Eternal Hippies A Year Homemade and Beyond

We have a rose bush in the front yard that tends to bloom two at a time. After this bloom, Joe said he is going to trim it back. My mom has been making handmade baby quilts for the past 30+years. Each time she made a quilt, she would make an extra square for a wall hanging. She finally finished it and Joe hung it for her over her bed. We have a small strawberry patch in a container. We haven't really been taking care of the plants, but they still produced a few fruit. I ate one before I took this picture. At the doctor's office, in the examination room, there was this wall decoration. I liked it. Not the exam gloves, yuk! LOL A coworker and I have a running joke. I code the invoices for the kitchen side of the restaurant and I keep each set nice and neat with paperclips. (Can you see where this is going?) We both believe in reusing all those paperclips, so every so often she leaves them on my desk. But she is such a fun lady, she has to make it interesting. I ...

I didn't do a post last week. It was a difficult week, full of stress and tears. I had two doctors appointments, one on Monday, then a follow up on Friday. I went to the gyn about what I thought was menopausal symptoms, but found out that there are other things going on that need further tests and possibly surgery. I can't talk about exactly what is going on yet, but I will soon. Let's just say it has changed a lot of priorities. I have to change my stress levels, my consumption habits and start an exercise routine. At this point, my life depends on it. In my last post I mentioned feeling like I might die before I get to live. Well, now is the time and real, hard decisions must be made. First, we are putting our house hunting on hold. The stress from this process needs to be reduced. We can't afford what is on the market right now. We are going to make where we live now more livable. So far we have bought a metal shelf to put all of the appliances that have been tak...

Last weekend we looked at two properties. I liked both, and decided to put in a offer on one. Mind you, I confirmed from the mortgage company that with the loan program we are pre-approved for allowed manufactured homes as long as they were 2006 and newer. The home we put in the offer was made in 2006. But the next day I got a call from our mortgage loan person that the rules changed and now they don't lend for manufactured home in this state. I like to do my own research and I thought I had done everything right. But even when I do everything right, it turns out to be wrong. This is the problem with depending on more powerful people/organizations then ourselves, we are subject to their whims. The hippie in me wants to drop out of society so badly. We are expected to conform, conform, conform, yet it is never enough. Obligations and serfdom drag us down until we lose hope, creativity and most importantly our very soul. I've been watching videos online of people who have bas...

Well, we are going to be looking at some properties this weekend. I'm not getting my hopes up. I was thinking about how many houses we have seen since February and I believe we over 40. And we have put offers on 2, but were rejected. It's funny, when we show interest in a house, it either goes off market or gets sold before we can act on them. There was one that sold just as we were asking to see it! These two we are seeing this weekend have been on the market awhile, so they are either under a foot of water or currently on fire.LOL!! Yesterday Joe mowed the yard so we can get the tent out and do some maintenance on it. Mainly we need to repack it. Living on the coast, the yard is all sand so really he was mowing was weeds, ant hills and leaves. But it looks better. Last year we only mowed 4 times. I'm looking forward to seeing our tent set up. Of course, that does depend on the weather. We have received a good bit of rain over the past month. In fact, we cancelled a camp...