Plants, frogs, and books....oh my. I have no life.

For some reason I'm going plant crazy already! It's early in the winter and I already miss my garden. I keep buying more and more plants and really tending to the ones I have. It's like I'm impatiently tapping my feet waiting for them to go dry so I can water them. My husband actually had the nerve to suggest that I had too many plants and that maybe I should "get rid of a few". It must have been the look on my face because he quickly said "uh...never mind" and left LOL

I think I had a fungus/soil problem - probably from using too much fertilizer or maybe the wrong kind. I had this one bottle of Alaskan fertilizer that was causing strange "formations" to grow on top of the soil of some of my plants. Yes, I was following the directions! Some of my plants actually look great. So anyway, I removed the top layers of soil with all of the stalagmites and added in fresh soil. One large plant though, who has been looking really puny lately, had pretty solid soil. I don't remember what type of soil I put in there but it was hard to break up! I had to actually get a knife and chop at it. I was afraid to chop any roots but I never did find any in that stuff. No wonder the plant wasn't doing very well, all it's roots were in the top 3 inches of soil even though the planter is quite large. I completely romoved that plant and changed out the soil. I hope it does better now. I had a couple of smaller plants that died *sob* but I'll get more I'm sure. I think someone opened the kitchen window after the temperature dropped in the fall. The plants I lost were all there. I had a beautiful verigated ivy that had climbed up this little trellis and it turned brown and brittle!!!!!! I also lost an African violet that was there. I am not surprised no one will admit to being a plant killer! I think I might be a people killer if they did.

Anyway, I just bought a new ivy yesterday. It's a nice ivy even though it isn't verigated. I got it all potted and it looks great. I'll have to take a picture of it later. I got another neat plant sometime last week and I just love this one! I've never seen one like this before but I just loved it's unique red flower!

Drats! This thing wont let me post a picture! I'll put it up later.

Anyway, I also bought some new fishes yesterday. I bought 5 tiger barbs and they are so neat looking. They stay together in a tight little group and my little frogs don't know what to think of them. I've been watching the frogs sneaking around and checking them out and it's so funny. The tiger barbs look like a group of little soldiers darting around in their little group. They are primarily black and white striped with an orange fin. It makes them look uniformed compared to the other fish. The frogs are so big and clumsy compaired to the barbs. This one frog had climbed the cave dealy in there and was standing up precariously with one foot stretched out and supported by the top of cave. As he watched the strange group of barbs his foot slipped off and he went cartwheeling to the bottom of the tank........real.....s l o w. It reminded me of Jarjar binks following around a group of stormtroopers. I'll post some pictures when blogger decides to let me.

I finished reading the book "The sudden lady" and I am trying to decide what to read next. There are so many choices but I actually bought a NEW BOOK! I went to barnes and noble to renew my membership card and browsed the whole store while I was there sipping my starbucks. Nummy! I decided I want to learn how to speak Italian so I bought a book with a CD. I have wanted to learn Italian ever since I listened to the audiobook for The Last Promise by Richard Paul Evans. I just fell in love with the sound of it. God help me if some good looking young guy came along speaking to me in Italian. If he happend to have lots of money and clean house......... Oh come on! You know I wouldn't do something like that..... hmmmmmm *day dreaming*

Flylady.net (Click here to visit the website)

A couple of months ago I joined flylady.net and I've been trying hard to stick to the routines. I know I lack organization and flylady.net helps you build routines that help you become organized AND motivated. If you join the yahoo group you can get very helpful daily reminders emailed to you to keep you on track, but it is optional. I read and delete them each day. Of course I adjust everything to my liking and even though dear Marla (Flylady) loves purple, I (bug) detest that color LOL I think it's because that's my sisters favorite color and I had to be different. So everything I have is either green, blue, or red so that I feel good when I get it out. That sounds kind of Christmasy huh? I'm talking more of a soothing sage green which most of the things in my house are and a nice *pow* red which is a color I choose for clothes to help get me going and feel confident. I have a pair or red tennis shoes that I wear when I'm cleaning and when I'm exercising and they just make me feel like I have super powers or something LOL. I know I get more done when I have them on. Blue seems to be a relaxing color to me and I like all shades of it. It either makes me think of pale blue skies or sparkling blue water or the blue green of the pine trees...... or my dog "Blue" who is actually a tri-colored Beagle. When I look around to see what I bought in blue, I see all of my craft tubs are blue, my bath stuff is blue, my heating pad and other things for relaxing are blue and my favorite papers, pens and the marker that I write with at my desk are blue. Oh, and the very pretty clear acrylic tape dispenser that I swiped from my oldest son is blue LOL I know that color is important, especially for me, and what colors you chose can tell a lot about you. There are personality books based on color choices alone. Anyway, I got a little off track there but I also adjust my routines to work better for me and my family. I've started to make my control journal but it's not just for me but for the whole family. My boys are given chores to do to help keep things in order and I have an extra after school routine and bedtime routines for the boys. I like to use a smaller spiral bound notebook (the cover is sage) with bright sticky notes inside for the boys to take with them to remember what they have to do. I added tabs for them to quickly find what they need. The routines are all in there written in pencil so we can easily make a change until we get it down.



When I started to use Flylady.net I was only thinking about myself. I knew I needed to be better organized but I never thought it would also help my boys. Riley is the one that has benefited the most. His favorite part of Flylady's plan is Kelly's Missions. The home is divided into zones and each week Kelly sends out missions for every day to complete in that zone. When the zone was in the bedroom Riley was thrilled because he could do it too. One day when Riley was home sick from school he told me that I should email "Ms Kelly Fly" and tell her that she should have more missions that he could do. He was so very sweet and I emailed her describing him and how he looked sitting there wrapped up in his tropical fish blanket with a cup of warm peppermint tea and his unicorn book.......and protruding lip LOL I also quoted the little guy because it couldn't have been said any better! I would try to tell him things he could do instead of cleaning light fixtures or dusting the ceiling but he wanted it to come from Kelly in mission form! Well she got my email and I can't believe what she did!!!!! She made special missions just for kids like Riley and they are called Riley challenges!

He was so thrilled when he came in from school and I showed him the email! I wanted so badly to get a picture when his face lit up when he saw his name but my camera had dead batteries. DRATS! The picture I added above shows Riley with his "fishy" blanket. Doesn't he look like an angel when he's sleeping??? When he's not he's more like the Tazmanian devil!! When after Riley read the email he took off to grab his backpack and did the challenge in less than 3 minutes! He likes to set my timer to count up instead of down so he can see how long it actually took. Then in a whirl he was off yelling for his friend to show him the email I printed out.

Here is the email:


Dear Friends,

About a week ago I got an email from a sweet boy named Riley and his mom. They wanted to know If I would send out some missions or challenges that he could do in the house. He wanted some for his room and some for him to be able to help out his mom. The email was so sweet and got me good, which I think was his Mom's intention LOL!

This week we are in the Children's room for our other room in Zone 3, we have included children's room missions in the missions for this week, but in honor of Riley and all the other FLY kids out there, I am going to send out Kid Challenges this week.Let me know how this works out for you and your kids.

Without further adieu let me present our first Riley Challenge of the week!Our very first Riley Challenge is to go grab your backpacks! Sit down on the floor and let's de-clutter those backpacks. De-Clutter means to get rid of anything that we do not need or use anymore! Take out all the papers that you no longer need to have, if you have a recycle bin go toss them there! Get rid of any broken pencils, pens or markers. Any used up, dried up glue sticks? Do you have any Library books that need to be returned? The end of the school year is coming. Are there any papers that you need to give to your parents? Let's set a timer for 15 minutes and see how fast we can de-clutter those back packs! I bet they will be much lighter tomorrow!

Have fun! Thanks to Riley and his Mom for this request - I think we can have some fun!

Love,

Kelly

Lonely birthday party

The party was a bust. No one showed. I even sent my oldest out on a secret undercover mission to try to scope out some neighborhood kids. He couldn't find anyone at home. It's just been too cold. No one wants to do anything. What a time of year to have a birthday. I knew it was going to be hard though and had prepared him. Still it was hard to watch him stand at the window and jump every time a car came around the corner..only to drive right past our house. Poor guy.... I think I'll throw him a surprise birthday at the new McDonald's when it opens. Hopefully that will be soon. Hmmmmmmm maybe I'll officially change his his birthday to March. That's a much better time to have a birthday and it's not too close to Christmas!

We still had fun by ourselves though. Dad said it was actually pretty cool that we got to eat the ice cream cake all by ourselves. That got a laugh out of the little man. Than he and his brother had a blow horn battle. They also called Gram. She always seems to make things better.

The oddest thing of the day was the mystery dead fish in his tank. He was all in a panic saying, "which one is it, which one is it" with his eyes scrunched closed. None of his fish are mising. It's a pretty small fish. I'm wondering if his guppies had a baby and we just never noticed.

SloooOOooooow going days

Well this has been my first week back at work and I'm so thankful that tomorrow is Friday. I only have one file so far and it's been soOOooooo terribly slow. I do get to go in a little later tomorrow but I also have to stay later as well. That's no biggie. I always love late days since I can watch my boys get on the bus safely and have an extra few minutes to get a Mocha from Starbucks. I'm not a morning person so these days are good for me and I'm not my usual growly self when I arrive. Even better than that is the beautiful quite I get to enjoy at the end of the day (hopefully). I can get so much more done during that time. Of course I have nothing to work on right now..... Sigh. So I'll have to figure out what I'll use to keep me busy. My supervisor is dying to send me to the dungeon for some dust bunny hunting...I mean, old file cleaning.

I really am glad to be back to work though. I love my time off but after a while I start to get bored at home and I tend to get lazy and waist my time. I do have a lot of projects planned but if they are spread out over weekends I don't get burned out so fast. My bookshelf project is sitting unfinished for that reason.... I just lost steam and inspiration. If I focus my mind on something else for a while I'll be able to get more creative when I need to be. Now that I've had a week I'm starting to think of some idea's to use for that project to make it more fun in the "fishy" room.

The boy who lives in the "fishy" room is having a 9th "fishy" birthday party on Saturday the 21st. So I have some planning to do for that this weekend. We have already done whales and a rainbow fish cake. This years theme is a shark. I have to figure out if I can make a shark cake or if I should have one made or do something else. I could also just do an aquarium cake to make things easier.

I am really loving this new computer with the media center. It's all tied in the with the TV so I can set it to record shows I want to watch after I get home. I love watching my DIY shows after dinner. Now I'm ready to crash.

Ahhh vacation...

I have been having a wonderful time just kicking around at home with my kids for the last week. It is so nice to finally have some time to get some things done that I just haven't had the time for. I've cleaned and organized... I've ironed a lot of stuff. I got a sewing machine for Christmas so I've been tinkering around with that. It's been really peaceful too since the kids each got their own computers and some new video games also :O)

I'm in the middle of making of a fun project right now. My youngest son had a bunch of those wooden crates (like you can buy at craft stores) stacked in his room to hold his books. I planned to buy him one of those tall book shelves after Christmas. But of course, we had to rearrange his room to accommodate his new computer and desk. We managed to get a nice small desk (less than 3 feet wide) from a friend and it fits nicely into a corner of his room but we still have to work around the upright piano in this room... that thing is not moving. I turned his bed and moved everything around but he still ends up without a wall space for a nice shelf. So I'm back to the crates again. I stacked them at the foot of his bed in an arrangement which would allow him to have books on both sides. When he is in his bed he will be able to access the books on the top of the shelf which is over his mattress. The other side will have open area's for books on the bottom portion. I even knocked out some slats on one crate so he can access books from both sides. Now that I have a nice arrangement I'm painting them. That's the fun part :O)

He has a really nice tropical fish bed set with matching curtains that we got from Domestications. It is like someone took a picture under the ocean and printed it on the fabric. We wanted something to match that set so we took the pillow case to Lowes to get some paint mixed. After it's all painted I'll stack them up and fasten them together. His bed is a garage sale find that I plan to refinish later one. It has the drawers underneath which saves space in his room. When I finally get a sander to help refinish it I know where to go to get the paint colors I need. Then some nice tropical fish knobs and he'll have a very cool lookin room!

Well I better get back to painting!