An Open Letter To America, from a Disabled Gulf War Veteran:

An Open Letter To America, from a Disabled Gulf War Veteran:
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This whole "Tim Tebow" thing? Wow. Really, America??
So, Christians are not allowed to have as much of a public presense as non-Christians? Because that is what is being said when we are told that he must be silenced and put out of sight so no one can see him doing his thing. And before you go jumping my case about, "they are shoving beliefs down other people's throats" let's just calm down and take a serious look at this situation.
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First, let's put a few things into perspective, shall we? Nearly 80% of the American population not only believes in God, but also believes in the power of prayer. This means that a mere 20% don't believe in either.
So you're going to tell me that the majority of Americans need to shut up and get out of sight... because the minority says so? The minority who, for some unkown reason, don't seem to be adult enough to handle seeing/hearing things they don't agree with?
Because there is a HUGE difference between "disagreeing" and "silencing." And if you are doing what you can to silence those you don't agree with, you are a bigot. What, you don't know the real meaning of the word "bigot"? You think a bigot is "someone that says/does something I don't like"??
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Hardly. A bigot happens to be a person that *won't allow* anyone else to have differing beliefs. Get the point? It's perfectly acceptable to not agree with Tim Tebow's beliefs. That's fine. It's perfectly ok to not listen to the bible verses read on the TV by Focus on the Family dring the football game because it's not your thing. That's fine. While it's happening go and get a snack out of the fridge.
But it's outright bigotry to try and force all public display of Christian faith into non-existence. You might think that you are "cool" because you blab in public about those awful Christians daring to the exact same public presense that you also enjoy, but all that you prove is that you are dancing uncomfortably close with bigotry.
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And meanwhile the minority of you are free to display your beliefs and your lifestyles and your actions in public as you see fit, any time of the day or night, without being censored and silenced? Really? Do you honestly believe this is right and good? Really??
Of course this is supposed to be how it is: everyone is free to live their (non criminal) beliefs without hiding them for fear of punishment, and rightly so. But folks, this is how it is supposed to be **for everyone.** Not just you but for me as well. No one is "More Equal Then Thou."
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And I think a lot of you need to re-learn the meaning of "offended." Because if there was ever a word that has been rendered cheap and pointless, it is that word.
Sometimes I wonder, why did I place myself at my country's disposal **to die in order to protect our collective freedoms** if this same country is going to try and make it so that these same freedoms only extend to a select few, and the minority of Americans at that?? All because these "liberated" people are not adult enough to deal with the reality that... there exist people that **disagree with you.** And so they abuse the courts of law and the media in order to silence people like me because they are "offended"??
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And another thing, my fellow Americans: Like it or not, America was founded as a Judeo-Christian country. The very same Constitution that gurantees your freedoms is dripping with Judeo-Chrisitan refrences and appeals to God's authority to give Humankind these same freedoms. Those that created this country PRAYED and BELIEVED IN GOD and READ THE BIBLE. Oftentimes out loud. In public. Ya know?
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Oh, and spare me the revisionist nonsense about, "The founders were not christian." I've read the documents. I've read their letters. I've even read the Constitution!! I've looked into this via first-hand sources because I get off of my backside and *research* issues before I opine. Try as much as you want but you can't re-write God out of America. And don't even try and tell me that belief in God and prayer somehow goes against what it means to be American. YOU might not want to believe in God and that is fine, as well as your legal right, ~ but if any mention of God threatens you so bad that you must A) re-write history and B) legislate God out of public life then it's time to get some help for your crushing insecurity and your guilt issues... Obviously something is not right. We can agree to disagree but don't try and make me illegal in public.
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And don't give *me* any grief for writing this letter. I earned the right to say what I have just said: I was willing to *die* so you can be who and what you are without the government or your neighbors or some outside invading force taking that right away. At any point in my military service I could have been placed on the front lines to fight whoever it was that tried to take *your* freedoms away. I was at full disposal to protect your liberty. So don't even go there.
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Oh, and if you're about to let rip at me for daring to express my views, take a moment and answer me this: Exactly what have you done lately to protect and promote equality... besides whine about being "offended" ?? Oh, snap! You can pop a few witty comments on Facebook or write an article or whip off a Tweet denouncing those of us that believe in God? Demanding that we shut up and get out of sight?
Yeah. I thought so. Try leaving the keyboard and placing your actual physical self on the line while saying, "You have to go through me before you can take our rights and freedoms away."
God bless America ~ and let Freedom ring for everyone from the prostitute on the street to the bible-toting christian in their pew. We are all equal, we are all free. I broke my body defending your liberties and unless you are also willing to die protecting mine then please spare me your claims of being "offended" because we differ in our beliefs: That is what liberty and freedom is all about, my "open minded" and "tolerant" fellow Americans... so get used to it.
Thank you.
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Michelle Therese, former Aviation Machinist's Mate 3rd Class
US Navy
6th Fleet
NATO Forces Europe
South West Asia
"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;..."

Mentally Retarded? No kidney transplant.

"We are in the year 2012 and my child still does not have the right to live, the right to a transplant, because she is developmentally delayed."

New website hopefully by April.

I decided to slow down and try and do this thing correctly the first time around. In other words:

Hire a computer-guru friend to design the website (with blog incorporated) and run the website as webmaster.

We'll begin the project in March and hopefully it will be up and running in April. I will post the new web address here once it's ready to go. :-))

Yoga!

I started a 6 week yoga class that ended just before Christmas. I'm hooked!! So I've signed up again for the next 6 week block. Here is my quilted yoga mat. (stretched up the stairs.)

Excellent book!

This book is deffinately worth the money, especially when you save 34% on Amazon. I'm still in the very beginning stages of learning about beekeeping and so I'm forever poking around in books and on beekeeping websites. The two loaner hives are buttoned up for the winter. I'm not sure if the bees sleep most of the time or if they are just as busy as ever? But I never hear anything when I check to make sure that the latest gales have not blown the hives to Norway lol!

Cappucino!

Where there is civilization... there be cappucino!!

Yay!

The Bishop visits ~ and good news!

Montessori inspiration and other things.

I really can't help but appreciate Maria Montessori's commen sense approach to children and their natural desire to be a productive member of their family. After reading several Montessori-based books about early childhood development I found myself being inspired to try and bring some of the practicals into our own wee stone farmhouse. So after a year of reading and planning and plotting... (Observe Inga used for scale hahaha)

...Behold! This unit was just installed today by our cousin: an uncomplicated play/work bench, made from inexpensive wood, with shelves above and below, five cubbies and farthest to the right we've taken the doors off of the cupboard under the stairs and we are in the process of turning it into a play cubby, soon to have curtains for doors.
Here is a closeup of the bench. Last night I placed toys all over the benches and shelves and in the cubbies so that the kids can begin to learn what these odd new things are all about. They don't really "get it" right now but soon they will delight in having their very own space for creativity, work, and afterwards, a place to store and stash their toys and treasures.
Here is a closeup of the five cubbies: you can see that it is all very simple. Nothing fancy. I decided to have the wood stained so that it remained a nice neutral colour.
This is the under-the-stairs cupboard that will receive a new coat of fun colour paint (maybe different colours for each wall?), some of the new blue wool carpetning from the offcuts out of the dairy, and two curtains hung for doors. (Kids loving having a hidey-hole!) And then in related news...
...my continuing efforts to organize this house!! We also had some new shelves made at the same time ~ here are the shelves in the hallway. My goal is to get things "up and in sight and no longer jumbled together in cluttered piles!"
Here are the new shelves in the kitchen. These will go a long way in helping me to keep the clutter off of the kitchen counter off to the left of the doorway there. I'm going to have more shelves put up around the house: I've been working out exactly where I need them in order to best rid us of clutter, clutter, clutter ~ because even the things that we need and use don't really have any place to go. It gets maddenig at times! But now we are beginning to triumph! :-)

Goodbye July!

I'm blessed to be learning beekeeping. This was my first time wearing the bee veil and getting right up close and personal with the hives. I was scared to death lol "Beeeees!! All around me! They're landing on meeeee!"

A hot sunny day! And I was trying to make the front yard more appealing to my weird kids that seem to only want to fuss to come in, then fuss to be let out... I think they are reincarnated cats!

Our growing barley crop :-)

Diaper artists enjoy fingerpainting!

Updates, Photo dump :-))

A lovely 100% wool rug that I found cheap on sale ~ perfect for the dairy studio and deffinately being enjoyed by the kids! :-)
I've recently purchased a few vegan and vegetarian cook books so that I can learn how to prepare vegtable dishes. Because at this point in time I hate veg. And it's working so well!! (I will still eat meat but not as much. Heavy red meat doesn't agree with me much any more. Did it ever??) Here I've tried my hand at stuffed red pepper and baked mushrooms coated in a hand made sauce. The pepper came out aaaawesome! The mushrooms were a bit too overdone. But practice makes perfect!!
A dear friend, Sister Mary of the Pure Heart, passed away two days ago. I will miss her so much! Sister was a true "Titus 2 Woman" who so lovingly and paitently, not to mention CHEERFULLY and with great joy and laughter, guided me on my journey as a new Christian. We met when I was 21 and fresh out of the Navy and she sustained me with her awesome letters wherever I lived, whatever I was doing. Oh, I'm going to miss her so much! God rest her very merry soul!And here I am, showing off my new skirts and aprons from Katie's Mercantile. They will be my "Town and church" clothes because the other skirts have big different-coloured maternity panels and the aprons are covered in paint!! (From painting the dairy studio... which is almost done.) I'll mostly wear the old skirts and aprons here on the farm ~ they are still lovely!

More goat pictures!

Nanny Goat, Toggenburg/Anglo Nubian cross. I LOVE when she perks her airplane ears!!

Zack snoozing in the sun. He's Anglo-Nubian and a whether. I hope to train him to pull a cart.

I stand
with
Israel

(I just want to make that very clear.)

Our Three Goats

Sqweeeeee!!

It's early. The house is asleep. I'm sick as a dog with swollen throat so sore I can't even swallow and... get this!!... green pus coming out of my right eyeball. YAAAAAY!!!! I just love waking up looking like (and feeling like) Hell personfied bwaahahahahahaa!!

Oh! Oh! And did I mention that on top of all this I have killer cramps?? Ah yes, when I am ill I am ill with panache.

So, that said, I figured gee, since I'm sitting here feeling like I want to die... or imbibe deeply, swigging straight from the neck of the wiskey bottle... (for medicinal purposes, you prude!) why not share with my dear readers my latest Dairy Update?? And so, here it is: and it makes me smile!! The funny thing is, "it" was hidden by the door when I went into the dairy last night to fetch something and so I didn't even notice that "it" had been completed until I happened to turn around. And that felt great!!
I am a huge Transformers fan. In long skirts. On a farm. Yeah.

The man that has built all of the shelfs and some of the cabinets, he was here the other day and I said to him that I had this rather huge poster and I couldn't find a poster frame to fit it. And so he constructed the coolest looking frame **from plywood** and there you have it, folks! I am one very thrilled pus-eyeball woman!! **Golf Clap**

Ok, back to bed with my scary self! I see the doc at 10am. I sure hope I don't scare her half to death when I walk through the door ha ha ha **cough** ow, that hurt...

My art space ~ now completed!

This is only one section of the dairy studio. I claimed this part for myself so that I could have a space dedicated to my artwork. (I'm a novice artist!!) I was determined that this creative space would be big enough for me to spread out while also organized so that I did not have to compete with my arch nemesis: Clutter!!!
We were given some offcuts of kitchen counter tops but you can also buy leftovers, usually at a discount, from decoration stores or builder's supply stores. The shelf with the two tins of stamps and the bottles of inks (some out, some inside of wee boxes) was made from plywood and painted. The containers are a variety of things I found around the house, from popcicle tray to Tupperware cup, and hung either with fencing wire, screws, or long strips of sturdy velcro. I also added velcro to the bottom of each of the other containers to keep them steady.
Now when I work on an art project I will have everything at hand ~ but better yet, a place for everything and everything in its place!
(I'm going to sew a wee curtain to block that light so it's not blasting into my eyeballs.)

Sorry, the image below is a bit blurry ~ I wanted to show the wee lip at the edge of the equally wee shelf that keeps the inks and stamp tins from falling off:
My eyes!!! lol

Dairy Update: plastic organizer boxes, playing "Tetris" with clutter lol

I've learned a few new lessons with regards to clear plastic storage containers. As I stated before, I found that clear containers worked best for most of my art, sewing, craft (etc) supplies instead of solid tins and boxes. But I ran into a problem: most of the storage containers that I found in the shops were inefficiently designed, much to my frustration! Observe in the photo below where I have placed my thumb (ignore the work-worn nail lol) You are looking at the bottom of the tub and my thumb is between the body of the tub and the overhanging lid. Do you see all of that excess space? When I used these tubs in shelves and cabinets those overhanging lids hogged up a lot of valuable and limited space. Also, the body of the tubs being much smaller meant that I had difficulty fitting things inside. So, be aware of this if you go and buy plastic storage tubs: be wary of those that have overhanging lids, and also those containers that have sides that curve inward ~ again taking up excess space while offering much less storage area.
Here is a photo containing my recent victorious find: "Really Useful Boxes" ... lovely plastic storage boxes that do not have overhanging lids, nor do the sides curve inwards. (They come in every size imaginable!!) And even better: they are less expensive then the other frustrating brands!! Yet made right here in the UK from quite sturdy plastic. (No sweat shop slaves??) The lids also fit much better due to the locking bits that look like handles. They aren't handles ~ they are locks and this means the lids don't fly off at the slightest bump, nor do they warp as badly later on. Because I have also found that the frustrating kind of plastic storage boxes end up with lid warpage in less then a year. (What gives???)
So now at long, long last I feel that my organizing adventure has been pulled out of the breakdown lane and is back in action! It's like a log jam really, with every room in the house backed up because of two places: The dairy and... the boxroom upstairs! Which has been converted into our "library." (But don't get excited as the room is only 8'x6' lol) The box room was once rather organized but now that the dairy is "organizable" I've wreaked havoc by removing books down to the diary but wait, no, changing my mind, moving them back up and grabbing different books and then changing my mind about some of them too... yeah, it's an adventure!
Today I am going to focus a lot on the box room so that I can remove some of the logs from the clutter log jam. Seriously, it's like playing real life Tetris!! (Without the hypnotizing background music lol)
Here you can see, if you look at the edges of the shelves, that I've simply taken a black sharpie and written out the topics/subjects for easier access. Yes, I've heard over and over "why don't you just use the public libraries?" As a matter of fact I'm fed up with hearing, "Why don't you just use the local library??" lol!! Well, sure. We do. At times. But with the library a half hour drive away and gas going for $10 a gallon and three small screaming kids to drag into town while farm chores are left behind on hold... can you see why I have built up a small easy-to-use library right here in our house? Oh yes, that and the fact that when all that we need is one small bit of information, one teeny wee bit, because a project has suddenly screeched to a halt...(doesn't it drive you bonkers when that happens??) I don't want to wait a solid week or more before I can get that information from a distant library. After dragging three screaming kids into town on $10 a gallon gas LOL! We love the library but we also love our library too :-)

Have you "redone" or redecorated or organized anything?

Even if it's something small like organizing a "junk drawer" or a linen closet, please feel free to share! I am *not* an organization queen. I'm learning all of this on-the-go with plenty of frustrating and time consuming mistakes.

The best way is to post your links in the comments section :-)

Dairy Update: Final shelves, organizing bits and bobs.

My art workspace is dedicated to Saint Luke, the Patron Saint of artists, he himself being an artist, a physician, and the very skilled writer of two books in the New Testament.
As you can see above I almost had a heart attack when pricing "wall organizer" items and instead of purchasing those over-priced things I dug around in the house and dairy. Much to my delight I discovered an assortment of tins and other containers that Husband then attatched to the wall using his concrete drill. (Some of the containers are hung by strong velcro ~ we'll see if that lasts!) Now all of my most heavily used art tools will be readily at hand instead of buried inside of boxes and bins inside of a shelf. Much better! As you can see the mismatched hodge podge of cups, popsicle bin, tins, old plastic food storage containers, and even an incense canister have managed to work well together in a funky artsy sort of way. Not bad!
Above sits one of the yellow shelves ~ I've done my best to utilize every bit of available space including the tight area above the window. My goal here is to be able to organize the various work spaces of the dairy studio in such a way that everything is easy to get at without having to paw through piles of clutter. Less avalanches that way! If I want to make a cup of tea I can simply reach for a teacup without breaking three others in the process. ;-)
One thing I have discovered during this adventure is that I don't do well with organizing things inside of solid boxes and tins. I end up having a very hard time remember what is where and even labels can leave you not 100% certain of the contents. I managed to find some inexpensive clear boxes at a local office supply shop that solved the problem perfectly! (I will still use some solid storage for some things, sure.) Again, the goal is to make things easy to access and locate without me (or anyone else) wasting large chunks of valuable free time hunting in vain... I mean, nothing kills the creative momentum like the frustration of trying to find that one single thing you absolutely need in order to carry on! Arrrg... been there, done that too many times lol
It is really nice to have a space dedicated specifically to creativity, be it art, crafts, soapmaking, cooking, or writing. Now all of my instruction dvds, books, articles, etc. are in one place and right there when I need them! No more having to try and find things upstairs in the main "library" (tiny room with shelves hehehe) or maybe kicking around in the livingroom or stashed in the attic ~ if I want to work on a craft or art technique or homesteading skill I will have the information right there in the same creative space where I am working.
I found that tree wall art on sale on the Internet and I just LOVE it! Up close the leaves are actually really cute ~ they are "made" of various fabrics, even newspaper clippings. I've found that being surrounded by creative things helps to inspire me in so many ways! It's rather interesting that I prefer my creative space to be organized but in a sense totally cluttered with mismatched funky this-and-that, clashing colours, and enough visual "activity" to make you dizzy. If this were Feng Shui I'd have to call it, "Merry-Go-Round" ...

Dairy Update!

I am so very happy with a new book I bought last week: "Organizing Your Craft Space." Although the dairy-to-studio conversion is still in the works I've already started organizing my art, craft, writing, baking, etc supplies ~ with sad results. But then: enter this book!! After flipping through the various chapters and oggling the related pictures I discovered so many fantastic ideas! But after searching out several types of craft organizing boxes and shelves, bins and trays... I about cried! The prices were insane!! Highway robbery!! Seriously, a 24" tall **plastic** 6-drawer "bin" costs nearly forty bucks?? Wow.

Sooooo I returned to the book and scrutinized the details in the photographs on each page and spied so many alternative ideas that I had missed the first few times around. Then, excited to bits, I ran back and forth between the dairy and the house so that I could gather up all manner of unused tubs, popcicle trays, cans, tins... and came up with this for my immediate art area:

I had also found some really useful hanging drawer-things on line that I decided were worth the price. These and all of my filled bins/tins are going to be hung on the wall so that my art tools are nearby but up, out of the way. No clutter! No digging around in endless boxes cluttered with layers of stuff. No more having to dig six boxes out of a shelf to find the one box I *think* might contain what I'm looking for (only to find out most of the time oops, wrong box)... and best of all: no more forgetting about what I have and what I don't have!
And here we have the final shelves for the dairy ~ I've been working on this project since June and I hope to be finished by the end of June of this year. However, I might not be fully "moved in" until July. But once that happens YAHOOO! And along the way I have learned so many wonderful organizing tricks that I can then employ in the house. :-)

Platter closeup photos...

The platter is 19" long by 14.5" wide. It's very thick and very heavy! And it is believed to be called, "Wren and Cricket." From the Georgian period. :-)