School Room Redo - The Painting

The painting and the painting and the painting.

I spent part of our first week of summer break painting our porch french doors RED.. Whose idea was that??? It took FOUR coats of paint and four mornings of painting to FINALLY be finished. It took our idiotic kitty Punkin all of FOUR seconds of being shut on the porch to scratch a patch of said red paint from my beautiful door. Why must we have claws, again?

ANYWAY, last week, The Boy and I dismantled the school room while one sister was at VBS and one sister was at Driver's Ed. We gave our "soft fern" green school walls a little fresh boost with "celery stick" green to better match the dining area.

Then, I tackled the tired wooden desk and shelves in the room. The desk belonged to little boy Hero. It is wood except for the desktop...which is wood-looking laminate. This is why I held off painting the desk these last 20 years. Finally, I had had ENOUGH of the pitiful sad desk. I found an "expert" at Lowe's who assured me it could be done and that's all I needed to hear to breathe new life into this little desk.  After deciding on a beautiful shade of teal called Caribe by Behr, I got busy and (((drum roll please))) here it is before and after:

Before. In need of some tlc.

After....happyhappyjoyjoy!

Same thing with two twin bookshelves that our neighbor made from scrap wood for us years ago. They needed some personality.....to the tune of Caribe by Behr and Grape Juice purple by Valspar. Here they are:

Before...not bad, just blah.

After....fun fun fun!!!

What To Do With All That Zucchini Squash, Part Two

Our Favorite Top Ten Things To Do

 With Summertime Squash

1. Shred zucchini with a cheese grater and add to spaghetti sauce.

2. Zucchini Bread. A quick search on my favorite recipe website yielded 94 zucchini bread recipes.

3. Chop into chunks, dust with seasoned bread crumbs and saute in olive oil with onions, bell peppers, corn (or any other garden veggies you have), add chopped garden tomatoes when other veggies are just about done. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Serve with rice.

4. Chop into chunks, spread on a baking pan, drizzle with evoo, toss with salt and seasonings. We love Weber Grinder - roasted Garlic and Herbs. Roast in oven at 350 until tender.

5. Freeze for later use (all sorts of squash-freezing advice found online).

6. Slice and eat raw with ranch dressing,  hummus, or spinach dip.

7. Slice long ways, coat with meal, salt/pepper, and pan fry.

8. Slice long ways, drizzle with evoo, season to taste and grill alongside your chicken or steak!

9. Squash Casserole - tons of recipe variations.

10. Then, there's Mema's, southern Georgia way...stewed..which is normally made with yellow squash. You chop squash and onions (sweet Vidalia, of course, grown in Georgia), put in a cast iron skillet with a little water and butter, salt and pepper. You cook it and cook it until it's mush. You can substitute bacon drippings for the butter. Serve with thin, pan-fried hoecake cornbread, sliced garden tomatoes, a bowl of pink eyed purple hull peas...cooked with salt pork,  a couple of pieces of fried chicken, a glass of sweet iced Lipton tea, and a heaping slice of lemon meringue pie for dessert. Sunday Dinner, southern style.

Zucchini and yellow squash are so pretty and colorful cooked together, which is what we usually do. All of the above ideas can be made with either type of squash or both.

I told my friend Tutu that I think I'm a little squash-obsessed. Last year, we didn't have much yellow squash or zucchini and I missed it. Yes, I could have bought some, but in the summertime of south Georgia, it's almost criminal to have to actually BUY squash or tomatoes at the grocery store!!! That's one of the the joys of living in a small, southern town. That's a whole-nother blog post, right there.....

For the record, the yellow squash in the picture above is not the same yellow squash we have in the south of Georgia. Our yellow squash is fondly referred to as "crooked neck squash" because...well, it has a crooked neck. 

What To Do With All That Zucchini!!

To my delight, we have had an abundant supply of yellow squash and zucchini.

I've gotten quite creative with ways to cook the squash that appeals to the discriminating taste buds of our children.

I was excited today to try my sweet friend's recipe for Zucchini Quiche. She is a veteran homeschool mom and has brought this quiche several times to our homeschool meals. It's so savory and delicious. You will love it! And...if you have a thing about quiche, you can call it something else. It's barely a quiche, anyway,  with only two eggs in it and all....

Cindy's Zucchini Quiche
1 pie crust
4 cups sliced zucchini
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup (one stick) butter ( 1/4 cup should be plenty.)
1/4 cup parsley (I used fresh, chopped)
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon oregano (I was all out, so made it without and it was still wonderful.)
2 eggs
2 cups shredded mozzarella or muenster cheese

Saute onion and zucchini in butter for about 10 minutes. Stir in seasonings. Stir eggs and cheese together and add to zucchini mixture. Put in pie shell or in a casserole dish and bake at 375 for 18-20 minutes or until the top starts to brown. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.


Responses from the Offspring:
Rayray - "Oh my word! This is divine!!", ate two slices
The Boy - "It's so cheesy!", ate one slice
Doodle,  after one bite - "I'm sorry Mama, but it made me GAG!"
To which her big sister replied..."You don't tell someone their food makes you gag! Mama, It's good. Don't listen to your daughter. Wait. Don't listen to the little daughter. Listen to me. It's so good."

Meanwhile, The Boy, aka Peacemaker,  is patting me on the shoulder saying, "It's ok, Mama. She didn't mean it." And Hero? He's laughing and eating...enjoying the show.

LucyBelle Turns One!

LucyBelle's First Day Home

 I resisted. I was the hold out. But we told the kids that we would consider getting a little doggy when our two elderly outside kitties passed on. The kitties didn't make it through the spring...and the lobbying for a puppy began.

Rayray had wanted a yorkiepoo for quite sometime and talked her siblings into it, too. We visited a kennel and saw several breeds....shih-poo, poodle, and this one little black yorkie-poo. I could see it in Rayray's eyes...we could hold all the little cute puppies we wanted to hold, but it was the little yorkiepoo that had stolen her heart. The kids voluntarily pooled their saved money to pay for half of Lucy's adoption fees. Two days later, LucyBelle came home with us.

My sweet puppy!

She is 3/4 yorkshire terrier and 1/3 poodle. She weighs 5 pounds, almost exactly. Rayray has taught her some tricks...sit, lay, roll over, dance. She LOVES playing ball with Hero. When she wants to play, she will worry us to pieces until we play with her. She loves her bones and her kitties, especially Punkin. She barks and runs to the door when we say, "Daddy's home!" She comes straight to me when someone says, "Go find Mama!" And "get in the bed" means to get in the closest sleeping spot...whether it's her basket, her pink bed, or....our bed. ;)

The one thing I did not count on was how attached I would be to this little puppydog. The first night we had her home, she had a low blood sugar attack and we totally missed the warning signs...because we've never ever had a tiny doggie and didn't know about this sugar thing. She let out one solitary bark that I happened to hear in the middle of the night. I went to check on her and she was in a coma and stiff. My husband brought her back, which was a miracle, with prayer and large amounts of Nutrical massaged into her gums and mouth. After that, she was my baby. It was a lot of work...consistent training and internet research on what to do for this or that. She's gotten sweeter and sweeter as each month passed by. We didn't expect her to be so so small...but she is what she is and we love every tiny ounce of her. She has won our hearts and is an official part of our family.

The ONLY time she can sit at the table is
on her birthday.
She looks like a Furby.

Birthday Hair!

"Mommy, for my 8th birthday, I want to
get my hair cut."

So, we went to see "Miss Ronda", who worked
her hair-magic.

She loved it...even though it's not as short
as she wanted to go....but she still lost 6-8 inches.

Birthday hair!
Big Sissy, Rayray, took her turn with her
"magic wand." 

Yes, you can still have piggytails!

We might be homeschoolers....

Or we might be just plain ol' rednecks.

This is what was happening in our "room of learning"
while I was cooking up a scrumptious dinner last night. 

THIS contraption is what I found in our master bedroom
after the scrumptious dinner.

 A few years ago, we closed in the garage to make a lovely master bedroom but it gets the last trickle of cold air from the a/c unit AND is on the hottest, sunniest end of the house. Since Summer has decided to get an early start on the three-digit temps down here in the south of Georgia, we are working ovetime to keep the room cool.....three fans blowing, blinds and curtains closed, extra insulation in the attic, etc. 

The Hero has a lightbulb moment....He did a little google research, spent less than ten dollars and mostly used things we had. He and The Boy together created the lovely, the beautiful, the "won't take up too much space", homemade air conditioner, pictured above. 

Does it work? Well, as long as there is ice in the cooler it sorta works. 

But no matter if it works or not, all three kids were involved at some point in the process and listened intently as Hero explained his method behind the madness. I personally loved the Daddy being the teacher and the group working together on the project......whether it actually works or not!!

Now....where are those pictures of the Redneck Snow Machine they made a few winters ago........

One Year Ago...

Clutching my stomach and bent over double, I crouched in the hall at the plastic surgeon's office trying not to get sick or pass out. All I could hear was my just-turned 7 year old babygirl screaming in excruciating pain and my Hero's attempt to soothe her with his words.

It's been a year today and I'm finally sharing the story.

The morning of June 1, 2010, we were finishing up our last week of homeschooling before summer. I had walked into our bedroom to plug in my laptop. My babygirl came running into my room to tell me something funny the kitty had done.

Then, it happened.

She tripped over the rug in my room and fell, face first, onto the corner of the cedar chest. I didn't see the accident. I heard it. By the time I got to her, she was up, had her hand over her mouth and was stunned and panicky. It took me a split second glance at the injury to see that her mouth needed medical attention, immediately. After a quick call to our beloved pediatrician, we were on our way to the ER.

I never let her see the injury before stitches. I'm glad I didn't. Her beautiful mouth was a mess, her top lip suffering the worse with a gaping gash from top to bottom, inside/out. The plastic surgeon and his nurse admitted it was much worse than they expected.She had just lost her front two baby teeth and the permanent teeth hadn't broken the skin yet. That, in and of itself, was a blessing.

The Daddy joined us at the ER as quickly as possible. What a relief! But we were both brokenhearted. No parent likes to see their babies in pain and scared.  Because of the intricate stitches needed on her mouth, a plastic surgeon in a nearby city kindly agreed to skip his lunch break to fix our girl.

The doctor had to give our sweet girl 5 painful shots in the face to get her mouth numb enough to stitch the lip. The first two shots didn't "take." He gave her no pre-shot calm down medicine nor did he put her to sleep. This is what we were dealing with when I started my story out. Our girl held nothing back...she screamed to the top of her lungs in pain from the 5 shots. I couldn't stay in the room. It was too much for this mama.

With the lip finally numb, the doctor was able to carefully make the intricate stitches needed to sew the jagged  edges of her lip back together. I heard our girl, finally settling back down, start talking...I heard her, of all things, apologize. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I screamed. I just...I just wish this never happened. I just wish I could go home."  My precious.

Here's what I wrote in my journal later:

"Seeing our beautiful baby girl in pain - with her split lip - the uncertainty of what it will look like once healed - her teeth and gums and other possible dental problems - her fear. She was terrified. We couldn't stop the fall. And she had to have the painful shots so the doctor could do the intricate stitches needed to put her lip back together. But, they were for her good. She couldn't see that. She only saw the pain of right then. Her daddy and I, as the two people who love her more than anybody, could not...did not stop the plastic surgeon.


As I crouched in the hall struggling to remain composed, I heard the Lord speaking to my heart, even then. He said, "This is how I feel when my children are hurting. I could stop some things - like you could stop the plastic surgeon and go home- but for your own good, I allow it to happen because I can see the big picture."


Babygirl's lip will heal beautifully with minimal scarring because we allowed the doctor to do what needed to be done. When we allow the Great Physician to tend to our wounds - even if painful - we WILL HEAL and our scars will be minimal. 


When we are in pain, He is holding us, like my husband was clinging to our daughter that day. When we are screaming in agony, He is crying with us, like we did with our daughter. Father takes no delight in our pain. He wants to take it away - but we first have to trust His heart."

A year later, the babygirl, now 8, looks back on the accident not as a horrible experience, but sees how brave she was and how strong she is. She couldn't suck from a straw or drink normally from a cup for a couple of weeks, and she never complained. She couldn't smile for awhile, but her eyes did. Her doctor gave her permission to dance in her recital 5 days later. It amazed us that she even wanted to, with a still-painful lip 7 times bigger than normal and black thread for stitches all over her mouth. Her Daddy found a bandage to match her skin and covered the black stitches. I was a nervous wreck for her. She got on that stage and danced her heart out. She was so strong; we were so proud. She knows where the strength comes from...from the Lord. We believe this time will be a significant one to our girl for the rest of her life...not because of what happened...but because of Who showed up and what He spoke into her life that day and the weeks that followed as she patiently recovered.