Anyway, they did what Jesus told them to do ( a wise thing to do), and when the master of the banquet tasted it, he raved about the excellent wine that the couple saved until the end of the wedding. Apparently, most people served the good stuff first, and then brought out the bad stuff. This was Jesus' first miracle recorded in Scripture, when he had turned water into wine! That is why this picture is so funny - ha ha ha - "Jesus was here", get it? I'm still snickering ; }
My eldest son came over to me this evening snickering, and showed me this picture that was on his phone, I read it carefully from top to bottom and then I laughed heartily, so I had to share it with y'all. For those of you who don't get it, I will give you the cliff notes of a story recorded in the New Testament gospels where Jesus and his disciples were invited to a wedding feast in Cana, a town in Galilee [Israel]. As it turned out, the happy couple had run out of wine, but the feast was not yet over, a very bad thing to happen in those ancient days. So Jesus told some waiters to fill a few very large pottery jars to the brim with water, and then he told them to draw it out again and serve it to the master of the banquet. Can you imagine? What would you have done if you were in their sandals?
Anyway, they did what Jesus told them to do ( a wise thing to do), and when the master of the banquet tasted it, he raved about the excellent wine that the couple saved until the end of the wedding. Apparently, most people served the good stuff first, and then brought out the bad stuff. This was Jesus' first miracle recorded in Scripture, when he had turned water into wine! That is why this picture is so funny - ha ha ha - "Jesus was here", get it? I'm still snickering ; }
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For a while, I have been wanting to create a logo like this one, for my website. Just a simple little housewife clip art to jazz things up a bit. But you know how it is, most of the free clip art on the Web is usually not what you are looking for. So, I knew that I would either have to pay someone to do it for me, because I just don't have any web savvy art friends that I could call on to help me, or I would have to do it myself. Finally, a couple of days ago, I buckled down and searched the "Interweb" for information on how to make clip art, I mean how hard could it be, right? Truly, ignorance is bliss, because that search only opened up a can of worms for me. As anyone who makes clip art knows, it's not all that easy, well for a beginner anyway. Many of the clip art programs are not that easy to use, in my rookie opinion. I would have to spend hours upon hours playing with the software just to learn how it works, and that means hours upon hours of frustration for me. And the tutorials on Youtube for these types of software are geared toward the people who are already somewhat familiar with them, they are not for techno challenged beginners. If you don't know this already, dear reader, let me tell you, everything in this world takes a measure of skill and know how --everything! I didn't want to take months to learn how to be a graphic artist, I just wanted to quickly make some clip art, and on the cheap too, but how? Fortunately, I did find a Youtube tutorial on how to make clip art easily, well that is how the Youtuber made it seem. Did I use the information that the Youtuber provided to make my logo? No, I couldn't. Why not? Because the website that was recommended by the Youtuber, the one that would easily turn a picture of a line drawing into digital clip art, was no longer on the web - so I was back to square one, and very frustrated. I'm guessing that Google found Picnik to be so amazingly easy to use, and a nearly painless process for the inexperienced web user like me, that they must have worked very hard to make the designers of Picnik an offer that they couldn't refuse. That is just my paranoid frustration talking, because I really have no idea why the creators of Picnik pulled the plug on their website. Surly, it seems to me, that they could have sold it to someone else, or hired a manager to maintain the site, but for some reason they just took it off completely and left millions of people like me in a clip art lurch. Their page that "explains" why they ditched the site, redirects you to a +Google photo page, which not surprisingly has no thingamabob to help the inexperienced and techno challenged to easily make clip art using a digitized photo - what a shocker! I couldn't believe it, I was so close to achieving my clip art goal, painlessly, but it was not to be. And so, I put on my thinking cap, because I was determined to make some clip art and I wasn't going to let this techno challenge stop me. So I resorted to what I know best - - low tech tactics. Stationing myself at my dining room table, I grasped my pencil, but instead of whipping out my logo, I stared at a very white and very blank piece of paper for a while - - this was something I would've done even if I was able to use Picnik. Then I realized that I had to decide what style I was going to make my logo, simple, or detailed. While I like the simplicity of vector clip art's geometric shapes and clean lines, for some reason, I just can't seem to achieve that style. And bitmap is a little too detailed for the style I wanted, so what I needed was a hybrid of sorts. To help dust off my drawing skills, I spent a few moments doodling, and then I set out to work. After I went through several pencil erasers, many pieces of paper, and had suffered a pencil sharpener mishap when the lid of the sharpener came off, spilling its mixture of wood and graphite debris all over me and the floor, I finally was able to get what was in my mind onto that blank piece of paper a few hours later - I was triumphant! Not bad considering the many years I've neglected my drawing skills, even if I do say so myself! The next day, which was yesterday, I went to Walmart and chose some scrapbooking paper that I liked. I just wanted about 3 or 4 sheets, but apparently they come in tablets these days. Just as well, knowing my penchant for making mistakes, it was probably a good idea to have more than one piece of paper per color. Back at home, I used my drawing as a template. I held my original drawing up to the window and put another piece of paper over it so I could trace it, basically I made a copy, well, I made two copies. Then it dawned on me that I had gone a little too far with my 'old school' approach, because I could have used my printer to make the copies- ha ha ha - oh well. Why make two copies anyway? Well, I wanted to keep my original drawing, that's why I made two copies. One copy was so I could cut out the shapes to use as templates for my pretty scrapbooking paper, and the other was so I could paste on the clipped pieces for the final product. I guess you could say I was making a paper doll. I suppose I could have used markers and colored pencil to color in my dress, but I would not have been able to achieve the intensity of color without marker lines, and the patterns of the colored paper easily gave me a measure of detail that I like. After I glued my paper doll onto the second copy of the line drawing, I then colored in my skin, hair, and frying pan, using colored pencils and markers. Then I outlined the picture with a black ink pen, and colored in other details, then I finally scanned it onto my computer. After that, I was able to easily put the digitized photo it into my computer's picture file, and I was then finally able to paste it onto my website, and voila! I like the finished product because it is simple like vector, but also has some realistic details without being too realistic. There you have it, I finally made my own clip art, literally, without using any clip art programs. Perhaps someday I will sit down and force myself learn how use at least one of the myriads of clip art programs out there, but for now, this works for me! Going through this process made me think that perhaps I do have a measure of that homesteading spirit in me after all! There it is...our hen house. I will be purchasing this well built structure today! Finally after months and months of searching, we are one big step closer to achieving our dream of owning our very own chickens . Well, what do you think? Pretty nice huh? This journey toward poultry paradise hasn't been easy, let me tell you... my husband and I tag-teamed our time. We spent hours upon hours for months with our eyes glued to the computer screen with our cramped hands curled around the mouse, as we searched high and low, and peered in every nook and cranny of the world wide web for a hen house, many of you know what this is like - it's monotonous. Well, we finally hit pay dirt when I moseyed onto the TUFF SHED website, after my husband suggested it. The coop they offered was a little too big, so I asked my husband to contact the Rep. from the Home Depot to see if we could order it through them, but make it a little smaller. After days and days of waiting for information, the Home Depot store rep. for TUFF SHED said we couldn't get this hen house, because it wasn't available in the California market - - BLAST! Now we were back to square one, oh how very disconcerting! However, all was not lost, as you can see, because I'm getting the TUFF SHED coop after all. How did I manage such a retail miracle you may be wondering? Well, as it would happen, I had filled out a quote request on TUFF SHED's website and I got an email from the Anaheim store's sales rep. and she answered all my questions and even gave me a quote! Now I was confused, because it seemed like she was offering something another sales rep. said I couldn't have. To alleviate my confusion, I called Liz at the Anaheim TUFF SHED location and she said they could build it there and have it installed within 3 days! Oh the joy - and best of all, my husband and I will save time, money, and our marriage, because with the purchase of this awesome hen house from TUFF SHED, it comes with free installation! They'll even customize it and paint it for you, how awesome is that? Now, I realize my exuberance may not fully embody the homesteading spirit, but I think it is best for one to know one's limitations in order to prevent eminent failure and heartache. Though my husband and I love watching home improvement shows, that doesn't mean we are good at it. As much as I hate to admit it, we don't always cooperate very well together, because I have a tendency to lean toward perfectionism, but my husband leans toward the "it's good enough" side of the home improvement scale - wait... I think my eye is starting to twitch. You see dear reader, like oil and water, these two ideologies don't mix very well. At any rate, we both agree that this is the best route for us to go. Isn't marital concord bliss? So for a mere $1200 we will have a well built "Poulet Chalet" for our future little flock; this handsome sum is chicken scratch compared to some of the poultry palaces I have seen on the Interweb, that range anywhere from $500 to $2000. This vast price range encompasses variants such as size of the coop, construction materials, building permits, and marital counseling, or divorce court fees. Well, I hope to document the coop build as it happens, and post it on the blog. Hopefully the installation guys aren't camera shy, and don't mind the presence of the home owner, the whole process of installation, as I understand it, will take 5 hours. These are professional installers, so can you imagine how long it would take me and Robert to do it? I shudder to even think about it!
that are somewhat in the way of the building site, as well. Besides, this purchase will clean out my savings, so I will need more time to save more dough for purchasing the other chicken necessities besides the chickens themselves. Now I have to do a lot of research on what kind of feed is best, and where to buy it for the best price. Still a lot more to do, but we are almost there!
I have just recently started looking into the vast and kind of daunting subject of urban homesteading. Now, I'm not talking about becoming like the Kilcher family in Alaska, --they are hard core. Homesteading is their way of life, and I mean life for death, and it has been that way for at least three generations. Besides, they have hundreds of acres of land at their disposal. As a young girl, I loved reading the Little House on the Prairie series, but of course, I'm pretty sure we didn't get the whole story. Romanticism from a young girl's point of view aside, I'm just starting to consider adopting a few homesteading principles, such as growing some food, preferably, food we already like to eat. And we are going to raise some small animals, we only have enough room on our little estate of 4653 sqft. [or .15 acres which includes our house and garage] of usable space for 5 chickens. Which is fine, since I don't have a hankering to raise the four footed variety of farm animal. As far as my skills, I can sew a straight line, but I don't see myself sewing my men any clothes, besides they probably wouldn't wear what I made them anyway. I tease the boys that I can crochet them a pair of swimming trunks, or a baseball cap -- I just love seeing the looks of consternation I get from them! I love cooking, and baking, and I have made several batches of apricot jam - yum - but that is the extent of my canning prowess. There is certainly more to learn, much more. What I really understand about homesteading, is that it is a heck of a lot of hard work! But, if you know what your are doing, and have a plan for what you intend to accomplish, then it can also be highly rewarding. What I mean by that is, if I grow a splendid bumper crop of green beans, then what am I going to do with them if my family and my neighbors can't eat them all before they go bad? I had better have a "plan b" in place to implement, or else I will be committing a few heinous homesteading sins like wasting time, money, effort, and food! And if you spend hours on a quilting project that never gets finished what good is it? Planing and follow through are the keys to success for most things in this life, and homesteading is no exception. So, since I don't have generations of homesteading know how behind me, I'm going to have to start small and work my way up to where I want to be. Thankfully there are many books, blogs, websites, and videos out there to help educate me in this worthwhile endeavor. And hopefully, my eldest son will catch the homesteading bug and carry a few things on to his family - I can only dream! Kyle has special needs, so I don't think he will be leaving our nest any time soon, to start his own family, but if he was "normal" then I would bet money that he would be the one to take on the rigors of homesteading, as he is my little domestic. I hope to inspire some of you to look into adopting a few homesteading practices, any part, be it baking, growing food, raising chickens for eggs, or sewing clothes helps foster a sense of independence, and confidence in providing something worthwhile for you and your family. Dear reader, I realize these pictures have nothing to do with hair, but bear with me for a moment. A while ago I thought I was losing my hair because I was allergic to the hair care products I was using. So, as it turns out, that wasn't the case. I have a skin condition known as seborrheic dermatitis. Seborrheic dermatitis is a scaly and itchy red skin condition that causes the sufferer great irritation, embarrassment, and even hair loss, as in my case. Basically it is dandruff on steroids. This fairly common skin condition can affect any area where there are oil glands, especially around skin folds, like the ears, nose, base of the skull, under arms, under breasts, and between the legs - ouch! It can be mild or severe, some of the pictures I've seen make me cringe and my heart goes out to the poor soul in the picture.
The good news is that it is treatable by a good dermatologist. For me, the itchy, flaky scalp was accompanied by soreness at the top of my head, like when you wear a pony tail too long. And that is where my hair was falling out by the brush full. I have since seen my doctor, and he prescribed some topical medication for flareups and I have to use a special medicated shampoo with coal tar in it. For some reason, it help control the massive amounts of oil my scalp puts out, which exacerbates the condition. It has been about 6 months since I have been using the shampoo and the topical medication when I get flareups, and it seems that my hair is slowly growing back, and I mean slowly! At least I won't be donning on any hair prosthetics any time soon. It was about a week ago, when my husband asked me if I wanted to color my hair. What he meant was, "Honey, can you please color your hair?" You see I had decided to give my poor scalp a vacation from color treatments, and I was considering making it a permanent vacation, but apparently my husband didn't like my "natural" highlights. So I went ahead and colored it. Even though I may look ten years younger, my scalp is not too happy with me. For a while, I wasn't losing any hair, or at least, hardly any, but now I'm noticing I'm losing a bit more and my scalp is kinda going back to being angry with me. Vanity is such a pain, and for me, not really worth my while - sorry honey, it looks like this is the last time I'll be reaching for the bottle of youth! |
Hello!Welcome to my blog, dear reader. My name is Heather, and I am a full time housewife and mom living in Whittier Ca. with my wonderful husband of 26 years, and our two sons. I welcome you and hope you enjoy reading what is on my mind. Subscribe to
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