Winters in the Valley

C Randy Parks wrote:

I am posting a link to the music video I wrote, recorded, and put together. It is over six minutes long so it is better to watch it with WiFi. Be aware, just when you think it is over, there’s more. I tried to include most of the pictures that were sent to me so you can look to see if you’re in it somewhere. Leave a comment if you wish. I hope you enjoy my rendition of Winters In The Valley.

 I love this put-together describing what takes place in Alamo Tx at Trophy Gardens. Randy is a very talented fellow as well as being Pastor. He did a wonderful job. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! ~Barb B.

Beading

 When we were in Michigan work camping, a woman was teaching beading. This was a specialized area of beading using delica beads. You may be familiar with pony beads. This wasn't that. It appealed to me on several different levels; it took up little room, it looked difficult but wasn't, it was unique in feel and texture and once learned you could make something beautiful in less than a week. I have returned to beading thanks to a lifelong friend who asked me to make a bracelet with her favorite football team highlighted. I had some trepidation because I do remember getting a project started was the most difficult part and it has been since 2017 or 2018 since I have done it. So I watched a couple of YouTube videos and fell back into it! I think it will be my craft of choice for an as-yet-undetermined length of time.

So here you see my work area. Longer gaps in posts can once again be attributed to beading. I apologize in advance.

Love

Everyday living -part 2

 We have had several projects or things-to-do this season and we have accomplished most of them. Oh, what a satisfied feeling that is! I said to Butch, "What in the world are we going to do next summer?!" He said something would come up and I am sure he is right. That is what always seems to happen.

It started with putting a gas line in the pool hall. The form of heat we began with soon proved to be far too costly. Our first bill with electric heat was over 300 dollars. This is prep work for when going South is no longer practical. We hope that is a long time from now.

Next, we needed a water line to the RV section of our yard. We were having far too many leaks so Butch decided the best solution was to have a faucet out of the back side of the house so people staying with us in their RV's would have access to water instead of using the leaky line already in place. We have already dug up our yard in various places dealing with various situations too many times. Enough already!

And on our todo list for several years was to clean, downsize, and reorganize the southside garage/shop. This became a problem when we sold the motorhome. It was never a "camper" it was our apartment on wheels and therefore carried everything we owned. And all that "stuff" had to find a new home. Butch worked on his portion diligently until it was finished. It took a long time and then I tackled my little corner and whalla! It looks so organized! Keeping it that way remains to be seen.

Getting the 'squirrel wars' settled was one thing on my list.  I became very tired of Butch yelling at them every time he caught them in or on the feeders. The baffle works!

The list seems small in retrospect but not so much in reality.

Here are some photos of the squirrel situation.

This is supposedly one of those feeders that flings the squirrel off. It worked on birds too so I stabilized it with a bandaid. The squirrels have been unable to navigate the shepherds hook

This was a gift from our friends to us. And it is Squirrel proof. Jason did make an alteration on it to keep the food from getting moldy.

This is the new feeder with the baffle. It works!

This was taken shortly after they were baffled by the baffled one.