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What a beautiful morning!  There was a little cloud cover to keep the sun from getting an early start on the days heat, so the temperature outside was perfect! 45 minutes of yoga in my garden was delightful and relaxing. The chirping of the first of the early birds, the hummingbirds having their breakfast at the three feeders, the heavenly sound of the horses munching away on their hay, the sound of Jack Russells digging through my squash garden hunting for toads….  HEY! Well, it was relaxing most of the time.

As most of you know I am not really a morning person, usually I stumble out of bed, somehow manage to make it outside to the feed room, still half asleep, all the while skillfully stepping over and around three Jack Russells and a cat.  Through muscle memory alone I believe I manage to hang the horses feed buckets in the correct stalls and with my eyes still half closed throw everyone some hay.  But on occasion as I am sleep walking back to the house something stirs in me to open my eyes… look around… listen… breathe the morning air… and give thanks to God for reminding me to stop and admire His glorious work.

Amy’s Equine Law of Probability #2

If your horse comes up with a mysterious lameness, with no obvious injuries, but YOU still see the lameness, schedule an appointment with farrier/vet… he is suddenly not so lame upon examination by them!

Amy’s Equine Law of Probability #1 : 

If you are going to break a tine on the Muck Rake… It WILL be the middle one.

Since it is now officially past Christmas I will post a picture of a project that was given as a Christmas gift…  I did hear from the gift giver that the gift recipient (owner) loved the box.

 Just a few days ago John and I joined this organization to “adopt” a soldier.  We are proud to report we now have three soldiers!  It is such a great way to give back to our service men and women that are overseas defending our country.  They do not ask for much… a few emails, letters, cards with words of encouragement, thanks or even just the regular ol’ news!  They all love getting a small “care package” with some fun goodies, especially things they may not have access too like pringles, twix bars, salsa, q-tips, favorite toothpaste etc…  Basically they would love anything that will remind them of home and will bring a smile to their faces.   Please check out the website and consider adopting a soldier.

www.adoptaussoldier.org

Adopt A US Soldier is a not-for-profit group founded by Ann Johnson and staffed entirely by a core group of volunteers. Dedicated to providing our deployed troops with the support that they need, AAUSS matches volunteers, just like you, with soldiers deployed across the globe. In just a few short years AAUSS has grown to nearly 500,000 volunteers from over 100 countries all dedicated to supporting our troops.

The United States has over 330,000 troops deployed worldwide

Many do not receive a kind word of support from back home

Thousands of miles away from home, many in combat zones, our soldiers need our support. You have no idea how treasured a single letter is! Adopt A US Soldier is dedicated to connecting supporters of our troops. 

http://www.adoptaussoldier.org

I had a terrific time at my sisters place in Washington state visiting mom.  I am grateful to God that mom is doing as well as she is.  It has been a hard few months for her recovering from several strokes and illness.  I am proud of her for her stubbornness!  She does not give up and for that I am thankful.  We spent wonderful quality time together shopping, eating, crafting, eating more, talking and driving around looking at the scenery.  Here are a few pictures from our time together. 

Mom in front of our favorite bakery in Poulsbo WA. For those of you that don't know Lefse is a potato tortilla that is scumptious when warmed up and slathered in butter!

Eating along the harbor at a family owned Italian cafe. Yummy!

mom showing off the two Christmas ornaments she made.

Have you ever had one of those items on the “honey-do” list that has been there for awhile and keeps managing to make it to the bottom of the list because others seem more important?  (or easier!)  Well I had one of those… organize the closet in my studio.  Now it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Yeah, you should see my closet!  It quickly became the dumping grounds for all the stuff you pick up and say “now where do I put this?”  Plus, there are MANY blank projects in there just waiting for my creative side to show.  It is a fairly good size closet, double doors, about 7 feet wide across and 3 or 4 feet deep.  It is a normal bedroom type closet with a shelf up high and a bar to hang clothes. I have a cabinet in there with my drawing papers, markers, reference photos, etc… and three of those plastic organizer towers… with who knows what in every drawer! That’s how the closet started, it soon filled to the top, but soon I could no longer stack things on top of each other because the dang ceiling was too low.  I of course I then started piling it on the floor.  Lately it has been so full that when I needed to put something in there it was done as a well planned out event.  1. Have the item in hand and ready, 2. make sure the area in front of the doors is clear, 3. turn on light before opening the door, 4. take a deep breath, 5. open door in one quick motion, 6. throw item in and slam the door, 7. turn off light, 8. rest against the door to make sure it stays closed…  Yeah, pretty much that bad.

I decided today was the day.  John was home, we had no other plans for the weekend, and I needed something from the dreaded over-filled closet.  I started pulling stuff out, wow! Who knew how much you could get in a closet! After several trips carrying stuff to the other room, which is always fun as two Jack Russells think that every time you leave the room you are going somewhere totally exciting and they have to be there, right under your feet so they don’t miss anything.  (and one is completely blind so he can’t see where your feet are anyway!) Add a crazy cat trying to dodge the Jacks and a big Lab trying to nap in the sunray in the middle of the living room floor, which is covered with stuffed animals and tennis balls.  All this comotion makes an interesting time carrying things back and forth.  That took about an hour or two to complete in itself.  With John popping in from time to time to see if I was ready for him to measure, mark,  etc for shelves.  I of course got the steady stream of comments… ”Gee, bet you forgot you had that.”  “Oh, that is pretty cool, what did you plan to do with that?”  “wow, did you even know you had those?”   ”Um… I think the 80′s called and they want their ”be-dazzler”  back…”  (ok not quite that bad but you get the idea!) 

Once I got everything out, then there was the “planning” stage… how did I want the shelves? Were the organizers going back in? the cabinet?  Then there was the removing of the exsisting hardware, which if you have ever lived in an old farmhouse you know how that goes… there was a peg board in one corner, it was put up with one regular screw and three phillips screws, so there is an extra trip to the shop for another screw-bit for the drill.  Then there is the old shelf around the top, it was put in with three separate boards, different widths and thicknesses of course. At least they all measured the same from the floor up. The long one against the back wall was sagging so we had to add a support to level it back out.  Then there was the clothes bar, it too was put up with at least 3 different types of screws with wood blocks to hold the bar in place.  And so another hour ticks by.

Then we decide on how many shelves I want and therefore how many brackets.  Now we put the job on hold and make a “quick” trip to Lowes for supplies… $121.72 later… (well I had to go down some of the other aisles, and you just wouldn’t beleive how much they charge for shelf board now!) another two hours gone.

Back at home we start back on the closet, after a much deserved lunch break (half hour).  At first we start measuring for the center shelves, against the big back wall.  Then we realize it would be better to put in the side shelves first so the long shelves can rest on the short ones. (think of a squared “U” shape of shelves going around the three walls of the closet. Uses less brackets that way!) I do the measuring and marking because I am a level freak apparently. (news to me).  I find it very inconvenient to try and get those darn 90 degree angle metal shelf brackets to match with the line on the wall.  Does anyone else have this issue?  They always end up below the line.. weird.  Anyway, we finally get two short shelves up on the one wall.  The top one is un-level by 1/16 of an inch.. I tried to live with it, honest! But I just couldn’t do it… we had to move it.  another hour gone.

Next we moved to the other short wall, this went a little faster.  Either we were getting faster, or the mid-afternoon drink helped a bit with the level-ing.  We are pretty proud of ourselves by now and get a bit cocky when John asks me to hand him one of the long shelves to put along the back wall… Have you ever watched anyone try to put a round peg in a square hole?  HE & I both tried numerous time to get the 7 foot shelf to go in… here is the problem, remember I told you there was an exsisting TOP shelf?  Well, I didn’t empty the top shelf, why would I? We were putting shelves in below the top one…  Needless to say another hour goes by, I emptied the top shelf, we had to remove the top pre-existing side shelves too, and the first new side shelf on each side that we had just put in and had already screwed to the brackets so they would not flip, just so we could angle the 7 foot board in to the  5 foot door opening and slant it just right to get it in on top of the new lower shelves! 

In the next hour we starting putting the brackets in under the long shelves now supported by the new short shelves along the sides of the closet.  Yes, I had the level sitting on top of the shelf so we could make sure the brackets went in the right spot.  We were adding two long shelves so we had to put in four brackets, two each shelf, with three screws in each of the bottoms of the brackets to hold it to the wall and three in the top of the bracket to hold the shelf to the bracket…. We were down to the third bracket when the battery in the drill died.  12 SCREWS TO GO!!! Mark off another hour.

We put in the old top shelves back in, which was a puzzle in itself as the house is old and definitely not “square” by any means so whoever put in the old shelves cut them with notches and angles so they would fit just right.   Yeesh…  I started bringing stuff back in to stock the shelves… Another afternoon drink while we waited for the other battery to charge, and another hour.

Finally the drill was ready. We finished the brackets.  John stepped back said how nice it looked and was glad we finally got the project done.  “Done?” I said, “I would like another short shelf on that side, please honey, it won’t take that long…”

Here is quick pencil sketch I did last night just for fun, it seems to have a Halloween feel to it so I thought I would share it with you.  Hope you get lots of “Treats” and not many “Tricks!”

Monty, our blind Jack Russell loves to patrol in front of the barn.  He keeps those four horses in line! And he believes it is his job to clean all the grain buckets when the horses are done eating.