Happy Halloween!

It's Fall. It's Sunday. I'm Lazy.

Yesterday the weather was gorgeous.  We got home from church and these two Natives grabbed some rakes and started raking piles of leaves to jump and play in.  I sat and watched pondering on the irony of the situation.  Had I asked The Natives to rake the leaves so we could clean up the yard it would have been met with complaining and all sorts of woes and, "I hate raking leaves.  Why do we have so many trees......."  Since it was their idea and for pleasure, well........ that's different.

I can remember growing up doing this very same thing.  If asked to do it, what ever 'it' is..... 'it' was a chore.  If it was my idea though!!  Well then!  Play time!!  The key here, is trying to figure out how to make it appear as if all the chores The Natives do are their own ideas and are for their fun and pleasure!  Yeah.... I bet Adam and Eve thought the same thing and parents since then have been trying to figure out how to pull the wool over their native's eyes.  Yeah.  I'll get back to you when I figure this one out.

In the meantime, I enjoyed sitting outside watching these two tumble and tussle and throw 'pies' in each other's faces.  Not a bad way to spend a lazy fall Sunday afternoon............

P.S.  Notice anything.........  STRANGE in the first two photos??

Painting Update

I know you are all just dying to see how the painting project is going but I couldn't resist posting this little gem first.  I was in the process of taking photos of the room and got a little side tracked.... It happens. Often.

And then this happened and I couldn't resist taking a photo of these two wrestling around which is why Zoe's head is a blur.  The look on Levi's face is NOT a blur however.  It speaks volumes.

So, first and foremost.  When one takes photos of their house and it is dark outside and the lighting is terrible you get a grainy yellowy photo.  My apologies.  You get the idea however.  Yellow kitchen is now a chocolate color and white kitchen.

You can see I've not gotten to the room downstairs yet.  The walls are still the yellow color and man I'm not looking forward to doing that room with all of it's book cases and stuff and stuff and STUFF to try and move and get around.

You can't see it in these photos but my walls are blushing.  They are NAKED!!!!  One thing we've noticed right away is without the quilts on the walls absorbing all of the noise, what we thought was noisy has become noisy times 12 plus echos.

Oh look!  Another chocolate wall!  I do love me some chocolate............   It is going to be months before this project is completed.  We have to wait until spring before we can buy the wood that is going to go up on the walls and we haven't decided how we want to do behind the wood stove yet with the mantel and all.........  In the meantime the place is looking lots of white and sterile and I'm gritting my teeth trying to be patient and not go all sorts of crazy.  White is good right????  Yeah, that's what I thought.......  boring!!!  Spring better hurry up and get here quick so I can get some color up on my walls again!!

In the meantime, this ought to help warm me up.

Oh Nellie!

Note:  I used these photos on my Essential Oils Face Book page which is why they are tagged as they are.

Yesterday Levi came into the house holding this big beauty along with a few other eggs he'd gotten from "The Ladies".  He told us that this big one was an ostrich egg!  He was quite proud of his find.  The rest of us had one thought.  OUCH!!!

All I could think as my legs involuntarily crossed on their own was, "I feel your pain........... oh how I feel your pain"!  And then I hobbled out to the hen house (it's hard to walk with your legs crossed) and found the hen who was waddling around looking more duck then chicken and made her sit down on a plastic donut and wiped her sweaty brow and told her not to worry about a thing for at least a month.  I filled her fridge with casseroles and then left her to rest while I went and downed a bag of peanut M&M's in her honor.  It was the least I could do.  We 'girls' need to stick together!!

Citrus....... Bliss?

The other day, I was tired.  Stressed.  Tired.  Cranky.  Tired.  In a not fabulous mood.  Tired.  You get the picture.  The Natives were off at school and with a good book in hand, I thought I would take me a nice restorative peaceful bath.  I just luuuuv baths.  Especially in the fall and winter when it is cold outside!

I started the bath water and added some sea salt from the Dead Sea that The Scout Master's parents had brought us back from Israel.  I was going all out on the pampering!!  And then..... I had this brilliant thought.........  I love Citrus Bliss Essential Oil!!  It always makes me happy!  I luuuuv the smell.  It's in my bath bar and hand lotion, why not pour a bunch into my bath water!  Putting calming Essential Oils into one's bath water is a common thing!  Note:  I said calming..........

I dumped several drops in my bath water because we all know if one drop is good then 50 must be better and settled into the tub with my book.  Down I went into the water.  Ahhhh it felt good.  I started to read and imagined I'd be in the tub for quite some time.  I started to squirm.

Why was my back feeling a bit hotish?  Ignoring the discomfort I shifted myself a bit and settled back in turning the page of my book as I read on fascinated in the biography I was reading.  Soon, the hotish began to get a little more intense and now other parts of my submerged body were starting to feel a bit like little fire ants were pinching me.  You'd have thought I was reading a hot romance novel by how on fire my body was starting to feel!

I jumped out of the tub hooting and hollering chucking my book and looked in the mirror.  Bright red.  Oh my goodness!!  I was on FIRE!  I grabbed some lotion and started rubbing myself all over because we all know that some Essential Oils tend to be 'hot' and so we use them with a carrier oil......... uh huh........  we don't submerge ourselves in them..................  WHAT WAS I THINKING????

Dancing around my bathroom panting and whistling.........  I will be as discreet as possible in this story so when I tell you that when you are in the tub, there are parts of your body, your yaywhoos and yawhoos!!! Uh huh!  You know what I'm talking about!  HELLOOOOO!   I looked like I was dancing on hot coals running around my bedroom at this point fanning myself!  Can I just say that I was very grateful all Natives were at school???

After a few minutes of screeching and dancing myself into exhaustion I fell on my bedroom floor laughing with tears running down my face.  I never cease to amaze myself at my stupidity.  One thing was for certain.  I was wide awake!!!

Change

Change.  It happens.  Down came the fake log and rock wall paper.  Now I can see the old stenciling I'd done on my walls previous before the wall paper and the taupe from chair rail down.......  It's all going away too.  All of it.  GONE!  I want change and what mama wants........ she usually gets.

The wall with the big half circle window is now a pretty chocolate brown.  The rest of the walls are going to be painted an eggshellish white.  Clean.  I want clean.  From the looks of this last photo........  I really really really need clean!  Where's the couch??

Smelly Gold

Our gardens this year have been like no other.  The amount and size of our produce......... incredible!

If I were blog savvy I would have washed these peppers first before taking this photo but I'm not......  it is what it is.  Veggies grow in the dirt and they'll have mud on them when picked.  Keepin' it real folks!

We did however wash them quite well before attacking and chopping up bags upon bags of peppers.  I made The Natives sit around the kitchen table and help me chop peppers.  We're not finished.  We've a cooler in the garage full of peppers still.  Hmmm, wonder what I'm going to make The Natives help me with today!!!  Hahahaha!  Evil cackle!

So what made my garden so smashing successful this year?  The only thing I can think of that is different...............  drum roll..............  chicken poo.  Yup!   My chickens working hard fertilizing my veggie gardens.  Who knew chicken poo could be so golden!!??  Now you know!