In a word or two...

Had a great walk this morning. As I was heading down the road, I noticed that the all of the beans have been harvested out of the field next to our property, so I took my walk in the endless field instead. It was, in a word, awesome. You can just see for miles and miles and it was so quiet (aside from the dogs racing by me in delight every few minutes). Tomorrow I am going to take the camera and post a picture - absolutely lovely. I will have to enjoy this while it is still warm enough and there is no snow to contend with.

Friday night we made our usual trip to Cedar Falls for the Friday the 13th bonfire. I have talked about this before - but I just love this ritual. No one is ever invited...you just go, bring food and it is a different mix of people each time. We got down there around 7:30 p.m. which is much later than usual - we met some friends at Old Chicago to eat and that was ...in a word, CHAOS. Wall to wall people and kids, a soccer team and every other imaginable club and group of people. We managed to get a table after waiting about 20 minutes which was way better than I expected. But I have to say it was sensory overload in that place. Naturally, my chair was next to the table of about 25 16 year old girls and there was no shortage of whacks to the back of my chair as the gal behind me left the table about 49 times during the meal. "Uh...SORRY!" she would say and then run off giggling - after about 20 times of that she just stopped saying anything at all and I just smiled to myself ....Ah to be 16 again and have the ability to drink glass after glass of sugary red soda!

We were at this party until 2:30 in the morning. It was one of those evenings where it felt like about 10:00 and I was shocked when I finally saw the clock. By the time we got to a hotel and to bed we managed only a few hours of sleep. Mark had to be home by 9:00 which translated to leaving by 7:00. I struggled yesterday - too much to eat, too much smoke inhalation (second hand and fire smoke) and a lack of sleep had me feeling like a total train wreck yesterday. Worth it? I don't know about that - but it was fun. Will have to be more careful about the smoke on both counts next time. Nasty, nasty....

Last week I resurrected a fun past time from the 70's - in a word, DECOUPAGE! I had honestly forget about this long forgotten process of shellacking anything within arms length! I am not even sure how it occurred to me - but I had fun looking for things to make forever ageless under a clear film of GLUE!

I ended up collecting some leaves from some of my favorite plants from this summer and made a small leaf box that is pretty darn cute! Rather proud of myself on this count since it was such half baked idea and the materials cost me all of about $3.00. Now that I have a bit of a technique to it I plan to take it one step further - I think the possibilities could be endless. Even the bottle says, "Decoupage ANY surface, to any other surface." Any Surface. ANY SURFACE. Do you see how this could be so tempting to go outside the lines with this one?

Are you kidding, any surface? Really? Well now, let the shellacking begin! Pictures to come!