for what it's worth

Tuesday

Oklahoma tornado help lists

Where do you start in the midst of chaos and tragedy?

Make a contact list for yourself and your family members.
Have several emergency meeting places on the list.
WFAA TV has a great resource for a survivor guide for pre-tragedy planning.

In the case of the 2013 Oklahoma tornado's; here is an ongoing list of places offering help

The U-Haul Company of Oklahoma City is offering 30 days of free self-storage to all residents who were affected by devastating tornadoes and severe storms that recently swept through many Oklahoma towns. U-Haul centers also have available tarp, tapes and propane tanks. They are also offering the take a box leave a box program The program enables customers to return their reusable boxes and allows others to take them as needed – FREE. For more information contact the main U-Haul center.

U-Haul Company of- Oklahoma City

7525 SE 29th Street
Midwest city, OK 73110
(800) 522-4236

Texas Bloggers Helping Oklahoma

Temporary OK shelter list

Central Oklahoma United Way

ADRN (Austin Disaster Relief Network) Donations are being received through ADRN's MOORE TORNADO RELIEF FUND on their website. Donations will help provide for the immediate needs of families while providing assistance to aid in their trauma and displacement.

church on the Oklahoma Christian Univ. campus

Memorial Road Church of Christ

Starting at 9:00 AM this morning, we will have a non-emergent medical station set up at the Capitol Hill Church of Christ at 2801 S. Robinson in OKC. For those who need medications replaced, have minor injuries, or need triage for more major injuries.

If you know of other helping groups, leave the information in comments.

A Downtown Loft.

My daughter and her hub moved into a downtown Dallas loft apartment this weekend. They kept their country house, but took the apartment close to work for convenience. She took us on tour today of the historic old building they moved into. Amazing. Almost all the old architecture was left in tact, including doors that are sealed off (so they go nowhere) and multi floor textures in one space. Here is a tiny virtual tour I took on my phone before the battery ran out.

Birdseye view from across the street.

Reflected in the office where hub works.

Love the exposed brick.

Wonderful door knobs!

A sealed off door in the apartment hallway that goes no where.

Checking out some gardens and fountains below.

Just thought this was funny.

Lovely pool with color waterfall.

The Mobil Building where the Pegasus sits.

A glimpse of the sun setting down Elm Street before we headed home.

Party links in menu bar up top.
This post specifically linked at:
Wordless Wednesday

Monday

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter cookies

I've been away from home for months helping my mom recover from two hip replacement surgeries. It feels really good to be home, though I still worry about my mom. On my first day home I surveyed my backyard garden. There is a LOT of work to be done. The weeds and overgrowth have just about taken over. The pathways are barely walkable in my bare feet. Yep, I like to walk it in my bare feet. The good news is there will be plenty of blooms for inside. I didn't allow myself to stay out there today though. Hubs needs some cookies to really feel like I'm home :) I pulled out the favorite peanut butter recipe, but felt a little extra touch of mini chocolate chips would make them extra special. I was right, we both loved them. If you don't have a blue ribbon, first prize winning peanut butter recipe, you can use mine. It's pretty much about creaming, mixing and quality ingredients to get a perfect cookie.

The one ingredient that is added to the prize winning recipe is mini semi sweet chocolate chips. If you click back on the recipe you'll see some DIY pictures.

Recipe:
1/2 cup real butter, softened at room temperature
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon really good quality vanilla
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to (350 F)
Beat the butters, sugars, baking powder & soda together.
Add the egg & vanilla.
Add the flour. The dough will be soft and fluffy.
Fold in the mini semi sweet chocolate chips.
Shape the dough into 1" balls. Place them about 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Dip fork tines in sugar and gently apply pressure to the dough ball to flatten out to about 1/2 thick. I like one set of tine marks, but you can make a crosshatch pattern too. Put a pinch of sugar on top of each cookie.
Bake at 350 F. 9-12 minutes. The tops will be very light in color-not brown.
Cool on a wire rack.

Now, I must focus on getting the garden back into shape.

Wednesday

Bar ditch beauties

on Wordless Wedsnesday.

It's barely spring and the heat is on. It went from 40 degrees last week
to 91 this week and with 2.8" of much needed rain, we got flowers!

Click here to see some of my favorite link hang outs.
Made in a Day
Wildly Original

Tell me, do you like bar ditch flowers? Can you identify these?

Tuesday

Plant a Fairy Garden

This has been a different kind of spring this year. Right when we should be watering and nurturing a vegetable garden, we are getting very late freezes and trimming damaged rose and geranium leaves. It has not stopped the random 80 degree days from fooling us into the need to be in the garden. One day we don warm jackets and brave the bitter cold winds and the next we are in short sleeves wondering if today is a gardening day. I fear our forced late spring gardens will not be able to produce before the Texas summer heat hits. It gets pretty hot and dry here. I gravitated to the flower beds and created a weed barrier between the rose bushes and mums using newspaper and pine needles. First I removed the weeds that had come up. I placed sheets of newspaper around and between the larger plants, making to sure to over lap in a shingling manner.

After covering all the dirt areas with two-three layers of newspaper (no color printed pages) I raked up pine needles from the tree in the yard and put a thick layer of 3-5” on top of the paper.

The faux stone face came from a garden center. I posed it against a large river rock.

A few fusty yard & garden utensils.

I re situated the decorative stones and rustic relics and watered the bed thoroughly. The newspaper allows the water to soak through but prevents most weeds from germinating and coming up. The roses have leaves all over and some buds ready to burst open. Because of the unusual late freezes, I had to trim back some damaged leaves and buds.

Frost bitten in May!

While the little grands were here yesterday we decided to cheat the unpredictable cold by putting together a fairy garden pot. I located a beautiful robin’s egg blue pot in the the garage and filled it with potting soil. We cut some sheet moss from the craft store to fit the top and took a cutting from a hardy succulent to plant there. The grands gathered little pebbles from the drive to make a fairy path. A larger stone looked like a perfect place for a little gnome salvaged from the bottom of a garden pot of “things” to rest and look things over. The whole project took less than an hour, which is good for the younger grands short attention spans. It sits in a raised bed between some rose bushes right along the sidewalk to the front door. I’m hoping to rip open some of the flower seed packets I purchased several weeks ago and spread the seedlings soon. Surely, the cold will stop invading our normal balmy spring since I prefer to skip indoor seeding and go straight to scattering them on warm moist soil.

P.S. That weird little metal rod next to the fairy pot…Little Girl grand thought the fairies might need it to swing up to the pot!
You can see our first fairy garden that has a Toad House here.
Here is the leprechaun garden.

I love your comments. It’s nice to know I’m not totally talking to myself in black and white with pictures!
I link up at these parties…
Made in a Day
Wildly Original
Fairy Garden Contest @ The Magic Onion

Monday

Bathroom reveal

My mom has degenerative arthritis. She has bilateral knee implants and is undergoing hip replacements. She has been living on her own on the farm where I and three siblings grew up. The small shower in bathroom #2 is not ADA compliant in any way, so while she was hospitalized and rehabilitated for 2 and 1/2 weeks, my two brothers and one sister in-law removed the cast iron tub and carpet from her bigger bathroom and completely remodeled it. As with all remodels on old homes, there were plenty of unplanned repairs needed.
The drain from the tub and toilet were rusted and corroded almost closed. My talented brother removed a portion of the cement foundation and replaced the ruined pipes. THAT WAS MAJOR. After the older brother built up a shower pan he built a short wall to separate the shower and toilet area.

Mom loves birds, so her new bath has plenty of those too.

The Demolition & re-building

The thing about remodeling is, you never fully know what you're getting in to. There wasn’t enough of the original brown tiles to complete the bottom in brown, but we like the resulting brown and cream color scheme as it made a nice transition to the tile floor. BTW my daughter in law found the cream 4 x 4 tiles, and 16 x 16 floor tiles at Habitat for Humanity. Habitat for Humanity Stores are a wonderful resource for affordable supplies plus you can donate recyclable items from your build back to them. I Googled them and found that they have store locations all over the US. She found the octagon shower floor tiles at Lowe’s. I absolutely love how it all came together and really appreciate her expertise is color.

The two brothers tiled the walls and floors, removed the existing window and added glass blocks, installed a new handicap height toilet, rebuilt the linen closet, replaced the sink faucet and put in a new space saving pocket door.
Our Mom was beyond excited when she came home and couldn’t get over the many improvements not only to her bathroom, but the guest bathroom and all the little repairs all over the house (including new paint in every room). This is the redecorated guest bath.