Thursday's Nail Day

There is Knitting Monday and Tatting Tea Tuesday. But have you heard of Nail Thursday?

Thursday is an Outing Day and Mom loves being creative with her nails. Her accomplice in this is Trevlyn at Wink (nail and hair salon in Emmett Idaho).

Mom gets custom nails every week or two. She matches her outfit or picks a glorious color.

But for the holidays, mom is going all out.

For Halloween, she had her nails done in a bright orange and then had Trevlyn paint on jack-o-lantern faces, ghosts, black cats, spiders and spider webs. This was done in stages so the picture her is from the first stage.

You can see in the the other pictures how good Trevlyn is at matching the nails to the outfits.

The nails for Thanksgiving were painted yellow with brown pilgrim hats and turkeys. Every other nail, alternately. It was amazing art work - and I thought I had pictures but I can't find any anywhere.

The gals have amazing plans for the nails through out the holiday season and I will try to remember my camera and get you the pictures. It looks to be a great happening.

My Frost

Rtiza's First Frost turned out to be a flop of a frost.

A great post but no frost for her yet. So here is a post about frost.

But Friday night we got almost up to freezing so I will share a real frost with you. Now, admittedly, it was not our first frost or even our second. But it was beautiful to look at from inside the house.

The bridge to mother's house was covered in snow - no footprints so no one has gone to visit her. The orange is a dam my hubby put over the water lilies while I was gone. The tropicals he brought inside for me, we will see in the spring if they survive once again.

The pond is snowed in - hope all of those plants are hardy and I know that they aren't. There were several types of taro that I had gotten at the chinese grocery in Seattle but I didn't think to take them ini before I left and I also didn't think to ask my hubby to bring them in while I was gone. Oh, well.

I definitely would not want to be out driving in the stuff or, heaven forbid, stuck in some hotel or lodge, unable to get any where because of the snow.


It snowed all day Saturday - not a lot but one of those days where the snow comes down very lightly but steadily. We got only a couple of inches total. The weather stayed cold for both Sunday and Monday - never got above freezing, so the snow is still there although it now has footprints in it. No snow angels tho.

The weeds and plants are all covered and so, no more weeding. There never were any plans for weeding, but if there were, there aren't anymore. Too cold, the ground is frozen, can't see the weeds, don't wanna.

We had to go out today and found all the roads except the main highway covered in a layer of snowy ice. It reminded me of a trip that I had taken recently.

The weather forecast is for colder and colder with another storm system coming at us. A percent chance of snow for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Sometimes you just have to wish you lived in Atlanta where the temperature is up in the 70's.

The alpaca were loving the snow. They have a shelter which they do use when we get rain but they were out frolicking in the snow. I hope this cold weather will encourage nice thick, thick fleeces for the spring shearing. Really thick and fluffy and nice and warm and thick, and lots of it.

The two little white cute things were having a ball finding things out in the snow. They weren't allowed to bring anything found in the house. Outside toys are outside toys even in the winter. Their coats grab the snow when they run through it and then release the snow all over the floor when they come inside.

It is just like magic. And nothing is more fun than running around through all the snow and jumping up into my lap. Well, it seems it is more fun when I have knitting or paperwork or a book in my lap.

What is that growing in that garden behind the dogs? Weeds. Everyone is welcome to come and weed. Now or in the spring, it doesn't matter.

The Great Flood of 2010

I took the Girl Far From Home back to the Far From Home place Saturday.  We got out of here late and drove for a long, long time and got there late.  We had a date with a couple of young ladies who had stayed on campus for Thanksgiving because they live so far away.  We all went out to dinner and had a nice time.  Girl Far From Home wanted to do something with me before I got in the car and headed home.  I said I would only do that if we could hurry and get her stuff in her room and then get going.  So we decided to hurry and then we'd go to the bookstore (she has a gift card she wants to spend).

We went to her room and she unlocked the door and opened it.  We were overwhelmed initially by the blast of really hot air that hit us and then quickly realized that the hot air was moist and smelled bad.  We went into the room with the idea of opening the windows to let some of the heat and stink out and as we walked across the room, we heard the splashing sound our feet were making.  There was about an inch of water on the floor near the dressers and closets.  The ceiling was dripping and there was water in the light fixtures.  The top of the counter over the dresser was wet and there were brown stains where the water was/had been.

We ultimately discovered that the steam pipe in the closet had sprung some type of leak and it must have happened right after we left the weekend before Thanksgiving.  There was an abundance mold growing on the closet ceilings.  The puddle did not extend all the way across the floor, so stuff by the desk was ok - thankfully.

This is after the maintenance people had started tearing out the ceiling and I'd gotten some of the very wet clothing out of the closet.

This is the counter - the water came down right through the tv and when I tipped it, water poured out.

This is Girl sorting her wet, moldy clothing into bags.  Notice the rain boots - we really did need those indoors!!!

The ceiling tiles in a pile on the floor.

The proud owner of a huge hole they tore into the closet wall - they also knocked out several shelves.

The hole in the closet wall and the pipe that spewed forth all the steam that did the damage.

Part of the ceiling removed.  Before the room can be inhabited again, all the rest of it will have to be pulled down.  There are stains but there is also a significant amount of mold.

The guys tearing things up with garbage bags full of clothes in front of them.

If you look closely at the light fixtures, you can see the puddles of yellow/brown water in the bottom - there was about an inch and a half in the closer one in this picture.

The brown stains on the counter and the soaking wet television.  Unfortunately, a cd was left in the player.

The wall of the closet in front of the bookshelves - and behind that there is a huge pile of wet and moldy clothing.  The green chair is behind the removed wall.

Some of the wet stuff from the closet.

The wet, stained and ruined green chair.

The yucky reading wedge - so sad after all the trouble I went to finding this.

Both her winter coats had mold growing on the sleeves - the light one is (was?) a down coat.

Everything girl owns stacked on her new bed in her new dorm room.

What's left of the Girl's clothing in her new closet - not much!

The new and very clean dresser - no TV on the counter because I haven't a clue if the TV can be fixed or saved.

The far wall of the new room - lots of shelves, lots of light and the new room is bigger than the old room.

Marilyn is on the new walls, the new desk is put in order, the bed is made, things are looking so much better. But do notice the black trash bags that have all the Girl's clothing in them - some needs to be washed in the machine, some needs to be dry cleaned and a ton needs to be hand washed.  There are four big bags.

The new rugs - that tile is really cold and I think bear feet need some protection.  I found a set of three that pretty much cover all that needs covering.

A new Marilyn poster . . . just because.

The last of the new rugs and a new green chair.  The new chair is not as nice as the old one, but it will have to do. 

The new reading wedge - again, not as nice as the old one but this one came with a little blanket to keep toes warm while you are reading (or watching tv).

Still working on the clothes and the winter coats.  Sure hope it doesn't snow anytime soon!

Some After Dinner Tatting

There has been tatting (and knitting) going on around here, though not as much as I'd like.  This is Angels In the Snow from Tatting Fool/Miranda.  Dena bought me the pattern as a gift.  It's not too difficult and the results are quite nice.  This is made in size 20 white DMC Cebelia.

This is the SassiSerpent Bookmark by Brenda Caldwell-Bonilla.  I saw it on The Tatting Forums and found it on Suzann Does it All's blog here.  I thought it was cute and it sure was quick and easy, so I made it out of Lizbeth size 20 in one of the newer colors 100-Falling Leaves.

This is a brown and white bookmark - just a standard edging that I did up one side and then down the other. It's made in Lizbeth 20 Mocha Swirl - and yes, that's brown and white even if it's a terrible picture.

 This is my constant companion - isn't she cute?  She's helpful too!

I got some lovely goodies in the mail too!  A couple of weeks ago, there were several detailed articles about types of beads and contest to win samples on Bree's Way.  I entered and won!  Bri sent me a lovely and very generous package of beads.  The contest was supposed to include 10 samples of various sizes and colors of seed beads, but Bri also included some lovely variegated thread and a package of really special focal beads.  I'm tickled pink with all these, but I especially love the bigger bead with the silver foil on it - that one gets to be something for me!  Thanks so much Bri!

I also got these books in the mail today.  The first three are crochet books, and have some very cute things in them.  The last one is the one I really wanted and since it's out of print, I hadn't been able to find it.  It came up on ebay a couple of times and I missed it.  This one was also on ebay but since it was not listed by itself, nobody else noticed it and bid against me.  It's the DMC Festive Tatting book.  It has lots of patterns in it for Christmas - a tree topper, a bunch of snowflakes, some edgings and picture frames and a bunch of covered satin balls.  I think several of the snowflakes will be easy enough for me to do.

The Dulcimer is Complete!

And it is absolutely beautiful!  The wormy maple oiled and polished is just gorgeous.  Girl Far From Home did a wonderful job!  Here is the dulcimer before finishing - this may be before we finished shaving down the sides and it is certainly before we sanded the dulcimer.

Here is the dulcimer after all the shaving, sanding, oiling and waxing are done.  The strings are even on.  I have to say that putting the hardware on was easy but stringing it was a little more difficult.  It might have been easy for someone who knew what they were doing, but we didn't.

Here are pictures of Girl Far From Home tuning the dulcimer after we put the strings on.  Tuning any stringed instrument with new strings is a little tricky and until the strings have been on the instrument a while, it doesn't want to stay in tune.  She had to tune it between each playing and it still managed to slip a bit during the playing.  But she was thrilled and it sounded good anyway.

This is her right after her very first song on the dulcimer - you can't tell she's happy, can you?

For your viewing and listening pleasure, her very first song on her brand new, beautiful, handmade dulcimer: