It’s officially Spring now! Today is the first FULL day of Spring.
I am hoping for a decent small garden of tomatoes and peppers and whatever else. May God bless my gardening tries this growing season, and give a bountiful harvest and help me fend off the pests throughout. I pray He will allow things to be gotten for the garden, whatever it is we need. I dedicate this growing season to Him. He is the creator and the one whom controls all, to His Glory is this growing season!
Found this Book Meme out on ‘the web’
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.
Book next to me -the closest one, sent by my mother the other week.
Page 123, sentence 5, (actually counted the 5th complete sentence, ignored the hangover from page 122)
If it grieves you deeply that your spouse seldom gives you a gift for any occasion, then perhaps your primary love language is “Recieving Gifts.”
The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Committment to Your Mate –Now With Comprehensive Study Guide–
By Gary Chapman
——————–
I have a prior edition of this book, I think, as well as I do know that I have a children’s version of this book, which isn’t FOR children, but ABOUT children, learning how to read THEIR love language, as a parent. That’s what introduced me to this topic and I learned that what is on Page 123 sentence 5 is what MY primary love language is. So this Book Meme coincidentally snagged a real live post topic for me!
I decided to do this Book Meme and did it by starting this post, copying the Book Meme instructions into it, THEN getting the book closest to me. I had no agenda other than following instructions, not knowing with full realization what book was closest to me.
So this is the one “love language” that I think most people this is phony or dead-wrong, the one not to have as it’s selfish, materialistic and such. How wrong that all is!
It’s also not the opposite, that it’s fine and any old gift counts since “it’s the thought that counts”.
Bingo! It’s the source of grief for me all my life. It IS the thought that counts. It’s not the monetary value per se. It’s about quality … quality of thought. Light thought, no credit for gift given. Well maybe some, maybe a tad, or maybe a negative sum.
It’s that frivolous “It’s the thought that counts” which is usually employed to mean “You don’t like it, but you have to pretend you do since it’s “the thought that counts” they remembered your birthday at least.”
Yeah, but they put no THOUGHT into it.
For those people who like to Receive Gifts, it’s their primary love language, it means that their loved ones tell them they love you by their deep thoughts in how to show it through something of physical staticness.
It doesn’t have to be costly in $, or time, or thought, it should be easy to think deeply about your loved one. Consider something that would have deep value to that loved one, mean something truly wonderful.
For me it’s easy: I like blue, cats, flowers, candy bars, gadgets, computer geeky stuff …
Sure a pricey object is a gift of love sometimes. But then so is a candy bar. Particularly one I like. Rapunzel makes a good organic good chocolate bar. It’s pricier than hersheys, and so much better, but still cheap. It’s a great gift to person with Receiving Gifts as their Primary Love Language.
How about a coffee mug with a cat or cat saying, or bluebirds, or just a blue mug. Or a teacup that is rimmed with “platinum” since that’s something else I love.
Catnip for my cats, so I can play with them.
A flower picked by the roadside, of blue or gorgeous hue or design.
A new potted herb, to transplant into my herb garden. Something nice: fragrant or flowery, or culinary in purpose.
A pretty pot and some potting soil and a packet of seeds. Some sprouting materials to grow many of something. More than one pretty pot. Seeds that are good for the garden, flowers of herbalness, that can be in pot or the garden. Something like this is a super neat gift, a way to start something, have many of them and do multiple different things with them. Have plants inside and out from a packet of seeds.
A poem written just for me. A story written just for me. A witty comment written down just for me. Those are free things, just mind power need be applied and a steady hand to try and make it legible on paper for me.
A gift to me from my dear husband might be that he “teach himself better handwriting” and then use that to write portions of anything out to me on cards, note cards, index cards, pretty cards, anything.
Something else then is books. Bring me home a book now and then. Something you see in the used bookstore that strikes you as “something she’d love”. Bring me home children’s books. Picture books. Coffee table books. Journals to write in. Paper. Ink for computer printer. Stamps. Puzzles. Scrapbook makings. A desk. A craft carrying case. Boxes of all sizes. Wood crates from stores that give them away from their unpacking of goods, freebees or cheap couple of bucks. The things in this paragraph are cheap or cost a bit of something more, or more than that. This is the area to get super creative in, and find cool things for less by going to antiques stores, used bookstores, thrift stores, etc. Some of the things are useful needful, like computer printer stuff. It keeps one happy to know they can print in color 
Now something I want that would really float my boat is a feather old-time pen and envelope wax seal kit and ink bottle. There are kits like that at bookstores lately. Really cute and right up my alley. This has a monetary cost though. Also in these sort of places are cool thermal coffee things (one at B&N is tall and stainless steel with pink outer shell, so pretty!) it’s a travel mug type. There are tea-pots-for-one of many designs. These cost too. Of course. One must use money of higher increments at some point during the year 
I realize that most of my ideas here cost money. But they also are things that may just spark other ideas that don’t cost money.
This post is dedicated to my husband Frank. Feel free to refer back to this post anytime you need to or want to, bookmark it dearie!
My mom sent this book recently, I said above, the book this post is about. This copy has a study guide in it, so that’s different. Frank said he’d be happy to study it with me. That we need to do. I don’t know what his primary love language is. It’s confusing for some people and easy to understand in others. I didn’t understand it about myself until I read the book about finding your child’s love language. That book made it clearer than daylight to me. I saw myself in the child-examples, how I was as a child, and it transfers rightly over to adulthood, love languages don’t change much. It’s not that they don’t change at all. I think part of this is that all love languages need to be represented in one’s life, just one or two are of primary importance and will be in balance when all needs are met more or less. It’s that one’s primary may seem acutely too sharp if other things are out of kilter, I think.
I’ll close this post by reinterating what it is about Receiving Gifts that is key. It’s thinking deeply about what’s good to give someone like that. It’s meaning deep things by giving something. It’s not just “trying” but it’s excelling at trying to try one’s best to please deeply” It’s to truly know what one would like. It’s to not give something that will make them think “What did he give me THAT for!”. That reaction in someone like me is something of a bad nature. It feels bad, it’s a socked in the stomach kind of feeling. It’s truly blue and sad. It’s a letdown, failure sort of thing. It can be maddening too, depending on the situation. It happens to be more like that when relatives do something that is obviously not well thought out. Or they don’t understand that that thing is really weird, why would anyone want it, let alone me – a relative that … ok it’s this: give things you KNOW they want. OR find something safe and great, like a CD cheap. Don’t give white elephants. It might not hurt the giver, but the givee feels stomped on and can’t say anything, has to hold in that pain.
It’s the thing about having that as one’s love language primarily, that makes the givee in most situations a thoughful giver as well. So it’s hurtful to want to give lovely presents to others, and always get ugly present from them themselves. DH learned to get things from department stores and get them wrapped, for some gifts, there. That puts a huge smile on my face, it means he cares, he knows I appreciate a lovely wrapped box, with something lovely inside, small on sale cheap is fine as long as it’s nice and wearable, usable nice to look at, touch, use. Whatever. Wrap it up nice, put it in cute bag, frilly froo froo hanging out the sides, bows ah, that’s love. (but the insides have to have value too or else the wrappings don’t count as much.)
Did y’all know that paint is stinky?
Some of you might know, but some may not. Paint that you can buy in the stores today can be quite nice and near odorless … or at least comparitively so, to older genres of paint. If you are young enough, Latex might be the usual term to use when referring to paint. Its ease in cleaning up was key to it becoming so popular, I have no doubts on that!
For older folks, yes that’s me, when considering painting I first think: Oil-based? Or Latex?
I usually have picked Latex in my adult years. It’s just so much easier to use. Oil-based paints are tough though. They are really worth their trouble. Stinky, messy to clean up, but a good tough coat of paint.
Primers also come in Oil-based or Latex.
If you know Kilz, you might have a family like mine. Dings and dents and holes and marks made from any writing or crafting thing you can think of that might be in our home. Kilz is a great friend to us.
Kilz2 is the Latex version. Kilz is the original Oil-based version. We’ve used both before, but the last time we used any it was Kilz2. It was a rude awakening being in a small cramped room with Kilz this morning. It’s over though, for now.
We have a Living Air machine, and that was faithfully by my side in Victoria’s under-the-roller room. The one window that is in there was wide open too, but the smell just hangs in the air. It’s not so bad at first, but by the time you are done and go to get that fresh air smell outside … you realize you can’t smell fresh air, Kilz is in your head. Ick!
The Living Air machine will do it’s magic and zap that smell away by tomorrow at the latest. But I need to do a second coat. I’m hoping that my husband will be home early enough and agree to tackle it together this evening. It’s not such hard work, but it’s hard when it was done the way I did it, with two big pieces of furniture still in the room. I had a space around the room I could sqoosh in and out of to get here and there, slide the furniture further that way, over there, back over here, and so on, to make room to move the ladder, the Kilz, and me, to not-yet-primed wall.
Kilz can be painted over in an hour. An hour is nice space of time between, but in THAT room, no way, that’s too much at once all by my lonesome.
Paint, now that’s a different story. The paint we have is Latex. Of course! It’s the top coat, it’ll be grand in Latex, easy to clean up, and go lovely over the Kilz. Paint covers differently and is like icing a cake, imo. No, it’s like painting. Priming isn’t exactly painting. It’s one of those crucial nasty steps to “get ready to paint”.
My paternal Grandfather was a painter. He died in 1926. Painters back then had stinky nasty paint. Lead paint. That’s why he died. My maternal Grandfather was a carpenter. That didn’t kill him. I have both of them in my blood and my love of renovating I know comes from them. It’s not “renovating” but “creating” really … making something, doing something productive, aethetics … beauty in the craft.
I’m not good at either thing, as they were, they did their stuff for a living. Here I just do it while I live in it. It’s just part of being a homeowner that doesn’t hire a decorator.
So what’s the cure for Oil-based stink in your head? Eat some ice cream. It doesn’t take it away, but softens it, creamy layers it, it’s not so horrid after eating ice cream. For me that was Chubby Hubby. I didn’t eat the whole pint. Only my chubby hubby does that.
So paint can be stinky too, not just the oil-based primers, like Kilz Original. Our Lotus Flower for the base top coat in Victoria’s room is Latex. But the paint on the wainscoting will probably be an oil-based enamal-like paint. We want it to be TOUGH. Delicate and feminine, but super scrubbable tough –SDT That calls for a high stink factor. THAT will be done in the garage, on saw horses though. Then applied with nails and the nail holes touched up with dabs of stinky paint.
I forsee a need for more Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer soon. “Everything But The” is my favorite. Chubby Hubby is really good too.
Is She Straight, Or… A Secret Botticelli? Girls Scorn Curls by Liz Krieger [Google Cache]
This is a humorous piece about something I’m very familiar with . Curly hair, and straightening it and pretending it wasn’t really curly.
I myself blowed it out in my teens. I also chemically straightened it by myself in my home bathroom. That was the early 80′s. I thankfully realized that I had really cool hair when it was wet … hmm. But it always dried up then, into a big blownup ball of furr. I HAD to blowdry it on HOT with a brush and curl it under and out to get it to go straight. I had to do that or it’d be frizzy and horrid.
I have a school picture of my hair in fine form. Late in the day it was finally my turn to get snapped. The camera chose to unveil the horizontal lines around my head. Straight hair with horizontal puffed out lines around my head at different levels. It was a huge crimped relaxed style, and super ugly.
What happened? Moisture. It was Florida. It was sweaty and hot in the hallways. My hair desperately tried to fluff up … but since it was blown out and didn’t get all wet, just humidity around it … it crimped up funny horizontal lines instead. It took me seeing that picture and thinking about it long and hard to realize that I looked like that more often than not. My “eye” straightened my hair out, but the real vision of me was frightening daily. I mean, I started out the day with it straight and smooth, and without being privelaged to see it happen, transformed to an oddity daily. My first look at the picture was of complete horror! It really was something to have to adjust to, that I don’t look how I think I look. That was a stepping off point somehow, for the time in the near future that I figured out that my hair looked great when it was wet, as long as it stayed wet.
I never had the privelage of a super great hot straightening like Liz Krueger talks about in her article. My hair was weird when it was chemically straightened. It was a strange process and freaked me out … it seemed my hair was gelly gummy stretchy during the process … comb goop through the hair and comb it in well. Oohh, now that I know I’m glad I survived! That was nasty stuff to do to my own hair.
I have other horror stories with my hair. I’ll save those for another time.
I found this article today because someone searched one of my sites for curly hair and lavender … so that set me out to see the page ranking, curious, not WANTING to be on top as some individuals online are … comment spammers, anyhow I got waylaid and started looking at other sites, and a second search produced that article. It’s dated for today, so that was great timing on the searcher to my site! Without that I’d not have been looking around for curly hair articles. Especially since that site is a “registered users” site, I’d not have had access to it. So I linked to the google cache of it, for as long as that’s there. I have a capture of the page in Firefox, so at least I have a good copy of it for my own enjoyment. Too bad it’ll go away to nether regions eventually out here.
I must add here that I didn’t grow up thinking I had curly hair. I didn’t. I seemed to have “hair with body” as a child. Sweet blonde smooth locks that flipped under at the ends, and up on those other ends, but not “curly” not even “wavy”.
Growing up in the 60′s and 70′s that was when we didn’t know so much about hair. We now know that 60% of people (Americans? or ALL PEOPLE?) have curly or wavy hair, different hair that needs to be babied. But it’s WORTH IT!
So for me it was culture shock to find out that MY HAIR IS REALLY CURLY!
It wasn’t just wavy … it was soft corkscrews, some tighter, tighter when I was in my twenties, for sure. My early teens saw me change from girl to turning-woman, which darkened my hair color and changed the texture and wave to distinctly different.
I had no support, and so blew it out to “make it obey”. I never “let it go”.
At the beach my hair looked good, like a walk on the beach with my relatives, my aunt said “you have great beach hair!” with pride and jealousy mixed into the statement. I was proud, but knew that everyday wasn’t a beach time. 
My hair at the beach shone, even blown out, it just got looser, the body evened out and with it blowing around in the ocean breezes it separated into pieces of hair, locks, that just were so nice, but not “curly”. You do know, if you know curly, that is totally curly. It’s just the curly without the curl. It’s just the curly peeking out in supreme conditions (sea air), which would give way to unfurled curls if I got it wet in the Atlantic’s waters. But that’s just beach hair. It never turned out so nice at home day in and day out.
I finally put two and two together and had a love/hate relationship with my curly hair in my late teens, beach good.
Then “Against All Odds” the movie, was out. Ah, the hair of that girl got me wanting it. I got it cut at a place super close to my house, it was just across the street angularly from us, a small place, not filled with people, a haven for an introvert like me! At any rate, she (the stylist) introduced me to “hair gel” and the “new curly me” was born, but it was short. I had ups and downs with lengths from then on, but always with gel on the outside of my hair. I sought out humectant conditioners and used more of that than shampoo, but all those years I still shampooed first. Silly. Strip it and add it back on. That’s not so good. We know that now. Well, at least I do. I meant the “collective we” of curldom understanders.
It’s been awhile now since I’ve gone to “conditioner-only” washing. My hair is still curly and needs to be worked with everyday. It’s really long though, so is quite a pain to re-wet daily. I have gone about with it in pony tails after a day or two, without daily washing, and it gets less curly. I’m still abusing it those days. I am pledging now to take even better care of my curly hair and always wear it curly, even if it means I have to wash these long locks every single day.
I will make a comparison here to my “before” method, maybe my curly hair looked curlier a day or two after a wash, whereas today it doesn’t, because I was stripping, re-moisturizing, gelling, laquering, and spraying this and that over top — my curls were locked in with that “curly treatment”.
I’m totally “natural” now, and so my loose curls can flatten out (but still be frizzy curly flattened curly, makes no sense, but it’s there.) It happens over night, and when I get frustrated doing something and jam it up into a band to hold it high. So a few days of that and it’s worse every day.
Curly Girl suggests every day, or every other day … and so I admit here it’s true, but I need to come to grips with doing that with long hair. Long Botticelli curls are nice. I’m glad God gave them to me. I wish for curlier sometimes, but what I have is me.
I look best as me. Natural me.
The article linked above talks about that sort of thing. How girls don’t look right sometimes, they are Fake Straighteners. It looks false, worse than a toupee. I’ll take a stab at it and say “Let it out! Let it get wet, moisturize it, work with it, give it a chance to be real for you!” I can say that. I was there once. So if you are a fake straight girl, leap right into the best of treatment for your real curly hair. Get the book Curly Girl, and let live!
Cross-posted at: Hyperthinking Weblog
The other day we went to Lowe’s and got some paint. The color is called “Lotus Flower” and is a light buttery delicate yellowish color. It’s the base for Victoria’s room.
Originally I had planned to have her room be very pink, with light pink or creamy light pinkish as base and darker pink in vertical painted stripes. We also have planned all along to have wainscoting, beadboard, painted enamel white, or maybe another color.
So I had gone as far before as picking out a color card with the pinks on it that I wanted to use.
At Lowe’s recently then, we were looking at other things and got round to the paint last. I had actually walked past the color area on the way to the back of the store when we first were there, and thought about finding that color card again, then felt a compunction to keep walking, which I obeyed.
Then I saw a different manufactuer’s colors, and my eyes fell on a brochure which had complementary shades on the back in color swatches. That’s when the plan changed.
So now it’s Lotus Flower for the base.
First we need to finish prepping the walls, filling holes, and sanding the old eggshell down a bit. I removed the baseboards this afternoon. Good hard work, loud, thrilling for me! I love anything with a crowbar, it seems.
So probably I’ll be able to start the painting on Monday. First the Kilz. Kilz is important in our home.
Then the Lotus Flower. It’s such a beautiful shade. I’m not a yellow fan usually. Victoria has different coloring than me though, and appreciates it more, but on the scale of all things weighed against all other things doubly over … I like Lotus Flower. Whatever that means!
We’ll be getting beadboard for the bottom half of the walls. We’re getting it in the 4 Ft. high sections. A good thick plywood, it’ll really protect the walls and add beauty as well.
That will be painted enamel, a pink that’s on the card where the Lotus Flower color came from. Then it’s time to reflect on the changes and to see what else I want to do. I’m taking it in steps, natural, and I’ll let it flow as it wants to.
I’m thinking still of stripes in pink … just not sure what type or shade. Always I had planned to do decoupage of paperdolls I’ll print out from cute things I’ve found online, many of them old paperdolls from vintage early 1900′s ladies magazines. I still want to do that, and will have to wait until the stripes issue is worked out to decide further on the decoupaging.
We’ll choose a chair rail trim and also something for the ceiling edge, a crown molding or maybe something a bit more elaborate … fun stuff, to trim out a room as a decorator! She has one corner in the room that juts out, it’s right as you come into the room –the hall closet, and we’ll put a wooden decorative corner piece it’s whole length. So it’ll end up that the room with be encased in prettily painted wood.
Lastly then will be organizational things. She has some, but not enough. Really the biggest thing is a raised platform bed is what I want to build for her, and give her storage, study, relaxing reading space underneath. It’s a small room and we need every square-inch! I need to paint a few pieces of furniture that she has as well. So I have much to keep me busy there.
There’s then the hall bathroom. Frank is going to replace the toilet, that one has been nothing but trouble. And the sink and cabinet there will go too. We found a nice different piece that is a cabinet and sink that go together, and is very pretty, euro hinges in the doors, and a curved upper door look, and the sink is cultured marble and extends out of the cabinet base, it’s not a skirt sink, similar, but it’s very curvy and extends out as a curve into the front space where a sink usually has already ended.
We’ll also replace the light fixture, and I’ll trim out the mirror to make it look prettier. Oh, the room has to be painted again too. And then a corner cabinet and new shower curtain should round it out, well ‘cept the floor. Once we decide what to do with the floor, it’ll be done.
We need to repaint the whole house interior and exterior. This is the start of major painting in 2005!