 350 buck repair. It didn't happen this time but it was a nice, wet mess for a few days and freaked me out because Butch was out of town. I re-adjusted the clamp and tightened it. I'm getting to be a regular handyperson around here with that hubs of mine gone all the time (he'll be home for a while now, thank goodness) Anybody want to hire me? I work for 100 bucks an hour. Tommy will work for suckers, macaroni and cheese, pieces of lint, pennies, polly pocket pieces, pen caps, or anything else you could find in corners of your living room or in between your couch cushions.


Here is a shot of my dining room wall (whoops, it's sideways) after I took off the wallpaper border but before I really got into painting it:Here is our Christmas tree, in the corner of the soon to be painted dining room. I couldn't stand looking at all the little pieces of tape holding the rippy border up on EVERY wall. I didn't have any money for paint but I had supplies and leftover yellow from the living room, also I had red from the hallway and bottom of the dining room...hey! Yellow and red make orange, right? Right?Before:After:

This is the other corner and I think the paint looks pinkish here but it's really a terracotta kind of color. I was going to go for a darkish, rusty orangish color but I like how this turned out. You should have seen the mess I made mixing paint but I am so happy with the result. I'm also proud of the fact that I didn't bother with taping the trim and did it all free hand (It's perfect, by the way, if I do say so myself.). I started the whole mess earlier in the day when we first put up the decorations on the tree and I ripped all the wallpaper off. I knew that, come hell or highwater, I wouldn't go to sleep until the whole room was painted and put back together. I wanted at least ONE THING DONE before Christmas! I finished around 3 am. (I will paint your room for 50 bucks or grocery store gift certificates.).

Here is the space above the main entry door that I like to decorate with seasonal stuff. I usually just grab a bunch of extra decorations, household thingies, lights, and other misc. statues and baubles. I asked my cousin Deedee if she had any extra things and she gave me that tree in the middle. It was just the thing I needed. The lights didn't work on it but I had extras from last year and it looks so cute from outside. I think I'll take down the colored lights and add white ones, and I'll take down the super Christmas-y things so by the time spring and summer come, it isn't so obvious that I never get around to changing that thing. When I crawled up there to change it, I was fighting dust and spider webs from LAST SPRING when I last changed the motif.

Here it is with the lights on (that's the entry chandelier in the top right of the picture). That old cabinet to the right is an old machine parts box on it's side and I like to put a bunch of things in there to play an"i spy"-type of game.

"I spy...a dust bunny, a spider web, an errant ball, an old sock that Matty thought would be funny to throw down over the ledge, an earring back, a pill bug, and parts of my Easter display from 2003..."

Okay, gotta go try to keep from pulling my hair out on this cold, blizzardy day. At least the kids have the Wii Outdoor Challenge game to stomp around on and work out the willies.

I'm outta here, people!: