Honoring Jean...

Who's Jean? I really don't know. What I do know is; she lived on my street, raised in my neighborhood, fell in love with a guy named Wellman in the 50's, married him... lost a child and lived all alone for quiet sometime after she had lost her beloved Wellman. 

Autumn and I went to her estate sale today. Broke my heart that her wedding album and many of her photo albums were for sale for $4 each. No family left to care that these precious memories of this lovely lady were being sold to strangers... I quickly grabbed up her wedding album and her vacation album. Autumn purchased a few others. With taking care of my mom right now this really touched me and felt that I just had to buy these albums.  We love these photos, and somehow feel connected with Jean. I will treasure your memories Jean and honor your life.  Somehow, I hope you'll be happy with Autumn and I as the keeper of your memories.

Wedding snapshots...

She saved Wellman's boutonniere, small snips of her wedding gown fabric and lace, a couple of honeymoon souvenirs and the first mail addressed to her as a married lady. She was happy as could be and madly in love.  

Keepsakes, a written account of how they met and and their courtship.

He had asked her to "go steady" on the Capital lawn.

Wonderful summer vacation photos...

a mousey dish that belonged to Jean.  I also picked up some other goodies.

although summer is not officially here, I decide to decorate the mantle with a summer vacation theme and honor Jean with a garland of my favorite vacation snapshots from her album.



Collecting and a bit of couponing

Hi everyone, first of all I'd like to share that I don't know if it's me, blogger or what, but I've been having the darnedest time trying to leave comments on several blogs lately. Wendy, I've tried a few times at your blog, just wanted to let you know that I'm at least reading your blog if you don't see a comment from me... I'll keep trying.  Adding Goose and Binky blog too... keeps making me sign in and I am already signed in. My post won't go though!!!! grrrr.....

So... for some reason I'm digging old game boards lately. Caleb and I found an old chess and Parcheesi board at an estate sale the other day after his driving test... oh yes! he passed!!!!  (Glad that's over.) Anyways, I love the designs and colors of the boards, they make me happy. I want a whole wall of vintage game boards someday and also I'm loving old paint-by-number paintings too.

Coupon trip today! 

Picked up stuff to stock up on and some things for my mom.  

Some good deals; 

big deodorants...seventy five cents each, the little ones...twenty five cents each.

(okay, it did feel a little weird with that much deodorant in my cart.)

Free candy bars and 4/ twenty five cent toothpaste.

My best deal ever!!!!

The store paid me $3.54 to walk out of the store with these John Frieda products:)

Check coupons, if they don't say "excludes travel and trial sizes" than you can use them and save big money.

I had 4/$5 off coupons; Sale at the store was $4.99 on the big ones and the trial size was only $1.49. I could of bought all trail sizes and walked away with much more money, but I wanted the free product more than the cash.

Around the house...

 Homeschooling, taking care of my mom, finding a momement for myself...

 All because...

Added a little sparkle to the porch...

view from the sidewalk...

garden is growing in spite of me... enjoying the fresh greens.

Cat's trying out the cat tree... it just didn't work out for us, I returned it. I will look for something a little less dangerous! I snapped this cute photo and... 

I did buy them a bag of colorful mice yesterday to make it up to them.

Laundry day and How does your garden grow...

I love, love, love hanging out the laundry to dry in the sun and breeze! I have such fond memories of helping my mom and Aunt Irene with the clothesline... handing up clothespins one at a time. Running in and out of the cool damp sheets... laying in bed at night, smelling the sunshine in my pillowcase. Yep... I love, love, love it!

How does your garden grow?...

(2 weeks ago)

with silver bells and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row.

 That's how my garden grows.

today

We had our first garden salad the other night. 

Are you hanging laundry and/or growing a garden?

Smitten with...

 my Noah... he's just a cutie:)

with the eight baby bunnies in my strawberry patch...

with my garden...

mama bunny helped herself to some lettuce last night...

Getting a fence!

Remember these mittens I am so smitten with?

One of my dearest and talented friends made me a pair!

Lovely surprises in the mail:)

Can't wait for winter!

Smitten with my estate sale $2 box of vintage crepe paper/flower making stuff,  full of goodies...

with this very old envelope inside my $2 box...

and inside the envelope 3 prefect condition Aunt Jemima rag dolls.

Noah is smitten with his rocker chair that I also bought at the estate sale.

He loves to sit in it when he reads.

Smitten with my Mother's day gifts from Autumn:)

Cute owl pillow!

mama squirrel with her three precious ones...

sweet little carnations, my favorite flowers...

a 1930's photo of the Dionne quints from Canada, (my mom is related to them.)

The one wearing the necklace is named Annette.

and my new Kindle from the boys:)

Reading: The Scarlet Letter... again.

~~~

Hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day.

We went for a long walk along the river and had Chinese take-out for dinner:)

Such a nice day!

Mom's Interest Led Learning

Lately I've been working on a few personal interest (learning as I go)  like recycling, using coupons to save money and incorporating thrifty ideas to help our family and the environment, growing our own food and learning how to save money on other foods such as meat. I figure it's my part of contributing to our family income with saving money instead of earning money now that I need to stay home with my mom.

One thing that I have done is recycle all that we can.  I've reduced our trash bags from about 5 bags a week to just one (not including cat litter... oh yes, I have figured out it's more economic to use scoopable cat liter than the regular, especially with 3 cats.)  Now I can call our trash service and get a smaller/cheaper trash container and save us money.

A wonderful thing about the recycling bin is that Noah always has a ready supply of "project" materials when he needs them. 

The Ojibwe Indians always keep in mind The Seventh Generation meaning treat the earth with care for your future grandchildren, seven generations from now.  I love the thought that seven generations ago Noah's ancestors thought of him and took care of mother earth just for him. Recycling is a beautiful way to honor our future children, seven generations from now.

I read on a blog somewhere about cereal boxes... save the heavy duty wax bag from the inside and use to wrap up other things. This idea has worked awesome for us. The wax bags are very useful... I just wipe out the cereal crumbs, fold them up and store them in the drawer. The cereal box can then be flattened for the recycling bin. I also save some bread wrappers and twist ties to be reused. 

My husband was a big fan of bottled water, ugh. I just knew this was a waste of money for us. Then I watch the documentary Tapped and learned how awful the whole idea of bottled water really is. There will be no more of our money wasted on bottled water. We'll use our tap water and reusable bottles.
I've cut up two old bath towels for housecleaning rags (some people...um hum, say I should cut up all of my bath towels for rags) I say if they still dry your butt then they are still good. Really!  Anyways... trying to live without paper towels, we'll see how that goes.  Household cleaners: simple... vinegar, baking soda, dish soap and water.

I've been watching the new show called Extreme Couponing, whoa... the money these people save is just mind blowing!  My first week of coupon clipping (nothing compared to their savings.) I saved $55 with coupons, $45 with my store customer card and I received a $5 gift card for my next shopping trip... grand savings of $105! I was so excited, it wasn't that hard at all.   I clipped coupons, loaded my customer card with downloadable coupons, check the stores sales flyer, made my list with notes of which items to buy, how many and if I had a coupon to use. The best deal was shampoo and conditioner on sale for 88 cent a bottle I had a coupon for $2 off 3 bottles, end price was 3 bottles of shampoo for about 21cents each.  Yes, it was Suave but I like Suave:) Now when I get some more ink for our printer I'll be printing out multiple online coupons.

Last week we took a trip to Merindorfs Meat in Okemos MI. We purchase a 40lb. meat bundle: steaks, roast, ground burger, sausage, hot dogs, ribs,bacon, pork chops, and 3 whole chickens. It averaged out to $2.36 a pound.  Nice savings, the meat is so delicious and fresh. What a difference from grocery store meats!

Sunday is Easter... it's suppose to be nice outside finally! (I hope)  While the Easter dinner is cooking, we'll be in the backyard putting together our raised vegetable bed kit. I've started lettuce and spinach seeds in the kitchen and they are coming along. We've decide to give raised beds a try this year.  We are also investing in a rain barrel and a compost bin. I've started a compost bucket for kitchen scraps.

Sunday will be a good day to have a seed blessings. We will send out a prayer of blessings for our heirloom seeds and our vegetable beds... Hey, I need all the help I can get! Maybe have a little bonfire and roast a marshmallow peep or two:)

My Protesting Boys!

Rally at the State Capital.

Noah and Caleb

I'm so proud of my guys helping Dad protect the Unions!

I.B.E.W local 665

Pysanky Egg Class

 Sunday my friends Ann, Hanlie and myself took a Pysanky Egg class at the library. It was taught by our other dear friend Jozefa (all homeschooling mamas.) Jozefa is a wonderful artist and she had self taught herself the art of Pysanky Eggs years ago. She sells them now at art fairs and they are just amazing!

Jozefa referred to these eggs as her "crappy ones," we had to laugh at that! I would be so talented as to make these crappy eggs:)



The tool to apply the wax is called a kistka.

We had such a great time learning how to make Pysanky Eggs. It's very relaxing and therapeutic. I think the flickering candle has a calming effect.  Layering color and wax, color and wax. I had to really wrap my mind around the concept of one step at a time. Jozefa is a wonderful teacher.

Unfortunately my camera died and I didn't get a picture of my friends finished eggs, bummer... cause I really wanted to show you how great their eggs turned out.  

 Here's my egg... blurry and all. (believe me... it looks all blurry in real life too!) hey, I tried.

One side has what should be a chicken (?) or perhaps a quail and on the other side I decided to put a whimsical purple squirrel, a tribute to my beloved blog and our homeschool.

I also added some Pysanky symbols along the sides. Such as the star that means: eternal life and good fortune, a spiral that means: divinity or immortality (and to me it means my sweet friend Tara:) pine needles that mean: eternal youth and health, dots that represent stars in heaven and from sorrow comes unexpected blessings. I love the symbolisms:) oh yes... there are tiny hearts for love.

So now we're thinking we should check out The Polish Art Center and order some Pysanky Egg kits and keep at it. In about ten years my eggs might look as good as Jozefa's crappy ones:)



Watching Documentaries...

We love to use documentaries as supplements for our homeschool. Here's two documentaries that we have viewed lately. Both are on Netflix.

All In This Tea This is a interesting documentary about tea farming and buying in China. Beautiful scenery and we learned quiet a bit about tea. Of course we were sipping our favorite tea during the show. Iced Peppermint Green Tea.

To Market To Market To Buy A Fat Pig Let's get in the mood for the farmer's market!

 A great documentary showcasing  different farmer's markets around the United States. I can't wait for summer!

I'm a little sad about the farmers market in our downtown area. They built a new, metal barn-ish building and tore down the wonderful old brick market. I was so upset by it.... just because my grandparents shopped there, my mom took me as a little girl and I took all three of my kids there. It was old and wonderful.

Now it's new and just okay... in my opinion.

We usually shop at our neighborhood farmers market called the Allen Street market it's an open air market set up in a parking lot once a week. We help promote the market with a yard sign in our yard. I love to visit this market and help support the local farmers and feeding my family some good food!

The old City Market...sigh.

Our Jimmy Mirikitani Inspired Cats

inspiration... an amazing Japanese gentlemen.

Jimmy Mirikitani's motto: "Make art not war."

Shooting the Breeze and a Treasure Hunt...

Hello Everyone, It's been almost two weeks since my last post. This morning I woke up early (7:30am) to the sounds of city workers cutting down our neighbor's tree. Nice! So I dragged myself out of bed; gave my mom her medicines, checked emails and grabbed a cup of coffee. Not too much to going on around here really... sort of waiting for the weather to warm up. Noah and I have been working on a lot of math lately (not our favorite subject) but we needed to catch up on stuff. Last night we watch a great documentary called The Cats of Mirikitani, if you get a chance you should watch it. We found it on netflix. I think we'll try our hand at some Japanese Cat art this week. Noah is signed up for some exciting Spring classes at our homeschool co-op: Pond life at the Nature center, Odyssey of the Mind, Solar Energy and Drama. That should keep him busy, I don't know what I'd do without these classes for him!

Lately, if I can get out of the house twice a week I'm pretty lucky...not counting taking walks in the neighborhood with Noah, we try to walk every other day at least. I've been keeping busy with taking care of my mom. She's fine, but not able to do much for herself anymore. She had a little fluid in her lungs but seems to be better now. She sleeps a lot and paints very little these days, she listens to Christmas music (which makes me very sad.) She doesn't have much of an appetite. I give her her meds twice a day, fix her meals, clean her rooms and I do her laundry. Autumn comes over and keeps her entertained with playing cards and just spending time with her. My sister can only come for one day every two weeks now, kind of a bummer. But she has to work. Brad told me to pick somewhere to go on Saturday while my sister was in town to stay with my mom. I chose to go to the Livingston Antique Market. We decided to take Noah along with us. Had I known this place is so huge I would of thought twice about bringing Noah. It takes about three hours or so if you want to see everything... which I do:) I told everyone that we were on a treasure hunt and they could choose one treasure, so that made it more fun for Noah. Uh, hum... with a $20 limit of course.

My treasure: a hand painted black tray, I like the crackles and the nicks in it. Noah's treasure: a Crown glass topped quart jar (Canadian) filled to the brim with polished semi precious stones. A pretty awesome treasure! Brad's treasure: 4 Hardy Boys books. He had read every single Hardy boy as a kid. (nerd) anyways, he spent the rest of the weekend reading them. Noah is reading, The Mystery of Cabin Island. Spooky!!!

If I had tons of money to spend, this lamp would be mine!

An adorable mad Easter bunny? Made me chuckle.

Even though it was a gloomy (non-Spring) like weekend, I did enjoy myself...

Hope you had a nice weekend too!