I'm a 35 year young, wife to an amazing man, mom to a wonderful son (whom I homeschool), & businesswoman. I'm new to blogging, but a long time user of the internet, so hang on and some amazing things are going to be happening here.
Ok, I know it's been a long while since I've posted, but I just can't seem to make the time to keep up with things here and everything else. Several things are going to be changing in the next couple of months to free up some of my time again so hopefully that will mean that I will start keeping up here better.
I have lots of things that have been going on and just loads of news, but to keep this from being a novel I'll just hit some of the most recent highlights.
Easter week is when everything really started to turn around here lately. We made peace with our neighbors and now have a wonderful relationship with them, which is doubly great since they are the in-laws to my darling step-daughter Nancy and the other set of grandparents to my gorgeous little grand children Dameon & Katie. So now when the kids come over they aren't so divided or strained as to which house they come to. Also, we now have the occasional privilege of some wonderful little living lawn mowers from across the street. These are cute little miniature horses that make great lawn mowers and are providing us some extra manure for compost for our garden and for worm food soon for Todds worm farming.
Easter was fabulous, we had company over to the house for the first time in ages, cooked out and had friends and family over and were back and forth across the street with the kids and grandkids so much of the time you would think that we planned a two house Easter, but it was fabulous and wonderful fun.
The highlight of Easter for me was Darren and I going over to this lovely lady's house to look at a horse (I fell in love) and Darren agreed that we could get him. I am now the very proud owner of a wonderful 2 year old Quarter horse, newly named 'Orion'. He's pretty skinny still, but filling out everyday, he'd just not been getting enough to eat where he was, due to some very dominant mares, but he's just gorgeous and even though he's only been with me for a little over a week we have made wonderful progress in training and bonding and I just can't wait for us to learn the next thing together. The whole family is excited about having him as part of our family, including my outside cats. I'll have to see if I can get a video of Slinky playing with Orion's hair soon, she acts almost like it's catnip the way she behaves, it's hilarious and just has to be seen to be believed.
Todd has been making amazing progress with his business ideas as well, he's decided to do worm farming, due to the wonderful donation of two commercial worm boxes by his Uncle David & Aunt Deta. Todd is also negotiating paying jobs off and on during the week and keeping track of who owes him for what job. His studies are going pretty well, but we've gotten a bit off track lately with everything else going on, so time to get focused again.
Darren is still doing great at his job and has survived a couple of lay-offs, so we're really encouraged that they do plan to keep him on there, which is great in this particular time of unemployment for so many.
Mom is doing great and is starting to get motivated to getting some work done outside now that it's pretty out. I still worry about her health, cause she just doesn't take very good care of herself.
Well, I know I was going to try to keep this short, but you'll just have to deal with it to get the updates.
I don't have long to post, cause I've spent the whole day finishing some updates to my website, getting several orders ready to go out in the mail tomorrow & getting the finishing touches on the newsletter (which I'm proud to say has gone out right on time and I think without any glitches) major Whoo Hooo!!
Now then on to what I really wanted to share with all of you. We went to my in-laws for our second Thanksgiving dinner this holiday and got a wonderful surprise. Our daughter and her husband were able to make it with both of our darling grand children & I got lots of pictures.
Here are Josh, Nancy & Katie
Proud Grandpa Darren & Katie
Todd & Katie
Todd & Dameon
We are all so proud of them and thankful that we have them in our lives.
Blessings & Grace, Tricia
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Well this is what I've been up to the last several weeks, not the lovely girl in the picture, the wonderful knitted creation on her head. With many thanks to Becca for being willing to pose in my hat and being an absolutely wonderful young lady, whom I'm foreseeing a great future for. I've been making my unique contribution to haberdashery. These are extra long knitted stocking hats that double as scarfs when wrapped around your neck. I have them in 4', 5', 5-1/2', and am working on one over 6' long, some have pom-poms and some have tassels and all are wonderfully soft and at this time are in two-color combinations. I will be working on some in local school colors soon and am thinking about offering some for sale online if I can keep a few in stock, right now they are selling pretty fast and I'm taking orders for a few that I'll be working on between getting others made. Here is another picture of the same hat, which by the way is already sold, so if you like it, let me know and I'll put you on the list for one soon. Just a brief note on the homeschooling front, Todd is doing wonderfully on his online curriculum at Time4Learning.com this has been a great learning experience for Todd and the rest of the family since we all work with him on different subjects. We're a little behind in science, but have several experiments going right now so I'm not as concerned about keeping up on the course work since we can catch up more on that one soon. Todd is speeding through the language arts and I expect him to be moving up a grade level soon. Math is moving along pretty well and shouldn't be very far behind language arts. Social Studies has really started picking up now that he's starting to get curious about the people that he's been learning about and the rest of the family is really enjoying learning about them as well.
It's really starting to cool off around here and we've actually made it down to freezing temps briefly a couple of nights so the garden is starting to die back severely, and we're making lots of plans for next years garden. I'll have to catch you up on that later when I have some solid idea of what we're doing.
Right now I've got a few things I'm focusing on, such as business and garage sales to clear things out in preparation for house renovations. We have several new products that will be on Herbal Grace next month so if you don't already get my newsletter, please email me and I'll add you to the list.
Well I'm back from being a bit of an internet hermit. Things have been really busy in our little world these past several months and it's been all I could do just to keep up with everything else that I've had to do, and not necessarily all that good at that.
Herbal Grace has hit the road a bit, we are doing some local Trade Days now in Longview and Gilmer and may add one more after the first of the year.
Darren had been out of work for the last 3 months after what we thought was a back injury, but turned out to be a kidney stone. Either way when he went to go back to work at his old job, they decided that they didn't need him afterall, just so that the new manager could hire in one of his friends. Their loss. Well the last 3 months have been stressful and a real test of our strength and determination as well as our marriage. We made it out and Darren has a wonderful job now with a great company that he's tried to get on with for the past several years and they love him already and seem to really appreciate what he has to offer. Now we just have to start getting caught up on all the bills and such that's gotten behind.
I finally get to go back to being part time at my day job, and focus on the other more important things in our life. Todd has been wonderful about taking over on a lot of his homeschooling and working it on his own, but we are very behind on what we had set as our goals and he doesn't do science without me so I've got lots to catch up on. He's done great on Language Arts, but we have to get started on some writing focus too.
I've gone back and tested for a couple of water licenses to be used in my day job, but they can also be used as contract work and that may be the direction I go with that as I cut back at work, we'll just have to see what the new year holds. Things at work are going through some changes so we're just playing a waiting game there. I'm about burnt out after the past several months of working so much overtime and more to get things taken care of up there and not having the time to do more than sleep when I get home. My whole house has been neglected while I worked so much, both for work and so that I could cover things as best as I could while Darren was out of work. Now I get to get back to what's important to me, Todd, Darren, mom, my Fur People, garden, and of course Herbal Grace.
I'll try to get some pictures of Herbal Grace on the road soon to post, but till then if you can make it to Gilmer or Longview you are more than welcome to come by and say Howdy!
Ok you have to look close, but right in the middle of the picture is my first little baby tomato. These are Sweet 100 Cherry tomatoes, so they won't be very big. Right now this one is about the size of a nickel, so I am anxiously awaiting it's development. Now of course there's liable to be a scuffle over who gets first taste, but luckily I did happen to spot two others a bit smaller so we should start getting lots soon.
Sorry for the ramble, but I just had to show off the first tomato in my garden. Of course it's not the first edible, I've been getting cayennes for a while and finally have some jalepenos coming in and some habaneros too. I'll have to take some pics of them later.
I'm back and so glad to be over the vicious little virus that's had a grip on me this past week. I truly thought at first it was just some bad burgers mom brought home, but then it stayed much longer and just got worse. Although, I have to say that from what I've heard from others suffering I actually had it pretty easy. Either way I'm better and back to work and business and play and gardening.
Luckily, the garden has not suffered, when I wasn't able to get out and water, mom & Todd did it for me. Here is a lovely picture of what I woke up to this morning with my Moss Roses. (can you tell I love these little flowers?)
We got out and watered the garden this morning and did some weeding. It is so hard to believe that most of this was planted only about a month ago, it has all grown so much. Just take a look below:
These pictures were all taken this morning around9:30 to 10:00 am so you can see that in the morning my garden is in the shade and then slowly ends up in full sun for most of the day. I do have a few pots that are mostly shade lovers up under the edge of the porch roof, you can see some of them pictured here behind Smudge:
Please excuse the jugs, right now that's my watering method until we can get the hose situation improved.
Besides my Moss Roses here are the newest color queens of my garden and they have really grown lots when you consider that these started as seeds. Here are the Zinnias:
Well, that's our morning work, now Todd and I have lunch, then he has math & reading to do and I have bookkeeping to get caught up on. Oh, joy.
Oh, and before I forget anyone who hasn't gotten a copy of the July News from Herbal Grace, please let me know & I'll get you a copy out. I have lots of new stuff going on and there will be a few changes soon, but I'm pacing myself a bit now, so hopefully that will prevent me from weakening enough for any bugs to catch hold.
Well, it's been a nice week, we've gotten a bit done and I of course still have more to go. The garden is growing well with more Moss Rose blooms (seen above).
I've spent a bit of time going up to Two Mom's Creations on the square in Gilmer, where you can find some of my products. Then over to Herbal Moon in Gladewater to check into some new and improved versions of their shampoos (soon to be on my site again).
I'm getting things together for this coming month's newsletter so this post may be brief as I have lots of writing to do for that, but please if you want a copy make sure to email me at patricia@herbalgrace.com so I can add you to the e-newsletter mailing list.
I have lots of news in the pet product area, I hope to be adding a few things of my own as well as a line of natural animal supplements that I hope to be adding soon.
Well, that will have to do for now we have lot's to get done this weekend and then back to the keyboard on a regular basis Monday with my day job and more.
Oh my goodness, things got busy yesterday afternoon and evening. Todd and I got to set up our newest Organic Gopher devices, seen here: we now have three of these lovely shamrock pinwheel spinners to cause vibrations in the ground and drive away pesky gophers.
Todd wanted to show off his pirate outfit of the day and help show off our garden so here he is below:
We managed to get a bit of work done around the house, but of course there's still more to do. Todd and I are working on his first tincture, we are going to be making Chaparral Tincture out of some Chaparral that a friend sent us. First though Todd is helping to pick all the seeds off of the plants so that we might be able to plant some this coming Spring. Here he is picking away at the seeds.
The next bit of our exciting day happened after Darren got home and was getting ready to fix dinner. Sandy started barking up a storm so Darren went to look and see what was going on and here is what he found:
Spudd had caught a mouse, which led to hours of entertainment for him and torture for the mouse. I can't be too upset for the mouse though, cause I'm so proud of Spudd for catching his first mouse. I took some video of it and I hope this works, we'll see.
Here is the Mighty Hunter returning his prey to the designated play area when it had strayed too far.
And finally, if you look closely you can see the mouse about four or five inches in front of the Mighty Hunters gaze.
I'll be posting this afternoon on what's been going on this morning so far, but we have a busy day planned. Unfortunately, we've had to skip Park Day today since I have a Web-seminar in a little while, but hopefully we'll go to the lake this weekend and have lots to report from that.
