Today was an awesome day. Bob got up early with me and we went out to pick up our order of Tangelos and on to the Mennonite Market... Did a little shopping and then back home again.. I sorted through some old coffee mugs and will be putting them in the spring yard sale for the Hope Fund at church..I know I will have tons more too. Christmas stuff especially.. I have waaaaay too much in the way of Christmas ornies.. I just keep the ones with sentimental value to them like some hand painted ornies my mom did and little gifts of ornies from a lot of really nice online friends I have met over the years.. Carolyn, It is so amazing when you can get more order in your life by purging what is just not working to the good in your life.... Hanging on to what is doing absolutely nothing but draining you either financially or physically or spiritually is not worth it... Kick it to the curb or give it away or sell it or donate it... but yeah.. don't let it drag you down.. sometimes things can act as an albatross around you neck..and will keep you from doing other things that really are worth while... besides, if you give it away or donate or so... then someone else may garner a really great blessing from it.. and guess what... your blessings will increase too..Just because you remove something from your life that is doing you no good, doesn't mean it doesn't have value.. to someone else it may be just fantastic.. It is turning cold for the next week, so walking will be brisk.. and not really long treks.. just a mile and a half.. and that's it.. toes get cold after that.. lol So ar this year I have walked every day.. and still watching my intake of calories.. so it's all good. Keep on keeping on folks.. and thanks for the squeezy hugs Dee.. we always can use a hug or two.. Stay well everyone.. CS

Well thank y'all very much. Had to juggle other paintings around to make room for it, so told the GD to think SMALL in the future. Yes, MEADEL - By the time I got to that room in my house I was tiring of faux painting, so it only got one coat of a paint I mixed by pouring in about three leftover colors and then one coat of raw umber ragged on. Many thanks for your nice comments, y'all.

Pollan's talk was a sold-out event (which is rather unusual around here except for Metal Music and rap like Snoop). The uni here had set one of his books for the Freshman Summer Read, so no doubt there were lots of extra credit opportunities being used. :-) However, there were a lot of community people there as well, and I have to say that it was a pleasure to listen to someone who is a good writer and speaker. Pollan has a great vocabulary and it was wonderful to hear him use words that you don't hear very much. Nothing too fancy, but just really well selected vocab. Lovely. He didn't really talk about his books that much, although there were various selected readings from some of his earlier work (like Second Nature) etc.). Most of his talk was about his path to being a writer (how circuitous it was etc.) and that you never really know what you are going to end up doing, career-wise, in the end. Took loads of questions from the audience and was overall a pretty nice guy. He did thrown in a snippy comment about politics, which was unnecessary, but then, again, if his politics had agreed with mine, I probably wouldn't have minded. :-> Good stuff. I have moved In Defense of Food higher up the TBR pile now... If you ever get the chance to hear him, he is worth the ticket price. Was going to do a lot of reading last night, but took the dog for a walk at the park, it got dark, I dropped my house key somewhere in the park in the dark, and ended up sitting on my door step (avec dog) for 2.5 hours while the Pop-a-Lock people tried to open Fort Knox. (DH is out of town at the mo and I was trying not to let him know I had lost the key AGAIN...) They couldn't open the super-duper special lock we have in the door, and in the end, I had to call DH and admit to losing my key and getting a long-distant friend to come over. Needless, I was cold and tired when I got in, so went to bed. Sigh. Anyone want to come to the park and walk all over the place to see if they can help me find my key? It's yellow.

Hi Mas: That was funny !! One runner-up in Biggest Loser stated: no matter how much one works out, if one doesn't change how one eats, it doesn't matter much. SO TRUE !! I put in 2 hours of snow-shoveling yesterday, and lost only 1/2 lb. on the scale. Compare that to 3 lb. a week, with zero work, when I drastically changed my eating a decade ago. For me eating while watching TV for the past years caused weight gain .. I mindlessly throw stuff into my mouth without thinking. So I took away the table in front of the TV, and put my Nordic-ski-machine, plus a Bow-flex. It works !! Now I eat slowly at the kitchen table, drink herbal tea while eating, plus lots of RAW veggies ... that really cut down my intake of food. Eating mindlessly, esp. in front of the TV, can pack on pounds. It didn't dawn on me, until I asked Jesus to help me with losing weight. Hi Frances & Damask & Jim: So glad to have all of you here with your strong faiths. To improve my kid's handwring, I copy & paste Bible verses from my Pinterest into Microsoft Word document. I chose a nice font at size 18, print in light blue, and made her trace that in black ink. One verse that she traced today: 2 Peter 2:19 "They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity--for "people are slaves to whatever has mastered them."" Also Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make our paths straight." Below is the link to my Pinterest with pics. of roses, plus Bible verses, recipes, etc. Here is a link that might be useful: Straw's collection of rose pics, Bible verse, recipes This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Feb 2, 15 at 15:29