How to Set a Leprechaun Trap :-)

Today is St Patrick's Day!  Punkin' decided last week she was going to set a leprechaun trap and she snagged a box, decorated it to the hilt and then asked papa to help her with the trap part:

She had collected gold 'coins' to put in to entice the leprechaun into the box:

Her trap was pretty darned good - but papa made it better!

They put the gold on the string so it when the leprechaun picked up the gold, the string would pull and the trap would catch the little guy.


Punkin' decided to add a fairy so the leprechaun would be sure to go in!

And the trap was set:

This morning she woke to find this:

She was surprised to learn she nearly...  very nearly... caught him!

But he left her a teeny, tiny note that said:

"Clever try on the spiffy trap, lass, but ye must try again next year! Got the gold!"

 

Guess she really will have to try again next year!  I think she made the best leprechaun trap ever even if she didn't catch the little rascal!  Her dad suggested she add a mug of Guinness next year... lol...

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Happy 35 Years!

Happy anniversary to my wonderful hubby of 35 years.  You are an incredible man, father, lover, hubby, and my very best friend!  I love you more today than ever!

Bloggy friends, I haven't forgotten you - we are in south Louisiana celebrating our anniversary and visiting with our girls.  Be back next week - with pictures!

Love, love, LOVE you Steve!

My New Truck

At the end of January, we decided it was time to get me a new vehicle.  I have a 2000 Camry that I love, and I would drive it forever.  How do you give up a good friend like that?   Megan needed a car to go to work, so we decided to let her use the Camry until she can afford her own car, and since Steve had been after me to get a new car f-o-r-e-v-e-r, he decided it was the perfect excuse and time to do so.

I wasn't going to blog about this because I have had some comments from a 'friend' that has made a few snipey remarks that I can afford this and that because we have all kinds of money.  We don't have all kinds of money, we have just saved for our dreams and we decided to start spending some of the money while we are still alive.  (Sorry, kids, we are spending some of your inheritance ;-) We have done without for many, many years so we can get some of the things we have dreamed of and I will be darned if one more person is going to make me feel guilty about our (good) choices and (sound) decisions.  We have done without for years and years, ma'm, so we can now enjoy our (nearly) retirement years!  

So I am going to blog about my new truck!

I struggled with what to get...  I knew without a doubt I would buy a Toyota.  Everyone knows the struggles we had with our Chevy Astro - the van from hell that Chevy would not back up.  If you don't, here is a quick run down...  It was bought new and by the time it was 2 years old, it had left me on the side of the road more times than I could count (including in Washington DC in July when the air conditioner broke and could not be repaired for weeks), and been in the shop for misc things over a hundred times.  No it could not be claimed as a lemon because it has to be numerous times for a couple of things, not numerous times for dozens of things.  If Steve could have taken a bomb to it, he would have.  We lost our backsides with that van and decided we would never own another GMC product.  Ever.  My next vehicle was a Toyota and I have over 200,000 miles on it and I would not hesitate to take it across country today.  It has been a terrific car and since I have taken care of it, it is in very good shape and looks great inside and out!  I am sold on Toyota!

I would love a new Camry, except I don't like the new body styles of the Camry.  I looked at the other options, and had sorta decided to go with a 4-runner.  We need a 4 wheel drive out here in the sticks, so my options were limited - another reason for not getting a Camry.  The salesman made the mistake of letting me drive a 4-runner that was not a standard 4 runner - it was jacked up and ran like a tank.  I told Steve there was no way I would buy that.  It was later that I found out that it was not a normal one - completely customized with something or other that made it run so nasty.

Anyway, I decided to try the Tacoma.  Instantly, I loved it - I am sitting high to see the traffic, and it rides nicely.  I stewed on it for a bit, not knowing if I wanted to go with a truck or not, and finally bit the bullet and we bought it.  I think I love it!

There is one thing I have a problem with - the running boards we put on it.  Look at how close they are to the bottom of the truck!  

They are useless to help me get IN the truck!  I have short legs - and this is a high truck!  Anyway, Steve is going to lower the running boards - then I know I will love it.  We have ordered a cover for the bed, will order a grill guard and I should be good to go.  If we get it customized a little at a time, I can close my eyes on what it is costing us.  However, it will be my forever vehicle - at least forever as long as I can climb into it!

Steve did another 'honey do' this past weekend to make this place ours.  He hung all of our wind chimes.  The ones that won't break are under the lean-to:

The others are on our front porch. Picture later - not today.  I am pooped from washing the truck!  Too bad I couldn't hear the chimes though:

It's kinda windy here!  March winds... Whew!  Even I don't like this wind!

Off to take my new truck to T-town.  I'm lovin' it! 

Oh, and watch for all of our green backs to blow out of the bed - maybe you will see them - I haven't!

Early Morning Calls

Steve is getting ready to go to work this morning and my cell phone rings... I see it is 'Stephenie' calling me.  If you know Steph like I do, you know she is not willingly calling me at 7 am.  I snatch up the phone in a panic and answer it.  

On the other end on the phone, I hear this horribly, pitiful, sickly child voice... "Granny?  Hello?"

Alert, I greet her and ask if she is ok... obviously she isn't - she is sick.

"No, granny.  I am sick."

"What is wrong punkin'?  What makes you so sick?"

"My head hurts very bad.  It hurts to turn my eyes."

"Oh no, sweetie!  That sounds horrible!"

"It is, granny, and my throat hurts too.  It scratches.  A lot!"

"You sound like you may be having an allergy attack."

"Yeap, I think I am sick.  My tummy is even hurting, but my head hurts the baddest."

"Head hurts worse, punkin'.  So you have a bad headache, a sore throat and a tummy ache...  Did you tell mommy?"

"No, granny, mommy is sleeping."  (so she calls granny who is 750+ miles away.  *heart throbs*)

"Punkin', you need to tell mommy you are sick!"

"Grannnny, I SAID mommy is SLEEPING!"

"But mommy wants to know when you are sick punkin' so she can give you some TLC!"

"Yeah... I know, granny.  Wait, granny?  What is TLC?"

"It is the initials for tender loving care, punkin' - do you need tender loving care?"

"Yeah, and some Tylen-mol because my head hurts really, really,bad."

"Ok, punkin', go wake mommy so she can give you some medicine."

"Ok granny,  and some TLC... I love you. Bye!"

"Bye baby.  Call me later."

"Ok."

And then from her mommy... "She hovered over me and when I finally woke and focused my eyes, she said "my granny said you need to get up and give me tlc"

Those are the moments you live for.  Gotta love those grandbabies...

They are the reason we let our kids live, right?

'Sewing' and Quilting

This weekend was super busy weekend for Steve and I.  We are trying to get the garden patch ready so we can put out (sew) our veggies.  One of the things we felt we needed to do was to test our garden soil.  We have no idea what our soil was like, but we felt it was pretty darned good considering the worms, the size of the worms and the amount of moles we have (moles love worms).  

We purchased a soil test and went about testing for PH, phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium content in our garden area:

We think our test produced excellent results on two separate sides of the garden:

These tests were taken before we fertilized or did anything!  I bet you can see why we are excited!  I think our garden will produce really well.  :-)

Last week, I spent two stinking days cutting out another quilt.  I have a friend who introduced me to the Underground Railroad quilt and after reading up on it, I decided I wanted to make it.  Here is the book:

I started gathering material for it and attaching little scraps of the material to my book.  If you look closely, you can see my patches below the suggested patches:

And here are my final selections:

 

The finished quilt will look like this (with my material, of course):

I am so glad I will be working on it with an experienced friend.  It looks very difficult to me, but she assures me we can do it.  YAY!

I still have to put the binding on my batik quilt, and I need to cut/sew my bright colored "Turning Twenty" quilt, but I can do all that while working on my "Underground Railroad" quilt.

I may have found my passion... another one anyway.

"Itty Ats"

Many, many years ago, I had a cousin who was standing on the porch playing with our cat.  He came in to the house crying, had scratches all over his body and my mom asked Roger what happened.  He said, "Dat ol itty at foo me off de orch!"  (That ol' kitty cat threw me off the porch!)

I look at kitty cats and I often hear Roger saying that - it was so adorable!  I still smile at the memory!

As I was standing outside this morning, I was admiring all of our cats.  Yes all of them.  I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy each of their personalities.  Thankfully we have barns and barnyards for them to play in - not one of them are inside cats.  They love the heat lights we put out to keep them warm, they love trying to catch the moles we have in the ground (I will treat the first one to catch one like a prince or princess!) and they love trying to catch one of the many birds that come through our yard.  Every one of them like to play with Chelsea (our dog) and not one of them like the geese that come to our pond!

I thought I would share pictures of our 'itty ats' today:

I never would have thought I would have 4 cats.  What a surprise!   Well, Monkey, the gray one is Megans - so I guess I only have 3, but who is counting?

I love our 'itty ats' as long as they don't 'foo me off de orch!'

Hold the Snow!

You never thought you would hear me say that, right??

Megan and I got out this weekend and put all of our seeds out into starter planters.  Megan had a blast planting itsy, bitsy, teeny, weenie seeds.  Seriously!  She did!  Well, she might not have had so much fun on the teeny ones, but she didn't complain - I actually think she liked starting the seeds:

Thank goodness we eat a lot of Popsicles because that is what we used as markers:

We tried watering with a sprinkle can, but those itsy, bitsy seeds where going everywhere, so we watered with a Mardi Gras Tauzin cup:
 

We put the trays in my awesome green house Steve bought me in my awesome greenhouse that I bought myself... confused?  I bought the little one - perfect size for my starter trays and then decided to put it in my big greenhouse that Steve had bought me.

As you can see, my plants have done fine this winter - not that they really had a horrible winter to try to get through - but they certainly would not have made it outside.  The mum in the middle that looks dead is coming back from the bottom.  It's alive!

Megan is such a happy girl - she was tickled pink we had finally started our garden:
 

This has been a crazy winter!  It has been entirely too warm for here.  Our trees, grass and plants are totally confused.  It was the last day of February when I took these pictures:

And I saved the best for last:
 

Yesterday, driving around in Tulsa, I saw the most startling thing of all.  The Bradford Pear trees are blooming.  I will take pictures of those this week - but trust me, Oklahoma thinks spring has sprung.

So friends, as much as I love snow, I love flowers more.  Please, hold the snow!