Week- with pictures

This doesn't seem to be a dramatic week.   Monday I was still recovering from the RS Women's Retreat and then branch conference. We did go and buy flooring for the Gassville house that day.

On Saturday, when I was exhausted, I got an email from the person I thought I was rooming with for PLF Live in Scottsdale Oct 9-13-- who said, oh... I'm not sure this will work out.  Can you find someplace else?  AKKK!  After I was sure I'd had a room, I'd given up the two other reservations I'd made.  And I knew places were booked.

The blessing of kindness came back to me.  A friend said she was going and so I emailed her and asked her if she wanted my room reservation.  She did, so we made the hand-off.  I called her to see if she needed a roommate.  She had just that day decided she couldn't go.  So I got the room back... but no roommate.  I asked on a bulletin board for roommates, and got one by Friday.  So all is well... after a bit of stress.

I worked on some spec challenges for the AWAI Bootcamp I'm going to  Oct 14-18th in Delray Beach FL. (I'll be taking a red-eye between the conferences.)  And I've been learning more about product launching. I've also been trying to learn about fulfillment.  This is when you have books but you want someone to store them for you and ship them out when they are sold.  In this case, we also want someone else to be the "book store" to take the orders and the money.

There are many places happy to do this.  They just charge varying amounts of money.  That's why books cost so much. Everyone takes a nibble.  Amazon charges $3.53 in total charges just to take your order and send it on to someone else to ship it.  Do we want simple, cheap, or easy? How much are we willing to pay for easy? Fortunately I collect the information, and someone else makes the decisions.  It's been interesting.

We are just about done with the house. It's turned out cute.  I wanted to show before and after pictures, so here's the before:

  Here is the after-- cleaned and repaired siding, shutters, painted porch, new front windows:

 Bathroom before-- wall paper, splotchy paint, dropped ceiling, offset cabinet.  After has fresh paint, new light fixture, centered cabinet.... still needs crown molding.

The original tub surround was broken, so Tom put tile in.  I like his zig-zag insert.  I thought the grout would be more gray than brown.  oh well.

 

Kitchen before- green paint, dropped ceiling, curled vinyl flooring.DIRTY stove.

 New paint, new floor, cleaned stove, coving over cupboards, new lights... soon to be new window.

 Family room: window a/c, metal rod to support roof, brick fireplace backing and hearth, broken front window, carpet removed, staples left on floor.

Beam reinforced so support could be removed, brickwork removed and patched, walls painted, new window, plank vinyl flooring put down, baseboard.

We may have mentioned that Rebecca's rental had a HUGE oak tree that was dying and needed to be cut down. It had limbs hanging over the house that were becoming brittle. We had professionals chop it down. Then Tom went over with a friend and a log splitter and got to work.  I had him stand by the wood pile today to get a picture.  He said he usually doesn't cut wood in this attire.

 And these are two of our adolescent chicks. I still can't tell if they are male or female.  A friend said the males will disguise themselves-- even to not growing a top comb if there's another rooster around. Eventually they must come out of the closet, I expect.

 Rebecca sent me her old Nook.  I downloaded some of the books I had on the computer onto it.  I hope I can spend some time reading and enjoying.  I want to get the scriptures onto it.

Saturday we had our annual fish fry at the ward. We took chocolate cake and a green bean salad.  Both were well received.  They had leftover fish and chips.  After they gave as much away as they could get people to take, they were going to toss the rest.  I brought it home for the happy hens.

The hen that was nesting but playing musical nests after she'd sat on her eggs for a week or so, finally gave up.  We'd been taking her eggs for a while. She wasn't happy, but neither was I with her for wasting her eggs.

I enjoyed the Women's Broadcast last night.  It focused on making and keeping covenants.  It was very international in flavor and very uplifting.

Women's Retreat-- long post

This week was a crazy busy week.

Monday I picked up my fair stuff.  I got a bunch of second place ribbons and 4 blue ribbons.  Umm… my veggie stems were not all cut to the same ½ length.  Some of my canned foods had too much or too little head room.  I guess I need to be more careful next time.  It is fun to take stuff to the fair and see it there.

Tuesday I revised/rewrote a children’s story for my counselor friend.  She was pleased with it.  That’s always nice.  My client’s book still needed a forward.  She finally got a hold of the guy.  He’d written it 2 weeks ago and sent it off… but no longer had that computer to get the document and resend it.  So I called him on the phone, interviewed him and got what he wanted to say, wrote it up and sent it off to him for his approval, and the client, for hers.  So Wednesday about 4 pm, the approval came back and the book was then ready to go to the printers.  Apparently the printer will make a final copy and send it out to be checked—color, page layout, etc.  Fortunately it will go to the client, not me.

She does want to move onto marketing and fixing her website.  We’ll see how that goes.  And she has another book to finish.

Wednesday I worked on finishing up the format for my Oil in My Lamp program booklet and the programs for the women’s retreat.   The Oil booklet is 27 pages long. But since there’s 4 pages to a sheet of paper (2 on each side) that’s 7 pages total.  I had a really tough time trying to get it printed on both sides here at home.  Finally I printed single sheets and taped them together.

Then I took them to the church and prayed they’d go through the printer properly.  They did and so I had a 2 sided copy.  I needed to print 3 batches of 50 programs for the Women’s Retreat.  I printed a few extras.  We were dividing into classes and each program had an assigned group number.   I wanted 175 of the 7 page booklets, but they seemed to take FOREVER to print.  I kept putting in reams of paper.  And I got to thinking; they couldn’t possibly be using that much paper.  I was printing long after all the activities were done at church.  Finally I shut canceled the remainder of the job.  Turns out I had about 90 printed.

Thursday at 10am I had two sisters come over and help me put together the programs. We folded the exterior scrapbook paper stock, and the interior program.

I had cut both to size at church on their great paper cutter.  Unfortunately as I was lifting up the handle one time, I misjudged and lifted on the blade with my thumb.  Dang!  That think is SHARP!  Got a deep cut and I had to try not to bleed on my stuff.  Fortunately, Pam Pfeifer went and got me a Band-Aid and that helped a lot.  I guess that’s what visiting teachers are for.

So we folded and stapled and then folded in the edges and glued the Saturday programs.  Then we sorted and folded and stapled the 7 page booklets.   It took about 3 hours. I was so grateful I’d asked for help!  As soon as they left, I raced back to church and printed off another 70 booklets.  While they were printing, I grabbed the completed pages and folded and stapled them.  So by the time the printing was done, the booklets were, too.

Then I stopped by the grocery store to get meat for dinner.  We invited the missionaries over and a neighbor couple from down the street.  It was an early dinner because Tom and I both had meetings later.  I fixed fried chicken, baked potatoes, beans, apple salad, green salad, and ice cream for dessert.  It turned out well, but it was a race to get cleaned up and off to our meetings on time…. We didn’t make it on time.

Tom had a meeting for Helping Hands, the charitable organization that owns the van the church uses for temple trips.  I had Relief Society Homemaking meeting.  I stayed long enough to learn how to make ribbon flowers and cloth flowers and grape wreaths.  And to taste the yummy snacks.  They watched Ephraim’s Rescue, but I didn’t stay for it all.  I was tired.

Friday I needed to pack our clothes and pack all of the stuff I’d collected for the women’s event.  I also needed to cook 20 pounds of chicken breasts.  I’d asked at church and collected two Foreman Grills.  Tom found one at a house where the tenant moved out.  So I had three pretty good sized grills.  It only took about an hour to cook them all.

But I also had bread boards and bread knives, platters and decorative napkins, various food items like 7 bottles of red wine vinegar, 3 cups of sugar, 3 quarts of pickled beets, a large basket to collect recipes in, gifts for the three workshop teachers, and various odd and sundry things. All in all it took an ice chest, a laundry basket, five bags and a hanging bag to get us there.

We also stopped by the church to load 6 round tables into the back of the truck.  So we drove the truck to West Plains.  We had time to check into the hotel and have dinner before we met at the church to set up.  I thought 6-8 would be sufficient time.  But, frankly we were figuring it out as we went along, and we actually got done closer to 10pm.  We decorated tables and bulletin boards; we set up tables for displays and organized the programs and booklets.  I made probably 350 oz. of dressing in 29 oz. batches. (Basically triple Mom’s Nicoise Salad dressing recipe.

One helper came with her 12 doz. eggs as yet uncooked, pealed or chilled. Sigh. So my counselor took them home and spent 3 hours (with her kids) doing it.

Saturday we arrived at 8am and started putting the Nicoise salads together. We worked until 9:40, and then turned it over to Tom and some other men to finish up.

The program was called “Pearls of Great Price.”  I conducted the opening exercises… as we realized we needed more chairs in the chapel (my 1^st counselor went to take care of that.)  And we didn’t have a chorister… um... I did that.  But mostly things went very well.  Pres. Roylance spoke about visiting teaching.  We had a great musical number with women of all ages singing, “If the Savior Stood Beside Me.”  We broke into workshops about: 1. The Scriptures are pearls of great price (Finding peace and comfort in the scriptures.). 2. We are pearls of great price (loving, appreciating, and valuing ourselves.) and 3. We are pearls in the community. (Serving in the community and standing up for what is right.)  Each sister got a single pearl necklace to remind her of her value.

Michele, my first counselor is holding the necklaces we gave the sisters and on the chair is a gift we gave each teacher.

We came back to the chapel and I introduced the Oil in My Lamp Program—a goal setting program designed to help the sisters draw closer to the Lord and be more prepared to serve him.  Then we went to lunch.  The tables looked lovely with the salad, dressing, and bread and butter on it. Sisters seemed to enjoy the salads and loved the Nicoise dressing. We had ice cream sundaes for dessert.

A few of my men didn’t show up and so we were short people to clean tables and serve desert.  The men worked like Trojans.  And bless the women’s hearts, many pitched in to help.  They didn’t ask, they just saw a need and did.

We got lots of compliments, so I guess it went well. I was soooo tired.  We spent some time cleaning up.  Again, lots of people pitched in to help.  We estimated 150 people.  I think we had about 140ish.  So the food actually came out pretty well.  We had some leftover tomatoes, green beans and eggs-- and lots of dressing. But we found homes for them all.

Tom and I came home and I mostly collapsed.  Tom went out and mowed the entire yard!

Today I had a branch conference in Ash Flat. So Tom and I were out the door a little after 7am. Good training and branch conference. And we enjoyed a great “Linger Longer” potluck after church.  We celebrated Dorothy Wagner’s 110^th birthday there.  She was in a wheelchair, but alert and engaged.  I think I mentioned earlier that she’d joined the church at 102 years old.  I had a little difficulty with droopy eye syndrome during parts of the service.

Now I’ve blogged and written to missionaries.  Tom is off visiting.  I may take a nap.

Fair Week

I feel like things are moving forward this week.   The client approved the design for the book.  The front cover looks spectacular and I love the interior design.  The printer will also do fulfillment.  She is firm in her decision to print 3000 books.  So if they move slowly, it’s her decision.

I picked up a little story revision job and need to work on a proposal or two.  Probably need to redesign a website, too.

Tom helped a new family move into the ward.

Monday night we went to our usually Empty Nester activity.  This one had a conservative bent.  We had a speaker talk about getting involved in Arkansas politics and being an informed voter. For the first time in my memory, Arkansas has a national presence as our Senate race is one of the swing states that could go Republican.  I’m hoping for a change.  But even if it occurs, I don’t know how much change we’ll see in the national government.

Tuesday I had the last of my Circle of Success calls for AWAI (my writing).  It was a peer review of headlines and leads. Good review and learning.  Then I quickly gathered things for the fair.  I took Anaheim, Bell, and Cayenne peppers, green onions, and some grape tomatoes.  I also took peach jam, applesauce, dill pickles and canned peaches.  And I took one piece of pottery.  I had to be there before 2pm because I volunteered to help check in photographs.

It was mostly busy. There were 13 classes in color and the same in black and white. You could only have one photo per class, except the “other” category could have 3 submissions.  Occasionally we had people with 30 photos to enter. With each entrant you had a process:

1. Check all photos to insure correct matting and no duplicate entries. If there were 2 in a class, gently explain they’d need to choose which they wanted to enter.  Check to see if they were in the youth, Jr, or 4-h category and tag appropriately if so.

2.  Write on their tag- division, category, class, entrant’s number and name.  Then you gave them the middle of the triplicate form, folded the back paper up and over the name on the front paper and clipped it to cover it from the judge. 

3. Paperclip the tag to the photo and take the strings from the tag, fold them over to the back of the photo and tape them to the back.  At the same time, check to see that they’d written their name on the back.

4. After a stack collected, file them in the proper bin—child, adult, b/w or color, and class.

It took several minutes to do each entry.  There were about 6 of us working.  In the few lulls, we chatted.  I finished about 7:30. 

Tom worked at the house most of the day and oversaw the chopping down of a GIANT tree in the yard of one of Rebecca’s rentals.  He got home about the same time I did.

Wednesday I went with Tom to work at the house from 9:30 to 3:30.  While he tiled the tub surround, I painted shutter wood slats and scrubbed the wooden floors in the bedroom and hall.  I also cleaned the Pergo floor in the laundry room and straightened that room. It looks pretty good now.  Came home and fixed dinner.  We had a new family that moved into the ward and they came over to dinner.

Thursday Tom gathered a truckload of wood and brought it home. One of our rentals came empty, so he checked that out and started cleaning it up.

I did some writing and worked on the Relief Society program for Saturday. Picked beans. In the afternoon we went to the fair.  The weather has moved to fall weather.  Cool and drizzly.  It was very nice. I was almost chilly!  We enjoyed the exhibits and chatted with people we knew.  We even watched the baby beauty contest for babies from 0-6 months old.  But didn’t stay long enough to see that Jen Bogart’s granddaughter came in first!  My entries into the fair got about ½ reds and ½ blue ribbons.  Perhaps next year I should give myself more than a half hour to pull my entries out of the garden and off the shelves.

When we came home, Tom wanted to empty the bed of the truck, so we tossed and rolled the logs off the truck. Tom split about 1/3 of them and I stacked them.  Friday we stopped by the house to see how much was left.  A lot!  I think the bottom round is about three feet across.  Tom thinks renting a log splitter and splitting them on site is the most manageable route.  Then there are leaves to rake and general debris to pick up.

Friday was our 44^th Anniversary and we had a nice time. We drove to Branson.  I activated the phone I got on Adam’s plan. It’s a sprint phone and we are in the roving area, but I think it will work here.  New cell phone: 870 565-7700

We did some shopping, ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant and then shopped some more. We had ice cream at Andy’s and then headed home.  We took a scenic route.  We stopped in Harrison at Aldi’s for food, and came home about dusk.  The wood called to Tom and he split and stacked another 1/3 of the truckload.  That evening we watched another episode of Eureka.

Saturday I picked beans, pulled the last of the beets, and worked in the garden.  The weeds are winning, but it’s hard to care when most everything is winding down.  We have some GIANT sunflower heads that are bent over.  Hope we actually can harvest the seeds.

I cooked and pickled the beets.  Tom worked at the house a bit grouting the tub surround.  I got some essential oils ready to take to my counselor who has been sick with that viral cough and lung thing going around.

Then we drove to West Plains for Super Saturday. It was the Trek reunion.  We saw pictures from the Trek and each “Ma” and “Pa” got a minute to share their thoughts on the trek.  Then the youth had a dance.  It was fun to reconnect with our “children.”

At the Super Saturday, I ran into my RS president who said she had not yet received invitation for the Stake RS Woman’s Retreat for next Saturday.  AKKK! This Sunday was the last day to get them out.  I came home and recreated the design and printed them off on cardstock and then just paper. They looked nice, although not as elegant as the expensive Vistaprint printed ones.  However, the sisters were glad to get them.

We had good meetings today. I passed out the invitations at the door to Sacrament meeting.  I collected George Forman grills to cook the chicken with and platters to serve the salad.  I have men to help set up and serve on Saturday.  One by one things seem to be falling into place.

I hope and assume that if I do the best I can, the Grace of Jesus will take me—and the program-- the rest of the way and it will all work out so the sisters have a wonderful time.

Writing Week

This letter could be pretty short: I wrote.

Early Monday morning I packed up and headed for Bella Vista.   I had set up a “Hot Week” timeshare there.  $199 for a 2 bdrm for a week.  I really only needed one room.  But since I had two rooms I invited Miranda and Dan for the last few days.

This timeshare seems a bit smaller and more casually run than ones I’ve been in previously. Since it was a holiday, they’d closed shop.  I had to call, get the lockbox number and just take out my key and information package.  Not quite the pampering I was used to.  On the other hand, no one asked if I wanted to sit in on a timeshare presentation.

The room was nice.  I tried to be accountable for all my time—recording each thing I did. When I went to bed Monday night I thought, I’ll let the light wake me up.  It did.  At midnight, and 2am and 5:30 when the lightening lit up the room! It rained Tuesday morning. And later I walked around the property to see what was there.

I completed my goal to go through the Clayton Makepeace course again and made progress on the Product Launch Formula course.  I did some marketing and some planning on future marketing and I wrote a special report for my Teen Style U website.

I finally got my client to approve the book I wrote so it could go to the book designer…. Only two weeks late.  I felt SUCH a relief. Then I discovered an error.  Sigh.  So then she said she’d really read the book. Hope she does.  I’d hate to have 3000 copies with an error. 

Then I worried again. I’m a writer. Not a publisher. I don’t know the best method to publish.  Certainly hiring a printer is cheaper than Print on Demand (POD).  It works best if you have people coming to you asking for the book, selling it on your website or at presentations.  With POD—at least with Lightening Source, they’ll mail out, get it into libraries and book stores and on e-book. But you get less money.  Which is best for her?  Both maybe?  Any advice?

I planned simple food and it worked out pretty well.  I took the occasional walk, worked at the sofa, worked at the table, read a bit on the lounge chairs on the deck.  While I did a lot, there’s always more that could be done.

I held a phone RS Presidency meeting on Tuesday night.  We got a lot worked out for our Women’s Retreat.  We’ll meet again by phone on Sunday night.  There are just so many details to worry about.

Miranda and crew arrived just after dinner on Thursday evening.  It was fun to see her, Dan and her munchkins.  They were delighted to see all the timeshare had to offer.

Dan went off to work on Friday and Miranda and the boys spent the morning going swimming and miniature golfing.  They found the Recreation center and brought back games, a puzzle and a high chair.

In the afternoon, when Dan came back, we all headed back to the pool.  I was a little worried about sunburn—since I’m totally white, but I used sunscreen and didn’t stay long.  In the evening we worked on the puzzle and watched Ella Enchanted.

While I was recreating, Tom was diligent and went to the St. Louis Temple. He also spent the week working on the Whiteville house—putting in windows, working on trim and siding, and I don’t know what all else. 

Saturday we packed up and headed our separate directions.  It was drizzling there and rained most of the way home. It rained as I stopped at Aldi’s to shop.  It rained until I crossed the Cotter Bridge. None of the needed rain came to our house.

I stopped to admire Tom’s handiwork at the house. It looked great!  I came home and unpacked.  We went to a baptism from 4:15-7… well, Tom wanted to be there early.  Then we went to dinner at our favorite little Italian place.

A neighbor had agreed to cut out breadboards for our Stake Relief Society event. He got them cut out, but they needed the hole to hang them on.  So when we got back home, we had 20 holes to drill.  And they really needed some sanding too, so we got them sanded, and the car covered with sawdust!  That last part was not intentional.

I had promised to get them to my painter by Sunday.  I was able to deliver them because of Tom’s great sanding and drilling efforts.  Today was a slow Fast Sunday, but a good one.  Tom went off to West Plains for a meeting. I was able to call Rebecca and visit with her before I left for church. It was great to hear her voice and feel closer to her.  I’m so grateful things have worked out well with the move.

Today when I went to feed the chickens, I saw that one of the adolescent chicks—the black and gray one, had fallen on hard times.  It’s carcass was scattered on the floor of the nesting house. I was so sad.  I expect it fell afowl of a hen and got pecked to death.