Wrecking my Manicure

I love gardening gloves. I have 5 pairs, pink ones, green ones, blue ones with little rubber grips on the fingers, and 2 leather pair. Yep, I love gardening gloves. Now, as much as I love my gloves, I cannot do a dang blasted thing with them on!
Today, after a winter of giving myself a lovely manicure every Sunday night, and having great natural nails, within 2 hours I managed to break 2 nails (using the wire brush hooked onto the drill sanding down an old fashinoned "mushroom" metal chair), get black paint on my white tips when I started to paint the same chair, and to get dirt under every single last one of them when I battles a bit of wire grass that has somehow snaked it's way into my lirope.
At the end of the day, I got my chair painted, conquered the wire grass(at least in the strawberries), and got the settee sanded down. It's almost 10 o'clock here in the old South, and I'm heading off to do what any good southern girl would do at this point............run me a hot bubble bath and try to salvage my nails!

70 and Sunny

It's that time of year again! Looking forward to the weekend, it will be in the high 70' almost every day for the rest of the week! I am anxiously awaiting the day that I feel comfortable to sit out my big green ferns, little pink begonias, white geraniums, and white with pink impatiants. Yes, I know they are such typical little plants,but I swear for my planting area, they jut can't be beat!

My husband tillered the garden up last weekend, and the Easter bunny will be bringing me the tender little bedding plants I talked about above, and a big bright shiny new compost bin! I'm also planning to do a new patio area around my swing with some of the brick pavers my mom gave me with a vintage wrought iron settee, chair, and little table, also courtesy of mom (she actually saved up to buy it when she and my father were first married back in 1971) and another patio made out of some gorgeous big pieces of granite slabs that my husband gave me from a job he did at a quarry, a bench to sand and repaint, an Adirondack chair to sand and repaint.... need I go on?! Now, I have a whole big bunch coming in for Easter Sunday and I've got a mere 3 weekends to get to gettin it all ready! Pray for me, and I'll keep you posted!
Have a fabulous day and I hope your weather is as great as mine. Also, check out my new blog Sweetiez Pies to hear about my new business venture!

A Spring Cleaning

Growing up, I was always excited about my birthday. It's April 12, and almost always fell to where I was on spring break and able to do something extra fun. The downside of this, was that every year my mother inevitably did her "Spring Cleaning" that same week. My granny (my great grandmother) came and stayed for the week, and bright and early Monday morning, all the curtains came down in the house, the windows got opened for the first time,and the rugs got hung out on the line. Now my momma had those blasted Cabin creek curtains.. ya'll know what I'm talking about, the long ruffled affairs with the colored trim for the majority of my growing up days and getting them ready to be hung back up was a darn 2 day affair, washing, hanging on the line, spray starch, iron, spray starch again, and the rehang. the only thing worse she has ever had in window treatment was those blasted scarves that we never seem to get right. Of course while the curtains were down, the windows got washed inside and out, the carpets got shampooed, the wood work got washed, the cabinets got washed, and the worst, longest most dreaded task was that the walls got washed!The best part was that everyone got new bedding, and I got to sleep with my granny in the "guest bedroom".
Looking back as much as I dreaded those long days, spent with my momma fussing because I kept dropping the end of the curtains while she was ironing and my granny fussing at my momma for fussing at me, I relish the memories. Now, as I look up at my own drapes, I smile... knowing that I recently went to the store and brought a big jug of vinegar (for washing my woodwork), a big jug of bleach, for wiping down my walls, and a bottle of Niagara Starch to make memories with my own daughter.

Good Day Sunshine

It's going to be a beautiful 72 degree sunny day here in Virginia!After a 6 month hiatas, I am back to my little blog. I have faithfully read yours, and enjoyed every single second of them.

A question to ponder for today..... if you wake up in a good mood, committed to having a good day, do you think it just happens, or do you really have to work at it?

Finding the Balance

So, as I've told you in my last few post, I'm exploring my faith more and more. I'm so excited about this "new chapter" in my life. It's opening up alot of avenues to go up and also forcing me to take a look at some areas of my life that may have been questionable.

One of the biggest challenges I've come across is I really feel out of balance these days with some of the hats I wear. I have to take a line from one of my favorite movies "The Women"... "Who are you, what do you want?" I am woman hear me roar, but I am also, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, etc. etc. How do we combine all of these roles to come up with our best self that we can be? Questions, questions, questions...

Now, you may notice that I stopped posting about my Love Dare Challenge. It was due to the fact that I had a dirty little secret I was keeping from my husband. I've no doubt in my mind that God put a shiny little mirror in front of my face a few Saturday mornings ago and said "How can you do this, if you are not sharing your whole self with him?" I spent the day very quiet, avoiding my husband and crying several times. Now, just so no one gets the wrong idea.. the secret was that we really needed to tighten up on our finances. I felt like telling him would make me a failure somehow because we have to drastically change our spending habits. ( I took a major paycut last fall!!! but tried not to change our lifestyle any)It finally came bubbling out of me later that evening in big gulping sobs. I was so scared that my husband would be disapointed in me and yet, when it all came out he was the exact opposite. He made me promise that I would not bear that burden again alone.

So, here I am, ready to start all over. I've spent the last 2 weeks, examing myself and the roles that play in life. I am now confident that I have gained some of the tools necessary to work towards finding more of that balance.

To Wine or not to Wine

In the past few weeks, I seem to have gotten more excited about re-discovering my religion. I've made more consciouses efforts to pray daily, had talks with God on my way home from work, joined a Women's group at my church, and a few other things. I did it because it felt good. I felt like it was where God wanted me to be, and the more I discovered, the more I saw every day little miracles happening all around me that I knew was God at work.

With all the excitement and new discovery, there is always some questioning of oneself. Was there anything that I was doing that wasn't Christian like? Was there anything that I was doing that might cause some of the women in my group to frown down on me? I feel like I always put my best foot forward for the most part in being a good wife, mother, and worker. I keep a clean house, take my grandma shopping every Friday, and tuck my babies in at night. Over the weekend, it hit me when we went to my cousins 40th birthday. I very gladly took the frozen fruity drink that was handed to me when we walked through the door Saturday night, in fact in the course of 4 hours, I took 2 more. I wasn't drunk, did not act immoral, did not do anything to embarrass myself,most certainly did not drive my family home, etc, etc. All that being said, it gnawed at me when I got in bed. Was it right? Was God frowning upon me for doing it? The longer I laid there, the more items that crossed my mind. I had dropped the "a" word earlier at the party, and possibly the "b" word, joking around. I had cleaned my house spotless earlier in the day, however I had simply shut the door to our bedroom, assuring myself that no one would be in there but myself and my husband, and while I had made the bed that morning, there was a towering pile of laundry to be put away in the floor and the dust bunnies under the bed had baby bunnies. My mind was racing at this point, almost to the point that had my husband not been snoring next to me, I would have jumped up and started cleaning like crazy.

Sunday morning in church I still pondered my questions. Now seriously, just who the heck was I going to ask? The sweet little old lady who sits behind us in church or my pastors wife who sits in front of us? So, I decided that I would put the question out there to you all. Is it morally right for a Woman of Faith to have an adult beverage socially? What do you think crosses the line when it comes to the behavior of Christian women? Do you ever have questions regarding your faith that you feel you can't ask anyone for fear of ridicule?

Have a beautiful week. I am anxious to see your answers!

Winner!!! Baby it's hot in here!

Ladies, I apologize for running a few hours late on announcing the winner of the hot contest. DH has been in and out of the ER for the last 2 weeks, and it looks like we are headed to back surgery. Anyhoo.. back to the contest! Our winner is ...... Miss. Kim! Kim's keep it cool tip was " POPSICLES & a nice fan right in front of me!!"

Kim, you have won a basket of keeping you cool items, including a hardback copy of "Return to Sullivans Island", some Lime and Coconut body wash and lotion, a cute hair acessory, a koozie, and a few other surprise goodies, as well as a recipe for a cool summer shrimp salad.

Thanks to everyone who participated. I will try to compile all of your tips and do a post in the next few days. As for the Love Dare... we are still doing it, however, I've taken on a whole new list of to do's with helping out DH.