Tandem Random(ness)

I have no idea how long this post will be, as I'm running out of time (don't want to be late for church; Again ;o) I suppose I should start with a happy Earth Day to everyone! Pretty sure this is Papa bird from the little family of birds we had in our garage last month (Mama was brown). Does anyone know what kind of bird this is? I thought it was a Finch or maybe a Wren, but he doesn't seem to match any of the photos I've looked at (he's brown and yellow, extremely quick and very, very small). 
I was excited to learn that our "An Epic Farms' Fish Tale" was included in a list of Earth Day lenses on Squidoo (yay!) I wrote it when we decided to use the goldfish to keep the horse's water tanks clean. If you're interested, click here to pop over and read (but don't forget to come back!) Okay, so nix on the beginning statement of this particular post - I obviously had no time, as it is now Monday. Sunday afternoon was spent organizing mom's pantry, bathroom, and unpacking still more boxes. Meh. 

Here's the dirty deets: I've been running back and forth like a lunatic helping my parents to pack and move; they sold their high maintenance "mansion" in the next town (okay not really a mansion, but it was definitely BIG) and have relocated less than 4 miles up the road - Woot! It has been an interesting - albeit exhausting - experience to see God's hands all over this. Here are a few of the highlights: The first thing was the sale itself, lots of prayer for it to sell fairly quickly. The answer? The first couple that looked at it, bought it (how's that for unusual in a lousy economy? ;o) Because my mom was completely overwhelmed by the idea of packing up and moving, I had some definite concerns about her driving abilities during all of this and said a few prayers for that too. I assume most of you saw the 77 year old  woman who plowed through Publix recently when she hit the gas instead of the brake (eek). Anyway, interestingly enough mom's car suddenly malfunctioned and had to go into the shop for repairs and the replacement part they ordered was defective (which "never" happens), so they had to send it back. The new part is on back order and will be another week or two at least before this is resolved (problem solved - whew!) 

I have to say the biggest one was their "new" neighbors. A couple moved in down the street from their old house less than a year ago and they struck up a casual friendship (they now go to my parent's church). I could not take off for most of the two weeks they were packing because of the state-mandated testing going on. As much stuff as they had I was really worried about my mom tackling it by herself so I did the best thing I could think of and prayed about it. The answer? 
Turns out mom's new friend has moved no less than 27 times and is a 'professional' packer-upper (due to her husband's line of work - he's a troubleshooter for a national corporation). Not only that, but she was also in between jobs and had plenty of time to help. Now what are the odds of that I ask you? Is God awesome or what!? I'm telling ya, He never fails (Boo-yeah :o) Although we will miss the house (it was gorgeous - and I'll try to post some more photos next time), I will no longer worry about mom taking a header down the steps from the second floor. She'd already fallen once coming down the steps from dad's monster office above the garage.
Seems I'm out of time again - and now it's Tuesday - so I'll just end it with some photos of my latest project; a collaborative effort with DD. She built a toy box for a little girl's birthday; she has been working with the family and helping them with their signing. My job was to burn the child's fingerspelled name into the lid. Nothing like a small challenge, eh? Good thing I wasn't busy (and pardon me while I laugh hysterically at that one, right? ;o)
Here's the lid. DD brought it to me to work on:

If you've never done pyrography [wood burning] it's pretty cool (although tedious and time-consuming). First thing is to take some graphite paper and transfer your pattern. In this case the letters I printed out (the font is called "Gallaudet", which is named for the big college for the deaf:

Once you have the design on the wood, you can start carefully burning it. I keep a piece of waxed paper under my arm so I don't smear my design or get the wood dirty (we have natural oils on our skin, don'tcha know ;o)

Several days (and a gazillion hours later :o) you can sit back and appreciate your efforts as you work the cramps out of your hand. Oh, and it says "Shea", by the way:

Gave the lid back to DD for assembly, and we put it together. Two sets of hinges; regular (the stainless) and specialty hinges towards the outside so it would close more slowly and - hopefully - not slam shut on little fingers:

Not bad, eh? I think we make a pretty good team, anyway :o)

Internet difficulties and an hour and half on the phone with tech support (to no avail) has brought us (at the speed of a lame turtle) to Wednesday. *sigh* This may be a terrible post, as I don't really have time to proof it as carefully as I normally do. Shall I apologize? Said technical difficulties, along with life in general, have made it impossible for me to do much visiting. For that I will apologize - I've really missed reading your posts this week!  Have a great week (what's left of it anyway ;o) Hopefully, I'll be back to my regularly scheduled self soon.

Sometimes I am easily confused...Are you?

Random Thoughts and Photos

Well, I survived the first full week of school. I'm pretty sure there should be some sort of fanfare, but I'm just too pooped to whoop *laugh*. Sixth grade is exhausting: it's nothing but Go-Go-Go all day long over an eyeball crossing amount of stuff (gotta find that groove in the new schedule ;o) The weather here has gone back up into triple digits - we're hoping it's the last gasp of summer or something, because ick. Praying for all those in the path of the storm, including some of our family (an uncle and cousins). Mighty scary stuff. Hope all of you are in a safe place. I thought you'd get a kick out of the hay sculpture; apparently we have some creative geniuses bopping around out there in the pasture (it's the Moo Crew's hay roll). They've either got Halloween on the brain or [more likely] our resident hoovenile delinquent and escape artist Mad Max is staging a non-verbal protest over being under so much increased supervision. Big brother is watching you...Ha.
This next photo is for Grace, who asked about Sara's ability to see through the fly mask (this post). I was kind of curious how things looked through there myself, so I took two shots of Taya (sneaking grass in the visitor walkway). It was a little awkward trying to hold the mask properly and take a picture of Taya at the same time, but I think you get the idea. It's clearer than I thought it would be, to be honest (kudos to Farnam and the SuperMask II):

I did a double take when I saw Cinnamon in the pasture sporting a rather unusual passenger awhile back. I can't believe I had enough time to make a mad dash for the camera, but I did ;o) He flew off before I could get any closer though. Rats. I've seen them parked on cows periodically, but never on a horse. I wonder if he's playing connect the dots...

I found this cool little bird's nest that was actually lined with hair from someone's tail; looks like it's from Rina or Sarbear (red and black). Isn't that wild? Ha. Well yeah silly, it literally is isn't it? ;o)

I have to tell you a funny; because it's just too good to keep to myself ;o) The planets must have lined up, and congress been in complete accord because DH finally had a day to do some more work on the "outhouse". Our favorite volunteer [Mr. Ron] was here to help and they had pulled off all the siding and were framing up the walls. DH asked Ron to check the dimensions of the patio door (our current tack/feed room) because it was wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair, but he couldn't remember if it was supposed to be 34" or 36" wide. DH held the 2x4s in place while Ron looked around for a tape measure (the doorway was only a few feet away from where they were working). Spotting a tape laying just inside the door by the feed buckets, Ron grabbed it and quickly pulled it across the opening. 

He stood there, looking down at the tape for a long minute without saying a word. Now most of you know that measuring the width of a door is not exactly rocket science, but after waiting what seemed to be far too much time for so simple a task DH finally said, "Well?? What is it?" Ron tilted his head, squinted slightly at the reading and said, "I'm not sure exactly what this means, but according to the tape this doorway is nine hands wide." *giggle* Poor Ron; he'd picked up my horse tape (1 hand = 4 inches). Good thing the man has a great sense of humor because it cracked us all up. You gotta admit they do look exactly the same until you actually pull the tape out, that is....Here's a progress picture for you. You can see the *ahem* doorway on the left-hand side of the photo:

Random Drawing

We ended up with only three entries, which should probably hurt my feelings; it makes for awesome odds though. *laugh* I suppose I'll just have to try again next week with something that interests you more (so be ready :o)  I'm not making them too hard, am I?

Congratulations to Susan! I'm hoping you're here reading this, but I'll send you an email just in case you're not.

Still trying to coordinate schedules with DD and the weather (too hot!)  to get some video clips and pictures of Max. With the insanity of a new school year, I haven't worked with him at all over the last two weeks (Ack!) Hopefully he hasn't forgotten what we've done so far...you never know.

Rina and I were delighted to learn that the phrase "fist bump" has been added to the dictionary and is now official. Somehow, we have gotten into the habit of doing this each morning and afternoon at feeding time as I walk past her stall. The first time was an accident (I was closing her door and we "bumped"). I laughed and said, "fist bump!" Since the horses understand the power of positive laughter (because sometimes it means, do it again and you might get a treat ;o) she did indeed do it again. It wasn't long before I was walking by and Rina was popping her nose out for a fist bump on a regular basis. Sometimes you just take your entertainment wherever you find it *grin*. Have a blessed week everyone!

This, That and The Other ...

Now I'm not the brightest bulb on the porch (a fact I've readily admitted on more than one occasion) but these days I feel like I'm spending inordinate amounts of time just scratching my head in puzzlement. Do you ever feel that way? Friday morning, I received an email from a local scrapbook store inviting me to a "Midnight Craft n' Crop" at 10:00a.m. (and silly me, as I always thought that was mid morning). Apparently I don't have the whole concept of time mastered nearly as well as I thought I did. 
I made the simple dessert in the above photo last Sunday for dinner at my parent's house (it's sinfully delicious and very easy to make, by the way, by layering ice cream sandwiches, cool whip, and chocolate syrup as many times as you feel like it...yum! ;o) Anyway, I found myself pondering the label on the syrup bottle:

Is anyone besides me confused by the phrase, "Genuine Chocolate Flavor"? As opposed to what? Fake chocolate flavor? How can you fake a flavor? Wouldn't that be some kind of oxymoron? I dunno, maybe I'm just losing it...if I ever had it in the first place, that is).

Of course when I got to my parent's house, I realized I wasn't the only one who was sometimes confused. My Dad expressed similar sentiments over the reasoning skills (or maybe it's just reading skills) of a local home improvement store's employees following a delivery of roofing materials. Duuuuudes, seriously?

On another note, I guess I won't be doing any gardening for awhile (we are, of course, pretending I had big plans to do so soon - Ha - not). I walked out the door the other day to find it occupied by four very hungry little birdies peeping and cheeping away. I believe they are Wrens. Can you see the dried grass just barely poking out from underneath my hand rake and pruning loppers? Although I have to admit I don't appreciate the bird poop in the garage, I just haven't got the heart to disturb them, so I decided to try to take pictures of them every day (or as often as I can remember to ;o) It's fairly difficult to get good photos, as it's dark underneath there and the zoom is having trouble focusing. I managed to get this one, which I thought turned out rather well (another happy accident!)

I am absolutely delighted to announce the addition of two more victims [so sorry] er, volunteers at Epic Farms. The first is Ann from over at Scrap, Edit, Snap. This photo is of Duke, her Westie, and the apple of her eye - isn't he cute? (I'm sure he's probably looking over her shoulder as she works; he keeps a pretty watchful eye on things over there). Ann has graciously agreed to loan us her assistance with any digital dilemmas we may be facing: she has some bodacious skills with Photoshop :o) She's what I've dubbed a virtual volunteer, as she lives hundreds of miles away. I have to tell you, though, her help is extremely important to us no matter where she is geographically. In fact, she is this very minute helping us with a supersecret fund raising idea. Thank you Ann!
The next is slightly shorter and definitely closer. Her name is Abby and she came out and worked for a few hours Saturday morning helping us get the meeting area ready for the concrete man (who is coming next week - Woo!)

To be honest, the "before" photo is probably closer to a "during" photo (but who says that?) The Jasmines - Confederate and Asian - were running completely amok and the back side of the house had almost disappeared under some serious jungle growth. Word to the wise: should you ever decide to plant a species of Jasmine, figure on some major excavating equipment should you ever have the need to remove it. Even Tilly couldn't get it all out (OY!).

Of course all work and no play makes volunteers just run away, sooooo....

We played around with the horses a bit (and maybe got just a little silly in the process ;o) Thank you for your help Abby!

 Have a wonderful week everyone, and don't forget to have some FUN!

THIS is a Counting Conundrum

Have any of you noticed frequent fluctuations on your Feedburner chicklet? I've noticed that my number is rarely the same; it pops around in the 50's and 60's and yesterday it bottomed out at 15.   I have a hard time believing that there are folks out there canceling and subscribing to the blog several times per day (Okay, okay: I'm really only asking you to be sure I'm not nuts - these things do bear checking out periodically, you know). It's probably silly of me, but I gotta tell you that the 15 kinda hurt my feelings. Thankfully, we seem to have rebounded 'cause today I have 70 (does this mean I'm popular? Okay maybe not quite, right? :o)

THAT is One Sensational Stamp Company!

If anyone out there is ever in the market for a well made rubber stamp, I am delighted to tell you I found the perfect place! CRACKER BOX RUBBER STAMPS not only has a terrific selection of ready-made stamps, they also make custom rubber stamps without breaking your budget; even with the wood mounting (Waa-Hoo!). 

Because I use archival ink so kids can color the images in any medium (including markers), I prefer the more durable rubber stamps to the clear polymer (which is cheaper, but a lot less hardy and not recommended for use with archival inks).

In short, I am giving the Cracker Box a four horseshoe review for delivering an awesome product (and yep, I'm already working on my next order - BooYeah :o)

THE OTHER day as I was zipping past the sliding glass doors in our Family Room, I heard someone knocking on the outside "tack room" door. Considering it was 5:30 in the morning, I wasn't exactly expecting company. Imagine my surprise when I looked out to see a bird banging away on one of the glass panes (what on earth???) She shot off the minute I stepped out on the patio (although I didn't open the outer door, because duh) and after looking around for a minute, I spotted the reason for her visit sitting high upon the top shelf in an empty supplement bucket. All I can say, is she must have built that nest in a mighty big hurry at feeding time because we are pretty careful to keep that door closed. Maybe it was a bird's eye view of Extreme Home Makeover (hey, who else do we know that can build a house in an hour between commercials?)  Don't worry, I relocated it very carefully to a place just outside the door underneath the eave of the house (and only touched it on the bottom, lest Mom be offended).

Until next week - try not to stay out of trouble ;o)