"Let is Snow"!! And, boy, has it!

I made this for a friend, for Christmas. I had the embroidery finished but just finished making it into a pillow today. Yeah, yeah.... I know... I'm late. What's new? I swear that I'm going to start making gifts early for next Christmas!! Early, as in... January!! No, I get all my good Christmas ideas in about the first or second week of December! I actually appreciate that stores put things out earlier these days.... it gives me good ideas earlier! I don't understand why people think they can wait until the day after Thanksgiving to start making a zillion gifts, baking a zillion cookies and batches of fudge, writing to friends that they only write to once a year, which you'd like to put a little thought into... no?? So, my friends, you can remind me, next July, that I need to start making things now, not in December!! Mabye that'll work.

Anyway, this embroidery pattern is from Crabapple Hill (http://www.crabapplehillstudio.com/) and Meg Hawkey. I love her stuff! My oldest daughter, who reminds us nearly every day that she hates the snow, asked me if I could make another one of these pillows, but, instead, make it read, "Make it stop snowing!" Such a wit. No fear, dear, it was 50 degrees today! Downright balmy! I think the snow is gone for a while.

Personally, I loved it... but, then I had the freedom to stay home... I didn't need to try to get to work, etc.... It did keep us from music practice with our bandmates a couple of times, but, oh, well.... we'll make up for that! :) I loved the snow falling while Christmas carols were playing and the smell of baking cookies was wafting through the house. I can't tell you how many times one of my kids came in the backdoor and said, "Oh! It smells so good in here!!"... either because of cookies or dinner cooking. Music to a mother's ears, for sure... especially when you have teenagers!

We had a wonderful Christmas as I hope all of you did. I love this "lull" week of getting ready for the New Year. I'm excited about the coming year... not that this year was bad; it was a great year... but I look forward to all the fantastic things the Universe has in store for us!

I wish you all a happy, healthy and properous New Year!

Teri

This was the view outside our back door a few days ago. We definitely had a White Christmas this year! I thoroughly enjoyed all the snow, but I was able to stay home if I needed to, so that made it nicer, for sure. We did have a limb snap, after being weighted down onto the power line that goes to our house! It wasn't ten minutes before Wayne called the Water and Light people, to alert them of the issue, that I heard it go. It landed on the top of Wayne's truck, but, luckily, it was small enough that it didn't do any damage...and we were really lucky that it didn't pull down that power line!!! We're grateful that we never lost power.... our home was toasty and cozy all through the cold-spell, even the days that didn't get higher than the 20's. :)

My sister-in-law, Laura, made these cute ornaments for us and put one on each of our plates at Thanksgiving dinner. Because we have six people in our family, we ended up with six of these cuties! So, I hung them from a garland of red, wooden beads. Very simple and sweet!

A friend of mine told me that she's been reading my blog, but that I'm not really talking about myself. I don't think she meant that as a good thing..... because in my profile, I said that you'd get to know me better by reading my blog. I do think that personalities come through in what they talk about; but I guess it's easier for me if an issue comes up that I respond to. You know, like "journalling".... as opposed to simply talking about myself. That seems a little odd. :)

So, tonight is Mom's Game Night, for our homeschool group. We meet at Lisa's and play games. We play Pictionary if we get enough people... which is always a riot!! I love guessing but I'm not good at drawing. I get too excited and then draw too quickly!! My animals always look like some kind of alien cows. But, we have a great time, anyway! Lisa always bakes a goodie and I try to, too. I was going to take Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars, but I figured people will have pumpkin pie, probably, on Thanksgiving, which is only three days away....so, I'll wait on the pumpkin thing. Maybe I'll take that next time. I made Grandma Ginney's Brownies this time! (That's Wayne's, "Grandma Ginney".) When I make those Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars, though, I'll share the recipe here!! They are wonderful!

Oooo.....I need to make Placecards for Thanksgiving dinner, too! Tomorrow? Maybe. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day, though! Quinn has last week's art class to make up in the afternoon...that means a drive to W. Salem. Gives me about an hour or so of free time, though, so maybe I'll get some shopping in. (Shhh!! Don't tell the Buy Local crowd!!) :) No, I don't profess to only Buy Local. But, I definitely see the benefit of it.... especially for our lovely, little downtown that we have!!! Definitely worth striving towards. But, I digress.
After art class we'll come right back and go to the Children's Art Fair at the library. Quinn isn't participating.... I found out about it too late for him to be able to sign up.... but we have a few friends from our homeschool group who are!! So, we're going to see all the goodies that they've made and show our support. After that, we'll probably have our food order pick-up and then off to music practice! Whew! I'm tired just thinking about it all! Not really. I actually find when I have those kinds of days ahead of me, I'm energized by the thought of it. But, only a couple of days of that and then I like to be home and get recentered.

OK.... need to get ready to go to Lisa's! Ciao!

Bizarre turn of events....and a heavy heart

Oh, my gosh..... life can be so strange. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back here... but this event has been front and foremost in my mind... and I haven't been sure how to deal with it on my blog. We have dear friends who had lived across the street from us for seventeen years. We celebrated every birthday with them for all those years....got together with them at Christmas time, etc...etc...etc.... They have grown kids, who live out of the area, so they spoiled ours! The bizarre turn-of-events, in a nutshell: He got a wild-hair to build a log home on the property that they had bought in the '70's, over on the Siletz River. So, even though he talked her into moving, we knew that something wasn't right about it. It made no sense for them to do it. She had an adorable little house with a garden that she had tended all those years..... so beautiful in the summer!! People would go into Incahoots and ask about the flowers that were at such-and-such a house.... after a while, they knew whose house they were talking about...hers!! She was very involved in quilting and knitting groups here in town. She would be taken away from all of that. But, she went along with it and in August of '07, they moved. We couldn't even have a neighborhood going-away BBQ, because she'd be too sad to face anyone. I'd be too sad, too! So, they move and three months later, he tells her that he wants a divorce!! These are people who've been married for over 30 years.... who, for all intents and purposes, seemed perfectly happy!! Of course, you never know what goes on in a marriage....we don't know everything. However, if it was just the divorce, that'd be sad enough; but he started doing bizarre things. I won't go into them, but it was as if something in his brain "clicked". Something had changed, and drastically!! My husband and I talked about the possibility of him having a brain tumor or something going on in his brain that was causing such bizarre actions. His wife had tried to get him to go to the doctor, but he refused. Apparently, she was the one who needed to go to the doctor!

He moved out several months ago. He went up to spend Father's Day at one of their daughter's houses and she mentioned them having been there the previous Christmas. He had no recollection of that. In fact, she thought he was joking around about not being there... and he thought she was joking... but it did concern him a bit, it seems, because he asked her husband about it later. His birthday is in August, so this same daughter sent him a gift of money; a week afterwards, he remembered receiving the money. Two weeks later, he had no idea what she was talking about! And, he didn't remember being there for Father's Day!! I don't know about you, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that something is wrong with this picture!!!

One of the issues for him was his failing business. He had to make that business successful, at all costs...but it wasn't working. So, he took off to Texas, to find "hurricane" work, apparently. About two weeks later, he was up on a ladder and came down, saying he had a lot of pain in his chest and back. I don't know who was there, but apparently they didn't know how to do CPR or not very well, anyway.....and it took twenty minutes for the paramedics to arrive... so he was without oxygen for twenty minutes. :(

His wife (they were still married) and their kids and other family members were all there, rallying around him. They didn't find out until about ten days after he went in that there had been no brain activity the entire time. She wouldn't have put him on life-support had she known that. They did say, though, that the EEG's showed that he'd been having lots of mini-strokes for quite some time. I'm convinced that that had something to do with his irrational actions, but maybe I'm just in denial. It is weird to have someone that you think you've known for all those years do things that make you question whether you really knew them at all. We talked about how it kind of makes you question everyone around you for a while! Do you really know this or that person??

I was hoping that his massive heart attack was a blessing in disguise; that they'd figure out that something else was going on in his brain which was affecting his emotions/decision-making functions, etc... and hopefully, they could help him and the nightmare would be over; that he really didn't want a divorce..... but, no such luck. When she found out there had been no brain activity, they all agreed that they couldn't keep him hooked up... it was time to let him go. Now, she'll never really know what was going on. He left the planet on November 14th.

A few nights later, our fifteen-year-old son said that he felt odd because he didn't really feel much about this person dying. Our astute eighteen-year-old said something to the effect of, "That's because, to us, he died a year ago." So true.

It's a lot to process... I'm still reeling from the news that they were getting divorced!! And, I feel badly for her, for obvious reasons, but also because I'm afraid she's going to find that he's left a tangled mess that she has to deal with.

So, if you have a happy marriage and you're healthy, be Grateful!!

Count your blessings on Thanksgiving......

Teri

The Howl at The Moon Party was so much fun!!

Just a quick update.... the Howl at The Moon Party was a success.... at least in my eyes! I think that the organizers were happy with the turn-out and enthusiasm of the crowd.... I hope so. I was responsible for the music end of it and that all flowed smoothly. (Yay!) Misty Vandiver, who often plays at the Open-Mic at Cornerstone Coffee, played first. She was great, as usual. She does a great version of Romeo and Juliet, by Dire Straits. It's not a song that I would've thought a solo performer could pull off, but she does it...quite well. Second was Nathan Ogden, another favorite from the Open-Mic. He played Neil Young, Beatles, CSNY minus Young and Crosby..... or is it Young and Nash? Well, the song was Helplessly Hoping and I know that Stephen Stills wrote it, but can't remember who accompanies him on it. Anyway, that was all wonderful, too!

We got to play after that and it was lots of fun! We had a few mess-ups, but I think they went unnoticed, for the most part, by the crowd. (I hope so, anyway!) We even played a song (our last one) that our lead guitarist had never even heard before! We gave him the option to not do it, but I think he was feeling inspired by the evening so gave us the go-ahead. It turned out pretty well, considering!

The kids that were there started dancing (??) up front. We joked that it was the mini-mosh-pit. Doing air-guitar while doing the splits!! Quite the scene. :)

Someone asked us for a CD...but, alas, we don't have one, yet! We were asked for one when we played at The Horse Radish, too; so we do need to get on that. We have been working on getting a demo recorded, though, so we can get serious gigs, so that's good. It just takes so much time to get a good recording done and mixed down! I can't seem to even get my dining room table cleared off!!! But, it'll happen. The table and the CD.

The open-mic was great, once again! We had more than a full roster.....which included a new guy who, I think, was playing mostly originals. He was good. I didn't play.... I've only been practicing the songs that I play with our group, not the ones that I do solo, and since it was so busy, I decided to "sit this one out".

But, I think the group that I play with is going to play at the Howl at The Moon Party, at McMenamin's, next Thursday, the 13th. One of the women who is organizing it asked me if I would take care of the music end of it and pull in some of the people from the Open-Mic. Cool! So, a couple of those people are going to play, in the first hour, and then our group (or a couple different configurations of our group), will play afterwards. The whole thing starts at 6:30.... I think music will start at 7:00. It goes until 9:00.... so, if you live in the area, come and check it out! It's all about the "Buy Local" campaign. To support your local, independent businesses. For more info, go to: www.buylocalmac.com At this event, there will be info about local businesses, some art by local artists and the music is local, too! It's in Mattie's Room, upstairs at McMenamin's Hotel Oregon, downtown McMinnville. Food and drinks will be available. It ought to be fun!! Come and join us! Mattie's Room is a kid-friendly venue, by the way! :)

For the Locals: Tonight is the open-mic!!

Tonight is the open-mic at Cornerstone Coffee. Wayne and I have been running this open-mic for about a year and a half now. It's going great! We were holding it once a month, but we've added another night because it's been so popular. So, now, it's every first and third Wednesday of the month. The music runs from 7:00 to 9:30, with sign-ups starting at 6:30 (and usually ending by 6:35!) Cornerstone has great coffee drinks, teas, smoothies and now even milkshakes! I usually play by myself or have someone sit in with me, but I don't think I'll play tonight because I've only been practicing our band music lately, not the stuff I play alone. Usually, the first Wednesday is the more crowded one, anyway, as far as the performers go, so it's easy for me to sit it out. :)

We organized a Beatles Night that happened on August 23rd. I wish I had photos of that to share with you!! It was such a great event! There were 100 people in there! Great talent... just really fun, all around. But, unfortunately, I was running the show, helping with sound and busy recording the evening.... I couldn't take pictures, too!! Next time I'll have to ask someone to help me with that. Wayne had wanted to have one in the Winter, but I think it'll probably be an annual Summer thing. If we do them all the time, they won't be as special. :) So, keep your eyes open for that announcement down the road!

Good morning! Do you like my new banner? My friend, Lisa, did that for me!! Wasn't that sweet of her? By the way, I do have other friends besides Lisa. I just haven't told anyone else that I even have a blog, yet! But, I guess it might be time to unveil it. :)

I awoke the other morning, all excited, thinking of all the things that I could take pictures of to put on my blog. Well, my camera has been acting funny, so I decided to try getting a new battery. I put the new battery in and put it up on the charging/printer dock. No charging lights were on, which made sense, I figured. Like with telephones, they say to put the new battery in and then charge it for something like 16 hours. So, okay. I let it charge for a few hours. No lights still. But, the camera worked better! I could actually take a picture and it showed up on the SD card. Days later, still no lights. Anyone have any ideas??

The point of sharing that with you was that I didn't get to take any pictures of my kids on Halloween, all dressed up!! Well, I did take a few with my cell-phone, but only of my youngest, with some friends, over at Lisa's house. I'll see how they translate to a blog.... or if they even turned out. I usually have pics of the kids carving their pumpkins, getting ready, in their costumes, jack-o-lanterns all lit up, etc.... This year? Now that I have a blog and have some place to share all these wonderful images? Nada.

Oh, well. Halloween is over.... time to move on. (I swear, everytime someone says that in my dear husband's presence, he says, "Move on dot org!" I don't think he's ever even seen the website.... I should have him look at it and he might stop saying that!)

Alrighty, then..... I need to get the camera fixed before Thanksgiving!

I hope you're all having a wonderful day! Remember: Life is Good!!!

Six Random Things

OK... I had wanted to participate in the "six random things" tagging, but I've decided to just share six random things about myself with you. I am not in touch with that many bloggers to be able to tag people without them thinking I'm a weirdo. So, I'm just going to share the things that I would've shared, anyway, had I been tagging. :)

1.) My sun sign is Gemini and, yes, I believe in Astrology. :)

2.) I'm from Santa Cruz, California; where surfing (and the wet-suit) began. And, I mean the original meaning of surfing..... out in the ocean... not at a desk.

3.) I play the guitar. (More details on music later!) :)

4.) I believe in reincarnation.

5.) I'm not big on housekeeping. :) I'd like to have a more organized/clean house, but I don't want to spend my life doing that.

6.) I believe in the Law of Attraction and am trying to be more conscious of my thoughts... because they do matter!!

Why "On Purpose"?

You might be asking, "Why 'On Purpose'?" When I first started this blog, I started to break out into a cold sweat when I got to the part where I had to choose a name for it. I thought, "A name?? But, there's so much in a name... it can't be just anything! It's got to be good!" And, then, all of a sudden, "On Purpose" popped into my head. Now, I can't take full credit for it because it's the name of a shop in Sutter Creek, California, that I love to go to when I'm there. But, I can take credit for it popping into my head. :) It's a shop that's full of metaphysical and spiritual goodies; crystals and incense, great books, etc.... the kinds of things that I love! (Well, *some* of the kinds of things that I love... remember, I told you I was complicated.)
And, the meaning of "on purpose". To me, it implies being mindful. Not doing things "just because" or without much thought, but to be purposeful. To make conscious decisions; to live deliberately. You know, all that stuff. But, it also reminds me that there's a bigger picture.... that there are no accidents, no coincidences. It's all On Purpose.

I hope you'll join me in the journey.

The vintagey, tin planter

Here is a close-up of the vintagey, tin planter. It's actually more green than it looks here. Finally, it has a purpose! :)

Ha! I just saw the "six random things" on The Tardy Homemaker blog and started to do it.. but, then, realized that no one has tagged me, yet. So, can I not participate unless I've been tagged?

Sitting here, waiting to be tagged......

Spaces between sentences?!

Just one more question: Do the people at Blogger not realize that you are supposed to have two spaces after a period?? I have noticed this on other blogs and figured it was just the blogger. But, now that I'm blogging, I can see that even though I put two spaces in there, it doesn't show up that way!! The separation between sentences should be different than the separation between words... what's the matter with these people??

Uh-oh... I see that I have a follower!! That must mean that I need to get with it on here!
No, a "follower" is not a "stalker". A follower, in blogging terms, is a person who is either interested in what you have to say, or, yeah, is a creep. In this case, it's my friend, Lisa B., who got me into this mess, I mean, blogging business in the first place! So, I'm happy that she's paying attention.... I think. (Hi, Lisa!!)

So, I didn't get on here to write about that.... I got on here to post a "Fally-photo". (I'm coining that phrase this instant... let's see if it goes anywhere!) But, first, I have a question. Why isn't the word, "fall", being synonymous with "autumn", capitalized?? It's the *name* of something!! We capitalize the brands of cars, for Pete's sake.... why not the names of seasons? And, one of the most beautiful seasons, to boot! Have I told you that I love fall, yet? (Now, doesn't that sentence look weird? You can't tell that "fall" is any special thing in that sentence! So, bear with me because I always capitalize my seasons.)

OK..... I'm getting over my silk-flower phobia. First, though, I had to start calling them "silk flowers" instead of "fake flowers". Although, when I started calling them "silk flowers", I didn't realize that I was mentally preparing myself to actually use them, years later....in my own home! So, this Fall I started thinking that I wanted a "Fally" piece on my table. I wanted flowers, in Fall colors, and I wanted them to last....not a week, not two weeks, but until I start decorating for Christmas, usually the day after Thanksgiving. Is that too much to ask? Well, if you're asking a silk-flower, then, no, it's not too much to ask!!

I happened to buy a vintagey-looking planter thingy, on sale at Craft Warehouse..... you've already seen it if you've looked at my Fally-photo. I loved the look of it... but, when I got it home, I realized that none of my plants would fit in it right. If a houseplant pot is that tall, then it's generally too big around to fit. Most of them were lost down inside of it... with only some plant pieces poking out of the top.... really lame.

I wanted it in the house. So, I decided that if I was going to be able to use it, that I needed to just build an arrangement inside of it. The last time I was at Craft Warehouse, they had all these gorgeous silk-flowers on sale! (Did I just say "gorgeous" and "silk-flowers" in the same sentence?!? Oh, man.) I bought a "frog" that fit perfectly inside of it... and started cutting and sticking my flowers in. I happened to have some Spanish Moss left over from lining a metal flower-box in the summer, so I used that to cover up the frog.

Now, my living room is in transition: My sister-in-law gave us a love-seat that is temporarily in the "parlor"...our house is over 100 years old and it would've been the parlor back then, so there you go. Lest we forget and accidentally call it the "dining room". Then, one of us goes to get the yardstick and slaps the offender on the hand. Just kidding. My yardstick is metal, actually. :)


But, I digress!! (Boy, do I!!) Back to the love-seat. I can't move it into the living room until I can vacuum... and, guess what? I have to take the vacuum up to the Oreck dealer, in Hillsboro!! I don't know where this stuff comes from that gets onto carpet!! Is there some kind of "little-pieces-of-stuff fairy that comes in the night or something?! We have a dark brown (ugly) carpeting in our living room. I know what you're thinking..... "dark brown: that doesn't show the dirt as much." Well, maybe not dirt, but it shows every other *#%*#^ thing!! I think I'd rather have dirt. You could just sweep it up off of a nice bamboo floor. :)

Back to my Fall centerpiece.... my dining table is full..... we haven't eaten on it, as a family, for weeks. We have had many nice dinners in the last few weeks, though!! And, we do eat all together, as a family, just not necessarily at "the table". So, I had to clear off a little table (that I hope gets thrown away, and replaced, in my lifetime) and put my centerpiece on that. My friend, Lisa, and those of you who've been inside my house, will probably notice the background of my photo. The french-doors that go into the parlor are right behind this table. So, no, it's not where this table normally goes.... but because of the lack of a vacuum, Quinn's "fort" that he built in the living room yesterday, etc... this is the only place I could put that little table with my Fall flowers on it.

Ok, ok, I'll add "clear off dining table" to my To Do list.
That reminds me, has anyone read the story of The List in the Frog and Toad collection??

Have a great day, or hour, or week.... who knows when I'll be back!!

The beauty that surrounds us!!

I went up to "High Heaven" yesterday. It's a place above town and I hadn't been up that particular road for years. I knew it would be beautiful up there so I grabbed my camera before I headed out. I'm so glad I did! Although I didn't take many pictures, I was, once again, amazed at the beauty that's all around us. Wow.

The story of why I was going up to High Heaven in the first place is kind of interesting. I've belonged to a homeschool group for, let's see....yikes! It's been thirteen years!! Anyway, one of the co-founders of our homeschool group, known as "HEY", lived up in this area.

A couple of weeks ago, some of the kids from this group started going to a gymnastics class that the local gymnastics place set up for homeschoolers. (Yay! Thanks, Li'l Champs and Heidi for doing the legwork on this!). So, we're at the class and a woman and her daughter come in, just looking for a class for her daughter to try out. She had no idea that we were homeschoolers and we had no idea that she homeschooled! So, we chatted and it turned out that her daughter, Emily, was in Quinn's kindergarten class when he did his stint in public school last year. They ended up pulling her out of school after I pulled Quinn out. Our group had an event planned for the next day and so she and her kids joined us for that. Here's the funniest part: When she was explaining where she lived, I realized that it was where the woman who had co-founded HEY used to live! So, not only did she stumble upon a group that she and her kids have been longing for, but she also finds out that one of the women who started the group used to live in her house...the group was started, basically, *in* her home! I'll have to tell her that part! We had many a meeting in her living room.... even came up with our "Motto" in her living room, although no one knows what ever happened to that.

I love synchronicity....and I'm not talkin' about the Police here, folks!

Why do I have a blog? No, I'm really asking...."Why do I have a blog???"

I'm starting this blog because.... well, because my friend, Lisa, has been pushing me to start one! :) That's not to say that I won't enjoy it... I've always loved to write and it really does make
perfect sense. But, I have so many interests..... can I put artsy stuff and musings about gardening and raising teenagers all on one page?? I also don't want it to take over my life... you see, the Internet is a Gemini's dream-come-true. Using their hands to type, plus communicating with... well, whoever, most Geminis don't really care....communicating with our hands?! We're in our glory!! So, then, I worry that taking care of a blog will take over my life! (They keep telling me that it won't, but I'm not convinced!) Here it is 5:47 p.m., I'm due to be at Lisa's house at 7:00 for our monthly Mom's Game Night, and I still need to assemble and bake an apple crisp. But, here I am, working on my blog! Hmmmm.....no, I'm not convinced.....please, wish me luck!