Thoughts of Snow (and some Beaded Snowflakes)

I was in love with snow. I was. For many years I lived in Oregon, in the Willamette Valley, which is absolutely beautiful because it's so green and alive. It's so green because it rained all the time and while living there I desperately wished for a little snow to change things up a bit in the winters. We hung crafted snowflakes from our ceilings every year (they were ginormous) and my mother said that they were our "snow prayers". I wore a necklace all winter long with a snowflake charm on it and I waited. And when the water would finally freeze into those rare fluffy bits I would go outside and enjoy how beautiful it was and dance in the snow.

Now that I live in Nevada I get snow in the winter, every winter, and somewhere in the 6+ years I've been here I started to not love the snow. I've been very unfond of being stuck in it and the accident on the ice (my poor truck). I was stuck thinking "it's cold and wet and when will it be summer already?". And then a couple of weeks ago I remembered that I loved snow. And it's all starting to come back. So this year I will hang my snow prayers from the ceiling and when it finally snows I will be outside dancing in it. Join me?

I've also included a quick DIY how-to for Beaded Snowflakes. These are very simple to make with beads and wire and the pictures truly don't do justice to how lovely they are when they catch the sunlight.

First you start with the wire. I believe this is around 20 gauge but unfortunately the spool isn't labeled anymore so I'm not positive. The important thing is that whatever wire you pick must fit through your beads and be strong enough to hold them up. For an 8 pointed star (pictured above) you will need 4 wires each about 7 inches long. For a 6 pointed star (pictured in blue at the bottom) only 3 wires are needed.



Using a thinner wire (I used 26 gauge for this) wrap the middle of the thicker wires together until they don't move around much. This doesn't have to be neat as it can add a little extra visual interest and look like another bead. At this point the wires can still slide sideways but once we add the beads and twist the ends that won't happen anymore.



Here's a closeup of the middle:



Start adding your beads. Try to use a few different sizes/colors to mix it up a little and add some interest.



When you get to the end of the wire use a pair of round nosed pliers to round off the leftover wire. This will also give you a place to insert string to hang the snowflake.



Here is an example of a simple six-pointed star. This project is also good for keeping little hands busy though you may have to help them make the original form since it can be a little tricky to wrap the thinner wire while holding the 4 thicker wires in place.



Add a little ribbon and your creations are now ready to adorn your tree, catch some light in the windows, or hang from the ceiling as you wish for new snow.



Let me know if you make these as I'd love to see what you've done.

What if your name wasn't your name?

With the passing of my last grandparent recently I've had grandparents on my mind a lot. This man here was my mother's father, Louie Glen. Grandpa was a farmer in Oregon and my mother was raised on that farm. We all spent a lot of time there and one thing we learned is that there is nothing like a potato soup when the potatoes and everything else is fresh picked. Yum. We also learned to look at the back of the lettuce leaf and not just the front when checking for slugs. I think my little sister may still have a little slug stuck in her teeth...

If my grandpa were still alive today he would have been 100 this year, on July the 4th. When Grandpa was born his own grandfather had wanted him to be named George Washington since he already had a family tree named after this countries fore fathers (Thomas Jefferson, etc) and also because this baby was born on Independence Day. His mother, however, said no. This baby was to be named Louie Glen and, after what is suspected to have been some argument, he gave in and let it be. Or so she thought.

When my grandpa was getting along in age it occurred to him that he should get a social security card. His mother was still alive and doing so while she was still here would make it a little easier. The paperwork was filled out and sent off but instead of a social security number he received a letter. It said that a baby boy had been born to the people he said are his parents on the day he said he was born. BUT his name was NOT Louie Glen. Upon further investigation he discovered that his grandfather had filled out his birth certificate more than 60 years ago and named him George Washington. All of these years he had been going by this name, raised his children (and given one the middle name of Glen) and run his business and had never known that his name wasn't really his name. Now, because of the business, he had his name legally changed to Louie Glen. My middle child is named for him and my uncle (who passed shortly before Glenn was born) and I think it a little funny that he was named for someone who wasn't really named that for most of his life.

What would you do if you discovered your name wasn't really your name? Would you change it to what you thought it was? Leave it? If you have to change it anyway would you pick something new?

Always trouble when those two are together...

I've known "Mackey" for as long as I can remember. She has always been my mother's best friend and my other mother. She never had her own children and the joke is that she spent a couple months living with us while my mother was in another state for training and that after that she didn't want kids anymore. Well, it was mostly a joke.

It was not safe to let her and my mother go anywhere without supervision as they always got into some kind of trouble, some of which it's probably not safe to mention even here. ;-) Once they went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and didn't come home until several hours later after arresting the store owner for selling liquor to minors (they were both law enforcement).

When I was around age 10ish my mother decided that she wanted to build a garden with a rock wall. To do this she needed a lot of flat and wide rocks and she knew just which mountain to get them on. So she loaded up my little sister and I into the back of the Ford Ranger pickup truck (the bed, not back of the cab) and she and Mackey jumped into the front and off we went. At that time of year it was still snowing up there and the snow was a couple feet high in some places. She drove to the top of this mountain and turned around the truck. Then my little sister and I got out and put down the tailgate. She drove down the mountain at about 3-5 miles per hour as Lee and I ran behind grabbing snowy rocks (with our bare, unmittened hands) and tossing them into the back of the truck. Our hands were freezing and red but we did this for miles.

Eventually deciding that a ton of rock was enough (in a half-ton pickup, mind you) she allowed us to get back into the bed of the truck to ride back down the mountain. We were now sitting on a large pile of cold wet rocks with no heater. So we begged. We asked mom and Mackey to let us sit up front but the seat was only meant for 3 and so they said no. But we kept pounding on the window at regular intervals and asking again. Eventually we wore them down and they allowed us to get in the front.

We started down the mountain again and Lee and I started warming up. Then I noticed something funny on the hood. There was an orange spot on the hood of our green truck. And it was growing. I asked my mother why the hood was turning orange and she whipped the truck off the road and hit the brakes so fast I was wishing we'd had a fourth seat belt. She commanded us to immediately get out of the truck and run to the tree line as apparently the brakes were now on fire.

Mom and Mackey knew not to open the hood as they would only be feeding the fire a better supply of oxygen. But they had coffee cups and they threw the coffee up under the wheel well to try and douse the flames. Up in the trees Lee and I found a couple of discarded 7-11 cups and we ran down to use them to scoop up puddle water to help with the flames. We managed to put out the fire but now we were stranded on a snowy mountain, miles from help and behind the forest service gates, with a broken truck. And it was freezing and getting later in the afternoon.

Luckily a man came by on his bicycle. What he was doing up there I'll never know. My mother tried to yell to get his attention as he went right on by. Then she changed to yelling some very colorful words... As he got a few hundred feet past us he turned around and looked back. Then my mother recognized him as someone she had arrested a few months back (not sure what for). He hadn't responded because he's deaf and hadn't heard her yelling. He came back and we managed to communicate that we needed help and he should go to the forest service station for help.

Well, the station was closed (being a weekend) but I guess he managed to get a hold of someone who tried to call out the ranger on duty. Unfortunately, that was my mother who, of course, couldn't be reached. So they called the sheriff, who was my step-father. He had started to worry a couple hours ago when we hadn't returned on time like we were supposed to. Now he got a call about two women and a couple of children stranded on a mountain with a truck that had caught fire.

When he arrived the expressions he went through were completely priceless. At first he was all business. His face said "I'm the sheriff and I'm in charge here". Then he saw us. His face turned to immediate worry as he realized it was us and wanted to make sure everyone was okay. Then he saw that we were okay and his face turned to rage with an exclamation of "What the hell did you do to my truck!?!".

It turned out later that the brake pads for that year of Ranger pickup could be put in backwards and the shop had done just that. My mother swears that this is the reason that the truck caught on fire and not because she was driving down a mountain while carrying a ton of rock in a half-ton pickup and riding the brakes. I'll let you decide. Either way, we refused to help in any of her later rock wall projects.

Owl and Elephant collage

I found this idea from Martha Stewart's website via Mod Podge Rocks. The instructions are actually for taking paper and Mod Podging it onto a piece of wood. I instead used textured paper for the entire collage (including the backing) and then used an 8x8 frame. And I used plain old Elmer's glue. They are a beginning to livening up the first section of the kid's bathroom (This is just the sink area. The toilet and shower are behind another door).

Unhappy or Dissatisfied?

There's blog I used to read fairly often, before it ever occurred to me to make my own blog and regularly follow others, that I had forgotten about. So I looked in on his blog today (and added it to my follow list) and came across a very interesting post (here) on the difference between being unhappy and being dissatisfied.

To partially quote Ed:

An unhappy person is:
* Grumpy or agitated: unhappy people bitch.
* Needy: unhappy people take from those around them.
* Mopey: unhappy people suck the energy out of a room.

A dissatisfied person:
* Sees something that’s not how it should be
* Doesn’t want to accept that the problem exists

and

Unhappiness causes you to miss out on being present. Here’s the thing: you can be dissatisfied and still be happy. Being unhappy causes you to focus on yourself- on your own lack of happiness or whatever it is you’re bitching about, and meanwhile the whole happy, amazing, wonderful world of possibilities goes on without you. You can be a dissatisfied person and still appreciate that world, take part it in and receive what it has to offer.

Go here to read the rest of what he said. It will definitely give you something to think on.

Kids are done and the adult evening begins...

The mini denizens of the house (kids and their step-sister)



My full costume:



The porch at night:

Something wicked this way comes

Our front entry:

A few spiders



A pinch of bats



The witch's broom:



A skeleton, a pumpkin or 6





The inhabitants:





Tonight will be fun!

Pumpkin pendant

I love those moments when inspiration floods into your mind and immediately you are drawn to create. It doesn't matter if it's 3am but it must be done now. So you fly out of bed to get started and try out your idea. Today it hit me on the way to work and I've been a little nuts waiting for lunch to try it out.

Here is my "first draft". I made this over the lunch hour and some bits were more hurried than others but I think it turned out well. I just wish I'd had some yellow wire for the face.

I coiled copper wire around the handle of a crochet hook until it was long enough. The green stem was coiled around a small screwdriver. There's a piece of copper wire through the middle of the main coil to help it hold it's shape and also to help tie it to the stem. The face is made from one continuous piece ending at the bottom of the nose.

I think it would be fun to make a beaded chain for this with copper leaves hanging from it.

To Etsy or Not to Etsy?

Going back to this post, I'm still fiddling. I've made several variations on the theme and the pictures are below.

I have necklaces I've made in many different styles and I tend to get compliments on them when I'm out. I've sold a few that way. I don't mean that in a bragging way but I mention it because the observation brought me to my next thought. What do you know about Etsy? I've heard of it a lot and poked around a bit but I haven't bought or sold anything there before. As a user (buyer or seller), what did you think? I'm considering starting an Etsy store and I'd love your input.

What do you think would be a good Etsy name? I kind of like an unExpected Twist but I would love suggestions.

Halloween decorating

Rather than carving the pumpkins this year I picked up some adhesive backed felt for about a dollar. I found a Frankenstein's monster stencil with a quick internet search (from here).

Just trace the pattern onto the back of the felt and cut out with scissors. Peel off the backing and apply the felt to your pumpkin.



Frankenstein's monster only took half a sheet so I also drew some bats and cut those out for the next pumpkin.



My mantel this year:



And I saw this idea on a couple of blogs (one here and the other I can't find again. oops). The second blog is where I saw the idea for the mummy marshmallow. So cute! All it takes is a bag of marshmallows and multi-colored sharpies.

How To: Washer and wire necklace

Here are all the supplies I used:
Seed beads
One larger bead for the center
Wire (size must fit through the seed beads)
Two washers in different sizes.
Wire snippers
Round nosed pliers
Rubber tipper flat pliers
String or chain to hold the finished product



Wrap the wire around the washer, keeping it pretty tight. Leave the end of the wire loose for now, we'll use it later to bind the other end.



Hold the bead against the washer as you bend the wire so it's close up against it. This will keep it from "wobbling" as much.



If you have a pair of rubber nosed pliers (available at most craft stores) you can squeeze the wire as you go. This helps to mold the wire to the bead and also keeps it from losing it's position after you're done. If you don't have rubber nosed pliers you can use the regular ones but you'll have to be careful not to crack your beads and it may scar up the wire a little bit.



When you've gotten all the way around twist the wire together to keep it from moving around later. I have two twists in here because I didn't use a big enough piece of wire initially and had to add in a second. That's fine because you won't even see this middle part later. Notice that longer piece of wire hanging off of it? It's very important for a couple of things.



It will hold the center bead for starters. Just pass it through and put it in place. The second washer we add in a little bit will help hold it in the correct spot. If the second washer is a lot smaller than the first (like the copper washers pictured at the top) then you will probably want to put some seed beads on either side of the large bead to help keep it centered behind the little washer.



Just to give you an idea of how the second washer will cover up the tie off spots and help keep the bead in place:



Cover the smaller second washer the same way as the first.



Using the longer wire from the first washer I threaded it through the smaller washer's wire to bind the two together. Be sure that they're tight so they won't wobble later. Then you'll need to pass the wire between the two washers and through the middle of the big one so it comes out the back. Next go ahead and wrap it around one of the big washer's wires on the back a couple of times to keep it close against the back and let the rest of the wire stick up.



Use a pair of round nosed pliers, also available at craft stores, to twist the wire around and make a circle just above the top.



Then wrap the wire around itself to tie it off and make a pretty ending. Continue the wrap until the end is hidden behind the washer. Now you can cut it off with a pair of wire snippers and tuck the end in tight (so it won't poke you while wearing it). A pair of flat nosed pliers are good to squish the end in hard.



And voila! You are now ready to attach chain or string to your pendant.

A little pre-Halloween at Borders

Our Borders bookstore had a little Halloween fun for the kids today. They got to make crafts (trick or treat bags), play some games and then trick or treat. Daddy and I got our treat too. Coffee.

Tigger and Sleeping Beauty getting ready to head out:


We got to read a little:


And play a little:


And wrap a little girl into a toilet paper mummy:


All in all we had a nice afternoon. :)

Art

Have you seen artwork from Rodney White? Normally I don't like the distressed look (I know, just flog me now and have it done) but the first time I saw these two I was immediately in love. They are now hung in my great room and I'm in love with them all over again each time I see them.





But I'm thinking that there are a couple empty spots on the walls and I would like this:



And I am drooling over this. I Loooooooove both of them.

Pumpkin "patch"

We went to the "pumpkin patch" this weekend. Which, this being a desert and all, isn't really much of a patch so much as overpriced pre-picked pumpkins and a couple bounce houses with hay bales and a corn maze thrown in. So I cheated. We bought our pumpkins at the grocery store (they had a better selection anyway) and the kids just played and had ice cream at the pumpkin patch.

Joe made a new girlfriend almost immediately. Last year he told Eric that having one girlfriend (me) wasn't enough and informed Eric that HE had 7 of them. I'll have to keep an eye on him...



The kids climbed all over the hay (there were two bounce house at the very top) while mommy tried not to watch, certain that they were going to fall off and break their little necks.



Ah, to be small again, when the big problem of the day is a spilled drop of ice cream. Heehee.

Wordzzle on dreams Part IV

Over at Views from the Raven's Nest, a Wordzzle challenge is posted weekly. The basic idea is to use all 10 words provided in a short paragraph (plus mini challenge words if you can). More information can be found here.



This week's words are (early morning light, Pinocchio, mist, leaves, sandy, coffee, walking, traffic, pray, stomach ) with a mini challenge of (train, art, admirable, cotton, fluffy).

This wordzzle is a continuation of my earlier story.

------------------------------------------------------------

"How did we get here?" I've asked myself this so many times in the last few days. I thought I was never going to escape this place. I had given up praying and had resigned myself to a lifetime of just making it work and yet...

It's a surreal feeling today. We're walking in the early morning light, watching the mist rise from the freezing ground. The leaves that had been falling just a few short weeks ago are now glued with ice to the sandy sidewalks as we crunch along. My stomach is in knots. It's not because of food, I haven't been able to eat today. I did manage a little coffee this morning but I just couldn't manage a bite of actual food. I'm excited but I can't believe it's really happening.

We cross the street while the traffic waits as we head for the train. The train. Was it only a month ago I was staring longingly at it? And now I'm getting on it. I feel like I'm high, on white fluffy cotton clouds, floating along down the road.

Somehow my mother knew. She knew without me saying that I had to get away from here and she did it. She found a relative in the city for me to stay with and bought me a ticket and I'm getting out of here. She's trying not to cry as she helps me check in. She's turned being stoic into an art, trying to never show that anything gets to her. It's admirable but I can't manage it myself and I start to tear up. I hug her and kiss her cheek and tell her how much I love her and then I get onto the train. I find my seat as the train starts to pull out. As I sit looking out the window and watching the trees fly by I laugh and think, "I'm like Pinocchio. I've got no strings on me".

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!

All of the kids' rooms have themes mapped out for them. The girls both have fairies and butterflies, though slightly different from each other, and they're the furthest along. Keith will have a cars room when I get it all done and Joe & Glenn will have a pirate bedroom. But this left me no where to put cute little animals and I kind of wanted to do that somewhere. Then last week I realized that there is a very sad, very blank looking wall by the girls' bedrooms that just needed filling up.

I looked up a few cartoon animal pictures on the web for inspiration. I had the guys at Home Depot cut the MDF down for me to save time (and I actually had a couple pieces left over for my next project). Then I painted all of the squares with some extra wall paint. After that dried I used some painter's tape to mark off the edges. I made the edges a little crooked so it would have more character but you could line them up straight pretty simply with a ruler. I painted the edges white and then went back over it with the brown to make "animal stripes". The animals I projected onto the wood with a craft projector and traced with pencil. Then I used my box of craft paints to fill it in. I also outlined it with a brown sharpie for a little more definition. 6 pieces of 1 ft square MDF wood, some painter's tape and a few bottles of craft paint later it's not art, exactly, but it's cute and it will fill the space nicely!

Home again

I'm home again and now I think my life gets to slow down for a little while at least. My grandmother's memorial was this weekend and it was really lovely to hear everyone's stories about her and to see the family. All 3 children, 8 of the 9 grandchildren and 13 of the 15 great grandchildren were there (2 great grandkids were home with the flu). I'm working on a special post for Nana that I'll have up in a few days.

In the meantime this was the view for the first 3 hours of our drive home. I stopped a lot. :)











The kids and I stopped in at Crater Lake on the way home and they were fascinated when I told them that almost 7000 years ago this was still a mountain (well, volcano) and that when it erupted the whole top caved in and now here we are at this pretty lake. I like it when they are rapt and paying attention.

Wordzzle on dreams Part III

Over at Views from the Raven's Nest, a Wordzzle challenge is posted weekly. The basic idea is to use all 10 words provided in a short paragraph (plus mini challenge words if you can). More information can be found here.



This week's words are (family, cheese cake, 20 years ago, refrigerator, laugh and the world laughs with you, bath brush, zombies, African violets, butterflies, holding hands) with a mini challenge of (monsters in the closet, roughly, bowling, menu, Pennsylvania).

For dreams parts I and II go here and here.

~~~~

Lizzy, her daughter, thought that she didn't understand dreams. Lizzy was wrong. Almost 20 years ago, before Eleanor had a family, she'd had her own dreams. He had been so charming...

As they walked through the African violets, watching the butterflies and holding hands, she had dreamed of their wedding. He would marry her and take her away from this place to live near his family in Pennsylvania. There would be a beautiful wedding and she would put the violets in her bouquet to remember this day. The menu would be perfect and they would serve cheesecake to their guests and it would be beautiful.

Nothing had gone the way it was supposed to. The man she thought he was turned out to be just a fairy tale and he became the monster in the closet. He'd gotten what he wanted and all dreams of a wedding and a life together were proven to be just that. Dreams. She had taken it rather roughly at first. She had walked around like a zombie, so wrapped up in herself. Then she'd found out... For all he had taken from her, he had left something behind.

It changed her world to know that there was a life growing inside of her and it was then she knew that it was time to grow up. This was not the life she had planned on but it was hers nonetheless. She felt she owed it to her baby, her Lizzy, to live that life as best she could. She got a job as a housekeeper. She scrubbed floors and refrigerators. She picked up the bath brushes and put away the laundry. She took on a new attitude towards life. No, she hadn't planned on the highlight of her weeks being bowling night with the PTA. But every morning she told herself that, though she hadn't known it, this was the life she was meant to live. She would look in the mirror and say something like, 'tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet' or 'laugh and the world laughs with you'. Or, more often than not, 'Life goes on'.

The thought had never occurred to her that, despite giving up everything for her child, Lizzy would resent her and want to get away. But she did. It was obvious she was looking for her own way out. And rather than let her try to get out the way her mother had, Eleanor decided to help.

Decorating in progress

Just a couple tidbits of current projects I'm working on:

For the living room


For one of the girls' bedrooms


And this morning Fidgeting Gidget mentioned Jackson Pollock and I remembered this website again. Now go make your own Pollock painting!

Craft Fair with a View

I spent the afternoon in Genoa, NV, which is about an hour away from here (and I had no idea). They have a craft fair and candy dance there every year and the craft fair part is HUGE. Great fun!



It's up against the mountains for such a nice view.



Just one of the many offerings:



And even better, the surrounding area is so pretty!

Faux Polaroids

Okay, this site (rollip.com) is pretty cool. It will turn your digital photos into polaroids. I found it through Shutter Sisters. I really ♥ how it brings out Erin's freckles in the first picture!

Wordzzle on dreams continued

Over at Views from the Raven's Nest, a Wordzzle challenge is posted weekly. The basic idea is to use all 10 words provided in a short paragraph (plus mini challenge words if you can). More information can be found here.



This week's words are (Tibetan sky, symbols, won’t you come home Bill Baily, shadow figures, brain cortex, practice makes perfect, life, start of school, lavender, chow down) with a mini challenge of (mental hospital, falling leaves, apple cider, packing crates, clues).

My way of doing this is to read all the words and look for a few things I can tie together and then just start writing. The more difficult words I then go back and find places to insert. This week happened to turn into a continuation of last week's wordzzle.

Leaving this town to make a life for herself was out. So she would just have find the clues to making a life here. No, she hadn't managed it yet but practice makes perfect, right? You can't fail until you stop trying... But how would she do it? The people in this town depressed her and she was pretty sure half of them didn't have a brain cortex. There were more than a few people here that had to have been in the mental hospital at some point (and only one had a good excuse, having been witness to a Tibetan Sky burial which is only not traumatizing if you're Tibetan or at least IN Tibet at the time). Still, as hard as it was to like them, she felt there must be one among them she could talk to. If only she could find the one.

She walked home from the restaurant, picking a little lavender along the way and turning it in her hand. Fall was definitely in the air now and the tourists were arriving to watch the leaves turn. On Cedar Street the laborers were packing crates with apple cider. She stood under the falling leaves watching them for a few minutes. It occurred to her that it was almost time for the start of school but, being so far ahead anyway, she wasn't sure yet that she'd go this year.

A few streets away on Pine she could here the music starting for Fall Festival. What was that song? Won't you come home Bill Bailey? Hmm... Maybe that was it. She never really joined in the festival much. There would be the inevitable bad palm reader who turned every funny curve of the lines in your hand into symbols representing hokey futures of fortune and fame (which are not much fun when you already know you can't have them). There would be street performers making shadow figures and every kind of fried food you could chow down on. Today she would skip it, being unable to pretend she saw anything in that life. Maybe tomorrow...

WTF? And I LIVE here?!

The tourism slogan of the City of Reno has been "America's Adventure Place" since about 2002 and the marketing group thought it needed updating. The city reportedly paid a LOT of money ($100,000+) for a new idea to be put together with ad campaigns and whatnot. So what did that buy? They decided that the new slogan will be "A Little West of Center"...

Um...

The intention is to mean that we are a little west of the center of the United States. For starters, that doesn't really say anything and is hardly a tourism draw. AND it's not even correct! For those of you who are not aware of the geography of the US here's a map with Nevada outlined in red. Colorado is a little west of center and we are two states further over, not to mention that Reno is within 30 minutes of touching the western edge. We are 1/2 hour from California, that's hardly "A Little West of Center" which leaves us to wonder how they came up with this...



On the other hand, we just paid over $100,000 for this so maybe it really means something more like "Has a screw loose" or "A few bricks short of a load" or "Lost her rocks", in which case it's entirely correct. That being said, is that really what we want to tell the world? "Come here and do stupid crap because, hey, we're a little nuts so you'll blend right in"? Oy...

Luckily the mayor this morning called it embarrassing and got them to throw it out. So this means that now they'll be making sense? Well, no, not really. The rest of the campaign so far is still a go ahead. According to kolotv's story today "While board members ditched the 'West of Center' slogan, they are moving forward with the rest of the new campaign. It sells our area as "refreshingly offbeat" and uses a talking bighorn sheep to relay that message" Just to make sure you didn't miss that "uses a talking bighorn sheep to relay that message"... Uh, huh.

What is it with this area and REALLY bad slogans? The power company had, a while back, a really bad reputation. They were really hard-nosed about profit and if a customer was behind they were shutting off their power without trying to work out a payment plan or anything. They got a reputation as being uncaring. So they brought in a PR company and did up a new slogan. They made hats and pens and all kinds of junk with the new slogan plastered on it. The employees were brought in to a room for an "unveiling" and when the curtain was pulled back the new slogan said "We Delight Our Customers". Someone started to snicker. Delight? Or de-light? The curtain was closed and the slogan died. All the pens and stuff were boxed up and hidden away. Did we hire the same people to do the City of Reno slogan? I wonder.

200 pounds and a new blog

It's time to lose the pounds. I'm putting this on a separate blog, all by its lonesome, as I don't think it really fits in with my current blog. So, if you're interested in that story, it's over here.

Reno Air Races

Eric has been wanting to see the Blue Angels since he was very small, as young as my boys are now. The last time they came to the Reno Air Races he was living in Georgia and he missed them (again). But this year they're back. We took the kids out there yesterday, paid the exorbitant entry fees ($17 for an 8 year old!?! This isn't Disneyland you know), and enjoyed the stunts and our lemonade. Oh, and the sunshine. I must remember to soak that in for the next few weeks as tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox and the lovely warm days only have about a month left.



Sorry it's a little blurry. Blue Angels are very fast and hard to photograph. ;)