I've Been Seriously Negligent

Bit of eye candy for you. I've been redoing the dining room chandelier and took down the roses and pink chiffon. I think I'll do it in netting now. These are the little roses I had pinned up on it. I'll show you the result when I'm done.

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I need to apologize to several bloggers who have given me awards and I've been lax in posting them. The last month or two have just simply gotten away from me. I didn't mean to let it go this long but it has. So now I'd like to list the awards and bloggers who have given some to me. I sincerely thank them and apologize again.

This one comes from a very dear friend, Lorena, of rosechicfriends. She's very dear to me.

This one comes from Ronda at apeachykeenlife. She has been a sweetheart and given me permission to use some of her photos for an upcoming blog. Stay tuned, chicks! LOL

Sisterhood award comes from Jannet. She lives in europe but has deleted her blog. I thank her anyway.

Star commenter and lemonade awards come from Bobbi Jo. She's also been a sweetheart and is quite funny also.

"If the shoe fits award" comes from Spenser. When I'm on her blog I just listen to Johnny Mathis and swoon! I love his music.

Can We Talk, Chicks?

I was in the market for some new mascara last week. Grubbin' through WM I had so many choices it was amazing. I finally decided on this one because it's a new formula and touted rather boldly on the display so I thought, oh what the heck? Might as well.

Now, first let me say that the Bobbi Brown mascara is 3x the price of this one and I wasn't too thrilled about their mascara. But this one for $6.00 I thought I'd try. What did I have to lose? I'm here to tell ya that this mascara is the best I've ever used.

Remember, my experience with the 15x magnifying mirror. Whoooooooa, chicks, you don't wanna know how truly ugly it was! Not pretty at all, I tell ya. Sooooo after applying this Maybelline mascara I looked in that mirror and they were truly lush, long and NOT ONE clump on them.

First one is from about 2 weeks ago with what was then my regular mascara—Cover Girl. Nice, but not as thick and long as the last one. I don't know why but the first one looks better on here than the last two but truly in person the last two photos of my eyes are better. If it looks bad don't blame the makeup; blame the FACE! Oh, and there is only mascara on the top lashes, not the bottom ones. And the new mascara was black where the old one was brown/black. I think I need the brown/black and not black/black. *

Okay, I went back to the store and got the brown/black and it looks much better I think.

And with the eyes opened. For crying out loud, why are my eyes so red? I look like I'm on crack or something.....truly I have absolutely nothing on except for mascara!

*These photos could have been Photoshopped to remove wrinkles! :-)

Update on Son

My son sent this email out to family and friends yesterday, saturday 5/16/09 to update them on what has been happening so I thought I'd post it in his own words. He's recovering nicely and almost back to normal which is this first picture.

Day after beating.

Two weeks after beating on April 4th.
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I got some good news and bad news in the past week. Since this is the first time I have written to my whole contact list, let me start at the beginning. I don't want to make this too long so I will just hit the highlights. On 4/4/09, I was assaulted by five guys at the gas station while I was filling up. I was trying to help a young lady who was getting hassled by these guys. I was knocked unconscious very early in the confrontation and don't remember too much. I do remember that as the situation started to come unhinged, I realized that it would be veeery difficult to defend myself since I was still on crutches and wearing a knee brace from having my ligament rebuilt on 3/9.
The end result of the attack was my left pupil was damaged and I have some vision problems in BOTH eyes, damage to the inner ear causing constant ringing and vertigo that persists til today, broken bone on bridge of nose and broken cheek bone which gave me the worst black eyes I have ever seen, damage to the eye socket that makes a sound whenever I blink or move my eyes, sprained left shoulder, bruised clavicle, strained right elbow, aaand I just found out this week that there is more damage to another ligament besides the one repaired in March and more damage to the miniscus which is causing it to lock so that I can't straighten it. That was the bad news this week.
I am still in physical therapy for the ligament repair and I will find out in 2-3 weeks if they will have to do another surgery to repair the knee again. Most of the head trauma is healing slowly. I am still having trouble sleeping, the ringing is as loud as ever, the headaches are getting less frequent but are still pretty severe, and the vertigo is still bothering me every time I stand up (I have to be real careful not to fall down).
But this week I finally got some good news. The police have not been answering my calls and will not return my messages. We called almost daily for the first 3 weeks and finally I got fed up. I figured that since the assault was RECORDED ON VIDEO, it should have been pretty easy to make an arrest. So I finally wrote to my city councilwoman and asked for her to put some pressure on the cops to do SOMETHING. Well I got a call this Wednesday from a Sergeant. He had gotten a call from City Hall and now he had assigned a detective the case (5 1/2 weeks after the fact). He got the tape on Wednesday night, set up a photo array line-up on Thursday, and called me today (Friday) to tell me that he had 3 of the 5 in custody and would probably have the others by Monday. What a relief! Finally some good news from the whole situation. I had, for all intents and purposes, given up on finding these dirtbags. At this point, I am so relieved to have them caught that I don't even care if they go to jail (of course it would be a bonus). At least they know they didn't get away with it. I wish I could have seen their faces when the cops showed up to arrest them. They HAD TO HAVE THOUGHT that they had gotten away with it after 6 weeks. And I hope to get them in civil court to recoup some of the medical costs, too.
So things are looking up. Still a few problems but I am feeling better and the therapy is doing some good. I appreciate all the messages from everyone. I know I haven't been prompt with replies this past week but there are so many things going on and so many good wishes coming in from everyone. Thanks to all who keep me in their prayers but please don't forget to pray for the guys who did this. As much as I need your prayers, I think they need them more.

Chandelier Redo for Pink Saturday 5/16/09

The chandelier top fell out of the thing-a-ma-bob that holds it up there the other day. Hubs said the long screw "tube" was too short so it pulled away from the ceiling but was still held up there by the electrical cord. (What is it with my ceiling fixtures lately?! I tell ya!!) We ran to Home Depot to get a longer one and while it was hanging down there I thought it would be a good time to dust........yeah, I know, I know, I don't do dust, but this was the time to do it if I was EVER going to do it. So I decided to take down the pink chiffon and silk red/yellow roses and put up some netting with pink roses.

Now, hubs is out of town down in California with our son, Keith, to give him and his wife and 2 boys a blessing for all they've been going through. We alllllllll know it's a bad time for this ol' lady to be on a ladder, right?! Yep, you betcha!! However, I'm going to surprise you and tell you that I did NOT fall off the ladder or try to set the kitchen on fire. I took 5 pictures because I wanted you to see it from all angles and how it looks in relation to all the rooms around it. I do love it.

I tied it at the very tippy top (isn't that a cute way of describing it?!) and tied it off tightly with ribbon and then went down every 15-20" and foofed it out and tied it on 5 times to the chain. It is foofed out less at the top and with each successive tie-on the "foof" is bigger. Then I just cut it and let the ends of the netting hang out. The roses are pink paper ones about 3" across on a stem and I just stuck them in there and let the netting hold them. I'll then be able to recycle them again should I wish to do so. This is such a simple, inexpensive (cheap, for those of you in Rio Linda) and beautiful way to cover the chain and make it lovely.

I may try to find some long garlands of faux ivy to twist around it also. Not sure yet. We'll see.

Embellishing Your Jackets & Winner of Storage Shelves

The winner of the giveaway for Cansolidator food storage shelves is:

Cat Nap Inn Primitives

Congratulations, honey!! Now get to working on that food storage.

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I have this white linen jacket that I changed the buttons on but I thought it needed something else. I used this vintage rayon ribbon that I purchased recently to sew on to the lapels. It's a creamy white and it's dirty but you get the idea. I love froufrou-ing up my clothing and all I did was take the ribbon and just twisted and tacked it on. Easy. Try it.