My Week in Pictures

I've had a full busy week this week. Not busy as in I've worked 12 hours a day or saved a life or served the underprivileged or anything like that. But busy as in I fixed one thing then broke two more. I know, it's exhausting being me. I don't know how I do it either.

Here's a pictorial review of my week:

I covered the tops of my button jars with scrapbook paper that matches the color of the buttons inside. Because I wanted to, that's why.

I started decorating some of the old bottles I picked up at Trader's Village. I bought them for next to nothing from a couple of gangsta looking black guys who had a store full of frilly white girl antiques. They were practically giving the stuff away so naturally I assumed it was stolen. I was okay with that and bought all I could carry.

Broke the lid to my apple shaped jar that holds all my ribbon scraps. Then broke a chunk out of Grandma Mable's sugar bowl. My box full of broken stuff to use in a mosaic some day is really filling up.

Bought a box of vintage lace on eBay. Didn't really know why I bought it until later in the week.

Once again thought about the DIY version of this Marjorie Skouras chandelier.

Read through the tutorial online, gathered some supplies, then abandoned them. I decided I need more beads before I can even get started.

Finally repaired and hung this most awesome old mirror I bought at an antique store months ago. The bottom swirlie is broken off and a small piece of the top swirlie is missing.

I sanded the broken part at the bottom to round it off and make it (hopefully) look like it's that way on purpose. Then I matched the finish as best I could. This was difficult because the mirror has gold leafing with a natural patina on it. All I had was craft paint.

Sanded the broken piece at the top and once again matched the finish as best I could. I think it blends well...from a distance.

Took a look at my stash of cards, letters, pictures, home videos, and other memorabilia that needs to be sorted and organized. Somehow. It was too daunting so I pulled out my wedding album so I could scan a few pictures.

This is what I found when I opened the box. The cover of the album was sticky, gooey and practically oozing off.

After further investigation I learned that all of the albums like this from the 80s are destined for the same fate since the (now bankrupt) company that made them used a PVC based material for the cover which breaks down over time. I feel sure it probably gave me cancer too.

I completely removed the oozing cancerous cover, sanded off all traces of it and the glue that held it, then fashioned a new and less toxic cover for my 24 year old wedding pictures.

I used a piece of the leftover fabric that I used to cover my dining room chairs. When I get ready to embellish it I will need that big box of lace I got off eBay earlier in the week. See? Sometimes Karma likes me.

I also did some spring cleaning in the family room but I'm not going to show you what I found under my couch. Let's just say it took me 2 days to recover.

Today I made a shopping list (mostly for Amazon) as a result of my other efforts this week:

1. A lamp kit - Because I want my Marjorie Skouras knock-off chandelier to actually work. Not just sit there and do nothing like the one in the DIY tutorial.

2. A blu-ray player - Because I got rid of the dead surround sound system we had that included a dead DVD player.

3. Discsox sleeves - Because this is the storage system I've decided to use for all of our DVDs, CDs and video games. However I am only buying the sleeves and not the stupid trays that they fit in because the trays are pricey and ugly.  I'm pretty sure I can find something cheap and cute that will hold the sleeves just as well.

4. A car console - Because Jayson has somehow managed to completely tear apart the one that's in his car. Hinges broke, the lid came off and there's foam stuffing coming out of the arm rest. This is what happens if you're like us and drive your cars for 10+ years or until they fall apart around you.

5. Yes! Paste - Because I used up nearly a whole jar when I covered my wedding album. And besides, there was a little mold on the side of the jar so I'm pretty sure it had exceeded its nonexistent freshness date. I just removed the mold and used the rest, just like you would if it was a hunk of good cheese.

Tonight Jayson is taking me to see Blue Like Jazz. I can hardly wait! Most Christian movies are so incredibly cheesy and poorly made that I'm embarrassed for them. There are maybe one or two exceptions but for the most part I find them just this side of awful. Of course the message is always good but I get seriously embarrassed for them in their delivery of that message and I would never consider taking a non-Christian friend to see them. I'm hoping Blue Like Jazz will be different. When Steve Taylor, the director, called me he assured me this would be a different kind of Christian movie and would be something my non-Christian friends could enjoy without feeling like they're being persuaded to join Amway.

Did you see how I did that? Did you see how I so casually brought up the fact that a movie director called me? I'm just THAT cool.

Okay, not really. I made a small donation to save the movie when it was in danger of being scrapped due to a lack of funding. I did that because I absolutely loved the book and I hoped the message in the book would reach even more people if it was on the big screen. Steve Taylor, Don Miller and I think Marshall Allman made a vow to call and personally thank each of the 4000+ backers who saved the movie. I was one of them. They made good on their vow.

They have also vowed to personally call each person who sees the movie then posts a review online and tweets about it. That's right. I will be posting a review and waiting patiently for my phone call so that I can tell all my Facebook friends that Donald Miller is my BFF. I'm pretty sure he'll back me up since there may come a day when he'll need another 25 bucks from me.

Silk Tie Dyed Eggs Part Deux

Last year was my first attempt at dying eggs with scraps of silk. You can read about it here. I was really happy with the results even though I used the silk ties I had on hand (which were the ones in my husband's closet) and they weren't very colorful.

Since then I've been collecting brightly colored silk ties and scarves when I can find them for under $1 at the thrift stores.

I've also been thinking about the technique and wondering if there were any ways to improve on it. I wondered if it was really necessary to wrap your silk wrapped egg in a scrap of white fabric before boiling it. This is done to help hold the silk tightly against the egg since the pattern will only transfer when there is snug, direct contact with the egg surface. It is also done to prevent the darker dyes from bleeding onto the lighter eggs. 

I split my eggs into 2 batches this year so I could do some testing on the first batch.  I won't go into detailed instructions since you can read those on my post from last year or on Martha Stewart's website. It's really quite simple and gives you stunning results. And I like that you cook and color your eggs all at the same time. And yes, your eggs will be completely edible.

One thing I learned last year is the importance of making sure the right side of the silk touches the egg as much as possible. Because of the shape of the egg you won't get complete contact all the way around but you can get close. And those undyed "wrinkle" spots are what gives the egg character. If the pattern transferred exactly then it would look like the egg had been decoupaged and if you want an egg to look decoupaged, why not just decoupage it right?

I thought a good way to hold the silk snug against the egg might to be put it inside a panty ho. Just one is a panty ho. Two would be a pair of panty hose. That's how it works at my house. Since I am anti-pantyhose I had to run to the store to grab a box of cheap knee high hose. I think mine came with 10 pairs which is 20 hose and each can be cut in half so that was enough to do all 3 dozen of my eggs.

I wrapped my egg in silk then slipped it inside the panty ho (Can you tell I enjoy saying that?) then made a tight knot right up against the egg. You'll want to twist the ho as if you were tying off a balloon. Make sense?

The picture shows my panty hoed egg lying on the scrap of fabric that I used for last year's eggs. Since this was my experimental batch I did not use the fabric. I just placed my eggs in a pot, added water and vinegar then cooked them till they were done the way I like them.

While your eggs are simmering you can tear some colorful pages out of a magazine, cut them into skinny strips and curl them like curling ribbon. This makes a nice Easter "grass" to line your basket or bowl or whatever you use to display or store your eggs. We do eat our eggs so I always try to use a container that is fridge friendly. This year I just reused the cartons so I could stack them back in the fridge. 

When my eggs were done the water had turned dark blue from the dyes which made me think I should have used the white fabric like Martha told me to. But when I unwrapped my eggs they were perfect! I couldn't see that the dark dye from the water had deposited on any of the other eggs. And the panty hose did a great job of holding the silk snug against the egg. Take THAT Martha!

The picture below shows both batches of my eggs. My first batch is at the bottom and the second batch is at the top.

Another experiment I tried this year was to see if you can really reuse the same scraps of silk more than once. I was skeptical but I took the silk that had just come off the first batch of eggs and used it to wrap my second batch. In the process I learned a few things:

1. Wet silk stinks, don't sniff it.

2. When the silk is wet it is difficult to tell which side is the right side. Either I guess right every time or either side will work.

3. It is easier to wrap an egg in wet silk than dry silk. The wet silk clings to the egg.

4. There was very little difference between my first batch of eggs and the second generation eggs where I reused the silk. In fact, I think I could get another batch or two out of those same scraps.

So there you have it. And now I have another year to collect more pretty silk or to obsess over a different dying technique. In the mean time, enjoy these close-ups:

First generation egg on the left, second generation egg from the same piece of silk on the right.

My favorite egg.

My second favorite egg.

Not sure what happened here but still kinda cool looking.

He Is Risen.

The Big Waffle House Incident of 2012 and The Deadly Rug Doctor

This morning we rented a carpet cleaning machine so Jayson could clean all the upstairs carpets. This was the plan for last weekend, or maybe the weekend before, but we had migraines beyond our control. I did get our taxes done though.

Jayson handles the carpet cleaning because I am generally baffled by the machines and I'm a little afraid of the whole water/electricity proximity. At least that's what I keep telling him and so far he's buying it.

We try to clean our carpets once a year and even though we're renting right now I think it's still a good thing to do. However this particular carpet cleaning episode was necessary as a result of The Big Waffle House Incident of 2012.

My 4 year old nephew Presley was here a few weeks ago and, bless his heart, was a victim of own lack of impulse control. He procured himself a bottle of pancake syrup and proceeded to pour it all over the house. And I mean ALL over the house! There were several dinner plate sized blobs in several bedrooms and in the upstairs hallway.  There were a couple of blobs on the stairs which was logical since he'd squeezed out a nice size serving of chocolate syrup there just a few days earlier. He doused Taylor's stuffed Garfield with it, or maybe it was the bedspread he doused and Garfield got in the line of fire. Hard to tell. He also went into Taylor's closet and poured it on her makeup table. To his credit he was very thorough in the limited time he had.

Ever since then my whole house has smelled like a Waffle House. Not that it's an unpleasant smell, it's just that I half expect to find a homeless person curled up under my dining room table.

In Presley's defense I was the one who left the syrup on the counter the night before. I took it out of the pantry and put it there so my sister wouldn't forget to take it home the next day. The kids use a special sugar free syrup and I sure as heck don't have any use for that! So...I accept my part in The Big Waffle House Incident of 2012. Presley's Daddy owns a little of the incident as well. He was supposed to be watching Pres but he stepped outside for just a minute...which is precisely how long it takes a 4 year old to cover a 3000 square foot house in syrup. Ya know, in case that pops up in a trivia game at some point.

To compound matters Presley chose to inappropriately express his creativity on the morning his family was in a rush to leave town so they could make it to Dallas in time for a doctor's appointment. Of course. These things don't happen during leisure time.

So this morning Jayson and I finally got around to renting a trusty ol' Rug Doctor machine. While Jayson worked on the carpets I colored 3 dozen Easter eggs so it's not like I was lazy while he did all the work. I'm probably more exhausted than he is. Plus I'm injured.

Jayson is the Health, Safety, Quality, Environment, Rules, Regulations, Whatever guy at work. At least until they hire his replacement. He took another position several months ago but they haven't hired a new safety guy yet so he's basically doing 2 jobs. This morning when we brought the Rug Doctor home he carefully explained to me and Taylor how dangerous it will be if we go upstairs then come back downstairs. All of our upstairs is carpeted but all of our downstairs is ceramic tile. Wet feet on ceramic tile can be treacherous. We rolled our eyes at the way he was treating us like 4 year olds. Duh, we know wet tile is slippery. To make Jayson happy I placed an old beach towel at the foot of the stairs so we could dry our feet before stepping on the tile. Problem solved.

After a while, Jayson called me upstairs to inspect the progress and make sure I was satisfied. He was in our bedroom so I just assumed that was the room he had just done.

"Wow, looks great!" I said with more enthusiasm than was necessary.

Jayson replied, "I haven't done this room yet."

The credibility of all my future opinions just vanished into thin air.

Later while I was slaving away on my Easter eggs the yard guys showed up to mow. As soon as I heard their weedeater I darted upstairs to grab the cash to pay them. I was in a rush to get back downstairs so I could catch them before they started mowing. I wanted to ask them to cut the grass a little shorter because it was getting too long too fast. As I raced back downstairs I was aware of the carpet cleaner hose lying on the staircase (Jayson was taking a break) so I made sure not to trip over it. I was real proud of myself for that! I was also aware that only the top half of the staircase was wet. Jayson hadn't gotten to the bottom steps yet. As I approached those last few dry steps at full speed I can recall a mostly subconscious thought that those dry steps probably dried my feet off so it's okay that I'm about to step down onto the tile and completely miss the beach towel I had put there. Then it was just all tangled limbs, carpet burns and flying cash.

I was stunned for a moment then recalled why I was in such a hurry so I hollered for Jayson to come downstairs...which is no small feat since the man is nearly deaf. He made sure I wasn't critically injured then he took care of the yard guys. That was actually sort of funny to listen to since Jayson can't hear and they don't speak English anyway :)

Jayson came back inside to find me whining and Taylor examining my injuries. He looked at me and asked, "Were you not at this morning's safety meeting??"

I didn't dignify his question with a response.

Then he asked Taylor, "Did you understand the safety meeting this morning?"

To which the little rat enthusiastically replied, "Yes, *I* did!"

Fortunately I didn't break anything and I have only a few minor scratches and scrapes to remind me of my stupidity. There is some slight swelling in my ankle which concerned me since tomorrow is Easter Sunday. Fortunately I can still shove it into my tennis shoe and my Easter jeans will keep it covered.

Cooking Is A Crock

I read a lot of DIY, design, organizing and homekeeping type blogs. I find a lot of good ideas on them that I can adapt for my own personal use. Some of them are really good, they seem to be written by gals like me who are just trying to make their environment as pleasant as possible with what resources they have. Others are just nuts.

Yesterday I ran across one site where the gal makes Martha Stewart look like a slacker. She had a computerized 'floor plan' of her refrigerator showing which shelves and bins each type of food belongs in. I kid you not. It was color coded and everything. I will admit that I sometimes covet a perfectly organized fridge and pantry but if I ever go so far as to draw up a blueprint for them I hope someone loves me enough to just shoot me in the head.

Occasionally some of these bloggers will write about once-a-month cooking where they get together with friends and on one day they cook up and freeze enough meals to last them an entire month. Not only does it save cooking time in the evenings, but your grocery shopping is done for the month except for picking up milk, bread and other staples you use every day. I think that's brilliant, especially for working moms with young children.

I am not a working mom nor do I have young children anymore but I still think the idea is brilliant. The time it takes to cook a meal isn't really an issue for me now that I'm "retired", it's the effort that gets to me. Contrary to what it might look like, I am extremely lazy when it comes to doing things that I don't want to do. I can knock out 15 craft projects in one day but most nights my family fends for themselves for dinner because I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than have to cook.

I'm not sure why I despise cooking so much. It might go back to my childhood. My mother cooked supper every single night except on Sundays. And let me tell you, we felt like the most neglected children on the face of the earth because we had to make our own sandwich or our own bowl of cereal on Sunday nights.

My mother is an excellent cook and she never made us eat anything we didn't like. We weren't force fed brussel sprouts and we didn't have to clean our plates if we didn't want to. That was never much of a problem for me. I was always the last one to finish my meal and after my 6'4" Dad finished his he would hover over my plate with his fork saying, "are you going to finish that?" or "are you done with this?". He would ask these questions after he'd already speared my food with his fork and it was on its way to his mouth. By the time he was done, my plate was clean! And I didn't top 100 pounds until my senior year in high school.

When my mom was making supper she didn't want anyone in the kitchen with her. We were not helping, we were just in the way. We weren't allowed in the kitchen until she was done, then she called us in to put ice in the glasses for the freshly brewed iced tea she made every night. That was the extent of my kitchen experience growing up: icing the glasses. If you need a glass full of ice, I'm your gal. No one can put ice in a glass like I can, that's for sure.

I can't recall my mother ever using a crock pot but that doesn't mean she didn't use one. Since my sister and I weren't allowed in the kitchen while meals were being prepared, I have no idea what she used or didn't use. I was almost grown before I was finally able to remember which one was the oven and which was the stove. They say the way to a man's heart is through is stomach but my husband will tell you that I took a different route.

One thing I know for sure is that during my lifetime my mother has never made a casserole of any kind. I grew up in the 60s and 70s when the casserole was queen. But not at my house. We had meat and potatoes every night. The closest thing to a casserole my mother ever made was a Lebanese dish with chicken, rice and chickpeas. They were all cooked together in the same big pot and that's the only thing that made it casserole-ish. I was a full grown adult before I ever tasted a tuna casserole with cheese and potato chips on top. It was delightful.

We also didn't do a lot of fast food when I was young. When we wanted hamburgers my mother fired up the grill and made us hamburgers. I never saw my Dad even touch the barbecue grill. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know how one works even to this day. We had fast food less than once a month and when we did it was always from Burger King. We got ice cream at Dairy Queen on occasion but other than that I was in high school before I experienced the joys of McDonald's and Taco Bell. Because of that I made sure that my daughter got to experience every local fast food place multiple times before she was even 2 years old. I felt like that made her a more cultured toddler.

Whatever the reason for my lack of cooking motivation, I still don't cook very often. Lately I have fallen in love with my crock pot thanks to Pinterest and sites like Crockin Girls, A Year of Slow Cooking, and Get Crocked. I find that if I use my crock pot I might cook as much as twice a week, which is double my normal output mode.

While searching the internet for some new crock pot recipes, I came across several blog posts and conversations about crock pot freezer meals. Done in the style of the once-a-month cooking, you gather up all your ingredients for several crock pot meals. You prep your ingredients by chopping, seasoning, browning ground beef, etc. Then you put everything in a gallon size ziploc bag and toss it in your freezer. When you need a meal you just pull out a bag and follow the instructions that you wrote on it when you prepared it. What could be easier, right?

For my first venture I chose 10 recipes to try. A couple of them were not specifically crock pot recipes but could be easily adapted. Taylor asked why I didn't start smaller for my first experiment and I just stared at her incredulously. After all this time does she still not know me??!

I dropped 4 large at Kroger and come home with everything I needed to make these meals:

Parmesan Tilapia
Beef Stew
Chicken Tetrazini
Calico Bean Soup
Mexican Chicken
Ham and Green Beans
Creamy Beef over Noodles
Steak and Potato Packets
Crock Pot Lasagna

I know, that's only 9. I got tired and decided to ditch the last one so I won't include it. I figure 10 (or 9) meals will probably last us a month when you factor in leftovers, pizza nights, sandwich nights, ice cream nights, etc. I couldn't find the beef stew recipe that I use online but there are a bazillion, just pick one you like. 

I thought it would take me about 3 hours to get everything done but it ended up taking 4-1/2 hours. I think if I had planned things out better I could have done it in less time. And if Kroger hadn't been out of stew meat I wouldn't have had to buy rump roasts to make my own which added on quite a bit of time. Plus my family kept interrupting me so they could make themselves something to eat since I sure as heck wasn't gonna do it. I was much too busy cooking to be bothered with feeding them.



I don't think I've ever trashed my kitchen as badly as I did last night. Some of the dishes I chose required extra cooking steps such as browning ground beef, blanching beans, and cooking chicken and some pasta. That added a little extra time but it was worth it for recipe variety. I generally despise tossing a piece of meat into the crock pot with a can of cream-of-whatever soup. It just lacks imagination. That's why only 1 of the recipes I chose uses a cream-of-something soup.

You should know that I didn't follow those recipes exactly. I substituted and left some things out to suit my family's tastes. For example, the ham and green beans recipe calls for ham hocks. I must admit I did not know what a ham hock was but I like ham in general so I decided to give it a try. Jayson went to the store with me and we both had trouble finding the ham hocks. When we did, we looked at the package and said simultaneously, "Oh HELL no!" Maybe they taste like a little slice of heaven but we'll never know since we deemed them too ugly to eat. I substituted a nice ham steak and we went on about our business.

By the end of the evening I had a freezer full of crock pot meals with instructions written on the bags. I also wrote on there if anything needed to be added such as stirring in cream cheese at the end. How convenient would this be for a mom with young kids when she needs to leave town for a few days. Dad can pop one of these into the crock pot before he goes to work and by the time he gets home he's got supper ready for the kids. He might forget to bathe them while Mom is gone, but this way they stand a decent chance of getting fed.

I think this is going to work out great for me since it significantly reduces the time I have to spend in the kitchen when I decide to cook, and it also cuts down on the amount of grocery shopping I'll have to do during the month since most of the meals are already prepared. I'll have to grab milk, bread, and eggs on occasion but that's better than the hour of drudgery it takes to do the weekly shopping. Okay fine, biweekly. Every 3 weeks at the most. Usually.

Sanatorium, Texas

A couple of weeks ago I was in Texas Junk Co. and found a box of papers that looked like it had come out of someone's attic. I probably spent half an hour sifting through it, expecting to uncover a brown recluse nest behind every page.

Fortunately I didn't find any spiders but I did find this fabulous letter postmarked January 13, 1941. That is exactly 50 years before Taylor was born so I bought the letter, not paying too much attention to any of the other details.

Once I got it home and took a good look at it, I noticed the postmark was from Sanatorium, Texas. Sanatorium?? Who in their right mind would want to live in a town called Sanatorium? Thanks to my sister's stealthy Googling skills we discovered that approximately 55,000 adults and children with tuberculosis chose to live there between 1912 and 1969. It was the state's first and largest TB colony.

To be honest, I had no idea there were TB colonies. I know about leper colonies but had never heard of TB colonies. After some research I learned that there was a guy who was cured of tuberculosis after a stay in the Himalayan mountains. Tuberculosis sanatoriums in the United States tried to duplicate those conditions by providing a treatment of fresh air, lots of food and milk, and plenty of rest. That was the cure for TB until effective drugs and surgical treatments showed up in the 1950s.

Sanatorium, Texas (which no longer exists) was located just outside of San Angelo. At its largest the complex covered 1,000 acres. It had 35 buildings including a post office, library, barber shop, dairy, hog farm, a power plant, a printing press with its own newspaper, a school for the children, churches, and a sewing club. Sounds like a town to me.

Eventually more effective TB treatments were discovered so there was no longer a need for a sanatorium. The facility was converted to the San Angelo State School which continues to serve the MHMR community.

Am I the only one fascinated by that? Probably. If you want the whole story you can read about it at the Texas State Historical Association.

I was shocked to discover that TB is still a serious problem in third world countries. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I thought it was like small pox or polio and had pretty much been wiped out or was under control. That's not the case at all. Even though there are now effective treatments for TB, those who are at the highest risk for it don't have access to those treatments. That makes me sad.

I also learned that when old books and movies talk about people dying of "consumption" they're talking about tuberculosis. I did not know that. Early folklore associated tuberculosis with vampires since it tended to suck the life from its victims.

The letter I bought appears to be from a young woman with TB living in Sanatorium. She's writing home to her mother and family. Oh, I also learned that a huge percentage of the world's population has been exposed to TB but the disease generally only manifests in those with weakened immune systems or those whose living conditions are unsanitary. This made me feel much better since I can just picture this gal coughing all over her letter as she was writing it and now I'm handling it while eating a bag of chips. If I lived in Africa I would be in serious trouble.

The letter is hard to read because of the woman's handwriting and she wasn't exactly queen of the spelling bee. Apparently her mother sent her some gifts for which she was very grateful. She especially needed the "scizers" because her fingernails and toenails were about a "foot long". She wanted her mother to make and send her some teacakes with raisins then proceeds to tell her how to make them.

She described what she had for dinner and she circled the word "milk" as if she'd had all of it she could stand. She was receiving gas treatments in which her lung was collapsed then filled with some kind of gas. She said her doctor might let her come home in 6 months if she stayed in bed. Bless her heart.

Then at the end of the letter it looks like she says something about the "last time the Dr. will see my ass". I'm not sure what that's all about.

I got some more letters from that same treasure box from a man staying in some kind of hospital in Muskogee, Oklahoma. It appears to be a long term stay but I can't figure out what his affliction is. Those letters are from the 1920s. I'll have to scan them later so that maybe someone can help me decipher them. It'll be my luck that he had small pox or something so now I'm probably a carrier for that as well as TB.