I learned an important lesson recently. Details can be very significant, they do matter. For example, Family.jpg is not the same as family.jpg and map.JPG is not the same as map.jpg, they may seem the same, but these details matter.
These details don’t bother my computer. I can see these photos just fine, but I got so frustrated not being able to figure out why I could get hundreds of photos to show up just fine on my computer, but when I uploaded all the HTML and jpg files to my server so they would be online, something wasn’t quite right and one just wouldn’t show up. I thought I’d have to call for help to figure it out and then it happened again. Finally, after exhausting every possible cause, I finally found out that details really do matter, the internet is pickier than my computer apparently and capitalization is the detail that mattered this time.
Admittedly it had been years since I did much coding using the HTML programming I learned in college. They forced me to learn some sort of computer programming language for my computer endorsement on my elementary education degree. This was the only sort of programming language I could ever see a need to know, so that is what I chose to take. I love making web pages come out just so using Notepad and typing in all the code it takes to make it work. Continue reading
Sometimes, when I am feeling somewhat less than confident (so pretty often actually), and I don’t know what to do, I ask myself, “What would Mom say?”
Almost every day I think of something I wish I could pick up the phone and ask Mom or tell Mom about. I want to be able to include my mother in my life, even after all these years. Still having a mother figure in my mother-in-law was some consolation. She was always willing to let me talk through anything on my mind, but it wasn’t quite the same.
This year is the first time that neither Hubby nor I have a mother alive to celebrate Mother’s Day with. We are both orphans now, as we say. We console ourselves with the thought that it happens to most people at some point in their lives and we had our parents to enjoy much longer than some. We look back on those precious days, not as the perfect times we should all aspire to, but the life we had and didn’t know enough to appreciate at the time.
If you are lucky enough to have your parents with you, then take this time to appreciate the ways they made your life so much better and forgive them any times they may have been less than perfect as parents. We are all human, after all, we make mistakes.
Newborn babies don’t come with instructions when you bring them home from the hospital and I still remember the sense of wonder when they let me just leave the hospital with my firstborn. You mean they are just letting us take this tiny human home with us? I didn’t worry too much though, because I knew I could call my mom or mother-in-law and ask them any questions that came up.
Thanks to both our mothers for being there when we needed you. Mom, thanks especially for being that voice in my head telling me I can do anything and be anything I set my mind to if I try hard enough. I’m so glad you always had such high expectations for us, it gave us something to live up to, and there was always room for improvement.
This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Include
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.
While I was making ravioli lasagna for dinner, I decided to share the process with you by taking photos of each step. This is a super easy meal to put together and because the ravioli goes in frozen the kids can even help you put it all together.
It is Friday again! You know what that means, right? Ok, yeah I guess the title kind of gave it away. It means Kate Motaung gives us a word prompt and we write whatever comes to mind about that word for 5 minutes. It seems I usually can’t stop writing after just five minutes, but today I am going to try. The word today is ADAPT.
START
I began to think of all the ways I have had to adapt during my lifetime. First, it was becoming a big sister instead of the youngest. I don’t remember the first time this happened when my little brother was born because I was only a year and a half old. When my baby sister came along three years after that, I remember looking into the crib and wondering to myself if she would grow up to be someone I liked and got along with. A strange thought, but I must have recently come to the realization that I didn’t like everyone and some were easier than others to get along with.
Then it is going off to school for the first time. Each year the school year would end and we would have to adapt to a new routine for the summer until that too was over and it was time to adapt yet again.
Then from elementary school where we were in one classroom most of the time with the same kids and same teacher to middle school (junior high in my day) where we changed classes, classmates and teachers every time you turned around.
Middle school kind of prepared us for high school, but not nearly enough. High school was harder to adapt to, at least for me. There were three floors of classroom and so many more classes, some of which we got to choose for ourselves.
Then college. Oh, my! What a difference there was between high school where your teachers knew you and expected things from you and college where they didn’t know or care what you did or who you were.
A couple of years into college, I got married. Another huge adjustment. The house we tried to buy before our wedding was pulled off the market while we were on our honeymoon, so we had to start the looking process over again. It was decided, that after the wedding, we would live with my new in-laws until we found another house to buy and moved into it. So, we moved into a different bedroom than the one hubby had been using and adapted to sleep in a double bed together instead of the twin beds we had grown used to our entire lives. It was also a completely new family and household I was forced to adapt to and only postponed the inevitable change of adapting to being co-owners of our own home and living with just one other person for the first time in my life. Continue reading
I’m back with another installment in my Trash to Treasure series. This project was a bit larger than the last project. The table shown below was pickup from the side of the road where someone had thrown it out with the trash. To be fair, the table looked almost new then except for the botched paint job on the table top. The rest of the table has never been painted and has been exposed to all the weather Indiana has to offer on our covered, but open, porch for several years.
I took these photos before heading to the local PPG store for some expert advice.
I had a pretty good idea that painting would be in the future for this table and my mother-in-law taught us that if a project was worth painting you needed to buy good quality paint. We learned that lesson the hard way when we tried to go cheap on the paint to get our old house ready to sell. We ended up doing more work in the form of extra coats of paint and buying more paint to get it done all because we tried to save a few dollars on paint in the first place. So yes, Porter Paint is more expensive, but if I am putting in the time and effort I want it to look good.
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So, after some discussion with Harry, the man working the counter, it was decided that I needed exterior paint and primer and that if he tinted the primer part way to the color I was painting over it, I had better chances of covering that lovely design. So I bought a quart of primer and a quart of gloss paint in the color he called Special High Dive (special, because he had to fudge it because he didn’t have the right base in the quart size and grabbed the wrong one to begin with). It turned out great and I really love that it is “special”. I also bought a Wooster Brush 4187-2 Ultra/Pro Firm Shortcut Angle Sash Paintbrush, 2-Inchbecause I love the short stubby flexible handle it offers.
So, you might be asking yourself how I decided what color to paint this lovely table. Well, I read the book,The Turquoise Table: Finding Community and Connection in Your Own Front Yard by Kristin Schell, and decided that I needed a turquoise table for our house. Since I am not much for sitting in the sun or on picnic tables, I wanted to have a table of a different sort and it would be on my front porch which is shady except in the late afternoon. I knew I had just the table to do the job too. If you haven’t read this book yet, I highly recommend it. I enjoyed reading the hard copy so much I got the audio version to listen to it also.
So, without further ado, here are the photos of the table during the various stages of the project.
The primer coat comes first. It soaked up a lot of the primer. I turned the table upside down and put it on a small plastic table to keep from having to stand on my head while I painted. Then after it dried for an hour or so, I flipped it over to prime the top and edges.
Once that had an hour or so to dry, I turned it back over and began painting it with the gloss paint. Look at the difference in the colors!
The darker color shown is the gloss paint that was supposed to be High Dive, but oddly enough it turned out darker on the stick at least.
Here is the table after a coat each of primer and paint on the entire table.
I decided I wasn’t so good at this painting thing and that the top looked very blotchy, so I found some YouTube videos to help me figure out how to do it better for the second coat.
Even though it is blotchy, it still looks pretty good, and oh so much better than it did earlier in the day when I was about to start this transformation.
Here is the final product in place on the porch. It is a little hard to spot from the sidewalk especially when that part of the porch is in the shade.
I am thrilled with how nicely it turned out and I think the porch looks very nice now. Once the tree comes into its leaves, you won’t be able to see this much of the house.
Please watch the video below to see how all of this started.
So, if you watch this video, you will get a better sense of what the turquoise table is all about. If you ever walk by and my car is in the driveway, even if I’m not out at the turquoise table, ring the bell and we’ll go out to the turquoise table, weather permitting, and sit a spell and share our lives and catch up with each other. You can call ahead if you want and tell me to put the kettle on if you like.
I want to be a front yard person. I want to get to know my neighbors. I want to invite friends to my house. If you have a turquoise table, you can register it here.
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