spreading a little sunshine . . .

oh look!  i have been blessed with the sunshine award from bev at black ink paperie!  how awesome!  thanks bev!

“The Sunshine Award is an award given by bloggers to other bloggers. The receivers of the Sunshine Award are bloggers who positively and creatively inspire others in the blogsphere.”

as a sunshine award recipient, i must share with you seven snippets of previously unshared information.  i am feeling the pressure to be witty now, not that these snippets need to be witty, but bev is SO witty; she is an inspiration!  and a very tough act to follow! here goes . . .

1.  it is difficult for me to be witty about my personal life as i tend to be a boring rule follower and have a poor memory for non-academic information.  i do remember skipping school once in the twelfth grade, however.  me and my fellow rebels went to the local gas station for tater logs and then drove to the local cemetery to eat them.  living on the wild side, locally speaking.

2. i also remember hiding the teacher's paddle in the 4th grade while she was taking her afternoon siesta during social studies class.  oh!  and in the third grade, i got paddled for talking during p.e.  these, of course, are isolated disciplinary incidents in an otherwise impeccable academic career.

3.  speaking of paddling, i feel i should also reveal that i hung onto my innocence much longer than the normal southern girl might.  to illustrate this point, in my mid-twenties i was dating a guy who liked artsy fartsy movies; the kind that win awards at the cannes film festival.  i decided i'd show my cultured side by renting one such movie all on my own.  i went to the video store and did just that, brought it home, and the summary looked so interesting one of my roommates decided to watch it with me.  now when our third roommate came home and found out what we were watching, well, she had a fit.  a FIT i tell ya.  demanded we get it out of the house immediately and tell know one we ever saw it.  what?  how was i supposed to know that "spanking the monkey" was inappropriate?  and i promptly told the tail to anyone and everyone.  innocence is nothing to be ashamed of and laughing at yourself is a healthy thing.

4. this same group of roommates eventually loosened up a bit.  why not too long after the monkey incident we all collectively got a wild hair decided to have a drink together.  i should mention here that we all went to same conservative religious establishment.  rebels that we were, we went to the grocery store and each picked out a wine cooler.  and none of us brought our house keys.  so we had to sit on our front steps waiting for deliverance as the rebellious spirit withered in paper or plastic, i can't remember which.

5. now i'm a bit of a control freak, so i've only actually been drunk once in my life and that was unintentionally.  i had a really bad cold and took a double dose of robitussin formula 44D.  i sat on the bathroom counter giving a discourse on square roots and tree roots.  it's probably a good thing that i am not prone to excessive drinking as i am apparently even more boring drunk than sober.

6.  i like to sing about drinking though.  my mom introduced us to a broad range of musical genres as children.  we watched heehaw and the lawrence welk show religiously growing up.  sometimes even both in the same night.  my mom's album collection consisted of cowboys, cowboys, cowboys, and ed ames.  our favorite was the son's of the pioneers rendition of "cigareets and whuskey and wild wild women!  they'll drive you crazy they'll drive you insaaaaaaane!"  my brother and i would belt out this catchy tune over and over and over . . .

7. and speaking of my mother, i think i get my large dose of naivete from her.  for example, she once stopped on the side of the road to buy a t-shirt for my teenaged nephew, because she knew how much he loved tie dye. image his complete delight to open the package and find a new tee from grandma with a huge rebel flag in the shape of a marijuana leaf emblazoned upon it.  "mom!  what were you thinking?!!"  innocently, and with self-righteous overtones, "what?  i don't know anything about that stuff."  indignantly, "well, didn't you at least study the civil war in school?"  her reply, "i was never good in geography."

now i must nominate some blogs to pass on the award. so, with out further ado here they are in no particular order.....

julie kirk from notes on paper
christy strickler from my scrapbook revolution
ashley calder from things that shine
betsy sammarco from just a pharmgirl
connie mercer from crafty goodies with a vintage flair
amy kingsford from creating memories
sharyn tormanen from tormville

WINNER! ribbon giveaway!

and the winner is . . . 

1. 
   Rebecca LovellMarch 22, 2013 at 11:30 AM

   Oh, my goodness!! Yummy!! Look at all that loveliness!! I have a passion for ribbon, and this would fit in so perfectly with my own box of beauties!! Thank you so much for the chance!!

   
   

   
   

   yay rebecca!  please email me your mailing address at doris.sander@gmail.com and i'll get your prize in the mail!  :)

calvinball: the not so grand finale

final posting.  i wanted to break 100, but i petered out at the end.  i'll get'em next time!

calvinscraps - 34
calvinblogs - 30
calvinbonus - 19

total - 84

happy easter!

he is risen!

florida photos: indian pass

this set of photos is from my instagram feed (i'm dorissander there).  we moved from the big city to small town usa the summer after first grade.  we actually lived across the street from the ocean for a couple years.  it seemed so normal at the time, but now i realize it was amazing.  we go back there most trips as we all love to eat at the raw bar.  i walked there from my house as a kid when it was just an old country store and post office.  it was a good mile or so away and i was only seven.  there were a lot more freedoms then.  these photos represent the florida of my youth.  empty, beautiful, wild.  revisiting my childhood paths was so much more nostalgic with my own child.  seeing him play where i once played.  these are treasured times.

calvinball update . . .

totally gratuitous blogging ahead.  i'm going to go ahead and admit here that the ocd has kicked in a bit with the ole blog.  i was gung ho and blogged 31 times in january.  in february, even with the flu, i somehow unintentionally blogged 28 times.  now if you know you're monthly math and anything about ocd tendencies then you probably realize that i've got 6 blog posts to go (counting this one) and 3 days to get them done in (counting today that's dwindling fast).  so here's a calvinball update!  and a reminder that if you haven't entered the ribbon giveaway, there's still time!  calvinball doesn't end till midnight on the 31st!  and i declare a calvinball bonus for dying easter eggs!  :)

quickie calvinball update:

calvinscraps - 31
calvinblogs - 25
calvinbonus - 19

total - 75

florida photos: riley's birthday outtakes

still establishing the pecking order, "NO deanna!  i don't need you to push me!"

"aunt doris!  aunt doris!  will you push me?"  as soon as you smile for my camera i will.

how godzilla might feel in the twilight zone.

somebody needs to cut that kid's nails.

now that one in the middle is obviously a princess carriage unless you're confused and think it's a four-eyed chick or catch an upside down glance and assume it's a bearded bug.

wardrobe malfunction.

this poor man's gonna spend a lot of time waiting for his women and their fashions.

where's riley?

reenactment requested by aunt doris.

box barricade as it was too windy for birthday candles.

the birthday diva provides another reenactment for aunt doris.

somebody had to pull a tooth and announce that fact right in the middle of the birthday song.

that smile, that smile, that cover girl smile.

does it get any better than this?

sugar rush.

and cake is apparently optional.

truly, one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is the ability to laugh at themselves.  :)

good blog reads

this is us.  enjoying a bit of seemingly illusive spring sunbeam.  fingers crossed they will be a more common occurance now.  weather.com only has 2 small blips on the ten day radar and hopefully those will warm up before we get there.  i'm over cold weather. 

here are a few posts i've collected for you this month.  i especially want to gush over the first batch, but have decided to let them speak for themselves in all their loveliness.  i'm limiting myself to one word introductions.


beautiful words + beautiful photos:

newborn photographer - tara whitney - sweetness

vintage photographer - hula seventy - poignant

amazing writer - black ink paperie - thoughtful


crafty shares:

free motion sewing - ihanna - fun

doodling on letters - rebecca sower - artsy


new blog finds:

photos plus words - scraps of us - ecclectic

plant lover - little green shed - green


a free online course on blogging inspiration:

rapier wit - julie kirk - sharp

get it scrapped!: last puddle

so far, we only miss two things about our old place.  we miss the fresh krispy kreme donuts at our friendly neighborhood gas station and i know we will miss the lake sized puddle that used to form after a good spring rain.  we've already gone on a pilgrimage or two for our beloved donuts and should spring choose to actually grace us with her presence, we might just have to head over to our old stomping ground to splash through that puddle once again.

this layout was created for an article on using the colors found in nature to deepen your scrapbook page stories.  my assignment was green and i had absolutely no trouble with that.  i love to scrapbook with green.  i also love to use vintage products.  there are quite a few on this page, including the sweet pea label, the lawn service letterhead, the tiny white flowers, and the price tag.  all fit nicely into the theme of the page and, serendipitously, one or two of the vintage kits from whence they came are still available at jbs mercantile.

haiku 326

tiny dotted dot
happiness dancing on red
spring is a party

florida photos: crawdads

somehow i have become the designated "adult" to take these boys on their adventures.  they've figured out that they can talk aunt doris into pretty much anything.  this trip the ditches were wetter than i've seen them since i was a kid, so we decided to go crawdadding.  i think it may have even been my idea.

i told them they wouldn't get any in this first ditch they wanted to try.  it was a cement lined one under an overpass.  crawdads need to be able to dig into the mud to make their burrows don't ya know.  all they found here were a few minnow . . .

and quite a bit of sludge.

we hit the mother lode here.  troy yelled, "it's a crane!  it's a crane!  stop aunt doris!  it's a crane!"  cranes like crawdads more than anything it seems.

here's g pulling in the crawdad seine.

investigating their catch.

it's still amazing to me how many of these little guys were condensed in this one small ditch.  florida is teeming with life after a good rainy spell.

g was a little hesitant at first till he got the hang of grabbing them.

avery, of course, was already an old pro . . .

he was especially enamored with the little ones and wanted me to get this pic.

and then there's troy who always likes to put on a show . . .

"come on big guys.  go ahead and pinch me."

at the end of the haul troy told me, "they're only this big." and i told him, "and you're only this dirty."

bet you can guess who's hands those are.

aunt linda, the one who can do anything (see post below) boiled these up for g for breakfast on the last day.

this is one happy boy.  he was so excited to capture and eat something straight off the land like that.  i think it reminded him of the little house series.  he kept asking me if laura ingalls wilder ate them.