Our Etsy Shop is up and running ....

The Fall Wreath Section of my Etsy shop, "Crafted by Pink Bunnies" (without any spaces between the words) is now open. If you click to follow me, you will automatically be notified when I add additional sections and later on, additional creations.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/CraftedbyPinkbunnies?ref=hdr_shop_menu

Sunday was FUN!!!

     The play [Menopause the Musical] Robin P. treated me to Sunday, was wonderful! It definitely is a secular play, so there were some spots we just shook our heads at, but overall, it was downright spot on about Menopause.  And being in a theater with LOTS of women who are also laughing, in great part due to relating to the subject matters = reassuring (aka: it's not just me!). So attending the play was GREAT!
    Spending time with one of my closest/dearest friends - What A Blessing! When I suddenly got very overwhelmed by the thrust of the departing crowd, her touch and reassuring words helped so much! When I was talking over dinner and stated "That word that I just had, but it suddenly went flying out the window" and in a bound she leans forward to get a better look out the window and states, "Man, it was fleeing fast, I couldn't even catch a glimpse of it" - wonderful combination of hilarity and acceptability! :-D
     The theater itself was BEAUTIFUL!!!  LOVED all of the architectural detailing! Got quite dizzy climbing the stairs to the balcony, due to my awe struck gazing at the ceiling. 

    Overall, or should that be 'lots more frequently lately' (?), my vertigo symptoms are a lot lower and thus easier to deal with/accept. Sunday's outing pushed them all way up again. I am still literally reeling from it. But I'm not really complaining, because the time spent with Robin and the laughter therapy of the musical, makes dealing with the current symptoms worth it!!!

"Directory" of Wedding Postings through 2012

May 17th, 2010 -  ~ Our Anniversary ~ 

               (contains links to lots of other wedding type things)

Oct. 6th, 2010 - Jordan's Bridal Shower :-)

May 17th, 2011 - It's Our Anniversary :->

June 22nd, 2011 - A Wedding Reception

Sept. 7th, 2011 - Wedding Weekend - Sat. - Part 1 - The Cake

Sept. 8th, 2011 - Wedding Weekend - Sat. - Part 2 - The Tux's

Sept. 9th, 2011 - Wedding Weekend - Sat. - Part 3 - The Flowers

Sept. 13, 2011 - Wedding Weekend - Sat.- Part 4 - The Decorated Church

Oct. 4th, 2011 - Reception we hosted for Brent & Kayla - Part 1

Oct. 5th, 2011 - Wedding Weekend - Sat. - Part 5 - The Dress

Oct. 6th, 2011 - Reception we hosted for Brent & Kayla - Part 2

June 8th, 2012 - a niece AND a nephew got married

'Lucy' here,

    A few weeks ago, I spent a week at Grandpa 'Honey's' house, totally for some R+R time. I left with more than I had arrived with, due to taking some silk flowers etc. out of his basement, to use in future wreaths (yes, I had full permission to do so). 

   We arrived home, played with our GRAND children (who had arrived around midnight the night before), went on about living life.  I was headed out of town the following weekend and wanted to wear my tennis shoes due to the weather predictions. But try though I did, I could NOT find them!! WHERE in the heck were they?  Thankfully, I had recently uncovered an old pair of loafers, so I wore them instead.

   Upon arrival back home, I searched again. And I asked other family members. And I inquired if they were out in our van. I KNEW I had not left them at dad's... I had tripled checked all the rooms before leaving.... where were they?!?!?!   I had no clue. Finally gave up the search out of sheer aggravation. Sigh.

  Fast forward to this now past Sat.. I wasn't feeling too good. The GRAND children were again here, and I wanted to be near them.. if I work on a wreath they won't climb on me as much (that proved wrong ;-p). So I got out the small wreath frame I had purchased for a specific idea, then went upstairs to look through the flowers I had brought home, to see which ones I wanted to use. As I'm pulling various plastic bags of flowers out of the paper bag lined plastic bag, I discovered my tennis shoes, sitting at the bottom of the bags. "Oh, now I remember..." (insert eye roll here).

     This now past Sunday, we hosted our son Benson's 30th birthday dinner at the lodge (just our little family and a couple of the cousins he's always been closer to). Brian dropped me and all of the ingredients off, before heading over to the church to run sound for the Praise Team practice, etc..  First, I started the Oatmeal Carmelita's. Once their base was cooling, I started the hamburger towards the Yum-A-Setta.  While that was browning, I made a sign (out of paper hand toweling) to wrap around a chair and put out by the driveway, letting the attendee's know to park along the side this time (reason being, small children traveling back and forth from the lodge to the play set).  Broke the hamburger up a bit more, then headed outside to set up the sign. Once the mission was accomplished, I attempted to open the door and re-enter the lodge. But it was locked. Solid like. And did not give despite my repeated attempts to convince it to. "BOTHER!", as I palm slapped the door frame.

     Deep breath, turned around.... I 'could' take the path through the field, over the bridge and rail road tracks, up the hill and go get the keys from Brian... Two things - #1) the oven was still on waiting for the second part of the Oatmeal Carmelitas to be baked and the stove still had hamburger browning on it.  I LOVE the lodge, no way what-so-ever did I want to be responsible for it burning down!!! Sigh. #2) I had not traveled said trail in a l-o-n-g time. What if I didn't take the right path? Various pastors and people of the church are always encouraging the congregation to go on nature walks through the various paths... I could just see me (aka: Ms. Vertigo) getting all turned around and wandering for hours. . .  .  Sigh.

    So I chose option 'B'. Walk up the ever so steep hill driveway (NOT exaggerating here!) and go to the "W's" house (people from church), hoping they hadn't left for church yet, hoping they were even in town. 'Nother sigh. So up the hill I went. I swear to you that somehow that thing has both lengthened and steepened since the last time I had done thus!!! Whew!  Finally got to the top of it and started towards "W's" house, only to remember it was a bit further that I had originally thought. First, I had to cross over..., then pass "G's" old house, then finally... Sigh. Off I walked. 

    A short distance later, a car approached. I waved my arm, palm up, to try and get it to stop. The guy pulled into the middle of the road, sped up and passed me in a hurry. sigh.  Walked on. Soon another car approached and I tried again. This time the elderly lady waved at me as she passed from the middle of the road. sigh. Yet again, in today's weird world, I couldn't say I really blamed them. . . but the distance I had yet to walk, seemed to grow longer and longer in my mind. The third car did stop. The window came down maybe a third of the way. A female voice called out, "do you need help?" (or something similar). "Would you make a phone call for me?"  The window went to half way down. "Sure" the pretty lady (maybe early thirties?) stated, as she picked up her phone. I told her Brian's number while she dialed. "Hopefully he'll actually get it and answer it" I commented with a chuckle.  The window went the rest of the way down and she handed me the phone. I had expected her to keep the phone, but smiled warmly at her. Suddenly, the back window started to come down. The lady strictly informed the person sitting back there to leave it up. I heard a very young laugh and my smile grew. The back window went back up and stayed up. :-]. 

    Via a true miracle, Brian answered his phone. He does not get reception inside the church building itself (it's built into a hill). A-n-d, he usually turns the ringer itself off once he arrives at church, so it doesn't go off while he's passing a door or something.  He said he was in the middle of the sanctuary, when his phone shocked him and rang. He didn't recognize the number, but he felt this nudging to answer it. THANK-YOU Lord! "Hi, somehow I locked myself out of the lodge and there's hamburger browning on the stove, would it be possible for you to send somebody over with your keys to let me back in?" "We'll get it handled"  "THANK-YOU!"

   I handed the lady back her phone and thanked her, then started to back away from her car. "Would you like a ride to the lodge?" she asked. "No, that's okay..." "But you looked wore out, won't you let me give you a ride back?!"  I climbed in while stating my gratitude. Once again down at the lodge, before exiting her car, I invited her to stop back down in a couple of hours (telling her we'd be there all afternoon) to get a couple of thank-you Carmelitas. While she had said it sounded like a good plan, she never did reappear. But I had thanked the Lord for her while standing there waiting to re-enter the lodge. My knight in shining armour of a husband, himself came to my rescue. :-]  I held out my hand, "Hi, I'm Lucy"  He laughed while unlocking the door, then headed back to church. The next time I exited the building, I propped the darn door OPEN!!! 

    Yup, still wondering about myself. . .  

This is 'Lucy', signing off.

A ride of wonder

    Several interesting things happened on our ride home from Brian's dad's last evening.  The first, was this thing, out in the field, what was it? As we got even with it, we realized it was a crane (the bird type), in the middle of a field of soy. ?!?!  A bit later we spotted some deer. Those we are use to spotting, well at least we are unless the guys are actually out hunting for them. 

   We stopped at the MickeyD's in Wayland. "What use to be there?" we questioned each other, about the now empty lot next to it. Neither one of us was sure. Turned out, both of us had an idea, but didn't share it because it couldn't have possibly been that, right?! We were right in our unspoken guesses. They had completely taken out the Speedway station. The one that had at least three cars at it, no matter what time of day or night you passed by. 'If it was always so busy, why in the world would they take it out' we questioned. According to the sign on the front of the fencing, a new one would be replacing the old one soon. "Awww.....".

   As we were approaching the 54th Street exit off the highway, Brian pointed to two buildings along the side. I wondered why they were being taken apart that-a-way. Certainly not the usual way to demolish a building. Turned out that it was due to them first being victims of the recent tornado. The tornado itself had been the slightest of blips on the radar screen, and it was gone the second time the scanner passed over that area, so they hadn't rung any alarms. But it had definitely been a tornado. The proof is in the evidence it left behind. Now true, compared to lots of tornado destruction paths you see on the national news broadcasts, this one didn't do much. But it did enough.

    Brian got off at the exit and drove me around to see the spots where it had caused havoc, lifted up, then dropped lower again. I said "OH  MY  WORD !!!" a whole lot during our drive. I had seen some pictures of the damage on line. In-fact, one of my brothers had stopped by the house he use to live in in that area, introduced himself to the current owners, and gotten permission to enter the property and take pictures. We had lived there with him for seven months after our house fire, so I knew the area. Oh my word is it not the same looking now!! And it's not because of the years which have passed since we lived there. The evidence to the difference is in all of the tree stumps which now show where all of the huge, wondrously shady trees use to stand between him and the houses on the street behind him, houses that we had forgot were back there because you couldn't really see them due to the trees. The evidence was in there no longer being a three season porch on the back of my brothers old house, it had literally been ripped off. The evidence is also in how many homes have tarps covering parts of their roofs, or are missing parts of their garages or houses. The evidence is in the insulation caught way up in the trees by and in, what use to be a beautiful wooded park. While we weren't able to access the park itself, we could see for quite a distance, and all we saw were toppled over trees. Not sure if a single one was left untouched. The owners of one house we passed, were installing an electric meter to the side of their house. Others were working on framing in sections. It was just all too surreal. 

   Brian then treated me to Dairy Queen :-]  Their waffle cone turtle sundae is good! yup, yup, yup! We were sitting on the bench, enjoying the wonderful evening air, enjoying watching people. Two pretty girls in their twenties were walking our direction, when this moped went down the street, with the helmet-less male driver standing straight up on the pedals, arms spread wide. We laughed. The girls laughed. Brian inquired if they'd been impressed. They exchanged a look, looked at us again, then their laughter became kind of the embarrassed type. My puzzlement must have registered on my face, because one of the girls walked over, put her hand on my knee, leaned in and asked, "you don't recognize us do you?". Awkward. "You do look familiar, but I don't know from where." They laughed joyously. I was all the more confused. Then (of their own accord) they told me their names, twice. Finally it dawned on me, they were my cousins! Well technically, my cousins daughters, making them my second cousins. But it was them!! They were out for a walk enjoying the evening air. They said they had already passed us once and had been quite sure it was us.... .  It was good to see them! One of them has two kids and they said that their sister is due for her third any day now. I had no idea any of them lived any wheres near us. We laughed. We hugged. What a neat surprise in my evening! :-]

2013 Cooking and Baking Directory -

   This is a directory listing of sorts, of the "Cooking and Baking" postings we did in 2013.

Jan. 13, 2013 - I want a LARGE sized Crockpot!

                 (update 2014 - never got letters to submit, still wishing for one)

April 4, 2013 - My version of 'Stuffed Cabbage' 

Sept. 17, 2013 - The Bz's D-E-E-P Dish Pizza

    Doing these directories, helps me find when and where it was I had posted something. I'm sure you other bloggers never have that problem o;-p.
~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;->
You might also enjoy these postings:  

~ 2012 Cooking and Baking Directory

~ 2011 Cooking and Baking Directory

~  2010 Cooking and Baking Directory

~  2009 Cooking and Baking Directory

2012 Cooking and Baking Directory -

This is a directory listing of sorts, of all of the "Cooking and Baking" postings we did in 2012.

Jan. 18, 2012 - Pie Crust 

     step by step directions and pictures

Jan. 19, 2012 - Blueberry Pie 

Jan. 20, 2012 - Toll House(R) Pie

Jan. 21, 2012 - Pecan Pie

Jan. 22, 2012 - Pumpkin Pie

Jan. 26, 2012 - Brownie Cake

March 21, 2012 - My Spaghetti Sauce 

March 22, 2012 - Pasta Pie

March 23, 2012 - Garlic Parmesan Pull-Apart Bread

March 26, 2012 - My Lasagna Recipe

    Doing these directories, helps me find when and where it was I had posted something. I'm sure you other bloggers never have that problem o;-p.
~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;->
You might also enjoy these postings: 

~ 2011 Cooking and Baking Directory

~  2010 Cooking and Baking Directory

~  2009 Cooking and Baking Directory