Don't be Afraid of the Dark

Don't be afraid of the dark, we weren't when we participated in Earth Hour; but it appeared ALL of my neighbors were. How disappointing. Spot lights on when they let their dogs out, dogs don't need spot lights to see. In fact they probably see better without a bright light blaring at them. And who wants to be light up with a spot light during a private moment? Not me. Anyway, back to the point. Earth Hour came and went. I was sad to see lights on in almost every room of every house around us. Lights on in and out of the house, far too many lights on for people to be in everyroom really in need of the light. Here in lies the problem. People are wasteful. I know people weren't in everyroom, I know how few people live in some of these houses and I know how many lights I saw on.

It took some doing; but we were 100% off the grid. Seriously, we went room to room and unplugged everything we could find. Hubby checked the meter and it still showed we were pulling some juice. We retrace our steps room to room and found the clock on the microwave was still on. It's apparently wired separately, as is the censor for the garage door. We pulled the circuit breaker to get those off, rechecked the meter and bingo! We were now completely off the grid. We were pulling no juice. We remained outside enjoying our wine by our fire pit long past the mere 60 minutes of the "official Earth Hour". I doubt we made up for all those around us; but we gave it our best effort. It was a learning situation for us, who knew some of those censors stayed on when you clicked the lights off at night at the switch? We didn't. So it was a good exercise for us; caused us to be more aware. Much like when I ware a pedometer to see how many steps I walk, it causes you to be more aware.

I spent some time yesterday at Staples learning about special breakers that can sense when something isn't in use and shut off electric to it. I plan to check further into this and will keep you posted what I learn.

Why should we all practice some of the lessons from Earth Hour? The above Tree came to mind. The World is Beautiful, we must protect it. The pretty tree is one such example. I'll close here with my favorite poem of all time.

TREES

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

This poem was written by World War I Veteran Alfred Joyce Kilmer who died in France serving his country. He received a Purple Heart. Alfred was born in New Jersey and has a rest area there named for him; as well as schools, and a street or two. You may better know him as Joyce Kilmer; did you think Joyce was female? A common mistake.

So today I'm sharing with you my love of trees and nature through a favorite poem, and asking you to be gentle on this Earth. Take care of it.
REDUCE...REUSE...and RECYCLE

Important Family Time, Eating Dinner Together

Have continued cleaning up my desk area, trying to transfer files etc. from stacks of CD's and my older computer to this one. You know the constant effort to get organized. Making headway for sure; though a heavier than normal work scheduled has slowed things down again. errrrrrrr Work gets in the way, frustrating. lol Life hun?

Anyway in the process found these nice pictures of my new dining room when it was new. Guess I hadn't ever gotten around to editing and posting my pics before. I've never had a dining room set before and so was super thrilled when we selected this. Also, today's furniture is soooooooo big, it's not all that easy to find something that is physically the appropriate size as well as something that isn't over powering in it's height. With new houses being so modern and having large open spaces furniture design has followed suit. I like to actually sit in a chair with feet on the floor, not do an Edith Ann imitation. And our house is not big and open, it's what I call normal. Kitchen, Living Room, Dining Room, 3 bedrooms, and 1 bath.

Dark gold walls, wine in the style of an old still life is the border. I have nice hand painted dishes that have been in the family multiple generations that I can now have on display in the china cabinet. I do still want a picture or two on the walls, but haven't gotten that far. I don't know art, I know what I like when I see... and am remembering a dark picture of an elderly gentlemen sitting at a table in perhaps France or Italy sipping wine. The picture is one that makes you feel like you're in the vineyards. Anyone know what that picture is called? I'd love to have that.

I know in today's busy world it's not uncommon for families to eat on the run, to not sit down and eat together. That's too bad in my opinion. I think one of the most important times of any day is dinner time. It's a time without TV, a time without internet, a time without kids being plugged in or turned off. Or should be. A time for families to look at each other and actually converse. A time to ask about each other's day.

Spring Yard Business

One little spurt of Spring Color! Isn't it wonderful? This one small clump of purple Crocus is blooming, or was the other day beside the deck out back. So far, this lonely clump is it. But, it got me pretty excited. Spurred both hubby and I to spend the day doing some spring clean up in the yard. Was good to get outside even if cool after the long hard cold, extremely snowing winter we've had. This one little clump gives me hope, hope that it will warm up, that the snow really is gone, and hope that winter really is over. I know the calendar says it's spring; but around here...that really doesn't mean much. We often get a snow or two after we pass the date on the calendar.
We raked all the flower beds of the winter junk. Winter junk is what's left of the leaves, the deed stems etc. We picked up sticks from both front and back yards from what fell from the trees. We filled 4 of these large trash bags and 2 large trash cans with yard debris. I cut the tall grasses down to a couple of inches and that really produces lots of stuff. Our community composts. They do pick up yard waste once a week and take it to the compost facility for a fee. The fee isn't bad, but we live pretty close and have the means to take it ourselves; which then makes it free. So, here's the old Explorer loaded to the gills as hubby get's ready to make the journey to the dump.

Wearing Art

Wearing Art. I bought this jacket last summer at a local Art Fair. It was too warm for the summer but I've enjoyed wearing it throughout the fall and winter. And now that spring's approaching I'll probably wear it even more. When you buy art, or something hand made you assure yourself you're not going to see someone wearing the same thing; and you support the artist directly. You're not going to get a sale, probably...but I think it's a nice way to have something unique and support artists. This jacket is very well made and I wear it to dress up like above. We were heading out to dinner. This jacket paired with nice slacks can be quite dressy, or with a pair of jeans a bit more casual.
Hope you can see the beautiful brocade effect. Though the lighting made it look a bit more orange. The one above is more true to the real color.

AND speaking about wearing art, hop over to Brenda's blog and check out her 29 day give away contests!

AND you still have 7 days left to enter my contest over on Traveling Suitcase.

Girl Scout Cookies

Girl Scout Cookies! It's that time of the year, did you order and take delivery? Did you see the kids at the grocery store with cookies on a cardboard table? It's very different now. Did you even buy from a Girl Scout? Or, did Mom or Dad bring an order form to work? Seems now days many projects that were once kid oriented are now being done by adults. Why? Do we not let kids do as much as our parents let us do? I do think that's part of it. Do we try to control too much? What is the difference. When we were kids you went door to door in your neighborhood, you knew your neighbors and it was safe..........or at least we all felt like it was. Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, school fundraisers were done on a much smaller scale. There were no competitions to see who could get the biggest order, you didn't go beyond your neighborhood, and Mom and Dad certainly didn't sell them for you.

Times, they do seem different. The selection of the cookies is greater; but I don't think they're as good as they used to be? What do you think? How many boxes did you order? Above are our 4.

Thin mints are Hubby's favorite. My favorite are the peanut butter on the far right. Though the first box I ate were the peanut butter and chocolate ones in the red box, 2nd from the left.

I wasn't a Girl Scout, were you? I was a Brownie and never went beyond that, once we moved there wasn't a group in my school. I never went to Girl Scout activities, nor did our daughter. She was however a camp counselor one summer in Connecticut at a Girl Scout Camp. Tough summer job. You work 24 x 7, sleep in a tent, a floorless one at that. She kept busy checking the girls for ticks etc. lol.

What's wrong with this picture?

Ok, that's a saying cause clearly I don't have a picture here; but wait a minute. You're driving to and from work every house you pass has snow melting; but still plenty of snow piled up along the walk and drive. Businesses have mounds still in parking lots from the plows piling it up storm after storm. You here kids voices, they're walking home from school BAREFOOT! BAREFOOT and wearing SHORTS!!! Not one or two, lots of them. I saw them all the way home. Smaller age kids playing in their front yards the same thing. Are people nuts? It's not summer, it's not even Spring. There's still Snow...you know the cold white stuff on the ground. Yeah I know teenagers do stupid things and might have gone nuts over the fact that the sun had finally come out and the snow was finally melting. I know they think they can do whatever they want and probably where wearing the gym shorts, and had shoes in their bookbags....but come on. It was pretty, the sun was out; but it was just barely 50 for a few hours. We had frost again that night, it's still winter.

And what the heck is wrong with parents? The small children, some younger than school age dressed the same playing in yards didn't just do this themselves. They are home with adults, they are playing barefoot next to a pile of snow!

I can't tell ya how disgusted I was. Parents and teachers are suppose to be teaching kids to be responsible. What adult thinks it's responsible behavior to be barefoot in the winter time with snow still about?

Any idea how many will get sick, not be able to go to school because of it? I shake my head. Parents have a job, and sometimes you're suppose to lead by example and sometimes you're suppose to say no. When the welfare, safety and health of your children is a stake you most certainly are suppose to put your foot down.

Gonna have to grab some yarn and relax a bit. Almost finished with a scarf for the homeless and I can guarantee you as nice as the sun was that one day for them, they weren't running around shoeless wearing shorts.