My sister came to Texas and kicked my fairy "tail"!

You know how it is when you have the feeling that something’s wrong but you can’t, or won’t, figure out what it is, don’t you? That’s how I was feeling. Not good or bad. Still doing the things I knew I should be doing but things just weren’t right with me.

Then here comes Sis*.

Like the Dog Whisperer, she observed my behavior. Then Sister Whisperer that she is, she sits me down for a talk. Physically, she says to me, you don’t have cancer. But mentally, you still have it.

My eyes opened wide and I started to object and defend myself but I couldn’t. I knew instantly she was right. I still think of myself as having cancer. Of course, barely two months out of treatment, and with scans and checkups popping up every three month for the next couple of years, it’s understandable. But that’s not how I want to live the rest of my life.

I’m cancer-free. Period. No "at the moment" added.

I’m cancer-free and going to live like it!

I’m painting pretty pictures every day I possibly can.



I’m designing our new house for our new piece of land.



Maybe it’ll be a bed and breakfast. Who knows but I’m living in the future from now on. I never realized how important that is. Yes, I’m living every day fully too but without tomorrows, "every days" aren’t whole.

How are you living your life?

*Sis had great scans at MDAnderson herself. Her lung tumors are almost gone. She’ll remain on this current chemo, which seems to be working miracles, for another four month, then she’ll come down from Denver for more scans…and hopefully, won’t have to kick my fairy "tail" again.

Love – and I do love you all,

A stephome tour!

My stepmother Reetie picks up a paint brush at the front door of every house she moves into and doesn't put her paints down until she reaches the back door. She marks her territory better than any dog I've ever seen!

Reetie lives with my stepfather Wade, a sordid tale of lust, romance, confusion, cancer, dizzy spells, good food, and wine, mostly red! The following pictures are of their house in the hill country.

Finally, plants I can't kill!

You've alread seen this bathtub
but I wanted to show it again. I love it!

Yes, the headboard is painted on the wall.

Wade made this sofa table out of an old western twin bedstead.

These hanging windows separate the TV viewing area
from a sitting area with fireplace.

I love all the mirrors together.

Here's another cabinet I made. You stick your fingers
into the adjacent knotholes to open the doors.

And the sweetest doggie in the world...
except for mine, of course.

I posted this makeover earlier this month and took the table to M-I-L's assisted living apartment. She loved it but yesterday we had to move her back into the nursing home. I'm sad to say there is no room for the table and back it goes into storage.  Oh, well!

Table revival

It'd been packed away at the side of the shop for over a year.

I knew what I wanted to do with it but I didn't have the time to do it nor a place to put it when it was finished...



...until now. My M-I-L needed a small eating/domino table in her new assisted living apartment. I couldn't wait to supply her with one!




So I dug out the table and painted the top white with swirling black sides, then I added wild roses and leaves...

...and shabbied everything slightly so M-I-L wouldn't feel bad when accidental scraps and dents occurred.

I love one stroke leaves.

The wild roses are kinka one stroke. Maybe they're carnations. Whichever, they're pink.

And M-I-L loves pink!

For painters only!

I've decided to become an oil painter...again.

So I went to a Russell Cushman workshop Tuesday. He's an excellent all-around artist and instructor. Here's the end of the class where he's showing me how to improve my painting. It's three minutes of your life but if you're a painter, it's worth it.

Runnin' around Warrenton

OK, let’s pretend I’m broke − money-wise, that is, not to the saddle!

That doesn’t take much pretending nowadays, does it?

So, here I am with no money and I’m headed home to Bryan after flying over the valleys of Central Texas Hill Country. And there right in front of me is Warrenton. Wonderful, wonderful Warrenton.

The advertised start date of this antique and junk festival is less than a week away but traders are already setting up their wares under big, white tents. Early bird junk collectors are grabbing up the unique items that vendors have herded together and headed out to the bluebonnet-covered fields of this rural community.

What’s an empty-pocketed girl to do?

Shop by camera, of course!

Guess which picture I like best!

Curb-side crime!

Drive by junking, trash picking, dumpster diving − whatever you want to call it − doesn’t always work for me.

A couple of years ago I was garage sale-ing with my friend Joan when I found a bonanza of old lumber by a curb. It wasn’t discarded used privacy fencing. This lumber was the good stuff, old and weathered, time-worn and wonderful, big ol’ wide boards!

Some man was working through the pile and I asked him if I could pick some up. “Sure. Take all you want,” he said, so I hustled home, got IT Guy’s truck, and hurried back.

No man was around by that time but I donned my work gloves and started loading. I’d gotten the pickup halfway loaded when this woman tears out of the house yelling, “What are you doing?”

Long story short she let me take one load of lumber. She probably felt sorry for me because I was all red faced and teary eyed from getting caught stealing!

This cabinet is one of the pieces I made with the stolen boards. These pictures are my dusting photos. It's really embarrassing when one has to have photographs of one's junk in order to dust the shelves and put the crap things back where they belong.

Dusting photos sure make life simpler!

Retractions, Corrections, and Benches

"You misquoted me on your blog yesterday," IT Guy told me last evening.

"I did?" I asked, innocently sitting down on the nearest bench.

"Yes." He paused to make sure he had my attention. "Technically, I said, 'Son of a bench! Stop making these dang things!' "

"What's the difference?" I said, doubting he had used the word dang.

"The difference is, I want to get credit for a great pun!"

Credit given, IT Guy.


Here are more benches. Thanks for stopping by. Do you want sugar in your iced tea?

I can't stand it when old fence wood is thrown out. I feel compelled to make something out of such good, weathered wood, so I have a fencebench in the front yard and a fencebench in the back yard, plus I've sold a few fencebenches. (Say that word fast three times!)


This bench is a favorite, mainly because the sides are shaped like cowboy boots.

On the seat of the bootbench, I painted playing cards. My daughter, Code Girl, says I need to paint another one. I'm one short, like that's news to anyone that knows me.

For lurkers who don't read the comments, I quote from yesterday:

Anonymous said...

Come, dear friend,
Let's sit a spell.
The weather's fine,
All is well.
We'll sip a glass of Texas tea and
Enjoy the shade of the kind oak tree.

I'm a sucker for benches!

I love to make benches. If I'm not making them, I'm painting them. I'd make or paint more, but there's no room for another one around my place. Plus IT Guy has put his foot down.

"Stop making benches," he said. Or maybe he yelled it when he stubbed his toe on one he had to move so he could mow the lawn. With Texas summers you have to mow every five days or so, which makes for a lot of bench moving!


I found this old bedstead in the garbage at the local thrift store. It was even too trashy for them to resell, which made it just right for me! The trim around the edge of the seat was one of those pieces I picked up out of the trash a couple of years ago, knowing that someday it would come in handy. The green shabby piece next to the bench is out of IT Guy's grandparent's house. Renee yells at me to put it in the house, but I HAVE NO ROOM IN THERE!





I didn't make this bench. My step-mother gave it to me, and I painted it with critters.

The ancient farm equipment in the background belonged to IT Guy's grandfather.

You can see our leaves are starting to fall here. They don't bother to turn colors before they go down. If they aren't blown off green by a hurricane, they just turn brown and float to the lawn.
To be honest, I stole the critters out of children's books. If you're not going to sell the item you're painting (in other words, if it's for your house only), I don't think it's a copyright violation. If it is, sue me for the money I made from it, which is ZERO.I needed something on the seat so I made it into what we call a "Texas two-holer."

Come back tomorrow afternoon for a tall glass of iced tea, and I'll show you a couple of more benches.

When you've decorated every other room...

I’m convinced the laundry room is the least decorated room in a house. And why not? It’s a work room, not a place to relax and read a book. It’d be like hanging pictures in the garage. Who's going to see them?

But we’re changing our ways…in laundry rooms, at least.

Because that room is traditionally a blank canvas, I treated it as such at our house and got out my paints and brushes. I painted a portrait of our little dog Sally hanging from a towel and just continued painting around the room until I got back to her. Then I got out my ant stamp, which I love, and placed ants along the clothes line. I even incorporated my hanging dusters into the painting by pretending they were attached to the clothes line. I also used the painted rope to spell out the words Laundry Blues.

And that was my downfall. One day C-Bear, my grandson who was about ten at the time, came into the kitchen and asked, “What's 'laundy' mean, NaNa?”

“I don’t know. What?” I said, thinking it was a ten-year old’s joke.
“I don’t know either,” he said, with a gotcha smile, “but you painted it on the wall in there.” I hustled into the laundy room…I mean, laundry room to view the mistake for myself. Sure enough, I had dropped the consonant. Paint brushes don’t have spell check.

Beaded art and peyote

Deep in western central Mexico, hidden away in the Sierra Madre Occidental Range, a tribe of indigenous Indians called Huichol (pronounced Wettchol) produce beautiful beaded art like these two examples. Through the use of peyote, a hallucinatory, chewable cacti (I’m thinking similar to chewable vitamins here, but I’m probably wrong), the artists create elaborate designs on skulls, shapes, and gourd bowls.

I saw these two pieces of Huichol art on display at a local bead shop some years ago and knew I just had to try my hand at this art form. The Indians utilized bone, clay, coral, jade, shell, turquoise, and seeds, but I decided to stick to glass seed beads, jewelry glue, and a powerful magnifying glass. I already had a cow skull from the El Paso area that someone had used for target practice. The way I figured it, both the cow and I were done with it in its present form anyway.

So I started gluing beads in my spare time. I didn’t have any design in mind. I just let the skull “talk to me.” It took FOREVER! (I guess it was a slow talker.) I’m not a perfectionist, but I did glue and unglue several hundred beads before I understood the medium I was working with. Plus little tiny beads ended up under seat cushions, in back of the couch, across the room, and in my bra and panties. I don’t know how, but they did. I also went through two new prescriptions for my glasses.

It was almost a shock to my system when the skull was done. I felt lost, with nothing to do with my time. THAT’S when I could have used the peyote!

The-Dog-From-Hell-That-Hates-Me sniffing my art work!