My Sea-Foam Green Thumb
My husband works about an hour from our home. Each night on his way home he calls and we chit chat about our days, and what-ever else is going on. Last weekend we went to our local chain hardware stores to check out their garden sections as they’d just re-opened them and I was anxious to see some green and pretty flowers. I want to redecorate our flower beds. Basically I want to pull out a few small shrubs in the front of our house, replant them in the back yard, and plant a new shrub as well as a bucket full of summer bulbs and other plants. My main flower requirement is hydrangea. I love hydrangea. My other favorite is Lilly of the Valley, so I’m going to try and get some of those in somewhere.
Please do not be mistaken. I only pretend to have a green thumb. Right now it’s more like a sea-foam green, but I’m working on getting to emerald. I’ll get there someday.
Last night’s topic of conversation post the “What did you do today?” and “Did anything exciting happen?” questions my husband brought up the topic of the rearrangement of our flower beds. We live in a town house but as town houses go I’ve got loads of space for my flower garden and anything else I want to plant. I was so excited. I started to blabber about other ideas I have like window boxes, and how pretty they would be, not to mention the added benefit they’d supply of making our townhouse really stand out-in a good way, just in case we do have to put our home on the market (should new orders come our way.) Some white window boxes full of blooming flowers would be a lovely addition to our property.
My husband and I our at odds slightly with regards to what we should do exactly on the side of the house. Right now, we have a droopy looking flower bed. We planted about five azalea bushes a few years ago, and basically what I want to do is pull out the mulch, and paving stones and lay new sod down and leave it like that. My husband on the other hand wants to by some railroad looking wood things and create a whole new flower bed. I’d much rather focus on sprucing up the front and back of the house along with the tree that is actually ours.
I would love to have a nice area in our back yard that we could sit out in and enjoy, we won’t be able to enjoy the side of the house.
Makes perfect sense to me.
I can’t wait to get started. Tomorrow morning I’m going to have us all up and out of the house before nine. That’s my goal anyway. It’ll probably be more like noon before we actually go anywhere! On the plus side, the hubs and I both agree that window flower boxes would be a great addition to our home, and offer loads of curb appeal!
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Read MoreHow Do You Measure Up?
Often in life, we compare ourselves to someone, something, we try to be the person we think we should be, instead of the person we are. I’m not saying that trying to better yourself, to be kinder, to be more than what we are as a person is a bad thing. What I’m saying revolves around the superficial. Open up any beauty magazine and your bombarded with ads telling us what we should look like, what we should be wearing, and even how we should act. Sometimes it’s less superficial. Sometimes we try to be the person we think our lovers want us to be, or who are parent’s want us to be…I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I do not suffer from this.
I have my mother to thank for that.
I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot.
She’s not perfect. She recognized that. She taught me to appreciate imperfections. The most important thing my mother ever taught me wasn’t how to put my makeup on, or to cook, or the best way to get grass stains out, but of self love. She may not have always had it for herself, but she certainly taught me to cherish the person I am. To love me. She did this by loving me unconditionally. By letting me express myself-even if that included wearing her-to big clothes when I was twelve and wished so much to be grown.
By teaching me to love myself my mother made it really easy for me to love others and for other people to love me. A fact, that I am very grateful for. I’m no where near to being perfect and I like that. I measure myself against me and the ever evolving person that is who I am. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about being imperfect, but I came across this today and it got me to thinking about it again…that’s all.
How do you measure yourself?
Read MoreCoffee First, Other Stuff Later
I realize I’ve been MIA. Lots of stuff was going on last week and the hubs was home-so when ever he’s home, my routine is usually side tracked with other stuff. I’ve got loads of blog business to get to, as well as some fun things that happened last week, that I can’t wait to tell you about!
I’ll be back later once I’ve had un cafecito to update you all!
Love & Coffee,
Nicóle
Happy St. Patrick's Day
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Hope you have a great one!
I thought today, I’d share with you some of my favorite Irish quotes…
Saint Patrick was a gentleman
Who through strategy and stealth
Drove all the snakes from Ireland
Here’s a drinkee to his health!
But not too many drinkees
Lest we lose ourselves and then…
Forget the good Saint Patrick
And see them snakes again!
And for you my friends…
Wishing you a rainbow
For sunlight after showers—
Miles and miles of Irish smiles
For golden happy hours—
Shamrocks at your doorway
For luck and laughter too,
And a host of friends that never ends
Each day your whole life through!
An Irish Prayer
May God give you…
For every storm, a rainbow,
For every tear, a smile,
For every care, a promise,
And a blessing in each trial.
For every problem life sends,
A faithful friend to share,
For every sigh, a sweet song,
And an answer for each prayer.
An Old Irish Blessing…
May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!
And another…
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
And finally, from St. Patrick’s Breast Plate
Christ be with me
Christ before me
Christ behind me
Christ in me
Christ beneath me
Christ above me
Christ on my right
Christ on my left
Christ where I lie
Christ where I sit
Christ where I arise
Christ in the heart of every man
who thinks of me
Christ in the mouth of every man
who speaks of me
Christ in every eye that sees me
Christ in every ear that hears me
Salvation is of the Lord.
What Makes a Good Wife?
Earlier today I had a brief conversation with a friend on facebook. She’d posted about her day, how she was tired, and about this amazing dinner she’d made. I commented, that I’m not a real big fan of cooking, and when ever I don’t feel like cooking I don’t. I said that my family would have been eating cereal or pizza for dinner.
Her response was that her husband enjoys a nice meal, and that she wanted to be a “good wife”.
This got me thinking.
What is a good wife? I thought we, as a society were kind of beyond the Betty Crocker house wife thing. Am I mistaken? I couldn’t help but wonder why she associated cooking a meal for her husband with being a good wife. I wouldn’t have cooked if I felt tired. Does that make me a bad wife? I don’t think so.
I think she and I simply have different ideas about what makes a good wife. To be honest I’ve never really thought about being a “good wife”. Just like I never think about being a good daughter, or a good friend, or…even a good mother. I am what I am.
I think I’m pretty darn amazing, and this is backed up by the people in my life who tell me so.
I don’t know why, but this bugged the crap out of me. That women today still correlate putting an admittedly delicious sounding meal down in front of their husband directly with the qualities that make a good wife.
Read MoreSuleman Face Off — Has Me Turned Off
The Nada Suleman story doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. Most of the country is still enjoying the voyeuristic appeal that the family seems to be counting on. Radar Online will be posting “world exclusive” videos this week, of Nadya and Angela Suleman who “face-off on camera for the first time – and fireworks erupt!” I watched the video only because I’ve previously posted my thoughts on Ms. Suleman, and frankly I was more than a little disgusted. The video has the quality of a bar brawl, which is something you might think is cool to see until you find yourself stuck in the middle of one.
Nadya attempts to show the world what a great therapist she’ll be, by telling her mother that she needs to “learn to let go”, and that she was an “inflexible” person. Inflexible? You’re being allowed to live in her house with your six children, and will need her to help care for your eight precious babies! How is that inflexible? A house that according to TMZ is reportedly $23,224.98 in the hole for unpaid mortgage payments and is scheduled to be sold out from under them in May. This story doesn’t seem to be getting better. I wouldn’t wish the loss of a home on anyone, I hope that they can come to some kind of an agreement with their mortgagor.
They also got on the topic of adoption. Nadya obviously a pro-life advocate, such as myself couldn’t fathom the idea of destroying her embryos. I get that. But why did she have so many harvested in the first place? Nada also comments that she couldn’t possibly “fathom” the idea of having her flesh and blood out in the world.
The most annoying part of the video for me occured when, Nadya said that she was going to have to give up “control”, and accept the help people have offered; at which point she gives a coy glance to the camera. Ick! That statement has also left me wondering if that was the real reason she wanted to have so many children, so that she’d have as many lives as possible under her control.
Control Freak: As described in Wikipedia (I know its not the best source.)
In psychology-related slang, control freak is a derogatory term for a person who attempts to dictate how everything around them is done. It can also refer to someone with a limited number of things that they want done a specific way; professor of clinical psychology Les Parrott wrote that “Control Freaks are people who care more than you do about something and won’t stop at being pushy to get their way.”[1]
In some cases, the control freak sees their constant intervention as beneficial or even necessary; this can be caused by feelings of superiority, believing that others are incapable of handling matters properly, or the fear that things will go wrong if they don’t attend to every detail. In other cases, they may simply enjoy the feeling of power it gives them so much that they automatically try to gain control of everything around them.
Nadya’s father Ed Doud will be on The Oprah Winfrey Show today where Dr. Oz will “weigh in”, if you just can’t get enough of this story.
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