A few more layouts

Our show choir took a trip to Nashville in late March to compete at Show Choir Nationals at the Grand Ole Opry. It was a great time for the kids and parents alike.

I recently finished several pages to document the trip, six of which are shown here:

The long bus ride, followed by a few hours at the mall...

Sightseeing around Nashville...

and performing on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.

As you can see, I used a few Picasa collages so that I could include lots of photos. My daughter did most of the journaling, some of which is on the back side of the layouts. Most of the pictures on the layout shown above are professional candid shots. Although somewhat pricey, I was very glad to have the option to buy some very nice performance photos.

Y'all know that my layouts are not elaborate, but they do take a bit more time because my daughter and I write a lot of journaling. It's worth the extra time because I believe the stories are every bit as important as the pictures.

Feline Friday: The Well-Trained Cat

Let me preface this post by stating that this photo is NOT a reenactment of the story you are about to read.

Monday morning, Spouse and I were sitting at the kitchen table quietly reading the newspaper and enjoying our morning coffee when we heard this all-too-familiar sound:

GLOP! GLOP! GLOP!

"SOMEBODY'S PUKING!" Spouse bellowed. Not being a cat person, kitty hurling makes him a tiny bit crazy.

On the other hand, I'm so accustomed to it that I carry a bottle of carpet cleaner with me at all times. I hopped up from the table to determine which cat had just thrown up and where.

Dining room - clear!

Family room - clear!

Living room - clear!

At that moment, I saw Lily leaving the bathroom. Although it's not one bit ladylike, she routinely drinks from the commode.

I looked around the bathroom and, seeing no mess, happened to glance in the toilet.

There was Lily's food, floating in the water.

Lily had thrown up in the toilet.

In. The. Toilet.

Even Spouse was amazed. Too bad he flushed the evidence.

Tabby Thursday

Lily is very happy that the ladder is temporarily back in the entryway!

Wordless Wednesday

Last day of senior year. Picture says it all.

Gardens in Late May: Not Bad

My flower gardens always look best in late spring and early summer. After that, they seem to go rapidly downhill, for a host of reasons. But right now, things are looking pretty good. My perennials coming along nicely and most of the annuals I've planted for color seem to be doing fairly well, with the exception of the begonias. We had a very rainy period a couple of weeks ago and I think they got a bit waterlogged. Hopefully they'll come out of their slump. I certainly know how they feel (the slump part, not the waterlogged part)!

I like to take pictures of my flower gardens in various stages over the summer so I can go back and assess what is working and not working, then make changes for the next year. I've found that unless I make the effort to take photos and write some notes, I forget the details. (Actually, I pretty much forget everything.)

Of special note is the bright pink hanging basket of purslane in the lower right corner of this collage. I had never seen this particular plant at the green house and to give it a try this year. Purslane is relative of moss rose with foliage that looks like a sedum, or succulent. Of course, this means that the plant can absorb a lot of water and prefers dryer conditions. Well, I didn't think about that during the recent rainy week. It got absolutely soaked...way too wet. The foliage started to yellow and the blooms disappeared. So I moved it to a full sun location and let it dry out. This morning, I was rewarded with a full basket of flowers. Success!

I'll continue to document my various garden successes (and failures) as the summer continues. Gardening is a trial and error process around here!

End of the run

I've given this a lot of thought, and I've concluded that the hardest part of the senior year is the end of activities which have been significant in the life of your student. It's hard for both the student and the parent.

And of course, the year is full of endings. I thought that the end of marching band last fall might kill me (and it nearly did). Then came the end of mock trial, show choir, chamber choir, and wind symphony. I've learned to keep a supply of Kleenex with me at all times.

And now comes the end of jazz band. We were lucky because this year our band's season was more than a month longer than usual, so we had many more opportunities to listen to this exceptional group of kids.

This band has had an incredible year, capped by winning the Iowa Jazz Championships in April. This past week, the kids played at the inaugural Jazz Education Network conference in St. Louis, an international gathering of jazz educators and performers. It was a tremendous honor to be selected to play at this event from the hundreds of high school bands who applied. Several parents traveled with the band for one final performance. The band stacked up quite well against incredibly talented high school and college groups from around the country. We knew our kids were great, but their performance at this conference really confirmed it.

This performance marked the end of the run for our jazz band. It was also the last "ending" of the senior year and for that, I'm thankful.

These endings are tough. I'm ready for some beginnings.

Feline Friday: Puffball Bonanza

In a recent post, I described Lily's obsession with small white puffballs. She had lost them for several months, and we recently found them under the refrigerator. Lily played feverishly with her beloved puffballs for a couple of days then lost them again. Since my last post, it's been a constant cycle of Find the Puffball/Lose the Puffball. I've taken to wielding a yardstick so that I can quickly fish out puffballs from under appliances.

But these days, I have more pressing matters to deal with than retrieving dusty puffballs to satisfy a desperately meowing kitty. So on a recent trip to Hobby Lobby, I made a purchase:

An entire bag of puffballs! Lily now has a huge supply at her disposal. I can dole them out at will and get back to my Pressing Matters.

You can see by the blissful look on her face that she is in Puffball Heaven!

Oops! A puffball went over the edge of the staircase!

Down she goes to retrieve it!

As you can see, the puffballs are having a very beneficial side effect: They are helping with Lily's weight loss program. She spends a lot of time each day chasing her puffballs. We toss them; she retrieves them. She bats them around and carries them up and down the stairs. Lily is moving around more than she has in months.

Just don't tell her that she's exercising. If she figures it out, I'm afraid she'll hide them all under the fridge!

Call me compulsive...

...but YES, my plants are labeled.

(I can hear my friend Darci now..."Janet, ONLY YOU would label your plants." LOL)

Well, at least the plants in THIS bed are tagged. The other beds were labeled last year, but many of my tags were mangled by Spouse with his somewhat aggressive lawn mowing. I haven't had a chance to fix them yet. I know...I'm a slacker!

This little statue was given to me recently by the board of a parent group I'm involved with in our school district. I'm "retiring" from the group and they gave me some very thoughtful gifts, including this beautiful little statue. It reminds me of my daughter!

I planted this new bed a couple of weeks ago (see the original post here) and everything is doing very nicely. Note that there is a sidewalk between my plants and the yard, which should keep my beautiful labels safe from Spouse.

My favorite flower

The lilac bush in our backyard smells so beautiful!

I cut a bouquet for the kitchen. The sweet scent permeates the entire house.

I only wish we could have lilacs all summer long!

Senior year is fun, finally!

I will not lie...we have had a VERY stressful senior year. The college search, auditions, and then the subsequent decision process hung like a dark cloud over our house. My friends will tell you that I have been near my wit's end for most of the school year.

But now that the whole college thing has been decided, life is good! The Dark Cloud of Uncertainty About the Future lifted just in time for us to enjoy the last month of the senior year. Don't get me wrong -- things are certainly busy. There are projects to finish, finals to study for, and a couple more amazing jazz band gigs to play. And scrapbooking to do. And an open house to plan. But all of that is a different kind of stress: short-term busyness. We can deal with that.



Here's a layout I finished up recently about our Mock Trial team's first and only trip to state competition. You can see our team name, Team Tinselfrog, on the plaque. (Click on the picture to bigify.) Since the team is partly named after our cat, Tinsel, it's exciting for me to see her name engraved on something. :-)

My point being (and I can hear Daughter saying, "Mom, get to the point!") is that it's busy around here, but it's a FUN kind of busy, for the most part. Too much to do, not enough time to do it all, but it's OK.

Senior year is FINALLY fun. We're finally looking forward, not back.

A few prom pages

I finished up a few (okay, ten) prom pages over the weekend. Last year, I made eight prom pages and I had promised myself that this year, I would try to cut back. Obviously, that didn't work well! Truth is, I could have made 20 pages, but I consolidated several photos into three Picasa collages. That helped a bit!

As any scrapbooker knows, it is a real treat to work with beautiful photos! Many of these photos were taken by our daughter's boyfriend's dad. He uses the Kodak metallic finish, which has a stunning effect in real life. Of course, I had to mix his gorgeous pictures with my "pretty good" pictures and a few "barely acceptable" ones from Facebook. But I don't mind. Collectively, they tell the story of this big event!

Crazed Scrapbooking Mom went along to the girls' hair appointments to grab a few "before" and "after" pictures. Of course, we also documented the nail and make-up transformations...all part of the story!

We had so many beautiful pictures from our group photo shoot that it took six pages to display them all. The girls looked gorgeous and their dresses fit perfectly with the prom theme, "An Evening in Paris".

(A little) More garden progress

Yesterday I weeded, planted annuals, and mulched two or three (depending on how you count) large perennial garden areas. Quite a task. In spite of my claims to being in relatively good shape, I had to consume a few Advil after I finished.

I spent quite a bit of time last summer on the above flower bed. It appears to be in fairly decent shape so far this season. It looks like everything I planted made it through the very hard winter. We'll see how things shape up in the next few weeks.

This next bed has been a real problem since I planted it. I have serious spacing issues which I tried to rectify last summer by moving some plants out and adding new ones. Some overwintered, but others did not. The far end of the bed isn't looking too bad, but the rest of the bed still has issues. Nevertheless, a fresh coat of mulch made it look somewhat better than it did before I started.

Depending on how this bed shapes up, I may need to hire a professional to help me figure out what's wrong. I have a lot of good stuff in this garden, but I can't seem to get the spacing right.

This narrow side bed runs along the back of the house and around the corner. It should be next on my list to overhaul. I thinned out the iris a bit last year and they're blooming better this season, but the spiderwort is overtaking the area and I don't like how it flops down when it's done blooming. I may take part of it out and replace it with something else.

Gardening around here is very much a trial and error thing. I enjoy it, but I know just enough to get myself in way over my head.

Of course, that's half the fun. :-)