New Tip, A Blast from the Past, A Future Project

Happy afternoon Y'all!!!     I hope that where ever you are today that you are enjoying your neck of the woods.     It's a pleasant day here in mine.     A bit cooler than it has been, yay!!!!     I live in the heart of the Solar Eclipse belt 2017.    It's gonna be exciting around here.   All the motels are already booked up for miles and miles and miles around.    They are expecting hundreds of thousands of people to come from all over to be in the places that are considered to be in the solar belt that stretches all across the US.    A lot of the schools will closed, a lot of public businesses and offices will be closed that day.     They are even warning of the impending traffic jams that will come with all the people wanting to see such an event.    I think I heard them say that the next such event wasn't to happen again for 500 years.    So, what I'm thinkin' is that I "may" not be around to see the next one, what about you, you gonna be here to see next one?     hahaha      While it is exciting to think about and see, my one concern is that people will look at the eclipse and end up ruining their precious eye sight.     I will not be looking up at the sun, because if you know anyone that is low visioned or com pletely blind, think about what they would give to have their eye sight.   Is looking at the sun worth losing your eyesight or damaging it?    Beware of the scam shades that people are selling and giving away!!!!     I don't know about anyone else, but I don't trust those glasses!!!!    I don't trust anyone to have my best interests at heart, but me, when it comes to something like this.   Maybe I'm a bit silly, I've certainly been accused of much worse, but I enjoy my eyesight, I sure hope you do too.     There will be many videos on tv and the internet to watch after the fact.     What I am excited about is seeing how dark it gets at 1 o'clock or what ever time it's supposed to get dark here in my neck of the woods.    Will the chickens go to their roosts?    Will the cows come in to be milked?     Will the pigs really fly?     Oh, sorry, pigs flying has nothing to do with the eclipse, hehehe.     Just be careful and think about your eyesight.    How precious is your eyesight to you?

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I just wanted to share a picture of a future project.   I have been seeing a lot of these being made on around the web and I really wanted one too.    A bunch of gals on a private group that I am on have been making them like mad, crazy people (love y'all!!)!!!   hahahaha    They are such a lovely gift idea and I hope to get one made to enter in the county fair this time.     I really need to get cracking!!!   This is the journal on the packaging of the die itself.    There are many many beautiful journals on the internet with some really great tutorials.     Do a google of the die and you can find some decent prices on it.

Yes, you seen it here.   I am gonna try my best to get one made!!!    I hope and pray that I can make a beautiful journal.    I hope I can do Eileen Hull proud, I'm sure gonna try my "best-est" to do just that. 

I already have it started, although I'm not really keen on showing anything yet, but I will.    I may have to scrap it, so I don't want to get too attached to it yet.    Texture is the word!!!    This is the front.    (Sorry about the lights from the overhead light.)

This is the upper back.   I was just trying to show how unevenly painted it is.     It's thick and thin and the color is splotchy.     Just what I was going for.     I don't know how much of this underlayer will show on the finished project and I wanted it really messy.   Texture is the word!!!  Looks like I succeeded, huh!   hahaha

This is the journal opened up, flat out.    You can see the overlap of the spine and the holes for the threads, ribbons or what ever, to hold the signatures in.     There will be a lot of mixed media on the cover for sure.      Texture is word!!!    Ok, enough about texture.    hehehe

I cut this from cereal box chipboard and then I gessoed it after gluing the 2 pieces put together.    I let that dry over night and the next day, I put on a mix of paint that I have had for about 3 years now.     This mix of paint came about from another project where I was painting bottles, all different colors, on the inside and I had to drain the excess paint from the bottles.    I rigged up a container that I could drain the bottles into and then when they were all drained, I had this mix of paint.    Now what?    Do I toss it or use it?    Easy answer, use it!!!    And I have!!!!    I don't mind telling ya, I will be very disappointed when its all gone.     One or two more projects and it will be gone.     It gets thicker and thicker with each project and that's what I love about it so much.     It works wonderfully as a base on my mixed media projects.     So, I have this layer drying, just getting ready to start putting on more and more.     Be on the look out for more of this to show up sometime soon.    (I hope!!)

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Now...for a blast from the past.    When I started thinking about this blog post and what I wanted to share today, I started thinking about some of times we used to go fishing as a family.    All 8 of us would load up and go fishing!!    It was some really good times, until it came time to clean the fish!!!!!    hahahaha       It could be a few hours or even into the late evening cleaning fish.    Daddy would always strap on his pearl handled pistol that was in this really neat looking leather holster.     The belt part of it had loops all around the waist that held about a half a box of shells and then there was a leather strap at the bottom of the gun barrel on the holster that tied around his knee.     Kinda Indiana Jones-ish.     That was always one thing that he made sure he had.     Then, we had all the cane poles and rods and reels, tackle boxes, all different kinds of baits such as worms and minnows  and artificial baits of all kinds and maybe a piece or two of stinky meat (hahaha), and stringers for the ones that wandered off away from the rest of the gang.    Then there were plenty of 5 gallon buckets to hold all the fish and keep them cool and fresh till we got home with them.  

At the time, milk came in the paraffin coated cardboard cartons that some milk still comes in today, I think.      (What I remember about the milk cartons for our part of the country is that they also had coupons for Santa Clause Land Amusement Park up in Indiana on the backs of them.    You could cut those out, save them, and use them to gain entrance and use them for other things once inside the amusement park.)    Mom always saved the gallon sized cartons.     She would wash them out and store them until we had fish or some other meat to put in them because they stacked really well in the freezer, and therefore taking up less space.    They also held enough meat of one kind or another, for a meal.   Once the cleaning of the fish started, I was the fish runner.    The guys would be outside cleaning the fish.     Once they got a pan full, I would run that pan in to mom and she would start washing them and making sure all scales was gone and packaging them and I would run another pan out to the guys.    This carried on for for as long as it took, but with everyone helping, we got the job done.    When it was all said and done, we would have several gallon sized boxes of fish to put in the freezer and enjoy later on.    Two or three fishing trips like this in the summer kept us in fish all the rest of the year, until we got to go fishing again the next summer.   Mom would put as many fish in each box as she could, then she would fill the empty space around the fish in the box with water.    That kept freezer burn off the fish.     So, if we was gonna have fish for supper, she would set a box out of the freezer first thing of the morning and let it thaw and then the magic happened!!!    My mom is the best fish fryer there is!!!    hahaha     There would be a platter of fish on the table that was mounded so high, that I don't know how they stayed on there!!      Oh my gosh, they were the best things I ever ate!!!  I wish I had some of her fish now.     Next time I go see her, I may have to get her to fry me up a fish.    She would too, if I bring her the fish.    hahaha  

The meal with fish would usually consist of her delicious great northern or pinto beans, cooked to perfection, stewed potatoes seasoned with black pepper, 2 cornbread pones cooked in cast iron skillets and lots of onion.    That, my friend, was a meal that my family was more than thrilled to sit down too, any day, anytime!!!!      Very few scraps was left from this kind of meal.    The dogs didn't get to eat very well on a night like this, because there wasn't many scraps and you couldn't feed the fish bones to dogs.    The cats got to clean up the fish bones.    The dogs were used for hunting, so we fed them well.   They ate what we ate plus some dog food for nights like the night I just described.    They didn't like dog food though, they preferred the food we ate.    hahaha     Spoiled dogs!!  hahahah

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I have a new tip for y'all today.    I want to explain a little bit about it first.    When I started adding a tip to each post at the beginning of the year, I had no idea which direction it would take.     I was thinking crafts and then it quickly took a turn, (not saying I won't be adding crafty tips along the way, but for now, this is what it is.)    Then again, I had no idea what my word for the year would bring either.     My word for the year was and is "DREAM".     Not my dreams for me, but God's dreams for me.     His dream for me has taken me on the quest to get healthy and try to finish my days of life left on this planet serving Him in as healthy a body as I can have, with His help.       So with exercise and trying to eat a bit more healthfully, it is taking me on a journey.     I hope that some of y'all are following me on this journey.       A weight loss of 5 to 7% of overall body weight, moderate exercise for 150 minutes a week, and journaling every bite I have eaten has been the way to get me started on this healthy journey.     This is the guide lines that I was taught on my weekend taking the PT2 crash course to be a Life Style Change Coach.      I had started with some of this before I went to the PT2 training, I just didn't know it.

This year I have been watching documentaries on Netflix about the food industry, the medical industry and trying to find out more in general about getting my body healthy.    Netflix has probably got 10 or more really good documentaries that are free to watch.    About all the GMO's (genetically modified organisms) and antibiotics and other crap (technical term, grin) in our meats and grain.    So, search them out and see what you can come up with.    (((And, just as an aside, the health industry does not want us healthy.   They want to keep us sick, because there is not a continuous source of income from healthy people.    They love treating each and every symptom, not getting at the root cause of the illness.    Think about that.)))   You can find some of them on You Tube also.    In the process of all this, it has led me to some interesting websites.     I am not advocating for anyone to go vegan or vegetarian.     I'll tell you why.     I shared in the section above why and it's because I was raised in a household that hunted and fished to have meat on the table.     We was taught that "if you can't eat it, don't kill it, and don't kill it if you can't eat it", unless it was gonna harm you, ie, fox, coyote, snakes or a rabid animal.     So, we grew up eating game meat; rabbits, squirrels, deer, quail, partridges, dove, frog legs, the occasional soft shelled turtle and other animals that my dad and brothers killed and fish we caught with our own fishing poles.    We raised our own beef for many years.   My grandparents raised their own pork.    They also raised their own chickens.
 
We got to see all the processing that took place at home, on the farm.   It's a much different form of processing taking place in the meat processing plants these days.    We had some of the best meat that you can ever put in your bodies.     Free range meat is all there was back then!!!     Who knew???   We had no idea what the future was gonna hold for the food industry, but just like everything else that man gets their hands on, it becomes a nightmare.       My opinion is that the food that we had back 50 years ago was much better for us.     Number 1, it wasn't processed with all the crap (technical term, grin) that's in the meat today.    No added hormones and no added antibiotics.     No genetically modified beans and corn was in their diets, therefore ultimately, not being a part of our diets.    Number 2, my mother put a lot of love and forethought in the way she prepared our meals.     Meat was not the main dish of our meals.      Beans and potatoes and corn bread was the mainstay in our house along with the seasonal veggies and fruits from the garden or the freezer after mom had processed them herself.     Meaning that we ate mostly vegetables and some meat.      Fast forward to 2017 and meat is the main focus of any meal and its processed with crap (again, my technical term, grin) in it that was never meant for human consumption.      It's the processing of our meats that is making it deadly to our bodies, all the preservatives and nitrates and nitrites and other stuff I can't spell much less pronounce.    It is the processing or should I say, overprocessing of grain that is making it deadly to our bodies and the same with the veggies we eat.    All the fiber being processed out of grain and all the sugars we are consuming without knowing we are consuming so much.    Not to mention everything that is being made with genetically modified corn and beans that is in just about everything we eat today!!!!!      You know what gets me?     I noticed in Sunday's coupons in the paper that they are now making dog and cat food WITHOUT genetically modified organisms or "gmo's".    They don't want you feeding this to the pets, but it's ok for your children to eat the crap!!!!!     What do you think about that???

I am "now" concerned about what I am putting into my body.      The reason I say "now", is that it's better late than never.      I don't know how this is all gonna pan out for me in the long run, but I am trying to eat more healthfully and purposefully.      Back years ago, my husband and I used to travel a lot and for the life of me I can't remember where we went, but I do remember all the foods associated with the good trips!!!!    Every trip, I associated with the meals eaten, not the sights seen.    How sick is that?!?!      hahaha     Who cares where we went, the food was good!!!!      And you know what, the food was good to my taste buds, but it wasn't good to my body and I am now dealing with the consequences.     A couple of sayings come to mind.   One is, "all things in moderation".    How's that working for me?     I wouldn't say that to an alcoholic or drug addict, so I'm not gonna say that to myself anymore.     Another one is, "eat to live, not live to eat".     This is one saying that I am gonna try to put into practice.     For so long, I lived to eat.     I love the flavors of food, I do, I can't help it.    Come to find out, it's not the flavors of food that I loved, it's all the addictive additives that was in the food.    Now, I can honestly say that I do love the fresh real flavors of real food.     

With all that said and the journey I am now on, comes my tip.     On the left hand side of my blog under "places I shop" is a new category I called "Healthy Eats".     These are some places that was mentioned in some of the documentaries that I watched and some are just places that I have found on my own and wanted to save for myself and I thought I would add them here for all of us to take advantage of.   There are lots of recipes and how to add more healthy veggies to our diets and how to make healthy sauces that are void of animal byproducts.     There are some though, that I can't add.     For some odd reason I can't make it a clickable link in the column under "Healthy Eats" (it turns into gobble-dee-gook that is unintelligible, another technical term) , so I'll have to add those in blog posts and hopefully figure out how to put them all in one place.     A couple of those places that I couldn't add to my list is www.plantplate.com, once there, check out the recipe list and also https://nutritionfacts.org/.    These are some really good places to get great info.    I tried to put these in my list, but as I said, I couldn't.    I said earlier, I am not advocating going vegan or vegetarian at all, but this next place is a good place to look at some of the alternatives for meals and what can be eaten at a very low cost, so that's why I'm sharing this one, https://rawvana.com/vegan-meal-prep-1-50-day/.    This one also has the you tube video that goes along with it to show how to prep the food.    Also, at the bottom of the page on Forks over Knives, (this one is listed) look for the newsletter archives,    There are a lot of recipes in that area.

I will say this about the places I have listed.     I am not responsible for the adverts that may pop up on the websites and the other content on these sites.   There was a place or two that had some questionable ads and I did not even post them, simply because I don't want y'all to think that I advocate for some of the garbage that they was taking a stand for.    I advocate for healthy food for healthy bodies so we can use them in the service of our Lord and Savior, that's it.    No hidden agenda.    I am just trying to be my own advocate for myself and learning to make better choices for me.    I do believe in taking care of what the Lord has blessed us with, His planet.    God made everything He made to be useful to man, even animals as a source of food.    The Bible has all that info in there, so read it to find out what God says.    If I do decide to give up meat all together, it will because God has directed me to do so, but for now, I am still enjoying meats, just less of it.    If you choose to give up meats, it's because you made the choice for yourself.   (Although, watching some of the documentaries is enough to turn a weak stomached person off of meat for good.)    

So, if you are trying to get a bit more healthy, feel free to check out the websites that I have listed under "Healthy Eats".     If you have a place that should be added, than add it in the comments below, and once I have approved the comment, we can all have access to it then.     I hope and pray that this will be a blessing and some useful info for all of us on our journey to get healthy.     We'll do it together!   Yay!!!!!

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Well, that's about it for today.    I have exercise class after while and will be heading off to it.    But when I get back home, I hope to work a little bit more on my Eileen Hull journal.    Come back soon for an update on that.    I hope where ever y'all are that today is a most lovely day for you.    I hope you have some good memories of fishing in your memory bank. Also some good memories of enjoying the catch later.   Yeah!!!!    Take the dare today to start eating to live and not living to eat. Savor every healthy bite of food you put in your mouth.    Check out some of the places I listed to help you get started and to give you some good healthy suggestions.    If you have any suggestions for us on the places for healthy advice with our meal preps, please let me know.     I do love hearing from y'all and reading your comments.    Start a fun project today.    Do something just for you today, that will make you appreciate this moment in time.   Tell someone you know that Jesus loves them and is waiting to hear from them.     And take care of your eyes, they are the only ones you have!     God loves y'all and so do I!!!     Till next time, hugs and love!!!!    Patty