This weather….it’s all over the place. What a life we have lived and are living now. Last week I wrote a post about the tornado alarms going off after midnight. Then the phone started ringing, waking everyone up, anyone with land lines that is. We have both.

We also have weather radios as well…you know, just in case the regular system isn’t working and we aren’t warned soon enough, especially during the night time storms, they are the worse. The tornado was headed our way but it jumped back up and disappeared into the sky or away with the storm, touching down, going up, touching down, going up….it’s a dance I have discovered.

Thanks to God…no one is getting hurt that I have seen so far in all these storms. I am writing this a few days before it is published and it seems more and more storms are coming in so I pray it stays that way, that not one life is lost. We live in the hills and we are still afraid of all these tornadoes coming in. It reminds me of a really bad Monsoon storm from Arizona with those powerful micro bursts. We also had huge dust storms that would come in and swallow the whole city up.

Everything is so green right now from all these storms. I love the rain, so I’m weird I suppose because everyone here seems to think rainy days and cloudy days are terrible days, but I think they are nice. I never experienced this before, so it’s a nice change for me. And it changes fast…there is green everywhere right now, it seems just a couple weeks ago it was still a little bare.

There are roses coming up in our garden. We didn’t plant them, the original owners that lived here before us planted them. They are growing around my husband’s grape vines. The grape leaves are so much bigger here then the city we came from. I used to have grape vines growing all around our pool in our city garden, it was so beautiful. When we sold the house they tore all the plants out of the back yard, it ‘s bare now. That was sad seeing the after photos of what the flippers did after they bought our old home. I may make some clay leaf bowls from the grape leaves growing here where we live now.

I have been looking up natural dyes and home made water color paints to make from plants. One of these days I am going to go foraging for different plants and berries to use as paints for paintings. I have done it with beets from the garden before but now I want to try a variety of plants and see what colors they make. I think it will be a fun lazy Sunday afternoon project to do.

There are bees everywhere right now and since bee hives have gone up so much, my husband and son have resorted to designing their own for now, which takes time to do. My husband even gave a lesson this week to a teenager, who happened to walk by one day with his aide. He was very interested in what my husband was doing.

My husband showed him what he was building and the young man asked if he could try to make a small frame himself and my husband helped guide him with each step to make one. He couldn’t wait to get back and share it with his friends at his school. The historic home renovations have been put on hold for a week while bee hives are made with all the wood we have in the old shop building.

At first we did not know what we were going to do with all the wood that was stored in the old shop, and this past Spring week my husband looked around and knew what it was left for. ..hives.

Now some of that wood is being made into hives…the good wood that is, any bad wood we use for firewood, or I have my husband cut it into craft products to teach children creativity, helping them have some much needed time away from the screens. My husband is very careful about the bees. Sometimes I will add my Scandinavian stencil designs to the hives to add a little pretty to them.

I have started collecting little prizes and small gifts for our Secret Santa tradition that we do in December. I shop throughout the year and try to have at least 100 small gifts to give out, I’m at 75 right now. We drop off our little wrapped gifts around small towns.

We add a sweet treat to each small gift, like a candy cane or chocolate bar, then we label it with the age recommendation on the outside of the package. We also try to make up at least 100 craft kits to give out for Christmas as well.

You remember that book To Kill a Mockingbird? There was an old tree with treasures in it . Scout and Jem would find treasures hidden in the knothole of an old Oak tree left by Boo Bradley. It was Boo’s way to reach out to the outside world by sharing kindness.

Pippi Longstocking also had a treasure tree in her story, the Lemonade tree. Both are really great books from childhood. I like to think this is our way to throw a little kindness out there, anonymously of course…that’s the fun part. You will never know the outcome of who finds the treasures or how happy a child will be when they do, but the idea of knowing it was planted, those seeds of kindness…you are always hopeful they will grow and be passed down.

We got our baby chicks this week. They are chirping away right now. Little dinosaurs, with their wobbly stick legs, so funny looking.

We also went to several events this weekend, that was fun but also a little exhausting. Most people around the area are suffering from lack of sleep because all around us have been several night time storms and most people stay awake to make sure they don’t need to go to their shelter areas… which leads to everyone walking around half asleep. It’s fun getting out though so we all just push through and get it done.

We have been walking the lake again, it is just too pretty not to. We no longer have a giant diving pool like we did in the city we left, now we have creeks and lakes instead. I feel it was a nice trade. I miss some parts of that past life but Arizona is not the same Arizona I grew up in, things have changed so much. Maybe there are still some pockets still hanging on to the past, parts up north, little dots of towns here and there but it really has changed too much for the life we want for our children.

I also stopped off at one of my favorite junk shops to see what they got in that was new. The lady who owns the shop is always out there in the world searching for vintage products for her little shop. They redid the whole store, it looks really nice. They did some Spring cleaning in the shop. I picked up some vintage green fabrics and a tiny bird bath for my terrarium.

And the last thing I worked on this week was organizing our closets. I am not such a big fan of Spring cleaning, this is something I started in March. Taking everything out of closets and seeing what to get rid of and donate and then wiping down the shelves and just giving everything a refresh…yep…not something I enjoy but when things start getting out of hand with clutter… this is necessary. You know who does enjoy it…the cats…they LOVE it. It’s a like a whole new house has been opened up for them to explore.

That’s it for this week. Hopefully we can get back to house renovations at the historic home. We have discovered some leaks after this last storm…that’s just another project to add to everything else, Life is one big adventure…we aren’t bored that’s for sure.

I will be taking the summer off from blogging, and may take a break long term like forever. I feel something very creepy is happening here on these screens, just how deceptive and monitoring everything. Something is very different now when it comes to blogging, as well as vloggers too, they are dealing with this also. They are being copied completely and it looks so real. Anymore you can’t tell if it’s a person or something else you may be communicating with. You could very well be talking to a bot without realizing it.

To all my followers that are still out there hanging on in the blog world…have a beautiful peace filled summer. God bless and protect you and yours always. Stay safe out there.