A Reorganization, Some Confused Critters and A Little Purple Star

Hi Readers!

For some reason I feel the need to always make the title of these posts into a three part take off. And I usually get it out of order as well...

We'll start off with the confused critters, but in reality, the reorganization did come first.

My living room is a disaster zone! 

Looks like a hoarder lives here!

Fred dog and Lola seem to be surveying this horrendous mess wondering what the devil it's all about!

I've been busy for the last three days emptying my cutting room in preparation of some badly needed shelves!

A close up of one tiny bit of the mounds in the living room. All that mess must be gone through before it can fill the new shelves in the cutting room. One box at a time, sort, sort, sort, toss, sort, sort.

There are cow horns in that tall round basket under the maxwell house coffee can. I've had those cow horns for about five years now...still trying to figure out just what the heck to do with them. Inchie cubes in the coffee can. The long wooden basket atop the heap has some elmer's glue in it. It was full of elmer's glue two years ago when I bought around 50 bottles of it for 20 cents a pop, on sale. They want 50 cents (or more) for the same thing today. 

Lots and lots of stuff to go through!

I found things I'd lost two years ago! I found things I don't ever remember laying eyes on. I found things I'd forgotten existed in my world.

Putting it all away will be a chore but I'm going to enjoy the adventure!

I'd love to be able to fix that dark line at the top of the window in the cutting room. The attempt to do so yesterday was a total failure. It is only a cosmetic flaw, but sure doesn't look pretty! The cutting room isn't really this dark! 

Click the picture and you'll be able to see it larger.

I don't have a picture of the cutting room before I started to move things around and add some shelves to it. Before, it was a total disaster area. Even worse than the living room looks at present! I could barely see the floor for all the bags and boxes sitting there cause every available surface in the room (except the paper cutting table) was already covered in bags and boxes of things I had dragged home for months! The cutting table used to be at the opposite end of the room where it is in the picture now. It's the green chest of drawers in the corner. The boards leaning up against it are the shelves for the big shelf that is not yet made.

That's more the light level in the cutting room. 

This here is the closet area. Yesterday there were doors on it and that red shelf wasn't there. And it was filled to the rafters! 

The red shelf isn't technically mine. It's been sitting out in the burnt house for over a year now. It belongs to my next door sister. She about had kitten fits when I nailed it to the wall in the corner of my room out there in the burnt house and used it to store stuff on. I didn't tell her I was bringing it into the house to use.

I figure if I've had it this long, I can with it what I want!

I hadn't realized that black stripe was on the wall till we moved the paper cutter table and then removed the closet doors. Apparently one shouldn't decide to spray paint keys in the dead of winter inside!

I took most of what was in this closet to the north bathroom where I've stacked all the containers.....such as empty boxes, tubs, totes, jars, things of that nature. The top shelf held mostly empties. I took three things to the livingroom to join the rest of the mess until I figure out where it will end up after all the shelves are in place. The bathroom looks like a hoarder lives here too! Sorry, no picture of it!

All the books you see in the left side of the picture are in the hallway. There are four book shelves, that size, lining the hallway. Not all of them hold books, but the majority of the things on the shelves are books, my man collection and More art fodder! 

If truth be known, I have what some would call a lot of crap! I prefer to call it art fodder, inspiration, knowledge.

And yeah, some of it is crap, I suppose.

I threw away a lot of stuff out of this closet for the simple fact I hadn't laid eyes on it in three or more years and it wasn't good stuff anyway. What the heck did I think I needed with 4, maybe 5 dozen, I don't know, I didn't count them.....dog food and cat food bags? Whatever the heck it was, it went by the wayside and I do not need all those bags! Besides if it comes back to me, I collect two bags every three or four weeks anyway!

The box of papers I can't throw away will go live in my clothes closet in the bedroom where the other box of papers I can't throw away live.

Freed up a LOT of space in that closet!

Gonna have to give the dremel a workout with those cow horns I dragged out from under the work bench in this room! (Something came to me just now.) I found the dremel in the closet. I knew the dremel was there, but it was near impossible to get to with it being on the top shelf, behind the doors and the tub not only holding the dremel, but a ton of rocks to be carved as well! The blue tote in front of the coffee table in the first picture is where the dremel is located. I haven't carved rocks in almost 13 years! Granted, they aren't huge rocks, but still.....almost 13 years I've not even considered carving rocks! I'm going to get that dremel rigged up so it is accessible whenever I want to use it instead of having to drag it out! 

Those weren't the only rocks I found in the cutting room....I am a rock hound! All those rocks will end up in the new big pot Ma planted the diffenbachia in the other day. (It's sitting on the end of the coffee table in the first picture.)Then I can reclaim my stone eggs and put them back in the basket by the shelf in the living room. The rocks are all buried in that pile in the living room and had we left the dirt bare in that pot, Miss Lola cat would have thought that fresh dirt was for her amusement. She won't dig in it if there are eggs or rocks in it! 

The ugly brown dresser with the paper shelf atop it used to be on the other wall. The two file cabinets under the work bench were moved from other parts of the room as well. 

At present the green file cabinet is all but empty. Has been for some time now.  I really couldn't tell you what is in it right now without going and taking a look! The other one holds my art reference files (aka morgue) in the top drawer and random papers in the bottom one. 

Tomorrow Ma will bring the boards to build the big shelf for the south wall. We cut the shelves for the big shelf today. 

We'll get the brown shelf put together with all its shelves and the red shelf from the old kitchen will come home also.

Ma took the old red shelf home with her to refinish it. It survived the house fire but has been sitting out there in the burnt house for going on seven years. Nothing done to it since. She built that shelf for me right after I bought the burnt house....must be neigh on 12 years ago? Anyway, I'm glad I didn't pitch it during the clean up of the burning. It used to hold all my cook books but now it will hold art fodder! 

I'm anxious to get those shelves in and filled up with the piles in the livingroom!

I'll actually be able to find things when I need them~!

Least that's the plan!

I"ll keep you all posted on progress.

I had a set back in the art progress for other reasons than the organization going on so there isn't much in the line of art in this post and I'm not sure there will be any art progress for a few days, at the least. 

I did sew a little star fish the other night while I wasted two hours watching a movie. I can't even tell you what the name of that movie was....as I said; it was wasted time...well, other than the cute little star fish ornament.

He's about 3 inches across, made of felt with glass seed beads sewn to the front side. I did not have any regular sewing thread in purple so I used red instead.  He's stuffed with fiberfil. I drew up the pattern for him.

I can't remember if you all have seen the fishes and green paintings yet or not....if not I'll do another post of those before I call it a day today. I've  been home from eldest son's house for a week and a half now, I know I've done a bit of art since then.

I was hunting for a 'before' picture of the cutting room, thinking I had to have taken one somewhere along the line. A thorough search of my pictures did not yield one picture of the cutting room at all! I did find a few cool things other than this bowling ball covered in flat glass marbles that sits on my front porch. I'll show them some day when I get them all into one folder so they're easier to move to a post.  My mother assembled this ball. I brought the farm implement part home from a junking excursion a few years ago. I need to paint the iron stand so it matches the glass marbles. It was a bowling ball. Ma covered it with the flat glass marbles by using liquid nails to adhere them. I suspect one could use any sort of silicone caulking or such and end up with the same results. Every once in awhile a marble will fall off and I'll stick it back on with some E6000. She gave it to me for Mother's Day! She made three of these year before last.

I have three of those farm implement parts. I think they're spacers on a discus...machine that makes furrows for planting? Not sure. I ain't a farmer! :)

They make cool ball stands though cause they have a big hole through the center of them and a ball sits there perfectly.

Thanks for reading!

Be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace!

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A Smiling Goat to Begin the Novel

Hello Readers!

I said I'd be back with this post yesterday...might of been the day before yesterday....well, I didn't make it back so here I am now!

:)

I figured we'd start off with a smiling goat and his buddy!

I took a few pictures at The Kansas State Fair the 12th of September but you're not going to see too many of them cause they're just of the kids and grands .... nothing too exciting to anyone but myself.

We spent more time in the petting zoo with this happy goat than we spent anywhere else on the fairgrounds except for the air conditioned building where we charged up the power chair the eldest boy borrowed for me for the day.

The little girl in the green John Deere antler visor in the picture below is the reason the petting zoo was a long stay!

Mind you, that didn't bother me in the least! I used to work for this petting zoo back in 1997. (It makes me feel terribly old to type that number. How can that many years be gone already?) Working for Hedricks was an experience I wouldn't change for anything! 1997 I was 38 years old, in my prime, strong as an ox and free as a bird. I was trying to find myself back then. My husband and I had separated the previous Oct. I 'ran' off with the zoo in July. The boys lived with him and I was off traveling with the petting zoo going to fairs in Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. It was the first time in my life I had traveled anywhere on my own. I didn't want it to end, but all good things come to an end...

and other good things begin.

Things come full circle and you find yourself in familiar spots from the past sometimes. 

I only wish Gary could have known his grand daughter. She's a gem of a girl.

There's been a lot of issues of loss in my life here in the last two months. 

This little girl made things bearable for me when I spent almost six weeks at my eldest son's house to keep an eye on her while others were seeing another to the next world. She made me laugh many times a day. She gave me hugs and kisses often. She created with me. She exuded sunshine even when it rained. 

The Good Lord gave us children to help us old folks remember the innocence that we are born with. I am so thankful for the grandbabies! All of them, not just this youngest of them.

This pretty girl is my youngest son's wife and that handsome boy in the bandana is youngest son. My wild child. The boy's gonna be 80 and still wearing a bandana over is wild hair! He looks about 12 without his beard!

We were waiting for the sea lion show to start when I took this picture.

We weren't really close enough to get any good pictures of the sea lions. It was a fun show though. Well worth the wait of about a half hour. Everyone  was in need of a break from riding the rides and going through all the exhibits.

That pretty girl took all five boys with her to ride the rides on the midway and both sons and I took Little A with us to look at the exhibits. It worked out well.

Youngest son abandoned us after awhile to join his wife and the grandboys. Four of them theirs and the other eldest son's boy.

They finally gave up the rides sometime around 10pm that evening. A good day had by all involved! Only wish eldest son's wife could have joined us as well. Would have made for a perfect day had that been the case. 

The weather WAS perfect for a day at the fair!

On Sunday eldest son, Little A and grandboy went back to the fair for the last day for a few hours. Eldest had a couple extra tickets still and there was no need to waste them. I didn't have the power chair on Sunday so I was hoofing it that day.

We stayed for almost 11 hours on Tuesday when both sons were there, so the four hours spent on Sunday were not really all that bad. I paid for the walking that much in one day but it was worth all the aches!

We stopped in at Dr. Goddard's Lab to see some space experiments. Dr. Goddard is affiliated with The Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Ks (where the state fair is held every year). The Cosmosphere is a museum dedicated to space. They have one of the Apollo missions capsules in the museum along with a rocket that went to the moon sitting on their front lawn. It's a really cool museum. They show IMAX films in the planetarium there also. Grandboy was chosen from audience to help with one of the experiments. That was pretty cool! 

That isn't really Dr. Goddard up there doing the experiments, I forget what this fella told us his name was...Dr. Goddard was a pioneer in developing rockets.

I'd like to get my hands on some liquid oxygen! That was what he did most of the experiments with... it's some really COOL stuff! You can blow things up with it....not to peices, I don't believe... but UP^^^^^

It doesn't take much to blow a large rubber trash can up into the air about 200 feet is what we were told. He did it with a film cansister and the help of grandboy and a girl about his age. Wasn't feasible to blow up a trash can on the fairgrounds. I'm sure it would have been a safety hazard of some sort. Would be a really cool thing to see though! LOL 

I cut young Gavin's head off but the rest of the grandboys and their mama are in the picture. The boy in the middle is the boy in the last picture doing the science experiment. Is his grandma that his mama was seeing off at the time.

Here's Gavin and his brother Gage (both in red shirts) talking to goats and a Jacob's sheep at the fair on Tuesday.

Fair week was a total success!

Lucky Tigger Murray on the left and Tippy on the right.

These two felines will be coming to my house soon.

On the 25th of August there was a big wing ding for DIL's mom and there were lots of hot dog and hamburger buns leftover from the picnic in the park. They were quite stale by the day we took Lil A and her brother to Carey Park in Hutch to feed the ducks. Most of these are actually geese, but we've always called it 'feeding the ducks'. There are around 100 birds that come to be fed.

Lil A had a grand time! I wanted to show off the sunset picture!

Ducks have always been in Carey Park. Even when I was a kid Ma took us all to the park to feed the ducks and see the rest of the critters that used to be there. We would sometimes feed the llamas or the camels or even the little brown monkeys! There's still a zoo in Carey Park but it's an actual zoo, not just a hodge podge of critters in pens along the road through the park. Now only the ducks are where they've always been. They are free to come and go as they please.

Was around the 18th of September when we went to the Park to feed the ducks all that bread. 

We had a squirrel in the mix too. It was so cute. The fowls come waddling toward us long before we made it to the lake's edge where the picture was taken. There are many trees around this lake and surrounding grounds. A little squirrel came down one of those trees close to the flock of ducks and geese. We were tearing off chunks of bread from the buns and tossing them to the geese. That little squirrel darted out among the fowl, nabbed a chunk of bread and darted back up the tree with it. A few minutes later she was back at the base of that tree, standing up on her hind quarters, begging like a dog, for another chunk of bread. She took probably around half a dozen chunks of bread to her nest before we moved on. I knew it was a she as opposed to a he cause while she was standing up begging, you could see all her teats along her underbelly. I don't think boy squirrels have that feature! I didn't have the camera out yet when this occurred so no picture of a begging squirrel, dang it!

Eldest son on the left, youngest son on the right; standing in my kitchen shooting the breeze on the 24th of September when I came home for about five hours to get some things done here that needed done. This was taken around 1 in the morning.

You already met Lucky Tigger Murray earlier in this post. I almost lost LTM before I ever got to bring her home! She's scalped cause she got caught in the serpentine belt on FIL's Kia the 22nd of Sept. This picture was taken on the 23rd. She was a sore little cat for a few days but relatively unhurt. She is missing a stripe of fur on the other side of her in addition to this and the buggered up ear. FIL couldn't drive his Kia till Tuesday when they finished at the garage putting a new serpentine belt on it. The mechanic said the belt stretched out an inch and a half bigger than it started out being!
LTM was called simply Tigger when I showed up the end of August. No one would give me a straight answer on what this cat's name really was so I started calling her Murray (thinking Murray was a boy). Then a couple weeks later I figured out Murray is a girl but by that time she was used to being called Murray and the grandboy informed me that the cat's name was really Tigger. So she became Tigger Murray and then the incident with the serpentine belt (which should have killed her!) I added Lucky to the beginning of her name. 

She was wound up in that belt when FIL started the vehicle. He went a good five car-lengths (30-40 feet) before the belt came loose enough for the cat to escape. 

As soon as those two kittens get fixed, I'll be bringing them home to my house so I can tick Lola cat off! :) She needs some playmates. That cat is FAT compared to these two!

I made Little A a very happy girl when I gave her this little purple kitty I made one morning while there.

I was sitting out on the patio one day and the air changed... the light more than the air. I looked up in the sky when Little A said she could see an airplane (I didn't see an airplane anywhere). I saw this instead. I think this is a sun dog? It was a ring around the sun. I'd never seen anything like it before and was quite pleased to see the camera caught it just as it looked to me. I put the top of the tree in the picture to let me know what it was later on when the pictures were downloaded. 

Little A says she can hear Santa Clause and he will be here soon. Like RIGHT NOW!  I kept telling her he wasn't coming quite that soon but she kept insisting he WAS coming soon. She is fascinated with airplanes. The kids live in the flight path of McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita and they see many different kinds of planes and helicopters frequently right above their house. Little A gets excited about every single one of them!

When eldest son brought me home on the 29th of September we took a scenic route I couldn't duplicate if I tried! Was an adventurous road home! It was a beautiful day for a drive as you can tell from the clear blue skies in the pictures below.

One the exchange of Highway 14 and Interstate 70 we suddenly decided we'd skip getting on the interstate to head west and go north on the dirt road to Lincoln, passed all the new wind turbines they've put in the last two years...still adding to the numbers there right now.

Doing this put us in the middle of post rock country!

That stone in the picture above is a limestone rock fence post. It's probably been standing in that spot for neigh on 140 years or so.

Nothing but farmland as far as the eye can see! A stone fence post keeping sentinel in front of a milo field.

After we went down the dirt road heading north aways I couldn't tell you where we went. Twisting, winding, taking us where the wind blew for quite a few miles.

The ride home shouldn't take more than three hours to make when you drive paved roads. We drove very few paved roads the last 130 miles or so. It took us almost 5 hours to get home!

Which was OK cause we did not have a schedule to adhere to!

The trees are doing a fine job of readying for the winter.

The colors in Kansas in the fall come short of the colors in New England, I will admit. The change is still quite lovely though.

This rock intrigues me. It is just a very large granite type stone standing on the edge of fence behind the barbed wire fence. It was on the corner of a T intersection in a dirt road. Eldest caught a glimpse of the rock just as he was passing the intersection. We turned around to see this rock up close and changed the course of our journey. We really did go just where we pleased!

I was sitting in the passenger's seat taking pictures while the boy drove. This one surprised me when I downloaded the smart card. I did well with getting the KEEP OUT tire centered in the picture going down the road! And look at that band of red center picture! The sumac is just gorgeous in the fall! That splash of red is so pretty! 

SO pretty!

Eldest son tells me milo is harvested after the first frost. 

Soybeans are still in the fields too. I don't think I included any soybean fields though. Soybeans have to dry on the vine....similar to how they leave wheat in the fields to dry before harvesting. 

I believe we were in Osborne county (we seemed to travel many miles in Osborne county) when we came across this old round barn. Eldest stopped for this picture.

Changing trees. Trees aren't thick like this everywhere in Kansas.

Wind damage probably. 

A herd of yearlings. We stopped and talked to these youngsters.

No. I did not tell them their fortune. My sister Susan would be so proud of me! :)

She hates it when I tell cows what is in store for them.

They had a beautiful view of the prairie in this pasture!

Talking to cows is a fun pastime. I know it's silly but it is fun!

In my neck of the woods there are a lot of cows to talk to. Puts a smile on my face every time I do it!

A herd of cows with many different colored cows is called a rainbow herd.

sumac  (will take you to a new window to tell you all you ever wanted to know about sumac over at wikipedia)

I went to Hays with Ma this afternoon and sumac is a deeper shade of red today than it was this past Sunday when these pictures were taken.

If I had to choose the prettiest sight in Kansas any time of the year, the sumac turning red in the fall would be my choice!  The second would be a roiling thunderstorm!

We shall get back to artwork in the next post and there won't be so much chatter from my jabbery self! :)

Thanks for hanging in there!

You all behave yourselves if you can.

Be good to one another.

It matters!

Peace

831

a boatload of mug rugs, some sheep, a moo and new critters

Hello Readers!

Been a few weeks since I made a post. I've been away from home and no way to post anything when I'm not in front of my own computer. If there is a way to accomplish that, I've not figured it out!

Here we go with the pretties:

Jefferson

ATC

markers on cardstock

On of the Flock

ATC

markers on cardstock

Pink Elephants

Moo Card

markers on cardstock

only one little lonely moo for September's offerings...

I cannot say that for mug rugs though!

Black Elephant

Mug Rug

Blue Star

mug rug

Giraffe

mug rug

This thing really looked like a duck with horns before I sewed the giraffe's ear on!

Goblin Girl

mug rug

green butterfly #1

mug rug

orange chick

mug rug

orange owl

mug rug

purple fish

mug rug

purple heart on burlap

mug rug

purple owl

mug rug

red butterfly

mug rug

skelly with blue flower

mug rug

skelly with two flowers

mug rug

yellow elephant

mug rug

his tusk is actually gray, not yellow like it appears on my monitor.

I made a few little books:

plain white cardstock

ATC size--2.5x3.5 inches

purple and red dots

1.75x2.5 inches

copy paper pages numbering 12

same as the previous purple and red book

same as the purple and red books

purple monster with red heart

same as the previous little books

same as the previous little books

all artwork on covers is done in marker on cardstock. artwork wraps all the way around to the back cover

I kept calling this thing the thumbilina monster but to quite honest, sometimes I don't know what the hell I'm talking about! This is the Tinkerbell monster. That isn't Thumbilina on the fabric...it is Tinkerbell!

Green fleece cat.

PUrple fleece cat. I gave this one to my niece for her birthday. She named the cat Amethyst.

blue velvet cat

I gave this one to my grand daughter to play with.

green butterfly #2

mug rug

green butterfly mug rugs are made from remnants of the Tinkerbell fleece.

I'll be back later today with a post that has no art in it!

I have people and places to show off!

Thanks for stopping by to see what I've been doing!

Be good to one another!

Peace

831