Life is a Journey

CLICK US FOR A VERY BIG VIEW!

Our ride Sunday was certainly that! We drove to Dallas and visited Rick Fairless' Strokers Bike Shop and Ice House. What a crowd and so many cool bikes to look at too. We borrowed our "ride" from a good friend and DH has a craving for another one himself. He had one years ago and this trip had him drooling over a few bikes that he'd love to have, but these darn things just cost do much. Someday he may get his dream bike, but for now it's fun to get out and feel the breeze in your face and bugs in yer teeth. ;o)
Oh, the bike is from American Iron Horse and is LOUD!
And just one more thing...if you scroll down 3 posts below this I talked about my urge to get a tattoo. Well I have a consult set up the day after tomorrow to have an artist sketch out what I have in my head. I am so excited! It will be my first and hopefully I won't faint, haha.
...to be continued...

What did you pay at the pump last?

Curiosity has the best of me. I jumped for joy when I thought $3.44 was a great price. Then I drove down a couple of blocks and it was $3.41.....then I called my daughter and she said she saw it a few miles away for $3.39.9 per gallon!!! Wow! I'm so scared how the prices are plummeting because I don't trust it. I am convinced that we are simply being teased for the time being and someday really soon, we'll wake up and it will be close to $5. a gallon like they predicted last summer. What do you think? What are you paying currently at your pump? Please comment if you can, cuz I'm very interested in what you think too. Look here and see how low it is down south of us, (as low as $3.24 per) wowza!
Texas Gas Prices
Thanks!
-me

Fire Belly Update

Here is where you can find out more about these creatures: CLICK!
It is also about two inches long, which is fairly small. I could never seem to get an underbelly photo, so I found one on a google image search instead that looked the closest. No idea if "it" is a male or female. Only way to really tell is if it started making a low barking sound during mating season according to what we've read. So far, no barking from this fella or gal, haha.

Pet Count

Odd topic I know. But before I go into that, just wanted to let those of you who read my blog know what my family has been up to lately. Actually enjoying summer! We've taken 2 trips to the coast and have been to several new movies out and even explored our little neck of the woods like we never have before. Funny how little I even knew about the DFW area and all of the beautiful areas and things there are to do without traveling that far. DH has been recovering from rotator cuff repair surgery and off from work for a few weeks. Physical Therapy is in progress and he is progressing very well the doc says. It was hard making him rest from day one because that is the kind of person he is.
I was out back today putting some things in our upstairs barn storage and started wondering if we'd all gone crazy. Our "pet count" is now up to seven. We have 4 doxies, 1 min pin, 1 rabbit and as of yesterday....1 fire belly toad. Before that, we had about a dozen hermit crabs that we brought back from Galveston. Bad decision. They are not land hermit crabs and they all died :( So to make up for my daughter's terrible loss, we went and checked into land hermit crabs and ended up bringing home a fire belly toad instead. Go figger?!? They say that these can have a life span of 10-15 years if properly cared for. Imagine that? It looks sort of like a moist colorful tree frog, but it's actually a toad found in China. Vivid green and black specks on top and bright red underbelly. It sure loves to snap up crickets! I'll post pics of it later if we can get it to be still long enough.
Anyhow, I hope everyone is having a great summer and is all ready for their kiddos to go back to school soon, cuz I know we are! It starts on the 25th of August for us. I am so anxious to go back to Scotland in the Fall and meet our new granddaughter that is expected in early November!!!
Oh, another thing. Don't laugh now! I turn 50 this year. That is not funny. We will have our 5th grandchild born this year. That is not funny either. But in honor of both events, I plan on getting inked. No kidding! I wanted to do a thistle one near my ankle because of the significance of it as far as it being the National flower of Scotland. Also in mind was maybe 5 flowers representing the 5th grandchild. Then the alternative tat would be the Celtic symbol for motherhood which pretty much says it all I thought. Perhaps I'll design one with all of these things combined. I've been playing around with it, doing sketches and looking online for ideas and inspiration. If anyone has any thoughts, please let me know!
Later!
-greenie

My Online Scotland Photo Book

Whew, what a job editing well over 600 photos and picking ones I liked the most...here is an online photo book that you can view here or click HERE and see it in a larger size, complete with descriptions. If you'll click on the Full-screen option and after it opens, then choose options, you can slow it down or speed up the page turns. Enjoy.
Cheers,
Sharon

Click here to view this photo book.

Probably Not Strange

But just different! I wanted to tell you all about some things that I learned whilst in Glasgow. Check out this Irn-Bru commercial first. I love this drink!

OK, so most of you may know that they have their darn steering wheel on the wrong side of the car ;o)
Of course that makes these Glaswegians, which is what they call themselves also drive on the wrong side of the road too! You MUST be careful when crossing the street or you'll absolutely get run down by a taxi. Most folks don't own a car and use mass transportation instead. We whine about our gas prices, hahaha you should hear what we calculated the price in USD from pounds after the conversion of litres to gallons. OMG! You stand to save money by walking, taking the subway or taxi, or even riding a bike. The train works nicely for longer distances and they also have buses. Anyway, we mostly walked everywhere except for when we went to Edinburgh. We'd take the subway to get to the furthest side of Glasgow to save time too. The air there is just so clean compared to DFW where I live, in spite of the fact that there are just so many smokers there. They only smoke outside though and I don't think it is allowed in any indoor spot at all. I was told that their autos and vehicles were so finely tuned and many are alternative fueled that the air stays cleaner than ours. Wow! The days were simply perfect with temps varying from 50F - 65F or so. I lucked out and it really didn't rain until the last day or so and it was very light at that. I say lucked out because my son said it rains a LOT in Scotland. Funny thing....I brought an umbrella and never used it until the next to last day. Then on our trip to Edinburgh the 2nd time, I had a darn pick pocket grab it out of the top of my purse. HAHAHA, it was so odd, because I had my passport, money, and credit cards all below it and he must have thought he was getting my wallet or something, because it was one of those tiny compact ones. Oh well, I hope he enjoys my black multi-colored polka dotted umbrella....NOT! Daylight happens around 4AM and it stays that way until almost 10PM at night. This makes it hard to want to go to sleep at night and my bedroom window just happened to be above where the party crowd comes when the clubs close. So almost every night at around 3AM, I'd hear laughing, yelling, arguing, and breaking glass. The OKO Express across the street would usually stay open and others from around town gather there to have their drunken breakfast or whatever they ate there. I wised up and started using ear plugs and that took care of that! If you can imagine how many 7/11 stores there are here, there probably are just as many Starbucks and Fish & Chip spots there. Our dollar is really weak right now, so my shopping adventures were not as interesting as they could have been, except that my wonderful son and daughter in law took care of just about anything and everything. I was just bowled over and felt like a queen! I tasted so many different and delicious foods there. My new favorite drink now is called Irn-Bru. The taste is very different and I wish so bad that it was available at a reasonable price. You can find it here and there I've since discovered, but the price is outrageous. It's just a simple carbonated soda, a pale sort of orange color, full of caffeine, a little like a slightly cream citrus like taste, but not so much....hard to explain until you taste it for yourself. I had great lamb, Indian cuisine, Japanese sushi, Italian you name it, squid, tofu, udon noodles, ox tail, crepes, honeypot yogurt, yummy rocket salads, feta cheese, espresso, prawns, French wine, teas, Victorian lemonade, Cloudy lemonade, Hot pot chinese buffet, puddings - oh my!, sweet corn at the cinema, angus beef, meat pie, apple slice pastry, dark chocolates, fresh asparagus, delicious root based soups, scones, shortbreads, back bacon, clotted cream fudge, creme brule, tapas, and more I can't remember right now, hah! I weighed myself when I had the nerve after coming home and found I'd only gained 4 pounds, which is not as bad as I'd feared. I suppose all that walking we did helped remedy that, so all is well. Oh....here's something else funny - the traffic signals of all things, they turn yellow right before they turn green instead of our yellow before red, wonder why that is? Taxi drivers can be chatty and tend to like to give out advice if they know you are a tourist, which is fine. Only thing is, their Scottish accent is so thick sometimes, you have to ask them to repeat some things until you catch on to their quirky little phrases and ways of saying certain things. Also, the working class order of the people coincides with how hard it is to understand them. If they are a suit wearing well to do businessman, you can usually understand their Scot-English easier, whereas a beggar in the street (and there were plenty of them) or a raggedly dressed man or woman has more of a thicker accent.....coincidence? I don't know. Beggars will either sit on the street or a corner with an old cup and say "Spare change love?". They always look very forlorn and unshaven or ragged, but some of them have crutches one day and then the next they don't, so I decided that they play on your emotions more than anything and didn't feel quite as sorry for some of them as I first did. Every museum that we went to was Free to the public! They took donations of course. The buildings of the city were so Victorian and Gothic looking, I just wanted to take so many pictures and stop and stare. Just beautiful!
Yes, there are bagpipe players on the streets and most play in anticipation coins tossed into their hats or instrument cases. There were more street performers of all kinds on the weekend, but you can expect to hear a guitar player, sax musician, drummer, or even a singer on any given day down Buchanan Street near the Royal Exchange Square. Wow, I miss it already and if things go as planned, I'll get to return in November to see my new Grandson or Granddaughter for the first time and son and DIL again! More photos to come soon, thanks for your interest if you've read this long post =o)

Photos to share of my journey!

Hi yall! I've been back a few days and finally have my time zone lag adjusted (I hope). The difference in Glasgow is a whole six hours ahead, so you might imagine how "off" that must have felt for me. To try and force the change when I arrived, I stayed up & felt like a zombie, but it seemed to work per my son's advice. But somehow when I arrived home, it took longer to get back into the days and nights for CST. Whew! What I'll be trying to do is post a few photos from each day spent there every day or so as I have time and energy. The heat here is just awful, so adjusting back to 100F from being in 50-60F is really not fun :( I have lots of things to tell you about how different things are in the UK from the USA too, but for now, here's a few images and I've labeled each one as to what and where they are. These are from the first full day in Glasgow and if you want to see a nice 600x800 size of each one, just click on them.

Me in the UK!

I'm here on day seven of my Scotland journey and all I can say is why haven't I been here before now?!?!? No words can really describe the experience, sights, people and feeling. I'll post more later, but here's one of me at Edinburgh Castle. I just had to add the little dragon to accent the feeling there, hah! Tomorrow, we have a "booking" for The Witchery for dinner. I'm really looking forward to that.
Lata Luv....
(click on the photo to see the HUGE version!)

I'm almost ready!!!

In Scotland, the currency used is Scottish Pound Sterling. ("£" or "₤") Three Scottish commercial banks - Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland and Clydesdale Bank, issue their own notes with their own similar designs. Although all banks in Scotland have the right to print notes, only the above 3 choose to do so. Also, you can use British pounds there too, but the Scottish pounds can't be used in London. Interesting I thought...
I have the cutest little wool passport cover that I found on Etsy and wanted to show it off. Tucked inside are some Scottish pounds that I converted to take over with me. Wow, it really sucks that the USD is so weak right now too, cuz I had to pay over $100 for only 50 pounds from there.
Can you tell that I'm excited? :-)

Freckles

Summertime is the perfect time for showing off freckles, don't you agree?
Credits: Love in Paris Collaboration from scraporchard.com

Thursday

Last day of school for my kiddos today!
We have recovered from the previously posted storms and I want to thank everyone that posted their concerns. It means a lot to us :) Summer feels like it is well under way already and June is not quite here yet. Very humid and hot days already and this weekend is supposed to be near 100F already. ARGH....that's Texas for ya though. Anyhow, we're still alive and well and I've not given up on my blog, so do check back for more soon. I'll be flying over to Scotland in a little over a week, so expect to see photos, stories and stuff when I return. I am so excited!!!
Later,
Sharon

Texas Storms

We were hit with terrible storms this past weekend and many around us are still without power. Ours is on, thank goodness! We had neighbors all around us with much worse damages than we had, so we were very thankful. Below are some small photos of what it looked like and also a few that show how life goes on and that Springtime is still wonderful here...

Amazing how strong the winds are to uproot huge trees, roots and all!

This is one side of our home and what it did to some of our fencing.

This is in the middle of trying to temporarily put one side of our fence back up to keep our dogs in.

In the cul de sac down our street, a neighbors whole tree fell through their fence and blocked the whole street, which prevented anyone there from driving to work or wherever they needed to go.


This is the back view of the Farmer's Market building near our home. It's roof was blown off, along with many bricks and in front where you can't see, a huge sign toppled over and the traffic lights at the intersection here were left as bits of wire blowing in the breeze.

My daughter and I drove around the neighboring streets to survey damages and already, people were busy with chainsaws getting debris out of the way. A lot of people could not do anything until their insurance adjusters came to look at the damages. Still others were talked to by the Red Cross trying to determine who needed immediate attention. Did I say that we were lucky?

But....like I said, life goes on and I still have my purple irises blooming in my antique tub in the backyard :)

And my stubby banana tree is sprouting up again :)

And the peach tree hanging over our fence (wink) from the neighbor next to us is full of little peaches, just waiting for the darn squirrels to pluck them if we don't watch out for them! ;)
It will be awhile before everything is back to normal for some of us, but gosh, we were so fortunate!

Sigh of relief

It's been a tough time for me lately. On March 19, I had the wonderful news that my Grandson was born! This was the good part. The other part is that my son was injured in a baseball game. He had numerous injuries, including a concussion and a broken orbital bone, causing his eye to be pushed back some 5 millimeters and drop a bit (yeowwwsh!) If that wasn't bad enough, his sinus cavity literally exploded or burst. He had reconstructive surgery approximately 10 days later, after a round of antibiotics and waiting for immense swelling to go down. Today, you'd almost never notice except that he can't put his contact lenses back on yet and there is still some slight bruising and the stitches are visible until they dissolve just under his lower eyelid. I have to say that this was a scary ordeal to go though for the whole family. My son barely complained the whole time. I was amazed...simply amazed. Again, let me thank those of you who knew of our situation and prayed for him. We are very thankful that he came through this as well as he did. Hopefully, his vision will not be affected, but time will tell and he is recovering nicely! Head and facial injuries can be serious business. If your child gets struck in the head, face, or neck area, please do not take it lightly! We've known of children who have died over seemingly lesser blows. I urge all parents who have children in any type of sports activities to be sure of the policies and procedures regarding such injuries. We found out some interesting things in our children's school district and plan on bringing about a change. I won't discuss details, but we were not happy with with the circumstances surrounding our son's injuries. I am blessed that things worked out the way they did and know that God had His hand in it every step of the way!
Credit for digital elements here.

Happy Easter!

May you all have a blessed Easter and time with your family if you are lucky. I also want to welcome to the world my newest grandson! He is healthy and already at home with Mom and Dad. On another note, I want to update those that are aware of my son's unfortunate accident while participating in a High School baseball game. He is doing well considering what happened and we are anticipating at least one surgery if not more. Prayers and good thoughts are very much appreciated at this time. Thank you and God Bless,
Sharon

Happy St. Paddy's yall!

My own little leprechaun....or wait, that's an Irish thing isn't it? Well this is Scottish, wonder if that is close enough? She is wearing a lovely "See You Jimmy Hat". What is that you ask?
The phrase "See you?" is a charming traditional Scottish preamble to warm and friendly conversation. "Jimmy", due to the popularity of the name James in Scotland's quainter districts, is a sort of John Doe, a wildcard for any random passer-by. That hat did come from Scotland and was the closest thing for today's theme, so that's what we used. Hope you enjoy it!
Bye for now...

B is for bubbles!

How to have fun with minimal cost.
Check out this site: The Bubblesphere

Weekend Finds

My fun finds this weekend! The journal is awesome. I'd actually hoped to find some old journaled handwritten papers, but this one was intact with no writing at all. I have some ideas for it...hopefully I can try them out without losing track of it first, hah. The little pale yellow shirt dress was probably made for a boy. It is totally hand sewn and has a back belted sash thingy. I LOVE the tiny pocket. I tucked 1 out of 11 teeny tiny little rubber doll house babies in it. The carnival kewpie was begging to come along with them, so she also came home with me *sigh*. A wooden painted rabbit jumping jack baby crib toy that would be totally outlawed by today's standards and a leather coin purse with vintage aqua baby rickrack...and I was done.
I just love this old stuff!

Bunny Rabbit Fun & Thunder Snow?

Well it looks like the Easter Bunny came way early around here!
Nicknamed Thumper for obvious reasons, she loves cilantro, carrots and other things soon to be discovered.
*UPDATE ON TODAY! Wow, we have snow, real snow...in fact they said on the news that it was thunder snow. Huh? I swear that I've never heard of that before. Still the same, it is turning white here and just when I thought it was turning into nice Springtime weather. Ahhh well, that's Texas for ya. Blink and it changes!

Grandchild #4

This month we will be blessed with another Grandchild, or Grandson to be more precise. I wanted to share a gift that I made for his arrival in a week or 2. So many changes lately! I don't want to forget that I used a pattern from Missy Ballance who I think is a very talented lady. You can find her blog here. Ingredients used were acrylic safety eyes, soft fleece, polyfill, embroidery floss and grosgrain ribbon. Simple and fun!

Happy Mother's Day (yesterday in the UK)

I learned something new yesterday from my son who recently moved to Scotland. He called me to say Happy Mother's Day. I was confused but very glad to hear from him. Here is what I looked up about it:
Mother's Day was once known as Lady Day and many of its customs date from the 17th century. Long ago children lived and worked away from home. These children were given a day off to go and visit their mothers. They often brought flowers as a present and sometimes a 'simnel 'cake, a very rich fruit cake. In northern England and in Scotland, the preferred refreshments were carlings - pancakes made of steeped pease fried in butter, with pepper and salt. In fact, in some locations this day was called Carling Sunday. People celebrated the fact of being together after such a long time. Even today many families follow this same tradition and either have a special meal together at home or go out to eat. In Scotland Mother's day is celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent. It is made to coincide with the religious feast of Mothering Sunday and is dedicated as a day of peace and happiness towards all mums.

So how about that? :)

Happy Birthday

My "baby's" birthday collage

Fun with Digital Collage

This is something I've been fiddling around with the past few days. It brought out some feelings about myself that I'm dealing with and I'm not really sure anyone else would understand, but this is how it turned out. Somehow it makes me feel better if that makes any sense. Ooh, in all of this messing around, I did learn a new trick with Photoshop. It's the text on a path thing. I always wondered how people did their swirling strings of words so perfectly around in a spiral or any given shape. Now I know! Also...I decided to call this collage "YEARNING".
Later!

Valentine

Mechanical Valentines fascinate me. Hope today is nice and kissy kissy, huggy, huggy, but most of all full of chocolate! (wink)

Finished!

First, thanks for those of you who commented on my last post!

Today I wanted to show you the finished bunny rabbit that I'll have
up for grabs on The Humble Arts this Monday (02.11.08). Her name will likely be revealed when that happens. There is a unique thing about this creature that I'll also share. Unique, meaning a new idea that I tried and hope that folks out there will like too. We're having a beautiful day today, so I'll make this short and sweet.....gonna go enjoy it just a bit.
Bye Bye!

Superbowl Sunday

First of all, let me say that I am not a football fan. I don't actually like watching any sport on TV. I realize that is opposite of 99.9% of how the male population feels. And.....I also realize that there are plenty of females that love to watch football on TV and heck, it's a perfect excuse for a party. How many other ladies out there watch it only for the commercials and the halftime entertainment like I do? If you do, gimme a shout on the comments and let me know. I'm curious to see who is also like me.I have always been a fan of Tom Petty since High School, so watching him and The Heartbreakers play will definitely be nice! Have fun everyone :)

Bunny Love!

Bunny Rabbit, which has yet to be named is finished except for final detailing touches such as more shading, grooming, accessories and selective plucking (ouch!) I'm not even sure if "it" is a male or female yet. Hmmmmmm, it doesn't seem to matter to this little gal in the photo that I'm sharing does it?

Bunny has a head!

Well, I've sewn up the entire rabbit and stuffed the wee head. Now I need to figure out if I want he/she to have lop ears going downward or ears pointing upward. Anyone have a suggestion? Mind you they are only pinned on for now and the eyes are pins for an idea only. They aren't even in the final position, which will be another decision to make. You can change a whole critter's expression just by the placement of the eyes or nose, etc.... I need to put it together with the joints and finish stuffing it. I believe this will have the tiny glass beads for weight, since it is quite smallish. More to follow!

What I'm trying to do next...

The photos here show my next creation in progress. A mohair bunny rabbit is what it is supposed to be, but we'll see what happens. As you can see in the last photo, I have a little helper who sometimes makes things take quite awhile longer to accomplish. She is such a character and fun to be around, but it will be quite some time before she's really able to help with this sort of thing ;)
I'll try to post more as I'm able as this develops...
Please click the photos to see them full size!

Can you find him?

Coffee beans, java, joe, wakeup juice...
This image has been around for awhile, but while drinking a cup of the stuff I decided to share it with those of you who haven't seen it. There really is a man in this! Also, they say that if you can spot him within 1 minute, then the right half of your brain is developed better than most people. I have no idea if this is true, but thought it was fun to find him. For the record, I believe that I spotted him in about half a minute. When you do see him you'll wonder why he didn't stick out immediately. Strange huh?


Let me know if you DON'T see him and I'll tell you where he is :) This isn't a trick, he really is there!

OK, I'll admit that today I was really bored and it was so cold I didn't even want to think about bundling up my Granddaughter and myself to get out just for the sake of going somewhere. So......I made a weird, ecclectic little collage of googled images and came up with this. Hopefully I've not infringed on any copywrited materials. Please forgive me if you notice that I have and by all means let me know, eek.
So here's my "caffeine junkie java joe coffee collage"
(to view up close, click it):

Here's to a great 2008!