Latte Coffee Candle

 Before I talk about our crafty day, I just wanted to give a quick update on the kombucha flavored with stuff I grew! The watermelon cucumber was so refreshing, I loved it. Jay had a bottle of the honeysuckle and enjoyed it enough that I'm going to try to gather enough flowers to make a half gallon of it. I only tried a sip of the grape the other night as I moved it to the fridge, but didn't get much grape flavor, so I've been letting it sit in the fridge a bit longer. This morning, when I looked at it, it had more color, so I'm looking forward to trying it with dinner tonight.

~~~

Each year, since I turned fifty, I've been trying to learn a new skill. Even though we don't have a family history of dementia and just a minimal history of stroke (Grandma Mary had one, but she was a life-long smoker), it's always in the back of my mind that I can do things to prevent, or at least increase chances of recovery. Not to mention, I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 90, so staying physically active is important. Hence the reason for learning new skills each year, in an effort to keep my neurons cranking out the myelin and exercising both sides of my brain. 

Since I've turned fifty, I joined the circus, learned to paddle board, learned to crochet, have been learning Italian, and tried picking up little skills here and there. Hell, Mom and I built Whimsy together - there was a lot of learning that went on, and is still going on, with that project. This year, though, I didn't have a big learning goal, which is where the little one-day classes are coming in handy.

I told you all of that so that you'd understand that I was already primed when I saw a Facebook ad for a Skill A Week. The intro cost was steeply discounted (I think I paid $15 for three months), so of course I signed up. I figured that this was something Mom and I could do together on Mom nights. Already, I'm behind because I have to order the supplies for each week's skills. It's a good thing the classes were so discounted! 

The first week's class was candle making, specifically a candle that looked like a latte. 

I forgot to take pictures of the process of making the ice cubes, but I did learn one really important thing, should I choose to make candles like this in the future: direct heat is your friend when melting high-temp gel wax. I tried using a double boiler. After 45 minutes, I gave up and went straight to direct heat. The gel was melted within five minutes. Now I know. It's a good thing that I followed the instructor's advice and made the ice cubed in advance, because if I'd waited until Mom got there, that's all that would have been accomplished.

Almost forgot to take this picture, too.

I chose to use pint canning jars, since I have an abundance of canning jars, and I know they can handle high heat. After we put the wicks in, we added the ice cubes and got started on melting the wax for the coffee and milk. The wax for the coffee/milk was a lower temp wax, so the double boiler was used effectively. We added in the scent, then split the wax into two pour jars: one to be the milk, the other to get colored for the coffee. Then, we started pouring the candles.

The milk went first,

then the coffee.

Pouring was the easy part, waiting for it to cool was the most difficult. Luckily, we'd planned to eat dinner and watch another episode of Reacher, which kept us entertained and not messing around with the candles as they cooled.

They looked like chocolate milk, not a latte once they cooled.

I reminded both Mom and myself that we needed to trust the process, and broke out the heat gun to warm it. The instructor said it would bring out the coffee color and we needed to "melt" the ice cubes to make it more realistic looking.

It worked!

But as it cooled, it started looking like chocolate milk again.

I think I was a little too generous with the heat gun and melted the wax too much. <shrugs> It happens. This was a ton of fun, and I'll likely make candles again in the future, though probably not something that requires more than one color.

Finally!

My quest to grow concord grapes like my Grandma Mary had has taken several years to complete. 

Four or five years ago, I bought and planted my first grape vines, then we got hit with a heat spell that cooked them within days.

In 2023, I decided to try again. Mom and I found some old tires on the side of the road to use as planters. I stacked 'em up on top of some cardboard to use as weed barrier, filled 'em with dirt, and planted two new grape vines. I built a trellis out of an old hog panel and t-posts I found in L.E.'s cat barn. I named them Grandma and Grandpa Grape, in honor of my grandparent's grape vines. I managed to keep them alive all summer and was optimistic going into winter. I knew they'd go dormant, and I knew my grandparents did absolutely nothing to them over the winter months, so I believed that if I could get them nice and healthy through the summer, they'd be fine over the winter.

Spring of 2024 came along and I didn't see too much in the way of signs of life. I panicked and bought two more vines to plant as replacements. I didn't pull the other vines, thinking that if they'd die, at least their roots would be good fertilizer. Within weeks, Grandma Grape started sprouting leaves, and I had two healthy grape vines in her tire. Grandpa Grape didn't look like he was going to wake up after the winter, but when I planted his companion vine, I hoped that by digging around next to his roots I'd stimulate them and they'd wake up. Weeks went by, and I was certain Grandpa Grape was well and truly dead, but then, a little sprout popped up and within days another sprout popped up. Grandpa's original vine was dead, but he was sending up new sprouts! By the end of the summer, all of my grape vines were doing really well. 

This spring came along, and I was confident that the first winter was the hardest on the grapes, so I fully expected that they'd wake up - and I was right! I also knew that, at the earliest, three summers is what it would take to get fruit. I was cautiously hopeful that I'd get some grapes this year. June came along, and baby grapes started appearing. I couldn't believe my eyes! I was going to get grapes this year, from both (okay, all four, but they've grown together in each of their respective tires - you can't differentiate between them now) sets of vines!

I've been waiting, and waiting, until the time was just right. I've been picking a grape here and there, popping it into my mouth, just waiting for the time to be right to pick a couple of small bunches. On Friday, the 23rd, I picked my first three little bunches. One went to L.E., who has been waiting right alongside me, and the other two went into a couple of very small bottles of kombucha.

First grapes!

My goal, since I started making my own kombucha has been to use things I've grown to flavor it. It was hard to give up my first few grapes to a batch of kombucha instead of popping them right into my mouth, but I did.

When I was looking for a climbing vine to help fill in the space on the trellis between my grapes and my kiwiberries, Jay suggested honeysuckle. Honeysuckle evokes childhood memories for him, so I was happy to oblige. I mean, my grape vines are 100% based on childhood memories, so I couldn't complain. Then, I realized that I could use honeysuckle to flavor my kombucha as well. Do I know what honeysuckle tastes like? Not at all. I've never drank the nectar, but Jay has when he was a kid and the memory makes him smile. While I was making my small bottles of grape kombucha, I decided that I'd make him a couple of small bottles of honeysuckle as well. I waited until sunset, then ran out and plucked some flowers from the vine.

I had no idea how many of the grapes or honeysuckle flowers to put in the bottles, so I faked it. I squeezed the grapes between my fingers to release the juice, then dropped the whole thing into the bottle. I think I had about eight grapes for each eight ounce bottle. With the honeysuckle, I was even more at a loss. I don't know what it tastes like, how potent the flowers are, anything. So I dropped about a dozen flowers into each eight ounce bottle and hoped for the best.

They've been sitting on my counter for two days now for their second fermentation, and will go into the fridge tonight. I'm excited to try them tomorrow.

While I was on a high from using things I grew in my kombucha, I thought, "why not try cucumber"? I'm not a fan of straight cucumber anything, unless I'm just eating it, but cucumber and watermelon is a good combination, so I cut up half a cucumber and added it to my watermelon kombucha. I had better like that combination, because I made a whole half gallon of the stuff! I guess I'll find out when I bottle it this evening before putting it in the fridge. 

Wish me luck that my kombucha, made from stuff I grew, turns out okay.

Most Viewed Posts

After my semi "poor me" post yesterday, I thought it would be interesting to look back at my most viewed posts. I was surprised, to say the least, at my number one post.

I'm guessing, by the fact that 27,600+ people have viewed it, that epiploic appendagitis isn't as rare as I thought it was. I knew Bill's posts were popular, but I didn't realize how popular until I titled a post after him.

I'd completely forgotten about Monday Minutes and True Story Tuesdays. I'm not sure how I managed to forget about TSTs, they were hosted by two of my very favorite people on the planet.

To heck with my blogs being stories for my kids and grandkids, it appears I need reminding of my own stories as well. :D

17 Years and Change

I almost couldn't believe it when my Facebook memories popped up with my "hey, come read my new blog" post, dated seventeen years ago. This blog is old enough to drive, and only a year away from voting.

My first blog post went live July 29, 2008, and was about my experience as a cast member on Julie Goodnight's TV show, "HorseMaster with Julie Goodnight".

Over the past seventeen years, I've written about horses, family, kids, pregnancy scares, marriage, death, recipes, crafts, and just about everything imaginable. I've written and published two books. I made lifelong friends through blogging. People who went from being my "internet friends" to IRL found family.

Blogging has changed. Blogs that I followed religiously are no longer in existence, new blogs are harder to find - the blog network isn't as prevalent as it once was. Or, at least, I'm not as plugged into the blog network as I once was. I think the way people consume media has changed a lot as well, and blogs just aren't a quick sound-bite of information. Vlogging is more prevalent, but I still prefer to read, and hope there are others like me.

Blogging got pretty hit-or-miss for a few years for me, and now that I'm trying to post more regularly, I'm struggling. I miss the engagement of my blog family, I miss having a window into someone's life who may be states away. Yes, other forms of social media can provide that, but I miss the realness of blogging. 

The Bionic Cowgirl and I were talking the other day, and I told her I'd wished that my grandma and great-grandma had kept diaries. They were fascinating women, but they kept their stories and struggles close to the vest. 

There's a rumor about one of the rings Mom has - my great-grandma supposedly ran wild with the James gang (or someone associated with them), and the ruby ring that she had, which has been passed down through the generations, was obtained through a robbery. Fascinating story, wish I knew more about it. Is there a piece of truth to the rumor? Or is it all fictionalized?

Grandma Nita had some skeletons in her closet; she was widowed more than once; she raised Mom as a single mother back when that just wasn't done. I'd love to have heard/read more of her life stories. 

My paternal uncle is doing a lot of genealogy work, and has shared some stories from his parents and grand-parents, but there is so much history on both sides of my family that has been lost.

Talking with Mom about it, I realized that, while I'm not one for writing in a diary, I have my blogs. My children and grandchildren will have stories. They'll have insights into our lives.

While I miss what blogging was, I can embrace this new season of blogging, as a way to preserve my history for my kids.

Sunrise over our little piece of paradise.

Butterfly Baths

The original craft that Nebalee wanted to do for our sister craft day was to make Butterfly Baths. She found a cute example on Facebook, and had her heart set on it. Unfortunately, the cost of terracotta pots has skyrocketed and it quickly became cost prohibitive to make these, so we settled on the garden poles.

Jay has taken up a side hustle as a reseller on eBay and spends time every week hitting the garage sale circuit. When I am off on Fridays, I join him. A couple of weeks ago, at one of the garage sales, I found an assortment of terracotta pots for $12, so I scooped them up. They were smaller than the large pots shown in the example, but I was certain we could make them work.

I was so excited to get to do the craft Nebalee originally wanted to do, that I was super impatient and strong-armed her into coming over after Mom and I did our glass class.

The first thing I did was stack the pots different ways, to see how we could make them work. I only had enough of the right sizes to make one stack like the picture, so I declared that stack Nebalee's. Mom and I played around with what was left and decided we could make a double-decker butterfly bath each. While waiting for Nebalee to arrive at my place, we went ahead an painted the backgrounds. That way, when Nebalee joined us, we could jump right in to painting the fun stuff.

Oh, by did we make a mess!

We each ended up with a different shade of blue. Mom had brought down some paints from one of her earlier projects, and I picked up some cheap acrylic from Wally World. The base coats dried just enough that once Nebalee got there, we could get to painting.

We loosely followed the example, but it turns out, we all have different interpretations of what mushrooms and butterflies look like. We spent a couple of hours happily painting away

I didn't have any little terracotta pots for the top of the baths, but for my 50th birthday, Nebalee and our friend wrote out words to describe me on fifty different rocks. I've been holding on to those rocks for the past four years, not knowing what to do with them. I dug them out of the potting shed, and we each chose a few to add to our baths for the butterflies/bees/bugs to stand on and not drown.

Once we were done painting, I broke out my favorite glue of all time, E6000, and we went about gluing all the pieces together. Nebalee had to run, so we quickly took pictures and sent her on her way. Mom and Neballe left their baths with me to finish drying/curing, and for me to seal the next day.

The horses are busy bodies and had to inspect them all.

Chonky Skeeter was just sad it wasn't edible

Nebalee's, Mom's, mine

The next morning, I got up and ran outside to spray the first coat of sealant on them. I picked up by rattle can of sealant, shook it really well, then blasted the top of Nebalee's bath.

Wait ...

The sealant is clear, right?

Why is it spraying white?

Oh, shit!

Yep, I'd sprayed right across the top of Nebalee's beautiful butterfly bath with white primer, not clear sealant.

I was horrified! All of the work that Nebalee put into hers, and with one careless mistake, I'd erased part of it.

Luckily, I still had all of the colors, so when Mom showed up to watch court with me, I fessed up that I'd have to repaint some of Nebalee's bath. After we watched the judge give yet another continuance to the defense attorney, we went outside and started painting. I painted Nebalee's butterfly bath, and Mom painted the trim pieces for Maggie.

I couldn't get the primer off the rocks, so we chose some bright colors that matched the colors on the rest of her bath and I started re-painting. I had to go back to my pictures to see which rocks she had chosen in order to re-write them. I'm so thankful that I was able to biggerfy one of the pictures to read her rocks. Finally, all of the baths got sealed, with sealant this time, and got distributed to their respective homes.

Mine went in with my "garden in
a box" native flowers.

Nebalee's went into her "garden in a box"
butterfly garden.

We don't know where Mom's will end up yet, but if I'm guessing, it'll be in her rock garden, near her garden pole. But that's just a guess.

Update 8/20/25 from Mom:

Text from Mom this morning.

Nestled in the geraniums for now.

Delayed Birthday Weekend

My birthday was last month, and I had a great time doing sister crafts with Nebalee. The following weekend, Jay and I went to a fancy dinner date in Denver, at a restaurant I'd been eyeballing for a year. Overall, I had a great 54th birthday, and didn't give it a second thought.

This past Saturday, though, I realized that I was getting a second birthday weekend. My present from Jay was to finish my circus tattoo, and my present from the Bionic Cowgirl was a one-day stained glass class. Yipee! I get birthday, round two!

All of my tattoos, of which there are many, are of things that I love. While I was hesitant to get my first pop culture tattoo, once I jumped in, I went all in. Over the past couple of years, I've added many things that I love and want to remember. Pop culture-wise: Supernatural, John Wick, The Walking Dead. Mom-kid tattoos: Belle reading from Beauty and the Beast, and Toad from Frog and Toad. Birthiversary tattoos: Conch shell (Key West), sea turtle (Costa Rica), Aztec firebird (Cancun), dolphin (Marco Island). Everything else I love in life: Estes and Skeeter on out on the trails; peace, love, and pew; book dragon, with books depicting each of the kids' (and the Gremlin's) birth years; my Aztec warrior.

I was lacking a circus tattoo, but struggled with finding one that really spoke to me. Jay and our tattoo artist, the Infamous Katie, collaborated to come up with the perfect one. I had the outline done a few months ago, so for my birthday, Jay offered to pay for me to finish it. I jumped at the opportunity.

They incorporated me into it,
not some random pic from the 'net.

My love of lyra and sling is incorporated,
and she brought in colors from my other tattoos
so I'm kind of matchy-matchy.

Jay also had some tattoo work done on Saturday. "Katie Dates" have become one of our favorite dates. We go hang out for a few hours with the Infamous Katie, who has become like a little sister to us, then we go grab something to eat. This time, since Jay had plans with his sibs after our Katie Date, we just hit Dairy Queen for an ice cream. I don't know about anyone else, but I am ravenous after a tattoo session, even if I eat before. 

On Sunday, Mom and I headed to the class she'd signed us up for. I love learning new things, and have taken a few one-day "taster" classes. They are great, because they give you a good introduction to a skill or a craft that I might be interested in, but without all of the expense involved in buying all of the equipment upfront. A couple of years ago, Jay and I took a welding class, which was a blast! This year, Nebalee and I took a glass fusion class; Mom and I took a soap making class (I still have several bars of "monkey fart" scented soap left); and Jay and I took a writing class. These one day classes can quickly become addictive. :)

The class I'd chosen for my birthday was a honeycomb stained glass class. I'd been eyeballing it since the beginning of the year, so when Mom asked what I wanted to take, this was it. The class was small, which I love, only six students, and we didn't have to do any glass cutting. The instructor had done that bit of prep work for us, for which I'm thankful.

We talked a little bit about the process, then jumped right into choosing our glass and laying out our projects.

Mom's

Mine

It was amazing to me to look around the classroom and see all of the different ways each of us chose to lay out our six pieces of glass. I'm not super creative, so I went with the layout that most closely mirrored the example on the wall. I did choose to add the round pieces as a bit of embellishment, but the reason for that is silly. When adding foil to the glass, it's fairly straightforward on pieces with straight edges, but when adding foil to the round pieces you get to shake each of them up in a little round container. It looked like a lot of fun, so I decided I wanted to do that, too. <grin>

Adding the foil.

After we wrapped everything in foil, and I got a giggle out of shaking up the container with the round bits, we started in on the soldering. Now, believe me when I tell you that just because I used to solder really well in high school, when I learned to do it on electronic components, doesn't mean I can solder well forty years later. Holy cow, I suck at soldering stained glass. Instead of a nice, tiny dot just to make a connection between a component and the motherboard, it takes a lot of solder with a big, unwieldy soldering iron to put the stained glass together. Both the Bionic Cowgirl and I struggled with this.

We are used to fine-tip irons,
these heavy flat-tipped ones were
hard for both of us to use.

Such ugly joints. I welded better than
this, and that's saying something!

Eventually, I quit dicking around with trying to make my solder nice and smooth and decided "it's good enough for who it's for". The finished products look pretty good, as long as you look at them from a distance.

My honeycomb found a place in one of Whimsy's big windows, and I'm not sure where Mom's is going to end up, but this was such a fun class. I'm not super creative, but I think I could really enjoy following some stained glass patterns in future. 

Update 8/20/25: Mom and I both found a place for our respective honeycombs and got pictures. They look so good in their new homes!

In Whimsy's east window.

Mom's is in the Lodge's kitchen window.

Meet Beemer the Gargoyle

If you've ever been to the Lodge, you probably noticed that Bill had a collection of gargoyles throughout the space. Most people absolutely loved them, but there was one notable religious group that took offense to Bill's protectors and insisted on turning all of them to face the wall or the corner. Bill, being Bill, just laughed and went with it.

After Bill's death, both Nebalee and I wanted one of his gargoyles for our respective gardens. It took a couple of summers, but we did each get one. Mom had a few for us to choose from, and Nebalee wasn't up there, so I chose two winged ones for us. 

I didn't exactly know where my gargoyle was going to land in the garden, but knew it had to be near Maggie, the Magical Potting Shed. Maggie already had a dragon on her side, so she needed the gargoyle to live there, too.

I kind of plopped it down on a shelf next to a couple of plants, and he's lived there since he came home.

He fit here pretty well.

My intent was always to paint Maggie barn red to match the rest of the outbuildings, and I finally got around to it on Friday. I have an old wooden coat rack over Maggie's door, where I hang windchimes and other goodies. While painting, I took the rack down to touch it up with white paint, and so I could paint Maggie's walls behind it.

As I was putting the rack back up, the gargoyle caught my eye, and I thought, "hm, would he fit up here?"

Turns out, he does fit up there!

Though he looks stone, he's really just plastic, and weighs next to nothing, so I knew I had to secure him somehow, otherwise our winds would find him a new home, posthaste. E6000 glue has become my go-to outdoor adhesive, so he got a healthy dose of it.

Now that he has a permanent home, he needed a name. The obvious name to call him would be Bill, since he was one of Bill's gargoyles. But the Lodge's big gargoyle is named Barton, after my Grandpa Ed. So, if I named the gargoyle Martin, we'd have a Barton and a Martin. I kind of like the rhyminess (yes, it's a word, I just typed it) of Barton/Martin.

But Martin didn't fit any better than Bill fit, honestly. 

I had been running the names past Mom and finally told her that he'd give me his name eventually. Overnight, I played with variations, but nothing seem to fit

I remembered that before we lost both Bucky and Bill, they'd joked around about having a ranch and naming it the Lazy BM, with both of their initials. They'd even drawn up a brand. Though, both of them would have cracked the heck up if I'd named the gargoyle BM, I just couldn't do it. But ... BM ... Bee Em ...could easily become Beem, the spelling of which is a play on Ranger's name for Beel. 

The next thing I knew, Beem became Beemer, and the gargoyle suddenly had a name.

Rest Well, My Gizmo

On July 25th, we said goodbye to our Grand Dame, Gizmo. At 18, I knew that this would likely be her last summer, but the time came too quickly. 

Enjoying the nice weather and a good brushing,

Gizmo was technically Digger's cat, but she came to live with us shortly after we moved in to our little place. She was a spitfire from the get-go. In fact, it was Gizmo that got me arrested.

As she got older, she stayed closer to home.

She'd also smacked the crap out of my dad (not Bill, she loved Bill) at one point. When Gizmo and Ashee were living in my grandma's house with my dad, he wanted to take a nap on the couch, but Giz was already on the couch. He made her move, then stretched out on the couch. Just as he was falling asleep, she made her displeasure known by reaching down from the back of the couch, where she was lying and bam-bam-bam smacked him across the forehead before (wisely) quickly exiting.

She had her share of kittens, and didn't much care for them. Which meant she didn't love it when we introduced new cats to the household, but she always warmed up to them. Children, though, were just skin kittens in here eyes and she never liked them. Until the Gremlin came along and some milk leaked out of his bottle while he was sleeping, then she decided that skin kittens were okay as long as they spilled milk for her to clean up. I have a picture, somewhere, of them sleeping together, his hand curled in her fur. In fact, her name was one of the first he uttered, "Mo-Mo". We've called her Gimmo-gimmo for ages, and he renamed her Mo-Mo.

None of our animals developed much of a taste for human food, because we tried never to give them any. Ashee's dog Gracie was so uninterested in people food that we could leave plates unattended on the floor and she wouldn't bother them. Well, we could, until Gizmo taught Gracie that human food was yummy. Gizmo didn't love human food, and would mostly leave it alone, but her weakness was pepperoni pizza. She once jumped right into the middle of Digger's pizza to get at it.

She mellowed out with age - thank goodness! - and was just a steady presence in and around the house. She'd often just hang out with us outside, quietly keeping us company.

She put up with my stupid hooman tricks of dressing her up for Christmas card pictures and wearing a crocheted witch's hat last year.

She didn't love wearing the hat, but she allowed it.

A few weeks ago, she'd been bitten by another cat (who will remain nameless) and had developed a huge abscess on her back. I only noticed the abscess when it broke open and was streaming bloody pus. I feel a bit bad that I didn't realize she'd been injured sooner, but she'd taken to just hiding out in the bathroom or under the bed for the last couple of months. I figured, she's old, she gets to hang out where she wants to. However, on nice days, I did force her to go outside and sit in the sun. Vitamin D therapy and a dirt bath always did wonders for her mood.

I cleaned her abscess as well as I could, and sequestered her in the bathroom to heal. She did not complain about the pampering or the cans of wet food she got twice a day during her convalescence. She didn't, though, love when it was time to clean and dress the abscess. It became obvious, about a week in, that healing was taking a lot out of her, and when the vet came for the horses' well child checks, I asked him about euthanizing her. He didn't have time that day to do it, so we set an appointment.

On the day we chose, I made sure Gizmo had the best day possible. She loved being groomed, but in the day or so before her appointment, she'd had a hard time cleaning up after going to the bathroom. I couldn't let her be seen like that, so she got a butt bath. I had intended on giving her a whole bath, but she was so humiliated by a human scrubbing her butt that I decided not to do the entire bath. Other than the bathing ordeal, she had a great day. She ate what she wanted (wet food, dry food/milk "cereal") and hung out in the sun with me while getting brushed. Other than being humiliated by the bath, I'd say she had a 9/10 day.

Many moons ago, I had a vet tell me that he'd rather be way too early to put an animal down, than one second too late. I've tried to live by that and honor the life the animal has given us. We were right on the edge of almost too late, I think, but she had a good day the day we helped her across the bridge and that brings me a lot of peace.