Joy Leanne

July 4th was a quiet low key day. A trip to a friend's pool. A cook out. Fire works in my parent's drive way. Thankful for all our troops who fight to make these quiet days of freedom possible.

We are still up in Maryland enjoying the AC and other amenities having electricity brings. While we were here our little Maddie Goose turned three. While it wasn't quiet the party we had planned it was a lot of fun and my girls enjoyed a day with Nana, Colonel, Dad, and Mom. They even got to go see Brave! I am learning a lot about flexibility and just how grateful I am to friends and family opening ups their homes to us. It's been an interesting experience, but all in all a good one!

Wow! What a few days it has been. Last Friday evening a storm rushed through ten states in ten hours. They are calling it a "hurricane like event" only with no advance warning. Pretty scary. Winds were over 75 mph in some areas including ours. Thankfully we personally only lost a few tree branches but some lost much more. We did however loose power along with oh... 3 million others across ten states. Unfortunately our county isn't suppose to get power back till the 7th of July so we packed up and headed to my parents who do have power!! It's been an adventure that's for sure. More stories to follow I am sure!!

I was sharing with a friend last night one of the things that helps me stay productive during the day. I talked about a bit on here but not a lot so I thought I would share. Over a year ago I shared a quick picture of my Task Basket . The basket I use changes constantly, the basic idea is that is has my to-do list along with at least part of the pieces for any project I am working on that day. Some of this is so I have what I need handy and some is so that I have physical reminders of that days chores. Today's basket included my to-do list along with: cleaner for the bathrooms, carpet powder, return address labels to remind me to go to the post office, my calendar since I kept getting messages about making plans, note cards to write down the verses I'm supposed to be memorizing (and later the verses themselves).  I like this as it really does help keep me on task and means I don't have to stop and go searching for things quite so often. My day in a few snap shots. My Task B...

As much as I love my dear blogger blog, I am contemplating moving things around. Eventually I am hoping to move to a personal website as apposed to a blogging template. Till then I am playing around with using my tumblr more. Frankly I am not as big a fan of the user interface, but I just can't argue with the nice clean lay outs. :) Playing around with physical space as well and moving things around. It's been a while since I have done anything major. Really not since last summer, but at least I am getting a vision again and are making some huge changes to one room and minor ones to another. Using  Pinterest in many many ways to pull together ideas and concepts and maybe just maybe have something to share sooner rather than later. 

It's a dozen little things that together all make up summer time some how. Slurpies, and red tongues, and Mochas, and pre-cooked chicken and lazy afternoons in front of the fan. So much on my mind, but really who has the energy to write it all down. It's so much more tempting to turn the fan back on and find a book and loose myself in the pages.

I've been enjoying another creative binge around here. Making some dollies as well as other pretties! And to add to the enjoyment one of the things I made was inspired by a pinterest pin which means I can scratch that off of this week's summer bucket list. So, for now these pretty new necklaces are in the shop. If nothing else I am now well prepared for baby showers!