Nothing says love like meat on a stick.

Last weekend our good friends Chad and Jamie Thibodeaux and their kids from Lafayette came for a visit. We had a great time as usual and we saw some fun stuff.

Thursday afternoon while waiting for everyone to arrive I decided to put our DVDs into their new space saving storage system. We don't have a lot of them but the ones we do have were shoved into a bulky plastic storage box.

BEFORE

I bought some DiscSox sleeves and was able to get 44 DVDs (some of them have 2 discs) into this cute little container that I crocheted. Now all I have to do is make dividers for it then buy some more sleeves for all the Wii games. You can buy the official DiscSox holders and dividers but the sleeves are nearly $1 each so I opted to buy those and make everything else myself.

AFTER

When everyone got here we went to Willie's Grill & Icehouse for dinner. They have a tasty chicken fried steak that's about the size of a frisbee.

Friday morning we headed for the Museum of Health and Medical Science. It wasn't as awesome as the Children's Museum but it was still a lot of fun and I would recommend it.

In the main hall of the museum they have lots of stations set up with brain teaser puzzles on them. I could have spent all day just trying to figure those out. We got a few of them but most kicked our butts. I was really impressed with one that Chad figured out where you were given about a dozen oversized nails. You had to stick one nail in a hole in the table then balance the rest of the nails on the head of that one nail. He actually did it. I spent 30 minutes trying to make the letter "T" out of 4 oddly shaped blocks and never could figure it out.

Colin getting x-rayed.

Emily studying her cells.

Jamie playing with livers.

Emily & Chad playing Mindball.

Jayson visiting a brain.

2 sets of actual functioning pig lungs. The lungs on the right are what they look like after smoking for 1 year. We couldn't figure out how they taught that pig to smoke.

After learning all about our bodies and what happens when pigs smoke, we decided to track down Bernie's Burger Bus. This guy converted an old school bus into a roach coach that serves up the most amazing hamburgers on the planet. We have chased that silly bus all over Houston and finally caught up with it at Inversion Coffee House, conveniently located on Montrose right next to Texas Art Supply.

Pricey but worth it.

Truffle laced hand cut fries with parmesan and green onions, served with homemade ketchup.

Once our tummies were full and satisfied we cruised by the Art Car Museum. If you're craving something funky, you can find it there.

This car is covered in mosaics made from broken pottery, porcelain, ceramic and other glass pieces.

I can't remember exactly how many thousands of pounds the car weighs but it was several.

This is usually what I think of when I think about art cars.

I guess I would put it on my art car too if I had an extra water buffalo head lying around.

Me and Jamie decided we loved this car and would proudly drive it to Wal-Mart every day. My phone camera just couldn't pick up the incredible sparkliness going on.

Even the engine is pretty.

This is the hydraulic stuff in the trunk.

The interior is to die for. How Austin Powers is that?! The only way it could be better would be to add some of my turquoise pompom trim.

Friday night we made one of several trips to Connie's Frozen Custard which is (in)conveniently located just a couple of blocks from my house. We can do this guilt-free since we learned the custard is gluten free. It's practically health food.

Friday night I put some steel cut oats in the crock pot along with coconut milk, banana slices, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Saturday morning we had some rockin' oatmeal for breakfast. I used this recipe and doubled it but left out the weird stuff. Flax seed? I don't freakin' think so.

After breakfast we headed up to Conroe to help Jamie's sister move into her new apartment. On the third floor. On the upside, it's a one bedroom apartment and she had everything neatly packed in the U-Haul. On the downside, it's a THIRD FLOOR APARTMENT.

Jayson & Chad trying to will the mattress to walk upstairs on its own.

It probably wouldn't have been so bad if I would get off my couch more often but since I'm not used to doing strenuous things such as walking, it pretty much did me in. I still have jelly legs. However, it was totally worth it cuz we got to know Jamie's sister better and her new apartment is just adorable.

We had a late lunch at Chofa's Bar and Grill in Conroe. If you're ever in Conroe take my advice and eat anywhere but there. The food wasn't bad, in fact the burgers were delicious. The atmosphere is nice but confusing. It's a sports bar type place but the decor is contemporary Asian...lots of dark wood and leather sofas. The problem is that the staff are idiots. We got there around 3 and ordered some of our meals off the lunch menu which had reduced prices from 11-4, and some meals were from the regular dinner menu. When we got the check we were charged full price for some of the lunch menu items since the order was placed at 3:56. The last time I checked, 3:56 was still before 4:00 but Chofa's doesn't see it that way.

Happy at Chofa's because we hadn't yet been ripped off.

Sunday we decided to trek on up to Old Town Spring.  I hadn't been there in over 10 years and was surprised to see how much it had grown. It was the last day of the Texas Crawfish festival so it was extremely crowded and we had to try really hard to keep from laughing at the overpriced and teeny tiny little things they were calling crawfish. Bless their hearts. No self respecting Cajun would ever eat those.

We met up with Jamie's sister and Chad's cousin and walked around until we were tired of looking at stores that were pretty much all identical on the inside. There were a few that stood out but for the most part it was like Chinatown for white people.

Here are some sights from the day:

$15.99 for dollar store jars glued to dollar store candlesticks.

$34 for dried paint on a wooden palette.

When I am old I will wear purple. And I will drive a Ducati.

A cake ball bakery that donated $1 to breast cancer research every time you bought one of their boob balls, which looked like a ...boob.

Chad spent a good 45 minutes at the cake ball place trying to solve yet another puzzle. This was fine with me since it gave me time to savor my pineapple upside down cake ball which was the best tasting ball I'd had in my mouth all day.

No Green/Thibodeaux outing would be complete without meat on a stick. Here we see Chad and Jayson with dueling corndogs.

Is it weird that I have an entire album of Chad feeding Jamie some kind of meat on a stick? I didn't' think so either. At least this time there wasn't a traumatized child in the background.

Old Town Spring 2012

Traders Village 2011

After the Old Town Spring festivities we all went back to the house where we ate tacos, made yet another trip to Connie's and visited and laughed until the wee hours of like almost midnight. If you want to make any of us crumble into a fit of hysterical laughter just say "I will dance for you" with a Columbian accent.

Jamie's sister spent the night Sunday night and we all went to IKEA on Monday morning followed by lunch at Five Guys Burgers.

We had a great weekend with old friends, made some new friends and are already looking forward to the next time we can all get together. I don't know exactly when that will be or what we will do but rest assured there WILL be meat on a stick.

Safe and Sound

One mystery has been solved. No, I didn't find my drawing pens and pencils which I discovered missing a few days ago. I have a feeling I might have put them someplace "safe" before my sister and her family came to visit so that my 4 year old nephew wouldn't be tempted by them.

I may doodle only a couple of times each month but when I do I simply MUST have my drawing pens and pencils. They are an extension of my very essence during that time. If they don't turn up soon I will have to replace them which will be inconvenient and expensive and will pretty much guarantee that I find the original set shortly after replacing them. It will be the airline tickets all over again.

About 15 years ago Jayson and I bought plane tickets to Florida to visit his family and do the Disney World thing. This was back before e-tickets. You could buy plane tickets online but they sent you an actual ticket that you hold in your hand. We bought our tickets several months in advance so we could get a good price. Once they were delivered, I put them in a safe place since we wouldn't need them for quite a while.

About a month before we were due to leave, Jayson asked if I still had the tickets safe and sound. I was sure that I did but I couldn't remember exactly where that safe and sound place was. He and I literally tore up our little house searching for those tickets. This was early in our marriage when Taylor was only about 4 years old and plane tickets were a huge expense for us. We couldn't find them. And believe me, we looked everywhere.

I was extremely upset and felt awful for losing those expensive tickets. My sweet husband wasn't very happy about it but he never yelled at me or blamed me in any way. At least not out loud. After an unfruitful search we decided we would have to go ahead and replace the tickets. We could have waited a while to see if they turned up but we were afraid we might not be able to get the same flight if we waited too long. I think it cost us $75 per ticket to replace all 3 but we coughed it up and did it.

When the new tickets arrived I put them in the top desk drawer and told Jayson where I put them so we wouldn't have to repeat the lost ticket nightmare.

A few days before we were due to leave, Jayson and I were lying in bed talking about the trip and he said something like, "You know where the tickets are, right?" The giant hands of panic gripped my throat as I tried to remember where I put the tickets. I was pretty sure I put them in the desk drawer but I hadn't actually seen them in several weeks.

I bolted out of bed with Jayson on my heels and threw open the desk drawer. The force with which I opened it caused the contents to shift to the back of the drawer then slammed up against the drawer front. I picked up the envelope and with a sigh of relief handed it to Jayson so I could take a breath and regain my composure.

I will never forget Jayson's next words: "Uh honey? These are the original tickets."

Yes, I had just found the tickets we paid to replace and now we couldn't find the replacements. We knew we couldn't use the original tickets because they were voided when we replaced them so not finding the replacement tickets was not an option. Jayson stuck his hand inside the desk drawer and reached up toward the bottom of the desk top. He pulled out another envelope with our replacement tickets inside.

The ticket envelopes were getting snagged on a piece of wood that was attached to the underside of the desk top. So technically it wasn't my fault that I kept losing them. The poorly designed desk was hiding them from me. Totally not my fault.

I would like to say that I never lost anything important after that but that would be a lie. Fortunately I usually manage to find the temporarily misplaced item before too much damage is done. For example, our sweet dog Snappy died just before Christmas. We had her remains cremated and the doggie funeral place gave them back to us in a lovely urn.

About 5 years ago our other dog Pongo died while we were living in Louisiana. We had him cremated as well but there was no doggie funeral place so we got his remains back Cajun style: in a gallon size ziploc baggie wrapped in a paper sack. I was traumatized by having to see his remains which really didn't look any different than what you'd find in the bottom of your fireplace except that they were unusually heavy. Dense, maybe. Anyway I knew I needed to get an urn for him but the whole idea of having to transfer him from his baggie to an urn just turned me inside out so I never really seriously looked for one.

When Snappy died and I saw her nice urn I made a decision to start seriously looking for an urn for Pongo's remains. But...I couldn't remember exactly where those remains were. I knew they made the move from Louisiana to Texas with us because the movers asked what was in the paper sack while they were packing. I explained to them that it was our dog and I assured them that was the only dead body they would come across. Most likely.

Experience taught met that Pongo's temporarily misplaced remains would eventually turn up so I didn't worry about it. I even found a lovely old copper coffee canister to use as his urn. It sat in a closet for several weeks until I found his remains one afternoon while digging through some stuff I had stored in Harry Potter's room (the room under the stairs). Of course then I remembered putting him there several months before. Safe and sound.

Fortunately the canister was large enough so that I didn't have to actually take Pongo's ashes out of the baggie. I just put the whole ziploc bag, still sealed and taped shut, into the canister. He was a perfect fit.

So...FYI, the ashes of one 60 pound dog will fit into a container roughly the size of a coffee canister. Just in case you ever need to know that.

None of what I just said has anything to do with the mystery that was just solved. Over the past year I have pretty much doubled in size like a nice yeasty bread dough. I am also unusually tired and lack more energy than I usually lack. Being narcoleptic I am sleepy 24/7 but tired is not the same as sleepy. At least not in my world. I live in a constant state of sleepy but I'm not always tired, or at least I didn't used to be. Lately I seem to have zero energy and everything I eat goes straight to my already ample caboose. My eating habits haven't changed and I still exercise the same amount I always have which is not at all. I thought these things were probably just more benefits of the perimenopause hell I'm in.

Turns out, my thyroid is out of whack again. I usually have it checked at least once a year but moving during this last year got me all off schedule. My new doctor said my thyroid levels have dropped significantly over the past year and I need to get back on a thyroid replacement. I've taken thyroid pills off and on for about 15 years but I haven't needed them in 6 or 7 years. My last doctor said my "thyroid is trying to go out," as if it was an old air conditioning unit. Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it needs help. It's been a while since it's given me any trouble so it never even occurred to me that it might be the cause of my weight gain, lack of energy and even my perpetual state of hotflashiness. This would have been good to know 30 pounds ago.

So I'm adding one more pill to may daily regiment which includes 8 others. I feel like this is entirely too much medication for someone as youthful as me but bad things happen when I try to eliminate one of them. So here I am a tired, middle aged, forgetful, yeasty-assed, pill popping narcoleptic whose body organs function like a 1973 Pinto. Don't you wish you were me?

Art Car Dreams

A couple of weeks ago I scored a huge box of lace and trim from eBay. In that box was this lovely pompom trim:

The color in the picture is funky, it's actually turquoise. What in the heck am I going to do with THAT? And I have yards and yards and yards of it. As I was contemplating how I might possibly use such a hideous thing, I realized I was staring out my front window, looking at the car that's been parked at the curb exactly half way between our house and our neighbor's house for the past two weeks.

HHmmm. I thought this trim might actually look nice on an art car. I found myself wishing someone had a spare El Camino they would be willing to let me have my way with. I would cover the interior with various patterns of faux fur then trim it out with these classy turquoise pompoms. Of course the look wouldn't be complete without pink fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. How fun would that be?

I wondered why the car had been parked there so long. No one has touched it as far as I know. I just assumed it belonged to the neighbor but what if he just assumed it belonged to us? Could it be abandoned? That thought hadn't occurred to me before because this is not the kind of neighborhood where one would expect to find an abandoned Bonneville. Not that it's an upscale neighborhood or anything, it's just suburbanly boring.

I did what anyone would do if they happened upon an abandoned car. I looked in the windows to check for dead bodies and I sniffed around the trunk for any signs of decomposition. I used to watch Forensic Files all the time so I know stuff.

I deemed it a corpse-free Bonneville then glanced over at the neighbor's house to see if he was home so I could ask him if the car belonged to him. Alas, he was still at work.

I started to imagine what would happen if the car was abandoned. I'm sure I could have it towed away but what if the owner left it here because he didn't want it anymore? I can't imagine anyone abandoning a car that still runs but I have to assume it still runs because it didn't get here by itself, right? I wondered if the owner would just sign it over to me.

I could have my very own art car. Finally! And I could probably work on it right there at the curb. It's been there a couple of weeks already so it obviously doesn't bother my neighbor and I've barely paid any attention to it until today. I could invite my friends over (just as soon as I make some) to help with the transformation and we could all ride in it in the next art car parade. I can just picture it.

The car would be amazing. Not kitschy or tacky like most art cars, but classy and edgy with just a touch of whimsy. Something along the lines of Magnolia Pearl's vintage Airstream they pull behind their vintage Rolls Royce. I don't have an Airstream or a Rolls Royce but I might have a Bonneville, dang it, and I can glue nice stuff on it too.

I could cut the top off to make it a convertible. I don't know how to do that but I'm sure I could Google it. I would use all the materials that are so popular right now: lots of muslin, old books, dictionary pages, rhinestone brooches out the wazoo, vintage lace (got that covered), jute, and some baker's twine for good measure. It will look like Etsy threw up on my car and it will be fabulous.

I'm gonna be so pissed if that's my neighbor's car.

Stuff I do to avoid doing what really needs to be done.

Well it's been another busy week here at Casa del Verde. Wait, what? It's only Thursday? Good grief, I've wasted a week's worth of time in only 4 days. I'm even more awesome than I thought!

Let's do pictures again so I won't get too wordy.

A couple of weeks ago this was my system for storing lace and trim. I outgrew this system with one eBay purchase.

This is my new lace storage system. I wanted something that would organize *and* display my trims so this works for now. I do tend to change things up quite often.

I've ordered a center support for the curtain rod and I need to collect a few more vintage brooches so I'll have one on each hanger.

Been eyeballing these dead cow skins at IKEA for about a year. The other day I noticed their stash was looking sort of picked over so I decided I'd better grab one before they're gone. Naturally, the one I wanted was on the bottom of the pile that I could not lift on my own. I enlisted the help of a couple of muscular gay guys who were doing some Sunday afternoon shopping.

I put the dead cow skin in my reading nook and I absolutely love it.

Remember this shelf I bought at a thrift store when we first moved here? It's nice and heavy but it was missing the glass shelves that were supposed to be used with it. I suppose I could have had some glass cut to fit but that would have cost more than I paid for the whole thing. Plus, that's just boring.

It's taken me almost a year but I've finally collected enough trays to fill the slots. I would love to have all vintage silver plated trays but was unable to find any that fit within my tight tolerance. The trays had to measure between 15-3/4" and 16" in diameter. Not a fraction more, not a fraction less. And they had to cost under $10 each. It wasn't easy to find trays I half way liked that fit within my specific requirements.

I loaded the shelves with little knick knacks, travel souvenirs and collectibles that I've gathered over the years. What I really need is a curio cabinet but I haven't found just the right one yet. When I do I will once again repurpose these shelves.

While doing some spring cleaning I came across our deceased dog, Pongo, whose remains have been misplaced for several months. When our dog Snappy died at Christmas we had her cremated and she came back to us in that lovely urn on the right. I never had an urn for Pongo. He's been living in a ziploc baggie all this time, bless his heart. Shortly after snappy died I found a container that would make a perfect urn for Pongo but I couldn't remember where I put him. I recently found him safe and sound in Harry Potter's room (the room under the stairs) where I had put him. That's him in the copper coffee canister on the left.

Going back to IKEA tonight to see if they still have this adorable linen cabinet that I desperately need. I didn't get it while I was there over the weekend because I was by myself and there was no way I could have gotten it into the car on my own. It's a discontinued item so it's half price and perfect for what I need. I'm just praying it will still be there tonight when Jayson gets off work. I don't know whose pasty leg that is reflected in the glass. It's certainly not mine, that's for sure.

Also at IKEA I picked up a couple of pairs of really cheap sheers for the family room windows. I miscalculated so I'll grab another package tonight. They're $4.98 for a 2 pack so I might grab extras just in case.

Since I was in a window treatment mode, I changed up the one in our bedroom. I took down the glove valance that nobody but me liked and replaced it with a decorative rod and a long piece of fabric that I got at a thrift store a while back.

I used a pair of gloves and a vintage rhinestone brooch for the tie backs.

The rest of the gloves are now hanging over the window in the back door. I need to pick up a double rod so I can hang a curtain then use the gloves as a valance over it. I like them, dang it, I don't care if no one else does.

This jar began it's life with spaghetti sauce in it but after painting the inside it's now a lovely vase. Taylor's room has a beachy theme so it will go well in there. I made the flowers out of coffee filters that I dyed pink with avocado skins.

I'm making some dictionary page flowers but don't have any immediate plans for what to do with them yet.

These are coffee filter hibiscus flowers that I'm still tweaking.

Hung these little shelves that I had sitting around so my buttons would have a place to live.

We're having house guests next weekend so I'm not going to start any big projects until after they've gone. One thing I need to do is clean out my garage. I know, I keep talking about it and not doing it. I also have a storage cabinet in my art room that is just sitting there empty. That is not acceptable. I need to put it to good use but it's too ugly in its present condition so I'm thinking about painting it or maybe covering it with dictionary pages or fabric or something. That has to be done outside so I just need about 4 days in a row with no rain. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so.