What have I been doing?

It’s been quite awhile since I have written a blog post, just about six months. The time has flown by since we left pipelining to be home full time.

In that time we have started a handyman business and I have been teaching pottery classes.

Handymaning (as we call it😊)

Our good friend, Sally, got us started with a few well placed social media post!🎉🎉🎉

We have been busy ever since. Currently we are booked about three weeks out!

Ron is loving the variety of work and the challenges that some of the jobs bring. I work with him as his assistant most days.

Pottery Classes

I have been enjoying introducing people to the art of pottery.

I do an introduction to the pottery wheel class and also a pinch pot class.

It has been a lot of fun to see how different each person’s pieces turn out, their personalities totally come through in their pottery ❤️

New life, new challenges

Along with this new life of being home full time comes some challenges that I didn’t expect.

As I have mentioned before I struggle with depression and anxiety. Changes in my “normal ” routine causes me stress, which in turn affects my anxiety and depression in a bad way🤪

I find it very frustrating that being home and pursuing all the good things that God has brought our way has been tainted with the worst depression and anxiety that I have ever experienced.

With the constant urging of my daughter I have finally taken the much need step of going to counseling.

I am hopeful…

Pretty photos from the farm to end with…

Hopefully it won’t be six more months before you hear from me again…😉

Weed eating…

I’ve been spending a good part of most days with this lovely weed eater😩

I’ve always tried to stay ahead of the weeds when they’re little, but we didn’t get back from New Mexico until the weeds were already waist high… so I weed eat and weed eat…

I finally feel like I’m making headway 🎉

When I’m not weed eating plants I’m planting plants😂

Ron made me a nice little sitting area with some of the boulders he has been finding.

Josie and Dallan asked if I would plant some lambs ears for them. Finding a nursery that had them was a bit of a challenge, but I finally found some along with some lavender and ridged verbena, all favorites from gardens I have had in the past.

Wild flowers…

While I’ve been weed eating I have also found some pretty wildflowers 🙌

Here is an arrangement of wildflowers and wild sage that I picked.

Roses…

I even have a few rose bushes in my garden area by the fifth wheel that are blooming!

All in all…

I’ll have to say that I am enjoying being home! Even with all the weed eating I have to do, I still like being here and seeing the farm starting to shape up😍

Lots of changes

This last month has seen lots of life changes for our family. My dad pasted away on Good Friday. It wasn’t totally unexpected, but still left us all feeling shocked. He was eighty six years old and had heart problems which he had pulled through every other time, but not this time. I guess God was ready for him to go on home.

This is a picture of my mom and dad taken this last August at their sixtieth wedding anniversary. He will be missed.

Other changes…

With the death of my dad, Ron and I felt it was time to be home, closer to our families. We had been talking about it for awhile, but this was the catalyst we needed to pack up from the job in New Mexico and head for home. Now we are trusting God to show us how we can make a living here at home. Stepping out in faith is a scary thing and I’ll have to say that I’m struggling with it… like terrified.

Some options we are kicking around

I’m planning some weekly craft classes that will include pottery, sign painting and paper flowers. Let me know if there are any particular classes you would be interested in. I’m also available to do private group class/parties as well.

Ron has been busy waging war on boulders

We are trying to make room for another storage container that can hold my pottery supplies and also furniture people want to give us for when we get the house built. Ron has found a couple huge boulders that he can’t move with his tractor, but they are in the way and need to come out. He never gives up and always finds a way to get the job done😊

Here is a time lapsed video of one of the boulder.

I’ll try to be better in keeping you up to date.

Until next time…

I recently was able to go to Waco for Joanna Gaines book launch of her new children’s book ” We are the gardeners”. While I was there I noticed paper flowers everywhere! Not only at Magnolia Market, but also at some of the sweet little shops that have popped up in downtown Waco.

Inspiration was everywhere.

One of the little shops, Linen and Cake, had beautiful silk and paper wisteria hanging from branches. It inspired me to go home and make some paper flowers.

Pictures of the process

I used alcohol ink to dye the coffee filters, then rolled them up into tight little balls to dry….

I plan on making some leaves to go with the flowers and then make a garland out of them. I just haven’t gotten that far yet😉

I did want to share what I have done so far. I’ll post some pictures of the finished garland when I get it done.

Next time I’m home I think I’ll offer a paper flower workshop. They are a lot of fun to make.

I’ll keep you posted…

Springtime on the road

As many of you know, Ron and I are most often on the road for his work. We would love to be home at Stone Creek Farm, but for now we travel from job to job spending nine months or more at each job. So when spring arrives I do what every gardener does, I plant my garden. One nice thing about this job in New Mexico is that spring has arrived already. I watched my weather app for weeks waiting for the night-time lows to rise above freezing and now I am good to start gardening.

Gathering my supplies

Since we travel back and forth all over the United States constantly I make it a point to collect old buckets and resin type flower pots for my garden on the road. I love terra-cotta pots, but it breaks my heart when they are reduced to shards because of all the bouncing on the road. I have even built wooden boxes for my garden in some of the places we have been, but I have to leave those behind when we leave because we don’t have room to take them with us. Although the neighbor I give it to is usually pretty happy.

This year’s humble beginnings

Final thoughts…

Take it from me… as one who struggles with depression. There is just something in the very act of getting your hands in the dirt and planting a garden that fills you with hope!

I will leave you with Audrey Hepburn’s words

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”