Crochet Me Crazy

Today is a gloomy and rainy day. I tried to go out on the porch and read my devotional but had to go back inside because I was too cold. Everything is so pretty and green right now! I'm loving Spring! My Mimosa trees haven't started budding yet but it's a coming!



The weeks are going by at lightning speed! Just finally starting to really get ready for the cruise! Got our itinerary all shaped up now. Getting our minds made up what we wanted to do in Cozumel has been the most time consuming. Got our documents printed and paperwork all lined up. I think we're all set. I even started packing a little bit. Alison and I went cruise shopping last week. I needed a new bathing suit real bad...mine are all faded. I ended up with 2! We should be wearing bathing suits a lot more on this trip than the last one in January. We had bad weather the whole trip! I'm expecting this one to be "smooth saling" as they say! I can't wait! I really NEED a vacation!!

I have Brennan here with me until school is out. Ties me down quite a bit because we have to schedule everything around being home when the school bus gets here which is why we had to go shopping on Sunday last week instead of mid-week like we normally would. He's been going home on weekends and I've been working! I still miss the girls a lot but I'm in less pain now as the weeks go by. Haven't gotten to see them but just in passing. It feels like they are trying to keep them away from me so I haven't tried to go see them. I asked Ana about Easter and she was evasive. I plan on making other plans for Easter. It will be the first ever Easter I haven't celebrated with the kids. I will give them their baskets when I see them or send them with Brennan when he goes home. We'll decided what we will do for our first ever non-kid filled Easter Sunday. Maybe we'll make steak. Haven't had a good steak in a really long time.

Jeff started back to installing Satellite Internet but with a different company. It's not going so well though. He's barely getting jobs. He's picked up a side job or two to fill the gaps. He's still got inquiries going on his resume in access control but if it doesn't pick up soon he's gonna end up having to try to go back to the company he was with before. It's a last resort though. There's a lot of reasons not to want to.

In the meantime, he's been getting a lot more done on the fence since he's home a lot. Started on the front driveway and putting a gate in! We still have one side and the back fence to replace the old fence but at least once we get this part done we can let Fancy out there with supervision.



It will eventually have a gate opener on it because who wants to get out and open a gate, right? Until then we can shut the gate if we want to let Fancy out back until the whole project is complete.

Jeff has also been clearing out cactus from the back....this is a big pile of cactus to be burned! Lots more but it's a start!



We had a real scare with her last week. Alison sometimes let her out back to graze and keeps an eye on her. It's all fenced except an one opening to the front. That horse decided to be bad and started wander off to the neighbors before she knew it. Then it was just an all out temper tantrum when Alison tried to catch her. She didn't want to go back in. She started running...and I mean running! All over the neighbors..heading for the highway at full speed. Thank God she didn't run in the road! She turned and there was nothing we could do to stop her! She was disobeying commands. Round and round she went! She finally ran back into our back section which relieved us a bit because we were able to block her exit. At that point we just stood there and Alison said just let her run. She ran around our back pasture which isn't cleared, jumping over cactus. Finally she stopped. I had to keep the exit blocked while Alison went to go try to catch her. Boy, did that horse get in trouble. Alison had to put her in time out and tie her to a tree. We were about to leave to go the YMCA for basketball and Alison to go to Body Pump class but she ended up having to stay home. She said I have to leave her tied for awhile or she's gonna get away with it. So Alison stayed home and left Fancy tied to the tree for over 2 hours. She was also grounded from her going in the front yard to eat grass privileges for about 3 days! LOL! She'll never go in the back pasture without a lead rope again for sure.

I think my long-term care taking job will be winding down soon. I've been with the family for over 4 years now. I went to work one day to find out that the Mrs. fell. (I probably already mentioned it here) I've only been sitting with the Mr. since then while she is in rehab. The family members living there are ready to move on and the couple will probably be going to a nursing home. It makes me sad to see. With Mr. having Alzheimer's I know what that move is going to do to him. They are 90 and 91 years old and still doing so well on the physical health-wise. They and their family have been such an inspiration to me. Such a legacy they have left and their entire family are such great people. I have so much admiration for the Mr. I don't know that I've ever met a kinder soul...Devoutly strong, gentle, Christian man. He has trouble working the TV now so we spend a lot of time listening to music. I put the music on...usually hymns...and he will sit in there with me for hours just listening and whistling. He doesn't have a care in the world. Anyway, always sad to see a season end. I guess I'll have to figure out what else I can get myself into after this is over and after Brennan is done with school to make a little extra money.

We are going to see FOR KING AND COUNTRY in concert tonight! We all love them and have seen them before! Should be fun!

Thursday and Friday seem to be turning out to be my personal project days it seems. I started out this morning getting a little mowing done before the blazing sun came on strong. Didn't clean the house today but I did at least vaccume! I wanted to get my night stand completely finished today! I have a thing about finished projects. I hate un-finished projects. So here it is all finished...painted, distressed and waxed. This dresser is such a dark stain underneath the white that it almost looks black against the white...



I also got 4 of the drawers on my big dresser finished!



I also started painting the table from my wicker furniture today but I didn't get a picture of it yet. I'll take a picture tomorrow.

We bought our landscaping bricks yesterday and then spent the rest of the day raking the white rocks from our driveway into our carport. Today, was the big day. The dump truck came withe our load of crushed granite. We got him to drop it in 4 very large piles in different places. So began our day.






We've only just begun...



Making headway...but there's still a lot of dirt left in that one pile and we're really tired...and yes, Alison and I helped. We shoveled. We raked. We sweated. We're crazy.



The goal is to get that one pile at least done so we can park the cars in the carport.

We did it...here the finished product but we're probably going to have to add more to this area after it packs down. It is going to look much nicer though.



This is just a picture of the driveway area we still have to do. It's where Jeff parks.

worked that hard manually since we wor

I have to say I haven't done that much manual labor since we used to unload 18 wheelers of bales of hay at the stables! Also, I am certain I would not have been able to do near as much as I was able to do today if we hadn't been going to those classes at the YMCA!! My endurance and strength is much better now than it was when we first moved here.

So we had decided to look into renting a skid steer next weekend to finish this with. We could knock it out in a few hours and be able to get it nice and even. God, I hope it's not too expensive!! LOL We still have 3 more piles to go!

Feels like I stay so busy! Alison and I are going to classes at the YMCA 3 days a week. We go to Zumba on Monday and Wednesday and Tuesday to Body Step. I'm trying to lose weight! I need to lose at least 20 pounds! We bought a scale and I didn't even realize how big I am until we bought that scale! EEEEKKK!! I really don't like Zumba class. I love the body step class but it doesn't fit into the schedule of Alison's days off except on Tuesday. Well, one day a week is about all I could do of the body step class anyway. It's very, very hard and works your whole body. I pretty much walk around soar every day since we started do this.

I almost went to Body Step this morning by myself but I ended up talking myself out of it. I think I could do it again today...I'm sore but not as bad as I normally am. I'm tired and it's been so long since I've had a day that I didn't have to go anywhere I just want to stay home today. I *should* go today...that's the class that I really think does you some good. I haven't really lost any weight that I can tell but I can tell that my legs are firmed up a bit and I definately have more stamina getting through the class. People come to that class all the time and leave because it's HARD. I just modify my movements...I figure as long as I keep moving, it's doing me good.

Last week, we got word very last minute that Jeff's parent were coming for the weekend. They came on Friday and left Monday morning. We ran around to antique/junk shops while they were here and we went to the Marble Falls Rodeo Saturday night. Here's some pictures from their visit.



Alison got a "new" car! We spent two days the weekend before last driving to San Antonio looking at used cars. We looked at a couple and she ended up deciding what she wanted was a hatchback. We ended up going to Hertz Car Rental Sales where she bought a 2016 Hyundai Accent Hatchback with 37,000 miles on it for 9,200. This is below blue book for this car. Even the bank had it valued at 12 thousand and something when she got her loan. It's cute and she loves it. She's keeping her Jeep for now. She's not ready to part with it yet. If she decides to sell the Jeep, she'll be able to pay off the car but she's doing the loan for the purpose of building some credit. The local bank here has been so awesome to us. They ended up financing 100 percent of Alison's auto loan. They really liked Alison and are so proud of her situation at her age. She was supposed to put 20 percent down...which she has but when we went and bought the car, they ended up financing 100 percent just so we could drive it home that day and not have to drive back to San Antonio. And this was before we had even signed a paper with them yet. But we've been in and out of that bank alot talking with them about this loan. We asked the dealer...we haven't given you a check for the down payment yet...they said, "Oh, the bank said they were financing 100 percent!" So we went into the bank the next day and they said she could either put the 20 percent down and lower her payment a bit or just apply that down payment to the principle and keep her payments the same. She elected to put it towards principle. She's getting a great rate on insurance through our Allstate coverage because I've had that policy since I was her age so she's good to go.

I got Brennan back over here to stay and finish school. Ana and Michael left him when they came while Nana and Papaw were here. We're on lesson 30 of 36 lessons now. Nana worked with him a lot while she was here. Nana has been a Kindergarten and 1st grade teacher in Christian schools all of her life and she is an OUTSTANDING teacher. It was great to have her here working with Brennan. She was impressed with his reading and handwriting. I told Brennan if Nana says you're doing good...then you're doing way above average. She said that he will probably be above his class in public school next year. Brennan is probably glad to have me back instead of Nana because Nana has very high standards and she was relentless and never gets tired of doing school work! LOL!

I haven't really had any time to crochet but I did decide to pick back up the thread tablecloth I started over a year ago! I got a new dining table last week. Well, it's new to me anyway but it has a heat spot on it so I'm going to finish this table cloth and put it on my table and put a piece of glass over it.



My garden has stalled out on my tomatoes. The big ones anyway. I'm getting the tomatoes that are already on there but there are no new blooms so I don't know if we'll get more after all these are ripe. The cherry tomatoes are coming in fast though. The zuchinni is producing and my yellow squash was going strong. Then last week all of a sudden the yellow squash started looking bad. We're not sure what's wrong with it. We did mow in there because the grass was so tall. We had to pick up plants and try to get around them. It's like a jungle in there. So not sure if that hurt them or not. We'll see, I guess.

Oh, I got a new storm door! As handy as Jeff is, he has had a really hard time getting that thing in. Our door frame was a bit too short. He had to do stuff to make it work and then the door knobs hit after he got it on so he had to move the door knob on the house door. It's finally in though and I love it.



Oh, and I lost a chicken!! Nothing got her...I just went out there one morning to let them out and one of them was just dead. It was after the weekend that we were gone a lot shopping for cars. The only thing I can figure is that she died from heat exhaustion. Maybe too many days of me not being here to keep and eye on them during the heat of the day and turn the sprinkler on for them. Chickens don't sweat so they can die if it gets too hot. I see them panting out there so I go turn the sprinkler on for them. They will get in that water and keep cool. Now Jeff has put up a misting system in there. I was having to leave the sprinkler on so much that it was over watering that particular area.

Jeff came home with some cucumbers that one of his customers gave him from her garden. I'm not a fan of cucumbers but I do want to make pickles so that's what I did today.



These are just refrigerator pickles. No canning involved. I would do real canning if we had them growing in our garden. We'll see how they turn out. I've never done it before.

There's no shortage of projects that need to be done around here. I went outside and started peeling the string or whatever is it off this table Mrs. Hayward left on the porch. It's a metal table. I'm going to paint it. Here's my before picture.



And just for grins, here is an updated picture of my front yard from my porch. Everything is nice and green now that he has the sprinkler system going. Needs some work though because it's missing spots.

Mother's Day we had our first day that we didn't "work" around here! Jeff bought some steaks and we grilled out for the first time. It was de-lish!

Oh, I take that back ... Jeff did a little bit of work. He fixed the water hoses and put new fancy electronic locks on the doors. We don't have to have a key to get in...just a code.

Alison and I headed to the river to see if we could get a little sun. We not only have a lot of lakes nearby by we also have a place right down the road from us called the Llano Slab which is the Llano River.



So anyway, I worked on Wednesday and it was a long day. I didn't get home until almost 10pm. I had to go pick up Brennan and I needed to visit with the grand girls since I hadn't seen them in awhile. I really don't like that drive home. I usually am driving in the dark and I don't like it at all. Those roads are dark and curvy and I don't see good at night. I hit a turkey on the way home. I mean I clobbered him. I felt bad.

So I'm gone for one day and I come back and it's like our garden had grown exponentially! Everything is growing well and has blooms on it.

Lots of cherry tomatoes coming up!


I was really excited to see the corn starting to grow! We've never grown corn before!


Zuchini blooms


Watermelon blooming...


There's two lettuce plants and a spinach here on the end...the other stuff behind it is okra and onions..oh, and there's an eggplant as well...



Jalapeno blooming too and we also have a serrano pepper plant...


This is one of the tomato plants that is going to have he big tomatoes on it...It's called a Summer Set tomatoe and is supposed to be heat tolerant.


The basil is so pretty...

Gosh...I think these are pickling cucumbers...


Sweet potato vine is coming out of the garden...


Yeah, we went a little crazy! We just bought what they had that we could grow this time a year. I guess we'll see how we do! We also have green beans that I guess I didn't take a picture of. They have little tiny beans growing on them and they didn't before I left for the day.

So today I started trying my hand at Chalk Painting. I had heard of chalk paint before and it's really popular. Alison and I had went in a store that sold it and was talking to the lady about it so I was inspired. Supposedly you can paint anything with it without sanding or priming. I have a lot of worn, ugly stuff around here the old lady left that might be okay with a new life.

I'm so dumb I didn't take a picture of the table before hand...It was a ugly and worn and had flowers painted on it. Just a small wooden table that was left on the front porch. I decided to start with this since it's small and I can see how I do with it.

Here's the first coat with gray...



I was surprised! It covered the flowers with one coat! I didn't even have to paint it agaIin.

Now, to add the white. I really want it more white than gray. I've been looking this stuff up online. You're supposed to "dry brush" the 2nd coat to get this "aged" effect. I would say this was the trickiest part. They say it doesn't matter but I think it does. I don't really like the legs on it. I think I'm going to have to do a little more work on the legs before I finish it up with the wax.



Not too bad! It DEFINATELY looks a hundred times better than it did...that's for sure!

Next I'm going to paint this drop leaf table she left on the back porch. There's two chairs that go with it somewhere in the workshop that we haven't dug out yet. I'm probably just going to go straight white on it.

I remembered to take a picture of the before so I'll post as I work on this....I'll probably have time to work on it tomorrow! It's a good solid table...just not very pretty.