Thanksgiving....

5. I'm thankful for the fall. I love the cooler weather. Especially this year. It was a horrific summer and I was soooo ready for it to cool off. Fall is the best time of year in Texas. I do miss the color change of the leaves. That doesn't really happen here, but it is cooler with out the severe weather of spring.

Which leads me to #6.

6. I'm thankful for staying safe this spring!!! This spring was a spring of severe weather. Worse than usual. It is the norm to have bad thunder storms and the occasional super-cell with wind and hail, but this year we had tornadoes. Fortunately nothing as severe as in Missouri and Oklahoma, but for the first time since I have lived in Texas (and that is 13 years) I have had times that I was seriously frightened by the weather. If a tornado comes through, we have no where to hide, no basement, storm cellar, shelter, etc. We just can hope and pray that it never happens. It came close this year, but didn't. And I am very very thankful for that!!!!

Thanksgiving...

4. I am thankful for tuition reimbursement. I have an ADN, not a BScN and I have always wanted to finished that degree. I am now finally at a point in my life that I am able to work on my degree. Tuition reimbursement significantly reduces one of the biggest stresses about post-secondary education - the cost factor. I now not only have the financial resources available to complete my bachelors degree, but to also continue on to grad school and complete my MSN.

Thanksgiving...

3. I'm thankful for my creativity and ingenuity. My Dad asked me a long, long time ago if there was anything that I couldn't figure out how to do. Yes, Dad, algebra.

I am very lucky to have a creative mind. I feel sorry for people who don't, it must be a giant void of nothingness in their head, only to be filled with Jerry Springer and Real Housewives and take-out.

I love to make things and learn how to do new things. I like to figure out how to make things from scratch, build things, learn about new things and how they work. I am so tickled that I can now knit socks! I want to make soap from scratch. And candles. I have never tried canning, but would like to do that as well. So many things, so little time.

November Should be for Thanksgiving...

I am a day late, but will start today. I would like try and post everyday, one thing that I am thankful for, during the month of November.

This will be good for me as I do sometimes dwell on the negative and I have no reason to. I am so, so blessed in so many ways and I need to examine this.

1. I am thankful for my beautiful, healthy, family. My two boys and my hubby. Lights of my life! Each one of them is special and wonderful in their own way and I love them all to bits!!

2. I am thankful for my job. There are times that I wished things were different. That I could stay home with the kids, or the I was doing something else, but the truth of the matter is my job allows us to have certain freedoms that we would not otherwise have. I also know that no matter what, at the end of the day, what I do makes a difference in other peoples lives. Not everyone can say that about their job.

Backyard Camping

Well, in an attempt to break our little guy into camping we tried some backyard camping this past weekend. It was somewhat foiled by little guy's little stomach bug, but that crisis passed and we continued on in the afternoon.

We set up the tent.

Made nature crafts.

Planted some fall flowers. I love pansies! Especially the tiny Johnny Jump-ups!

And made a fire in the Chimnea, roasted marshmallows and made smores. Big brother enjoyed playing in the fire, as all boys do.

In the end, we did not sleep in the tent. As the evening wore on, little boy decided he wanted to sleep in his own bed. Which turned out to be a good thing, as there was a horrific thunderstorm that blew in after midnight, complete with penny sized hail. We would not have wanted to be in the tent, even if it was just in the backyard. Fortunately, I had the foresight to stake the tent and put the rainfly on before it got dark. the tent remained upright and the sleeping bags were dry inside. Not a bad little tent, I must say!

We will be outdoorsy, dammit!! I want my kids to experience and love the outdoors, whether they like it or not!

They really do. We have much fun when we make the time to play outside. We just have to make the effort. I need to ensure that we make the effort. (It sux to live in suburbia!!)

Making Home Made Laundry Soap

I've made my own laundry soap before, but did the liquid variety where you grate the soap and melt it in hot water on the stove, add the other stuff and it looks like egg drop soap when you are finished. It worked pretty well, but the process was labour intensive.

I was excited to find reference to home made dry laundry soap the other day on another blog I follow - The Sitting Tree. It is the same basic ingredients, you just don't have add any liquid.

So, I used 1 bar of Dr. Bronner's soap, I like the lavender scent, but there are others and un-scented as well. It is totally vegetable based, so no petro chemicals. I know lot of web sites refer to Fels Naptha and Zote soap, but I wanted to get as natural as I could. And then the other standard ingredients are washing soda and borax.

1 bar soap - grated finely
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda

Mix well. I found the finely grated soap incorporated easily with the powders and it smells awesome!! The whole process took about 20 minutes from beginning to end.

Mix well and store in an air tight container. I happened to have a large plastic tub left over from some take out Hot and Sour Soup that worked perfectly. (I guess it was probably 1 quart, sized?)

I have been using 2 tablespoons in my machine, which is a HE front loader and it works great. the clothes are clean and smell very fresh. the lavender scent is not strong at all when it's all said and done.

My next green laundry project is to make some felted dryer balls. They are supposed to significantly cut down drying time and wrinkles and no more fabric softener. One more chemical to get out of my house.

Grey vs Gray

I didn't really think about this until I was spell checking a previous entry where I typed grey. It got me to thinking about which is correct, grey or gray and if there is a difference in how they are to be used in context.

I am a Canadian ex-pat, transplanted to Texas, USA. I have now been here for 15 plus years and have definitely linguistically assimilated. (somewhat to my dismay) I suppose I have retained some of my Canadian accent, but a lot has been lost. I must qualify that I am from Western Canada, where the accent is not as strong as Eastern Canada - think Bob and Doug Mackenzie from SCTV. I do still drop a lot of "oh yeahs" and "oot and aboot", but the famous "eh!" was dropped from my vocabulary after living in the States for approximately six weeks. I was routinely savaged for using it and quit promptly. But, truth be known, I still think it in my head when I am speaking.

I digress...

Spelling required some re-training as well. It took me some time to drop the "our" and the "re" from words like colour and centre. I noticed recently that I still write cheque if I am in a hurry and not thinking. Also, I will have an occasional Canadian moment when writing the date for example, October 13th would be written as 10-13-11 in Texas, but 13-10-11 in Saskatchewan. Old habits die hard, as these things occur when I am busy, rushed, distracted or tired. (apparently also when I have been drinking)

So back to grey vs gray. After doing a bit of research I discovered what I thought to be true. Grey is the UK spelling, thus Canadian spelling, too and Gray is the American spelling. There was some historical explanation as to how this evolution occurred, but I am not going to get into that. If you are truly that interested, Google it, lots of info out there in cyber land.

Bottom line...

Grey is a colour.

and

Gray is a color.