The end of summer already

What to write. 

It seems I think of things to write each day and then wait so long- I forget.

I'm still using up old paints. I had some white paint left over from the kitchen island. And thought that I could use it in the cubby holes over my trailer bed. 

They had doors but if you weren't careful you could bump your head on them. You need to be on your knees on the bed to get into them. They are so dark I can never "see" what's in them. They look like caverns. I only use one side because it isn't handy to get anything out of the 2nd one.

 At home I had been painting these wood deer. I brought them here planning to decorate them, unsure of where they'd go. I hate to buy things and not have a place for it, but they were so cheap I picked them up anyhow.

Meanwhile I used the leftover white paint for the cubby holes. And decided to put the deer in the far right side!

The left side over where I sleep isn't shown here. I'm making a curtain for that side. Not done yet. I have pretty winter tree sparkly fabric for it. I love the now bright white in the cubby holes. It was 4 coats of paint. And not an easy area to paint! Lots of hard to reach areas!

I'm still cross stitching my deer below. He will be red and his outline defined in dark red. His antlers will be light grey and the "snow" falling (triangles) behind his head will be a bright royal blue. Clear splarkly beads will be added as accents! I've just been going so slow on this- too many other projects!

Below- I've been painting light switch covers

 I had painted the box with the papers/phone book in it about 4 years ago. The switchplates I painted this week.

Above -these are just snow flake buttons, I cut the shanks off the back and glue them on. Needing cataract surgery means my snow flake free hand painting is on hold! ;o)

 My picture by Pauline King that sits across from me at the kitchen table so I can look at it as I eat, type, cross stitch!
No I am not obsessed- ha! ha! 

 I had this piece of wood for years, I glued some buttons I recently purchased on it, removing the shanks again to make a "picture". The buttons are the things we love- the trailer, tent, foxes, owls, pines and faerie haven on the bottom! Again I wondered where to hang it, and noticed a perfect spot for this one and the plaque I made below. All is good! 

I had a blank wood craft board, again for years! I painted it dark forest green. Last winter I had also bought 24 of the deer cut outs for $2. I painted them all red with sparkles except the 2 above on the light switch plate. I had a few snow and owl buttons left over. After seeing a metal bear cut out with this message in a catalog for $50, I made this! 

The lettering turned out not as I liked, the paints I bought the teens had some dried paint in the "tube" end. So a few popped their covers when squeezing paint out. I used those paints to write the words. I held my breath and told myself it looks fine. Well we love it anyhow. I'm going to make a larger sign this winter because we love the saying so much- "Going to the Woods is going Home!"

And now here are my loves! I made them new bunk beds and they are so happy! They are like their home beds.

 Above- Moses middle bunk, Noah bottom, Samson on top just like home.(no he's not up there!)

Kitty corner to that bunk is the 2nd bunk bed I made. On the top bunk Julius, middle bunk Pauly, bottom bunk Jacob. Pauly and Moses use a chair to get in their middle bunk. They can climb out without a chair. They prefer not to get out at night. Julius uses the bunk next to his (the double bunk beds with the curtain) to climb up and get in. Samson has a metal bunk bed ladder, not shown here, Grumpy was cutting it shorter to fit.

 The weather has been amazing! Not too hot, chilly nights but not cold. Samson and his balls.

 Isaiah was doing yard work for me. digging up invasive weeds that were killing our raspberry bushes. He's so sweet!
He even lets mom take a picture.

 Its hair cut time already! Julius above waiting for a wheel barrow ride!

 My sweet soon to be 12 year old, my princessa. Mercy is my little/big lovebug. She's almost as tall as me now!

 Pauly trying to enjoy the outdoors. He really dislikes being outside. But he works hard at staying out with us.

 Samson turned 24. Such a handsome man! Helping his brothers Noah (16) and Jacob (14).

Moses keeps very busy. He loves to ride a 3 wheel plastic trike, kick balls and slide. He doesn't like anyone to watch him though!

One night Miss Mercy heard me sneak in to check on everyone. Isn't she sweet! I am so blessed!

Not much news. We've been super busy!

Thank You for stopping by!

God Bless! (((HUGS)))

Not dead..........yet! ;o)

Goodness where do I start? 
Well we left the Woods July 9th, and went back to the house for 5 weeks. While at the house I did a whirlwind of chores.

I completed a total upstairs bathroom make over. This bathroom had not been painted since the mid 90s and had 2 walls with wall paper from the early 80s. My fab 4 teens were not thrilled to help. BUT once it was nearing completion they got excited and more motivated!

The brown wood cabinet on the left I bought at JC Penney via catalog in the early 80s. I stained and varnished it. There was no towel storage in the bathroom. I think it was $100? Worth its weight in gold. The catalog delivery helped me load it into my station wagon at the store. Then at home I begged my sister (9 years younger) to help me get it into the house. She whined it was so heavy and was little help. Its lightweight pine- for goodness sakes. It stood in the living room till Grumpy got home and helped me carry it up the flight of stairs. 

The varnish  I used on it has stood the test of time. I had Isaiah add knobs (we had from somewhere) to the door and drawer,(not shown) they didn't have them before. 
The back wall towel holder was my 23rd Bday present from my mom. It came without a bar?? I then indulged and bought myself the toothbrush holder not wanting to wait till my next bday!! Again- good old JCP catalog!

Walls are now painted pink, (I had the pink for my sewing room I'll never have!) baseboards and trim are light blue. I've always painted the bathroom a shade of very pale blue with blue accessories.
Then my 5 youngest boys came home- 2011 and 2012 making this bathroom a mess of adaptive potties. Finally we are "streamlined". Meaning 3 boys plus Mercy refuse to toilet or don't get it, and 2 boys potty (on a schedule since they don't "say") on 2 tuck away commodes. All 6 have "toilet" fears. So yes 6 still in diapers not for trying, but 2 going through the motions using a schedule, to make us happy! :o)

While at the house I also painted quite a few small things that needed it. I had hoped to do the up and down stairs hall way trim too. 
But then it was time to go back to our "real (summer) home" the Lodge in the Woods. It wasn't a moment too soon!

I was so delighted to be able to have a wonderful artist paint me a picture of our Lodge!!! It has ALL of the things I love about being here!I haven't even hung it up yet, I carry it wherever I go! Right now it sits on the kitchen table bench across from me so I can look at it while I'm on the computer etc! :o)  I'm sorry I don't have a better picture here to show it off. Being legally blind causes limits I hate. I thought I had a better picture to show it off. Did I delete it? Lose it? 
Above (photo) I had just framed it. I painted the frame a color of green called "silver pine", and then a layer of sparkles were needed to put over that, plus two coats high gloss varnish. I just LOVE it. Its everything I think about and love about being here. It's a magical picture just like my magical Lodge!

She also made me 4 cards from the picture. I put leaf patterned paper behind them since they were smaller than the frames I had.
At my age you don't buy new- you use what you have! So this was what I had and I think it looks great! The leaf paper is also behind the painting because it was about 2 cm smaller than my frame.
The artist is Pauline in NZ. I have read her blog going on 2 years now and LOVED her creativity. Here is her blog link if you would like to contact her! I highly recommend her! She has beautiful ready made items too.
https://thecontentedcrafter.com/

For fun I bought this owl wood "blank". Years ago I bought a lot of these wood blanks- they are fun to paint. Now I tend to use stencils instead since I lost my vision. Free hand sketching takes me twice as long as it used to. At 62 time is not on my side- so stencils come in handy as templates. 
I do miss sketching. I had been looking at some TangleEasy books with animal shape templates, that I found intriguing. Here's a link- 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/149720027X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I don't care for adult coloring books- its not "my" style. The TangleEasy books give me "ideas", I don't like to be told what to color, I just want to do things my way. 
I thought sketching this wood piece looked do-able and would not overwhelm me.

 Here is my owl. I was quite happy with him. My right eye is completely blind so when I sketch, I am now left eyed instead of  right eyed like I was for 42 years. So it's harder to sketch things with symmetry. I'm my worst critic.
When I painted my lamp shades in a previous post, I used glitter glue to outline the shapes because the lamp shades had a bumpy fabric that would cause the paint to possibly "bleed".
This time (above) I outlined my sketch with glitter glue as part of the design intentionally. 

 My mother would think I have not grown up because of my love of glitter and sparkle. Oddly as a child I hated nothing more than glitter and sparkle! 
She is so not a fan of anything she considers not to be "pure" art. On my mother's side of the family art and alcoholism (depression) run rampant. I guess maybe the sparkle/glitter saved me? 

In my 20s I decorated my kitchen with a fruit picture I created with fabric scraps. They showed how to make them in a very popular women's magazine. Mom thought it looked like kindergarten art. It really was nice, I liked it. I also had painted a "velvet" painting of colored glass bottles. (In the 70s we loved our velvet paintings didn't we?!) My land lord wanted to buy my fruit collage and my velvet painting! I said no, I was too attached to them. :o) I had no money to buy something else to hang up! Plus she was a mean Land Lord.

My finished Owl! Again I only used the paints I had in the house. (the paints that had not completely dried out after years of waiting  :o(
There are 8 different colors of green on the owl. I didn't want to do brown. The teen girls wanted me to do jewel colors.........mmm-nah. I felt like green. I do really like him- he makes me happy! Can't wait till I get time to try it with a TangleEasy shape!

 I'll leave you with a few photos of 3 of my adorable little men. Above is Julius, don't ask why- but he put his sleep sack on before changing into jammies first. Julius is 12. This is our school table, he likes to read, do puzzles and Legos here too. He thinks he's like his big brother Samson who has a desk in this room. :o) Julius has no language and doesn't "read" per say, but he understands a lot.

 Always trying to get Moses (front) to "show" me how he plays the piano! Jacob (back) thinks this is funny. Jacob will only play the piano hand over hand. They are both 14 now.

Jacob can get so goofy when someone is being uncooperative. If Jacob could talk- he'd argue just for the sake of arguing. Doing what's asked is the last thing he'll do. Even Moses in the back corner thinks its funny that Jacob is getting such a kick out of Moses not cooperating with me! Silly goofy boys! I adore them!

Thank You for stopping by!
God Bless! (((HUGS)))

Whatcha makin in the woods part 2

Yes, I was going to blog a "sermon", but life has not given me a moment yet to concentrate on such an important post.

So back to our creativity in the woods!

 Our Phoebe babies a week before they flew away. They nest under the 5th wheel (trailer) every year- 2 x a year. So cute and they eat lots of mosquitoes! The Phoebes at the Lake did this too!!

The teen girls painted pillow case designs for me. The cases had cross stitch stamped designs on them. Sadly most were not "quality" fabric for cross stitching- too thin. So I suggested they paint their interpretations of the stamped design.

 The girls painted one case each and decided it was not what they considered to be fun. Needless to say I was disappointed because they were doing a great job and I love painting ala freehand! Painting actually relaxes me!

 I could have ironed a light interfacing to the inside of the pillow cases and stitched these myself- but I don't have the time. The girls don't want to cross stitch. They want fast craft results. So I suggested painting.
We had 23 pillow cases. Eventually I even talked Isaiah into painting one- but after a week its still not complete! ;o)
Lysa (17) took over the majority of the painting feeling sorry for me. Knowing I wanted them completed! 
So now they are trickling in, one by one to me for iron set the paints to be permanent. 

There were about 6 nice cross stitch pillow cases with good quality fabric that I will stitch. (no one else was interested) And about 20 blank pillow cases of good quality that transfers could be applied to for embroidery. Maybe if they designed their own pillow case they'll have interest in stitching??? 
Meanwhile above I started stitching 4 placemats that are quilted. Sadly the red quilted placemats are poorer quality compared to the blue. The red are not very well padded. Once again I chose a design with my winter theme! :o)

This is Violet on the new  cat tree we had delivered from am*z*n. Our cats hurt each other when they are bored. Who knew cats got bored?? Our 2 dogs don't do that! I watched some vids on psycho cats and learned how to change it up a bit for them!
The cat cage you can see in the back ground, is so at night in the Lodge, Violet doesn't kill one of the younger cats. 
At home Violet glues herself to me and chases the other cats away from me. In the woods at the Lodge she hates the change of leaving home. She throws up when she's stressed. She hates the trailer I work in, luckily she does better in the Lodge. And she does like the privacy of the cat cage. I really miss her when I'm out in the trailer.

 Just a back view of our mega tent we enjoy!

My very handsome Isaiah mowing. 
The other day Isaiah told me he was going to clean the gutters. WHAT?? Grumpy NEVER cleans them and its only 10' off the ground, one spout each end, one con-joined straight gutter, all set along one side, a straight shot of 60'. 
At home I could understand Grumpy's lack of willingness to clean gutters. The gutters at home are up and down and 30' or more off the ground with multiple spouts on 6 corners. When Grumpy turned 60 I bought him the kind you don't have to clean.

Isaiah reminds me so much of my Dad. My Dad was a real go getter- like me, I like to think. Dad thought it was incredibly funny if when he was doing a big chore like gutters, to say to us girls - "Look what your Mother makes me do!" My mom would just roll her eyes, after all she paid no attention to what needed to be done- she didn't need to, all maintanence/repairs were just done by my dad.

I told Grumpy this year "Look, I've cleaned garages at the Lake and now here in the Woods for 30 years. My mom has never cleaned a garage in her life." He was not impressed.

Grumpy has never cleaned the garage at home either, and he locked it years back so I can't see in. So if he dies I'll just burn it down. Its 43 years of his junk. Mostly things he thought I should not have thrown away. He knows where nothing is in the home garage. Tools etc are in our basement, and I have to clean the work room with those too or everything would pile high with no rhyme or reason.

Here in the woods I had to give in and clean Isaiah and Grumpy's work bench in the garage, its the one area I try to trust Grumpy and Isaiah to keep it clutter free. It was so bad I nearly had a heart attack from frustration. It was a big pile of things that I had sorted places for storing. After I was done Isaiah wanted to show every one, Grumpy wouldn't even look at it. Isaiah said "only mom can clean like this". 
BUT! I told Isaiah- "Oh no! YOU can do this too!"

We had a huge 2 hour storm with 50 mile an hour winds that actually blew my trailer back 2 ft. There was flooding too. It was quite frightening. It bent the jacks. Now I'm waiting for Grumpy and Isaiah to put the new jacks underneath. 
I'll stay where the wind blew me, I won't pay someone to pull it forward. Once again I thank God for a+m+z+n to the rescue- jacks delivered to our door step. Several families around here are generations of homesteaders who ate off the land and made do or went without. Now 100 years later I'm on the computer ordering items delivered! Puts me to shame!

Inside the big trailer I had the most beautiful pleather couch/bed. (don't you love the word pleather! LOL!) This pleather is very thick like leather and could fool you if you didn't inspect it. The couch was also very heavy. It was not built in, only bolted down by 2 very small L shaped steel pieces screwed to the couch and to the floor. No one ever sat on it. 
It wasn't in a convenient place. And if you pulled out the bed, anyone coming in the door or sleeping in the front bedroom would have to climb over it! While someone was in it! It blocked the walk way to the bathroom/kitchen and back bedroom. 
In the Lodge we are always changing sleeping arrangements yearly, as the youngest 6 grow. 
Grumpy had lost his bed to Moses, so Moses could give his bed to Paul, so Paul could leave the crib/bed.
Now Grumpy has the sofa bed from the trailer and he loves it. Isaiah did all the work removing it for me. We needed 3 to carry it out so Grumpy did help. :o)

I had so much in the back bedroom of the trailer for cooking and sewing. Lots of dried food storage. 
The main kitchen in the trailer is quite tiny- with a huge sink that I didn't need, and no counter space other than for my coffee pot. These things above were pulled out of the back bedroom and put into the couch space. I love having more kitchen room and the white  sewing cabinet is easier to access now. 
I actually have empty shelves. All of the years of raising 21 children I have never had an empty shelf! Now I find myself thinking what to put on the empty shelves!? But I won't put things on them just to fill it. 
In June I put all of my sewing in the most beautiful clear divided sewing case I bought from Nancy's Notions. So the cabinet is mostly empty. I'm sure things will come along to go in there. In the meantime I'm enjoying the empty spaces! 
Clutter truly bogs you down!

While crafting I told a very Dear blogger friend that my Kitty (16) was taking a lot of flower pictures, but that she was not a great fan of my artsy crafty ideas for us here. S (blogger) mentioned that she enjoyed pressing flowers when she was Kitty's age. 
What a coincidence! I had brought flower pressing devices up this year from my old craft room. Years ago a friend of mine had encouraged me to try it. I did purchase things for it, but I did not ever do anything with it. 
I just was not into flower pressing ever, and at age-16 I enjoyed cleaning fish (fish guts) and dissecting frogs and small rodents at my parents Lake, more than I liked flowers. I also collected big interesting spiders- sadly you can't "save" or press them- they mold!

Kitty's pressed flowers don't photograph as pretty as they look. They are very delicate after pressing, and so dainty. Kitty studied/read up on everything and jumped right in. She loves it! I'm amazed!

Kitty takes before and after pictures of her flowers. :o) She also searches for their names.

 In the meantime I finished the 4 placemats. I did not want to do all four with the same color snow flakes. So I did green, red, white and blue. The stamped "white" markings will wash out. They actually began to become faint just from handling it. 

This is my next project.
Because I'm legally blind with vision only in one eye I do stamped cross stitch. I bought this kit this year because it was 11 count (large stitches) and a design that fits my decor here. This project has been slow going. I've had little time to sit!
I am not doing the multicolored threads. I am doing all red threads. Eventually adding sparkly beads!

I think I showed my new "planter" in a previous post. Our old boat that weighs a ton, soon to be planter. I'll fill it with rocks, then dirt, then plants.
I also had an old Rubbermaid commode. It was sitting out next to the outhouse that Isaiah demolished for me. This commode was very well made/sturdy. Unfortunately the "bucket" was not. It cracked and replacements were/are unavailable. We'd used it 10 years + for our Group Home gals. I was so disappointed, not wanting to toss it in the trash. I set it back in the garage, until I remembered- no bucket. So what to do?
Wellllllll..... I thought to myself, it would fit perfectly in my new planter boat- greatly enhancing it! 
Grumpy as usual asked what were we doing with a garbage commode now? a commode without a bucket? 
As soon as I told him he exclaimed "Lunatics- we are a bunch of lunatics here!" and nearly died laughing! He thought the planter boat was crazy enough! We've had a few friendly partyers honk at the boat driving by! I dearly hope the partyers don't use the commode on a whim. It is nearly impossible to get to it with the huge wet (roadside) water drainage ditch, on the roads right of way. Its 200' from the driveway, so access is limited. Never underestimate youthful partyers.
   

I must say it looks quite distinguished in its place of pride, as it waits for me to get going on the planter! LOL! The planter will need to wait till September. I've scheduled just about every minute of what's left of July and August. No plants till next spring. 

Above my sweet daughter Faith (18) poses.

You can see across the road they flooded about 10 acres for duck hunting, so all the trees died. :o( It used to look so woodsy. They are outdoor hunting guides. We did have Golden Eye Ducks nesting in our yard this spring because of his flooded acreage attracting many ducks. That was fun to see.

Faith doing her best George Washington crossing the Delaware pose! (great minds think alike- I was going to ask one of the kids to pose like that- she already had!)

The kitchen Island is fini. Its still on blocks in the garage, as the paint cures and the top piece of panel dries after being glued on. 

We love it!! It will wait here till we come back in August to set it in its proper place.

The lovely couch above we fixed/saved from Grumpy burning it! The seat was busted out. A bit of wood and for only 56.99; a 4" heavy density piece of foam delivered by am*z*n. Now we all fight to sit on it!

Goodness the months fly by. Here we are 7 days into July already! I hope you are enjoying your summer or winter for my friends in the Southern Hemisphere!

Thank You for visiting! ((((HUGS))))

God Bless! Come again!