HOBBY LOBBY TOP 5

Do you like Hobby Lobby?

Or is it a chore that you MUST do and therefore DREAD???

Not that it matters, but even in the midst of all the chaos and hullabaloo, I find Hobby Lobby to be one of the best places to shop and here's why...

1.  First stop from the long drive is always...the bathroom...this is where it smells fresh and clean and no matter the season there is ALWAYS glitter sparkling on the floor!

2.  EVERYTHING no matter the season is ON SALE...and a great sale...not just 10% off.  This  means when the season (Christmas) is tight...it is so affordable.  Exciting Stuff!  And if a sale isn't good enough?  Then take your phone in and use the app for 40%

3.  The wonderful Christian music....please listen and let yourself hum along to your favorite hymn...it's one of the most relaxing and in my opinion, brainiac shopping strategies of all time!  

4.  Which probably explains #4....I actually like standing in a long line and watching the employees over and over and over be kind and gracious and helpful and NICE...

no matter the season...

CLASSY!

5.  I just love it when I run into someone I love in the aisle, which happens often, so when you get done with your shopping, it's time for lunch and you make time to lunch with them...and then you notice in the middle of a bite of a Golden Light Cheeseburger...the glitter sparkling on the face across from you!  

I just can't wait to go back!

CHEAP

Meet our granddad...Charles...his brothers called him Chief

Meet by brother and sister

Bobby and M

they have been married since 1973...high school sweethearts together forever

after all this time...they got to choose their grandparent names

Meet their children Bobby and Beth and their four new babies

These babies will finally be adopted in January and then we can show their faces.

With one phone call, in one fail swoop, in years and months and weeks and days

God's great plan....unfolded.

Imagine the heart ache of trying for years to have children

Imagine the uncertainty of giving birth to four children you didn't want

Imagine the heart-break of a birth mother changing her mind when the baby came

Imagine the struggle of two parents who could just not get it together to keep their kids

Imagine the anger over the adoption agency bankrupting with thousands of your dollars

Imagine the scene CPS saw to make the choice to remove two brothers and twin sisters from their home

all the while...swirling above...a great dynamic plan was brewing

who in the world would adopt four desperate little baby children?

GOD knew just the family that would!

in one fail swoop...Chief and M get to have four little grandchildren...as if they had just waited for them one by one...over the years...

On the very first day of school this fall...Bobby and M called to talk to the kids to wish them good luck....one of the twin girls, who can't quite say "Chief" yet...told him...

"sorry Cheap...we're in a hurry...we gotta go!"

God is Good

Pura Vida

OKLAHOMA

I am almost as in love with the state of Oklahoma as I am New Mexico and count myself so fortunate to be but a drive away from each one!

There is so much history to the wonderful state of Oklahoma...a wide open, big blue sky and fertile soil country all its own!

The name Oklahoma is based on the Choctaw Indian words okla humma which translates as "red people." 

Recorded history for the name "Oklahoma" began with Spanish explorer Coronado in 1541 on his quest for the "Lost City of Gold." Oklahoma became the 46th state on November 16, 1907.

My people are from here...they came during the Trail of Tears

My mother was born in a little house in Bokchito that is still standing today

The Trail of Tears was a series of forced relocations of Native American nations in the United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The removal included members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations, from their ancestral homelands in the southeastern U.S. to an area west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Indian Territory.

Our supper table can be very spirited during college football season

we studied at Texas Tech, Texas A&M, OU and OSU...all rivals

Origin of the lyrics. The phrase "Boomer Sooner" refers to the Land Run of 1889, in which the land around the modern university was settled. Boomers were people who campaigned for the lands to be opened (or tried to enter the lands) before passage of the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889.  It is said that the Sooners found their land and staked it before the land rush started with the single cannon shot into the air.

The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 was the first land rush into the Unassigned Lands. The area that was opened to settlement included all or part of the present-day Canadian, Cleveland, Kingfisher, Logan, Oklahoma, and Payne counties of the US state of Oklahoma.

Far and Away is a very sweet epic film about the Land Rush starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.  Their chemistry in this film is incredible and I cannot watch it enough!






Tulsa Time  Even though the late great Don Williams is from Floydada, Texas, he made Tulsa famous with this song.  Certainly Tulsa could have been famous without this fun song, as it's one of the most sophisticated cities in America.

This past summer, our entire vacation was a drive through the state of Oklahoma and we loved every single minute of it!

The history is wonderful...so much to see and do...but perhaps you might know of Oklahoma for a very sad moment in time

Oklahoma City Bombing

April 19, 1995

Oklahoma City National Memorial

If you are lucky enough to take a drive through Oklahoma..give yourself at least a week to see it all....the most beautiful country you can imagine!  If not, it is worth the flight in!  If you don't have time to do that...then take advantage of technology and take a virtual vacation!

OKLAHOMA IS OK!

THE UGLY BROWN BATHROOM

 When we purchased 822, the tiny bathroom in the exact center of the house was definitely on the

TO DO LIST!

I had no idea that 7 years almost exactly (October 19, 2010) would pass by before it ever made it to the top of the list.

I have been collecting photos and ideas all this time 

The bathroom was a five piece bathroom in a very small space and truthfully over the years I came to really like the cozy feel of it...but it was so dated it was coming back into style!

My plan?  Well, it's what I would call  a

religious romantic chocolate box powder room

Pink marble

Pink Venetian Plaster

lots and lots of fun vintage religious ...STUFF!

not this white but this is one of my inspirational photos...loving the brass!!  See what I mean? So old it's back in style!

Here we go...first things first...

DEMO!

so long brown tub

OUCH!

NOPE!

scary!

wish you could stay exposed brick wall...you  nearly made it but you just don't fit!

so long ceiling...hello pitch!

YES!

Beam and Chandelier...fancy!

Hoping we will done by Christmas!

NEW MEXICO POTTERY

New Mexico pottery...well...even if you don't want to own it, you must admit it is very beautiful...

...especially when you think about the talented hands that sculpted the clay taken from the earth and baked in the sun or fire side kiln.

Maria Martinez

Of Tewa heritage of the San Ildefonso Pueblo in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, Maria Martinez became world-renowned for her black-on-black pottery

Andreita Gonzales (8)

Barbara's granddaughter and Maria's great granddaughter

this is a little pinch pot we bought from her family's studio on her reservation

we purchased it for Betty (10) in case some day Andrieta is as famous as her great grandmother

In a recent art class of my 8 year olds, we water-colored a pot by 

Maria Martinez

this belongs to Betty and is hanging in her home...she was 8 when she painted it

I think kid's art is so naïve...I just love it

San Ildefonso Pottery

San Ildefonso Pueblo New Mexico

Saint Ildefonso

what a great adventure to visit the reservations and see their wares
most of them are excited for you to visit their homes, but you must check in and you must follow their rules and honor their privacy

Angels Baker and Café

we walked in to grab some lunch and I spied a pot that was sitting dangerously close to the edge of the shelf.  I asked our waiter if it could come live at our house...(was it for sale?)  He went to a lot of trouble to contact the owner of the Café and make arrangements for us to purchase it, pack it up and take care of our lunch all at the same time!

The owner of the Café worked with Sanford Besser, a well-known collector in Santa Fe.  This is where the pottery came from.

Sanford Besser

Zuni

Zuni Pueblo Pottery

these are part of our small collection...the owl was an estate sale find and the story teller a gift from my mother

this is the pottery that came to live at our house!

It never hurts to ask if something is for sale...you might just take home a treasure!

GEORGIA O'KEEFE

On our recent backroads trip through New Mexico

we did a thing we have never done but always wanted to do

we took a few days to learn more about this Iconic American Artist

Georgia O'Keefe

spent her last years in

Abiquiu, New Mexico

and at her home at the 

The Ghost Ranch

she was born in Wisconsin 

she taught art in the Amarillo schools system and later at West Texas A&M University

I find her gloriously beautiful

her home in Abiquiu is now a historic landmark and one of the most amazing places I have been in my life.  Since our return...I cannot read enough about her or look at photos of her and her home

She died in 1986 at the age of 98 and her home is exactly as it was the day she left to go to the hospital in Santa Fe, where she later died.

Her estate was worth 70 million dollars, yet the favorite things in her home were rocks and bones

she was a minimalist

while I am not all that crazy about her art, I am 100% crazy about her

she is fascinating to learn about

she married 

Alfred Stieglitz

our tour guide told us that after his death she was never intimate with anyone ever again

many believe she was a lesbian, but he assured us there was absolutely no evidence of this 

I am so intrigued with a person who says

I will love only you until death

and mean it

she lived alone in New Mexico for many many years loving him only

how tragic and bold and soulful and refreshing 

to love so deeply that being alone is righteous

 she loved the earth and sky 

everywhere you looked...she collected rocks

rocks and rocks and rocks

and rocks

her window sills were filled with rocks

this is the view from her bedroom window

her bedroom had a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp

this is 

Pedernal

she painted this mountain over and over and over

she said that if she painted it enough God would give it to her

she painted the same things over and over in different ways

this is the door that caused her to purchase this home

she bought her lifelong home because of a door

this is a painting of a road she could see from her bedroom

our guide (he's an art professor) is from the family that took care of her in her later years

he was also very inspiring and I believed he knows her very well from old stories and study

a simple way to make shade in the hot New Mexico sun

her simple way of life is something I keep thinking of

our guide told us the day before there were HGTV hosts on his tour,  and they remarked how she was living vogue before it was vogue...bulb hanging from the wire vogue

I adore my  man...I always have to chuckle at his bright vacation clothes

I guess he gets tired of dark work suits and lets it go...he's like a desert flower or a little yellow bird

I think if Georgia could see him from her window...she would paint him