Penny Sanford Designs

Splish, Splash, Pinch, Dash, Sploosh!

Have you ever thought about the germs on your trusty, loyal sewing pins?



I must have seen too many episodes of "How Clean Is Your House: US" where they do lab tests to prove to people that phones, computer keyboards, counters, etc., are crawling with nasty, harmful germs.  So when I spilled my Happy Yellow sewing pins all over the floor in the sewing room recently,  my sweet hubby swept them up into a handy dust bin.

That was great. Quite helpful. And I DO appreciate his help.  But it did not take long for me to think about the OTHER stuff that broom and dust pan handle around here...in a house of four Westies and one creaky old English Shepherd.

Are you following my train of thought here? What do I do with the pins when I sew? Sewing with pins temperarily lined up between my lips or buried in the fabric of my bodice. Hmmmnnn....dirty pins in my mouth.  Germs from the floor transferred to the Happy Yellow sewing pins from the dust bin and forward to my unsuspecting lips. 

ICK! *Grimace* E coli, anyone?

So, little square Happy Yellow Tupperware container was filled with water and a small SPLISH of bleach was added. About 10 percent bleach, or one part bleach to 10 parts water....a "splish" which is different from a SPLASH. The measurment is rather like a PINCH or a DASH is to a cup of liquid.  I'm not quite sure where SPLOOSH fits in with these measurements, but when it is bath time for the Westies,  Gordon asks them if they are ready to go take a SPLOOSH.

Fuzz and thread snippets floated to the top of the Tupperware pin container, and I simply let the accumulated fluff flow away from the pins that I stirred in the disinfecting solution.  Every pin got a good soak in the Splish Bleach solution.

Is 49 years of age too old to still be playing with silly stuff? Actually this is only half of my Happy Yellow sewing pins. The ones I first disinfected are making a fun pattern on my pin cushion (sorry no handy photo, but here is a previous play session with my pin cushion).  Yes, I play with my sewing pins.




And I still play with my BFF Happy Yellow Duckie from my childhood.  This little fella must be 46 years old by now.( I wonder how old that is in Duck Years?)  Our friendship has never waivered, My Happy Yellow Duckie and me.

Even when he was accidentally sent to the attic for many years, I still loved My Happy Yellow Duckie. Even last year when Nemo came to live here on a pair of wash cloths bound with pretty quilt fabric,  I still loved My Happy Yellow Duckie the best.

Yes, I have seen all of the Toy Story movies, as well as Finding Nemo. Many times, in fact. Why do you ask?  *wink*

So BIG JUMBO Happy Yellow Tupperware Canister full of Epsom Salt awaits the next bath along with my BFF Happy Yellow Duckie and Nemo, who cannot escape the quilt binding on the wash cloths nor the anemone made of Happy Yellow sewing pins.

Uh, you might want to give your sewing pins a Splish Disinfecting. Needles too. I'm just saying...

PennyCast: The Eyes of this House

PennyCast for Nov. 6, 2011: 

The Eyes of this House.

(Click on the link below ("Eyes_Master") and then when the page with the podcast player appears,  click the play button to listen to the podcast.)

Eyes_master

This is a short audio podcast of how a simple DIY task has sparked some insightful symbolism to life.  I expanded the blog post of a few days ago on this topic.

Here is the picture of the actual window on the second floor from which two panes dropped to the ground WITHOUT breaking!



The windows on the second floor are perfect Westie Height!



Lillibeth, above, died September 5th of this year.  We miss her SOOOO much!


Jenny keeps a frequent watch out this window for any invading critters.  Even at night, the Westies can smell visiting wildlife around the yard.

The Eyes of this House

We started re-glazing the old windows in this family farmhouse late yesterday afternoon.

There were two panes in one of the windows in the upstairs-guest-bedr00m-turned-sewing-room that fell to the ground back in the summer, but miraculously they did not break.

This is the very window, photographed in the spring. A thick carpet of periwinkle buffered the fall of the glass panes, and the old glass must be quite durable.



It's been too hot, or we were too rushed with deadlines to actually start reglazing the windows in this circa 1870 farmhouse.  Some of the procastinating was my fear of the unknown, having never glazed windows before.

So with a forecast of 35 degrees Farenheit for early this  morning,  it was time to get those old bubbled glass panes back in their proper spot and for me to  jump into reglazing with both feet.

I've volunteered to reglaze every window in this house (and anywhere else on the farm that needs it). It's a frugal step, but I also like tedious, repetative work. Well, maybe I don't automatically LIKE tedious work, but I know how to talk myself into thinking that I am enjoying it. *grin*

What I did not expect was to cry as I scraped oversized layers of putty from the panes.  I cried as I tried to explain to Gordon and Unc why I was crying over the window on my work table. I cried while trying to put this into words last night. (I'm finishing this post Tuesday afternoon)

The emotions are still raw and not quite captured in words in my mind, but as I struggled with the layers of old caulk, I thought about the tenacious, weathered family from which I come. 

The erosion of the old wood on the outside of this second story window brought to my mind the family stories of the natural disasters that left footprints on this farm.  How many storms with driving rain have pummeled these windows? How many ice storms, snow storms, hail storms?

This 141 year old window is quite fragile when compared to tumultuous events in those 141 years of protecting this family. Up here on the second floor, the windows have received less attention and more temperature fluctations, so life's toll is easier to see.

So, why did I cry over the mundane task of reseating a couple of window panes? The contrast of our little petty family dramas of the last couple of weeks compared to the scars and erosion of the 141 year old wood in this 141 year old window...is what made me cry. 

The three of us in this house had gotten caught up in a silly merry go round of "he said, he did, he didn't, it's his fault, it's not my fault"...when the REAL battle was and is how God continues to protect us and provide for us as a family in a never-ending script of quite daunting problems.

God's constant protection could be illustrated by these fragile, beautiful old windows that have never failed to protect us. If the panes of old wavy glass were representative of faith, then our view of the world is filtered through the intangible of faith just as my view of the falling leaves that I am watching right now  through the panes of this old wavy glass... is slightly altered because of the unique character of the old glass.

SO in the weeks and months ahead as I tackle this re-glazing process one half window at a time, I will be removing the old "scar tissue" of cracked putty and paint. Then as I clean each beautiful pane of bubbled, wavy glass, I will be removing the cataracts, so to speak, from the eyes of this old house.

I fully expect to learn quite a lot as I putter along with the putty and glazing points, primer and top coats. It's as if God is saying that it's time to clear off the debris of the past generations and the lingering scars of unforgiveness, jealousy...the old family stories of "He said, he did, he didn't, it's her fault, it's not my fault".  

We inherit those emotions too, you know, from the old family stories.  Cloaked in the shadows of passing along family stories, we also pass along the negative emotions.  Those toxic emotions  in turn hold us back from the kind of life with which God wants to bless us.

Yes, I have MUCH to learn from these old Eyes of this old family farmhouse.

PennyCast 2: Molly and the Turkey.

Mollyandturkey

A Lilibeth/Belle Memorial Podcast

Memorialpodcast

 

Bath Time for Westies

Well, *fiddlesticks*!

I was trying to get in a post before midnight, and I just managed to erase half of my post. Fresh start:

We give the five Westies baths in the bathtub every couple of days and sometimes every day. Westies easily develop allergies to food or items in their surrounding. The stress our rescued Westies have endured in previous years leave them very succeptible to skin issues.



A bath with Epsom Salts not only kills any fleas, it lets their skin soak up Magnesium, soothes their little arthritic joints and dries up skin issues. Yes, Westie skin can dry with too many baths, but Epsom Salt leaves dog skin and human skin soft and moisturized. I don't know the chemistry of Epsom Sal+ Water = soft moisturized skin, but it works.

For these family baths, we've worked out a system.

I get in the tub (the Epsom Salt soaks are good for humans too) and wash the Westies in the tub with me. Gordon's role is to find, catch and bring the dog to me. They love their bath time, and they are SO playful when they are first out of the tub, but they also like to play Hide and Seek from Gordon before the bath.



These are a few shots of Lillibeth and Maisy getting their bath. From their expressions you would think I was torturing these babies. Not. Maisy Mae enjoys her bath so much that she tucks up her hind legs, props her chin on my tummy and floats in the soothing water. NO, there is not a picture of that!!!



This is a close up of the tatoo in Lillibeth's ear from the puppy mill. Charlotte has one too. All of the puppies we rescued from that blankety-blank puppy mill in 2007  had tatoos in their ears. They did not have names, only numbers.




This old deep cast iron bath tub with its butter yellow tile in the bathroom upstairs has become a Happy Place for me. These pictures, taken at night with the strong overhead light have such a vintage feel.  They bring back memories of my childhood, playing with the plastic tug boats and yellow duckie. Somewhere we still have those bathtub toys.  The yellow duck has a place of pride atop the towel cabinet.

More to share about the fabric binding on the wash cloth...in another post, hopefully tomorrow! If you are already my friend on Facebook, then you are ahead of my blog postings.

Happy Bath Bubbles!

The Sky is Pregnant

The weather is pregnant this afternoon...fretful, heavy, very uncomfortable, pensive. The air feels claustrophobic.

A few grumbles of distant thunder signaled the slow beginnings of labor pains in the sky. Then, just a short while ago, her water broke with a 2/10ths of an inch of rain.

Now the labor pains and grumbles and sharp pains of lightning have picked up. We anticipate the delivery of a nice bouncing baby thundershower very soon.

Just like a nervous father-to-be, we are all unsettled, restless, waiting on the rain to arrive before we can settle down and focus on an activity.

We need the rain on the crops and the garden!

Here is a quilt picture to go with today's weather. It is the quilt on a guest bed upstairs. I did not make it, but I love this particular section of the quilt and hope to incorporate the concept of this design into some as-yet-unplanned future quilt.

Good Neighbors and Farm Fresh Food!

Gonna catch you up on some pictures of the farm-grown fruit and vegetables we have been enjoying so far this year...and those veggies shared with us from some good neighbors. Isn't it nice to have good neighbors like this?

This is a collection of photos from the last few weeks. Our tomatoes have not yet come in so we were thrilled with these beautiful vegetables. In return, we were able to give them figs and an icebox watermelon and other vegetables.



Once again, my uncle Charles K. Hamer, age 84, is working every morning and late afternoon in the garden and loving every minute of it. He is also good at freezing food. He loves his garden, and the garden, in turn, is keeping him vibrant and healthy!

I had not shared it on my blog, but we lost a freezer earlier this year, and it WOULD be the freezer with most of the vegetables we put up last year! "Spilt milk", so we will just work harder to put up more vegetables this year.



The bulk of the vegetables in our garden will come in later, essentially a Fall garden. We started our own seed this early, trying to use up an over-abundance of old seed. For various reasons, we had to re-plant a couple of times.

The rabbits enjoyed the first planting of beans, and crickets have eaten up peas and string beans at least once. That's ok...we have a special , non-chemical weapon for those crickets! We are planning to introduce weeder geese to the farm this fall, and that will take care of the crickets!

Repairing the garden and orchard fence to hold in the geese will take care of the rabbits. "We're making progress," my mantra! If it were not for the crickets, the menfolk might not be motivated yet to fix the orchard fence...so there is a silver lining in most "calamities"!



We like to start our own seed and acclimate the plants to this Mississippi heat. They do better overall than store-bought plants grown in a hot house. We need plants with vigorous roots, not lots of foliage and root-bound roots!



The seed we saved last year for tomatoes were extremely viable, so we will save seed again. Open pollinated plants like heirloom varieties work great from saved seed.

We are working toward growing only open pollinated vegetables so that we are not dependent each year on the seed one can find in the local stores or orders far in advance of planting season. We are watching seed prices rise, so saving our own seed is yet another frugal step we are taking.



So far, Unc has put up 17 bags of peas, thanks to some generous neighbors, 6 bags of squash from our garden, 2 quarts of okra from our garden, 8 quarts of mulberries (it was a good year for mulberries here), and 6 quarts of blueberries (the best our blueberry shrubs have done to date.)



This is what we were harvesting last week.



No more blueberrries for this year.



Every day, Unc and I are enjoying an afternoon salad. Gordon does not like vegetables, so he is missing one very delicious treat!



In another blog post, I will share with you our "discovery" of a herb that has more nutrition than lettuce. We have been cutting it up for years, thinking it was a weed. It has proved to be a DELICIOUS summer lettuce substitute. No lettuce would be living in this Mississippi heat right now.



Did I make you hungry with these pictures?  *wicked grin*

A Pretty Shrub as Invasive as Kudzu!

Quick post on pictures I posted (now) last night on Facebook...a mystery flowering shrub that we HATE around here. Can you recognize what it is?

Gordon took this picture back on May 8th. Neither Unc nor I recognized the flower laden branches, so Gordon took Unc out to where he had taken the photo. Unc came back in laughing!

Take a closer look at the dainty fairy like blossoms. How could we possibly hate this flowering shrub? Granted, neither Unc nor I remember this shrub every blooming so profusely before. This must be special year for it!

Grandma requested a start of this shrub from one of her friends in Kilmichael, back in the 1940's. The lady said, "OK, but you will regret it". Truer words have never been spoken.

The stuff has the nature of a terrorist! It sneaks into your lovely fence plantings of roses or other shrubs or flower beds and puts down an extensive root system and then seemingly overnight, it shoots up six, eight, ten feet tall...or MORE! Extracting the darned things sometimes requires a tractor to pull it out by the roots!

We've cut it to the ground and saturated the stump with Root-B-Gone only to have it spring back to life the next year!

It is the common privet hedge, (LIGUSTRUM vulgare). Read how much this guy does NOT love this shrub either!  Garden centers still sell the stuff at ridiculously low prices, like 99 cents per plant or less. That should be a red flag as well!

So briefly what I learned about this plant that I rank among my most hated growing things along with Dock weed, cockleburr, Johnson grass, nut grass and Kudzu...is that the common privet hedge is HORRIBLE for people with allergies!

There are some vague herbal medicinal uses for this plant, but other herbs can do the same jobs, probably much better. The raw berries are poisonous for humans and probably pets.

Sure the birds love the berries, but that is how the darned thing is spread so far and wide, through bird poop. I'd rather plant something else for our birds!

If you want a hedge, think boxwood, think roses, think bamboo...ANYthing but the common privet hedge! (Unless you really dislike the people in your neighborhood and want to vex the neighborhood for generations to come!)

As you know, a post like this is not usual for me. I even love dandelions and many plants other people consider weeds. Some pretty flowering plants that I DO adore will be in a blog post very soon...to catch you up on what has been blooming around here this spring.

Bedtime!
Fondly,
Penny

Snowdrops and Snowflakes (sung to "These are a Few of My Favorite Things")

(cue music "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music) 

Snowdrops and snowflakes and Lily of the Valley
Pretty cut flowers or hats for little fairies
Grandma's cute flowers are blooming right now
These are a few of my favorite things.....



My Facebook friends helped me identify these as Spring Snowflakes or Leucojum vernum. They are the shorter six to eight inch tall version compared to the Summer Snowflake or Leucojum aestivum which blooms later and grows to two feet.

In our family, we have always called them "snowdrops" and sometimes "lily of the valley". I'm glad to know the real name of them now! Note the little lime green spots on the tepals, another new word I learned in this quest.



My Facebook friends also tell me this little diminutive bulb is invasive. Yippee, I say! It can invade anywhere it wants to around our house.

You can see how just one clump of Grandma's Spring Snowflakes have multiplied in just five or so years. I don't remember exactly when we naturalized the little bulbs in this area of the yard, putting just one or two bulbs per hole.

I just love these, and they bring back wonderful memories of picking flowers in Grandma's ever-blooming yard!