Fall Colors: Part Two

More photos--this time, they're all from my backyard. 


The moon rising in the late afternoon sky...

Berries on a tree just over our fence...

Beautiful fall colors all around...

 

 And a fiery sun setting through the trees.

Visit 5 Minutes for Mom for more Wordless Wednesday photos.

Fall Colors

 These are some photos I took last week on the way to our homeschool play date

 and before leaving the play date.

 

But this--this is my favorite shot.

 

 
Do you take lots of pictures of the leaves changing colors in the fall?

Visit 5 Minutes for Mom and My Little Drummer Boys for more Wordless Wednesday photos.

Sunset

The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; 

where morning dawns, where evening fades, 

you call forth songs of joy. 

Psalm 65:8 (NIV)

Grace (5) calls sunsets like these rainbow sunsets. 

The Versatile Blogger Award

My friend Elizabeth recently (OK, last month) awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award!  Thank you, Elizabeth! 

Hmmmm...Versatile Blogger.  I'll take that to mean that I blog about several different topics.  Which topics?  Good question!   I checked out my top categories, and this is what I found (with the photography-related categories combined):

Photography (292 posts) is the clear winner around this blog, with humor-through-children coming in next with the Kooky Talk (69 posts) and Overheard (59 posts) categories.  Giveaways (36 posts) are certainly fun and something I would like to do more of.  I never knew I blogged about Christmas (27 posts) so much.  My Works For Me Wednesday posts (19 posts) tend to be frugal ideas...

And that makes a wide variety of topics.

Part of accepting this award is to tell seven things about myself.  So, here goes... 

7 Random Things About Me:

1. I eat dark chocolate every day.  Seems I've said this before, like here and here.  I think it's a good place to start any list.
2. I have finally kicked my two decade long Diet Coke habit and now only drink unsweetened tea. 
3. Blogging is cheap therapy.  Yes, I've said this before, too.  If I haven't blogged for a while, I'm not very focused on much of anything.  Sad, but true.  So, if you haven't seen a blog post from me in several days, you would be doing me a kindness to say, "Post something. ANYTHING." Really--because I am not thinking clearly and can't figure it out on my own.  ;)
4. I have learned fairly recently that I like digging holes.  Wait--it's not as bizarre as it sounds.  OK...so maybe it is.  But I'm preparing a garden spot for next year and I have found digging to be another form of therapy for me.  And that's a very good thing, seeing as we have really hard clay that must be dug thoroughly (read:  deeply) for anything to grow.   So far, I've dug two spots that are about 3x7 feet, with a depth of somewhere between the length of my shovel head (the first hole) and the length of my leg from the knee down (the second hole is deeper now that I have muscles). 
5. I've also started composting, seeing as all that clay won't grow anything no matter how well it's dug, and composting is free.  Where am I putting the compost?  In the holes I've dug, of course--trench composting.  :) 
6.  I may or may not be contemplating a very redneck expansion of my clothes line.  The "expansion" would involve turning the swing set so it is parallel to the back porch and running a new line from the (other) porch post to the (other) side of the swing set so both sides of the swing set would be used instead of just one like it is now.  Classy, I know.  And if I do this "expansion," I'll certainly take pictures of it, which will only add to the classiness.
7.  I am perplexed as to why my younger two children (ages 9 and 5) are all of a sudden telling me rather nonsensical jokes and stories and then asking me if I "get it."  Ummm...no, I don't.

Now, I am supposed to pass this award on to 15 (you've got to be kidding!)  a few other blogs. Check out these other versatile bloggers!  

Kari Apted (absolutely the most versatile blogger I know!)

Dawn at My Home Sweet Home 

Julie at From Inmates to Playdates 

Katie at A Southern Lady's Ramblings  (a new homeschool friend I just met) 

(Not so) Wordless Wednesday: Visiting

 We visited my aunt and uncle earlier this week and, since they live in the same neighborhood I grew up in, there is always a bit of nostalgia for me, 

 

with an odd mixture of the old and the new.

  

 

 

 

 For the kids, there is lots of dog-petting.  Forced dog-petting.

 

 Oh, I'm kidding!  But that's what it looks like, doesn't it?  In reality, it was a lot more like this:

  

Visit 5 Minutes for Mom for more Wordless Wednesday photos.

Rainy days

 Ah...rainy days.  Where raindrops hang from the clothes line instead of the usual laundry

and you might see a rainbow in the sky

 

...or even two.

Double rainbow

Works for Me Wednesday: Magnets

Yes, magnets.

One day this week, while sitting with my 9 year old so that he would remain sitting at the table working diligently on his math assignment (ahem), I decided to make my refrigerator look a little better.

I started with making a new homemade "dry erase" surface to record leftovers, kitchen projects that need to be completed, etc.   (Here is my old one mentioned in a previous blog post.)  I found prettier paper than I had been using and covered it with some laminating paper my aunt had given us years ago.  This time, I wrote not only the days of the week along the side, but also a space to record the time I started the crock pot before I laminated the paper; the rest is erasable. I also now have prettier magnets because...

My next project was to cover some of those advertising magnets you receive from businesses.  I started with covering one magnet that I've been setting my magnetic kitchen timer on.  The refrigerator surface was getting scuffed from the constant movement of the timer (Does anyone else have kids with a fascination with timing everything?) and I had placed one of those ad magnets behind it...but it wasn't pretty.  Now, with some paper and a little glue, it is.

 Then I got a little carried away with other advertising magnets and smaller magnets...

Grace (5) was so impressed with my work that she said it looked like a company had made them.  ;)

~~~~~

This is something we don't use anymore, but it saved a lot of headaches and arguments for us a few years ago when we first began allowing Robert to "roam the neighborhood" on his own to visit his friends.  After he had permission to go to a friend's house and we had told him what time to return, he would write the information on a piece of paper that was held by this magnet (under "GOING TO:" and "BACK AT:" at the base of the magnet).  This was a simple solution to keep him accountable--and there was no discussion of "But I thought you said..." because he wrote it himself, and he typically wrote the time on his hand right then since he already had a pen handy.  (This was another advertising magnet that I had covered years ago.)

What works for you?