Catching up. Again.

And a great good Saturday to you!  It is the most gorgeous day outside.  I have no idea why I am inside typing on the computer instead of hanging around outdoors.

Oh right, the flipping allergies!  I pay for it each and every time I spend big chunks of time outside.

But, that is not what I want to share with you.  I have things to talk about and pictures to show you.  So, get up now and go pee.  Go get a refill of your favorite beverage and settle in to see what you shall see.  : )


First up, I saw that I was running low on Downy.  Yes, I still use Downy.  No, I do not feel guilty about it.  When I was at the store I had to keep looking at the bottles to see which one is the same as the one I have at home because it was slightly different.  So when I got home I set them next to each other to make sure I had bought the right flavor.  And what else did I spy???

Here is a close up of Bottle A, aka the old one, the one that was already here:  Spend a few minutes perusing the label, won't you?

And here is a close up of the new label.  Go ahead and check it out and notice the differences.

They are both Downy.  They both contain 1.84 liters. They are both lavender scented.

Here's the deal:

THE OLD ONE SAYS IT CONTAINS 78 LOADS worth of softener.

While the new one only does 72 LOADS!!  ???

I took the caps off and looked at them since they are the measuring devices to know how much product they recommend.  And guess what?

EXACTLY THE SAME CAP, EXACTLY THE SAME MEASUREMENT.

Anyone else confused by this?

Those dicks over at the Downy offices have done some very creative math to come up with this.

And by the by, I don't follow their recommended quantity per load.  The first thing I do is to pour half the new bottle into the empty old bottle and then refill both with water and mix them well.  This is following the Rule of Half.  Half of any recommended amount of product will do the job just as well.  Try it with your shampoo, conditioner, laundry products, liquid hand soap, etc.  I promise you won't miss the other half and you just saved yourself a bunch of money and time shopping to replace these things.


In other news, the lovely and talented Miss Rachel Pie has been working with small children.  And you know what that means, don't you?

She got sick!  You have to have a really strong immune system to work with the wee ones, as they bring in germs like nobody's business.  Anyhoo, she was S. I. C. K. She went from feeling a bit poorly to running ridiculously high fever, throwing up and sick as a dog overnight.  And thanks to the Affordable Healthcare Act, she is still on our insurance (at least until her next birthday).  Our insurance has this great local business partnered up on it called White Glove Health

Go check out their website and see if they are near you or if you can sign up for them.  Essentially, they are in business to get people well as quickly as possible and back to work.  It keeps up productivitiy and that is why Mr. Big Ed's company has gotten this policy for all the insured employees.

Anyway, Miss Rachel Pie was sick as a dog and there was no way she was going to be able to sit for hours at the med clinic waiting to be seen, so we called the White Glove Health people and they sent a nurse practitioner right over.  She examined Rachel Pie, she looked down her throat, in her ears, listened to her heart, asked tons of questions, you know, the same thing the med clinic doctor would have done.  Then she said Rachel Pie has a sinus infection and a ear infection and prescribed medication, antibiotics, bed rest, liquids, etc.

And did Miss Nurse Practitioner then hand me a bunch of prescriptions to go fill?

No she did NOT!  She reached into her Mary Poppins-style bag and brought out a bottle of antibiotics, 2 bottles of Mucinex, 2 bottles of nose spray, 1 bottle of ear drops which you will see below sitting on a box she also gave Rachel Pie called a Well-Kit.

See the Well-Kit box?  With its cute little carry handle?  What do you suppose is inside?

Let's look, shall we?

I spy with my little eye:  cough drops, 2 packs of tylenol, 2 packs of motrin

1 can of chicken noodle soup, 1 bottle of Gator-ade, 1 pack of jell-o, 1 can of Ginger Ale

1 pack of Kleenex, 1 snack sized apple sauce, and a box of saltines.

We didn't have to go to the store.  We didn't have to go stand in line at the pharmacy.  We didn't have to get Rachel Pie out of bed for 24 hours, actually.

She may call herself a Nurse Practitioner but I think she might have been Florence Nightingale reincarnated.  : )

And FINALLY!!!!  I know, I know, first I don't blog for a month and then I go on and on f o r e v e r . . .

But this is cool, so you will want to stay tuned for this last part.

Have I ever told you about the glass ball collection I have?

Well, my mama travels to Germany a lot.  She used to, anyway.  We have relatives over there so she goes to visit and takes a suitcase full of Mexican food items that they can't get and refills that suitcase with lovely things for all of us.  Anyhoo, she goes to some glass factory and buys these gorgeous blown glass balls.  All different sizes, and colors.

And we string them up with ribbon or fishing line and hang them in the windows like sun catchers.  They are just gorgeous.

Well, we moved to this house in May of 2005 and I have never found a great place to hang them in this house.  So they have been sitting in a cabinet in bubble wrap, just waiting.

And you know how one thing leads to another and then another and then BAM!!!! The light bulb comes on of how to think outside the box?  Well, that is what happened to me.

Why do they have to just be unused sun catchers?  Why can't they be Christmas ornaments?

But what kind of tree would they really be showcased on?


And BAM!!!  I got hit with another picture on Pinterest of a gorgeous wrought iron tree with loads of space between the branches for just such baubles as my glass balls.

So, I ordered it and it arrived!

Yay!

I spent yesterday putting it together and hanging all my little glass balls, some of which are egg shaped and some are heart shaped.  And here is your photo montage of this!

Here is the shipping box as it arrived and I took it to the corner of the dining room where I am going to assemble and display it.

Once I opened the shipping box, here is the box that was inside.

And when I opened the box this is what I found.

Each of the corrugated paper wrapped items had a label on it identifying what piece this is.

Once I unwrapped every piece and lined them all up in alphabetical order, way on the bottom of the box was this instruction sheet.

Here it is all put together and naked.  I think it might need a skirt of some kind. What do you think? Any suggestions?

And here it is with all the beautiful balls, eggs and hearts in place.

And here are some close-ups of the ornaments.  Sadly the glass reflects the light so much that they don't show up as beautiful as they truly are.

What do you think?  I think it was well worth the $$ to buy a new item to showcase these beauties rather than letting them languish in a drawer.  And besides, you all know how I am on a campaign to quit using the shitty quality Made-in-China Christmas lights.

As always, I am happy to get some comments and hear your thoughts.

p.s. Should I write or call the Downy Dicks to see what gives on their bottle information?

It's a match made in Heaven!!

Do y'all remember way back last fall when they came out with the lip smackers that are flavored like the Girl Scout Cookies?  And I loved them?  And they were at Claire's?

That was one of those smack-yourself-in-the-head and say why didn't *I* think of that? kind of moments.

And here we are again!!!

You are just not going to believe what a fabulous new product is out there that I MUST go get right now!

And guess what?

It's also at Claire's!!

(are you getting tired of all the !!! in this post?)  Must learn to end a sentence with a regular old period and not be all excited-exclaimmy.

Ta-Da!!

Look at that!  Peeps nail polish that leaves your nails smelling all Peep-ish!  (sorry for further excited-exclaimmy-ness)  But look!

Sorry, I will blog more later.  I am trotting right down to Claire's to get some of these.  Woot!!

Cork, Cork, Cork.

So, I was sitting here listening to my Irish Drinking Songs cd and thinking of what to post about.  I was also considering St. Paddy's Day coming right up and my shopping list for my traditional St. Paddy's meal. And this week I have gone ahead and plunked down the $$ for the ancestry.com software to be able to print up loads of different charts and such.  You may find it hard to believe that all these things are related, because I sure did!

I have distant ancestors from several different branches of my family tree from County Cork.  I didn't know a damn thing about County Cork so I looked online and found that it is, at least according to the County Cork's own website, the largest county in all of Ireland.

Here is Ireland:

County Cork is the highlighted county below:

Here's a close-up:

And below are some beautiful photos of County Cork:

This one is looking up at Castle Blarney

And this is up above looking down on same Castle Blarney, obviously at different times of year.

And we all know what the Blarney Castle is famous for, don't we?

The Blarney Stone!  And the kissing of the stone!

Now, who wouldn't want to go get hung over the side of the wall upside down to kiss a stone that millions of other lips have touched?

I am using the information I am finding on ancestry.com to plan a trip, possibly next summer, to Ireland and Scotland.  I don't know exactly what I hope to find, but the question of why on earth would anyone ever leave such a lovely place keeps springing to mind.

The Great Potato famine was in 1845 - 1852 and Ireland lost 25% of its population due to starvation and emigration.  Many of the ancestors I am looking up left Ireland 100 years before this.  So I researched a bit and found there was a previous famine in 1740-1741 due to some horrible weather and bad crop harvest.  If my 7th great-grandparents could stick it out through this, why would they leave approx. 10 years later?

Back to this coming St. Patrick's Day!  What will you be doing?  Will you be wearing the green?  Do you make Irish Soda Bread?  Drink green beer?

I wear loads of green and several Irish pins.  I will drink Irish Breakfast tea.  Then I will make a corned beef, cabbage, carrot and turnip dinner.  I will drink Irish beer.  Harp is my favorite.

I will either make some Soda Bread or some gingerbread.

Have a great time celebrating your Irish heritage if you have it!

Valentine's Day Surprises!

Happy Valentine's Day!  I know, I know, just yesterday I said how it isn't really a big deal in La Casa Lisa Pie any longer and what happened when I woke up this morning?

I went to the bathroom like most people do when they first get up and it took me a minute to notice that something was stuck on the mirror.

Here's what I saw:

Aww, isn't that sweet?  Those cute little boys from Glee!

It still didn't register that it was for me though.  So I was getting dressed and talking on the phone and headed to the kitchen to make my giant mug o'tea for the morning, while still on the phone with my wonderful friend Mom of the Peach and I went to the cabinet to get my tea mug and what did I spy on the shelf where the mug should have been??

A Valentine's card (with the promise of a home-cooked dinner!) and some beautiful flowers.  There are daisies, alostrumeriam and roses, all shades of pinks.  Just beautiful.

I am still on the phone and giving my friend a play-by-play of what is happening, too.  So I take my mug and go to the water dispenser to get instant hot water for my tea.

And look what I found strategically placed over the hot water button:

Hee!!  So I took my mug of hot water and went to the pantry to get my morning teabag of Scottish Breakfast.

And you will never guess what I found!

Another Glee Valentine in my tea box!!!

So of course, we are laughing and loving this over the phone still and I made my tea and went to the computer as I do each and every morning to do my email and check in on facebook, pinterest and One Kings Lane.

And sure enough!  One more Valentine on my screen.

And then I looked down at my keyboard:

How sweet is that?  Mr. Ed had to get up pretty early to sneak around doing this and not make a sound.  I was so surprised.

I can't wait to see what's planned for dinner.

In other news, I bought myself something off the Vermont Country Store  recently and just haven't taken pictures to show you.  Those of you who are my age may remember this.

Do you remember this?  Sweet Earth!  I have been so excited since I saw this on the VCS website and I finally broke down and ordered one.  This is the "woods" scents version.  Back in the 1970s there were also a flowers one and a grasses one.

I tried to get photos of the labels describing each scent but it's all shiny and glare-y.  From the left it is Sandalwood, then Amberwood and on the right Patchouli.  You can wear them individually or mix them as you wish.

I will check out the VCS site again and see if they carry the other scents or not.  Also, it seems like I remember there was some kind a Christmas-y holiday one too.

I just scoped out the google to see if anyone had posted pics of the original 1970s versions of the Sweet Earth and glory be!!  Of course, there are photos.

This first one is the Christmas-y winter ones, Frankinscence, Myrrh and Mistletoe.  It's in the newer version of the case.

Below is one of the older styles. The Rare flowers collection.

And here is a magazine ad for the Sweet Earth scents.

Makes me very nostalgic for all the great old cosmetic items from back in the day.  Do any of you remember Yardley cosmetics?  Love's?  Mary Qant?

Have a lovely Valentine's Day and remember that your friend Lisa Pie loves you!

Happy New Year

I made a conscious decision to NOT do a retrospective on this blog.  I don't have 5 gazillion posts to go through, and it's really just not something I would do.  I have tried and tried to make a list of goals in Jan. and follow up with them monthly and then at the end of the year, grade myself on how much I accomplished.

Let's face it, I am not good at this.  This is why I am not enrolled in an online school.  Self-starter?  Not so much.

So if you were looking for that kind of a post today, I will have to direct you to my friend sluggy's blog where she did a fabulous job of recapping and grading herself.

However!  I am here with some lovely and entertaining photos for you!  Yay!!

Without further ado, here come the pics.

I decided to take a picture of the new vintage 1960's aluminum tree with each of the colors of the color wheel shining on it.   In my head, you would be able to see how beautifully each of the colors looked and how distinctive.  We each selected a color we liked the best.  I thought I would like the blue, because blue and silver is such a perfect combo, but no!  I actually liked the amber/gold on the silver best. It was a really nice glow.  Take a look at these and see if you see any difference.  I am sorry to tell you that for me the color variations didn't show up at all.

And no, I did NOT just put the same damn picture up there 8 times.   Anyhoo, isn't it a beautiful silver aluminum tree?  And it was easy peasy to put together.  It came inside a new box that is housing the original 1960 box and all of the original little waxed paper sleeves for EACH of the 152 branches are there.  So, now we have to take it apart very carefully and put each of those 152 branches back into their own original little waxed paper sleeves.  (I can't tell you how much this appeals to my weird OCD self!)

Next year, this will be my main tree.  Yay!!!

And next to the tree, we have my buffet in the dining room that this time of year houses my gorgeous pewter angel and Christmas tree collection.  I love them.  Underneath them is this beautiful red and gold embroidered cut out table scarf thing my mama brought me from either Spain or Portugal.  I need to ask and find out for sure.  It is exactly the measurements for that buffet.  Just like it was made for it.

Sadly, I started taking photos of my Christmas stuff in the midst of moving things around and getting them ready to box up.  But next is the huge crystal bowl full of shiny iridescent ornaments that sits in the middle of the dining room table.  I am thinking that a bunch of those ornaments would be just perfect on the new vintage aluminum tree.  What do you think?

Next is a picture of my current main tree in the living room.  The reason I took this picture was to show the variation in the clear lights.  This is one of those damn pre-lit trees from 2 years ago.  The 2 year old original lights on it don't work except for a bunch on the very top of the tree.  So I strung a bunch more new lights on it and you can NOT believe the difference in color!  You know, old incandescent light bulbs have warm white and cool white and boy can you ever tell the difference if you happen to mix them?  Same thing here.  They all say "Clear White", but that is not the case.  Definitely got the warm vs. cool thing going on.  Grrrr.  Still hating the way quality has nose-dived on Christmas lights.

Next up is one of my largest nativities.  I love this one because of the bright vivid colors, the touches of metallic paint where it should be shiny, and especially how the angel just hovers above the stable.  She is beautiful.

And what Christmas decor would be complete without a Leg Lamp??  "It's a Major Award!  It must be I-talian, it says FRA-GEEE-LAY!"

This is one of my prized nativities.  I bought this when we lived in Mexico City.  It is a corn husk doll nativity.  The most amazing detail on each of them.  You can tell at a glance who each doll is.  I bought a herd of extra angels to stand around the holy family.

Here's a close-up of the 3 kings.  Notice how in Mexico they always have one dark-skinned king, and each of the kings has different garb and carries different gifts.  Awesome!

Next, I took some pictures of some of my ornaments.  Not necessarily my favorites, but some fun ones.

First up is one of the commemorative ones from the Texas State Capitol.

In this one you can see one of my many Christopher Radko walruses.  On the left is one of the little toothpick God's Eyes that the kids and I made in 1991.  When we moved to Guadalajara in August of 1991, our shipment of belongings didn't arrive and we had no ornaments.  So we sat down and made little God's Eyes out of toothpicks and embroidery floss and larger ones of 4 - 6 inch skewers and yarn. It was a really pretty tree.  And every year since we put the God's Eyes on to remember the year we had no ornaments.

Oh, and on the right of the walrus is a pewter ornament of The Alamo.  I have a lot of pewter ornaments.

In 2002 we moved to Minneapolis, and I went in a Hallmark store and they were doing different Santas from many countries.  So I found the 2 Santas that represent my heritage.  First is the Irish one.  He has the most gorgeous Celtic knot design on his coat.  Just beautiful.

And then the German one is more rough-hewn, made to look handmade.  This reminds me of the German relatives who make absolutely everything by hand.  He is a very nice Santa.

Another painted glass walrus, not Christopher Radko, but very nice and plump.

In this shot you can see that I found the pickle ornament and down below the pickle who do you find?  My favorite cartoon character!  Foghorn Leghorn!!  He has a teeny little Henry Chickenhawk next to him.

Another pewter ornament.

This ornament is very special to me.  When I started being a doula I went to the San Antonio Birth Doulas Christmas party where we traditionally do an ornament exchange and this was the ornament I got.  It was made by a wonderful young doula named Erin who had gone to school at RISD.  She made it of silver and the 3 teeny Christmas balls on it are little gemstones.  It is very sweet and means a lot to me.

This last picture is one of my newest ornaments.  This came from my very best friend Beth (mom of the Georgia Peach).   There is an organization in town that works with mentally handicapped people and they have started making these crosses.  They are made of nails, 2 long ones going up and down and 2 shorter ones for the arms of the cross.  Then the whole thing is wrapped in beaded wire and hung on a pretty piece of ribbon.  I left the tag on mine that says it was made by "Lil Will".  Isn't that the most precious thing?

Thanks for sitting through this little pictorial of some of my Christmas stuff.  Thanks for coming here to my little blog and sharing in my life.  It means a lot to me.

My wish for the coming year for each of you is a little time to relax, enjoy yourselves and find the love and peace surrounding you each day.

Happy New Year!