Wonderbag

I'm not sure if I have blogged about the Wonderbag before, but people ask what it is when I have it out, so I think it bears blogging.

Amazon y'all is my favorite place to shop. Anyone who knows me knows the first Amazon drone will have my name etched across the side of it. Two times in the last ten years or so, Amazon has had this Wonderbag on their home page-I think it's their idea of highlighting a charity, and I totally went for it.

The Wonderbag is made in Africa by African women and it is basically...a crockpot. The bag is huge-be thinking of where you will store it, or you can use it as a pillow on the couch if you pick the perfect fabric.

Today, I am making two gallons of yogurt in the my WB. I struggled for years to make yogurt since we buy raw milk from the farmer, and raw yogurt is something we would eat.

Maybe everyone else thinks making yogurt is super easy, but I had so many failures and re-Bayed so many yogurt makers, it's kind of sad. Therefore, this $52 handy bag is worth every penny. I simply take the half gallon jar and put a dollop of yogurt in the bottom, then I heat the jar(s) of milk to 110 or 115 degrees. Then, I put the jars in my WB, and by dinnertime I will have two gallons of yogurt.

My other complete failure-so many women seem to love it-is the crockpot. The toughest meat ever served at my dinner table came from the crockpot. The directions will say 6 hours when one hour would have sufficed. My better "way" and a seemingly slower way is to heat up the same dish for twenty or thirty minutes in a covered pot, then place it in the WB for  the rest of the day. No timer. No tough bird. Happy family.

When you, the new owner of your wonderbag, purchase your bag, one goes to a family in Africa. (It is like the concept of Tom's Shoes-a pair for you, a pair for a child in need) This saves a tremendous amount of energy for the women in Africa, as they do the same thing that I will do this morning with their WB. They heat up the future dinner in a covered pot, place it in the bag, and go to work.

Finally, I will also take it in the car with me if I need insulation-either hot or cold-for groceries, picking up milk from the farmer, or if I am taking a huge pot of beans or chili to a party-it keeps the goods at the perfect temperature as long as necessary.

www.WonderBagWorld.com

Never Ending Painting Project

Yes, I know the room is cool. I am totally in love with the change. Even the mint green, which horrified me at first, has grown on me and seems to be just the right accent color for this room.  HOWEVER-this room gets the "longest project ever" award. When the painters gave me a bid of $1600 (?%#%!$), I flat refused to even respond. It was a complete insult to my intelligence. When the second bid was $1000, I thought-it must be a sign-we are just going to paint it ourselves. I think the reason for the high bid was the fact that we were covering neon pink...but still....

This time I decided to try the paint with primer already in it, and that helped tremendously. Excited about the project, I got our first gallon from Lowes, and woke up to a blue (not gray) room. Unsurprised at Lowes paint guide,  Benjamin Moore was my first stop the next morning, knowing that a true and good gray only lives at Benjamin Moore.

Mackenzie, Megan, Bea, and I started painting like wild cats. Max painted more like a siberian husky, getting it all in his fur and rolling around on other various new furniture in the house.

I drove up to the Pottery Barn outlet three times (a 45 minute commute-one way), while the group excitedly painted. I would come home to do hard parts like ceiling in a lighter gray and dismantling hardware, only to run back up to PB Kids....but we finally made it. We got it painted. We got the new bedding put on. We got the desk set up with cute pencil holders and task lights. We went to Target and TJ Maxx. We went back to all of the places to make returns. 

I just sewed up the second curtain today, which means three trips were made to Joann Fabrics as I could not accept that mint was the actual accent color and was drawn to the more turquoise color on one of the swirls of the bedding. Taking Megan with me helped eliminate guesswork. 

Tonight, I am hand sewing around the seat cushion for the office chair as my sewing machine and I have had a horrific wrestling match for the last three hours. Thankful for the stomach bug and kids in bed so I could work, we still never came to terms and I found sewing with a needle and listening to my audiobook: Boys in the Boat more relaxing anyway, 

Reading to the kids tonight, I was lying in the newly fabulous bed and noticed the air vent in the bathroom was still taped with green tape. 

Excitement is waning by this point. I trudge up the ladder and pull off the tape, exposing a bit of pink paint from the last painters, not caring by this point, and hoping that's the last green tape still up. Texts are still flooding in for the last Disney princess bed-a full. Everyone wants a twin, but wants to discuss the full and maybe have me deliver it to their house??? Hmm. Maybe a new craigslister. Doesn't know this is convenient for me, and a great deal for you.

The weather, still clammy, provides the perfect excuse for a home project. No temptation to be anywhere but the house, scraping paint fragments off the floor, and hand sewing cushions are actually a bit comforting; reminds me of a time when my mom decided to stencil down a hallway of our Nacogdoches house.

I remembered looking up. She had handkerchief on her head and was very deliberately and carefully holding a cardboard cut for the purpose of stencil. She has always been methodical and this event was no different. Balancing on the top of a ladder, pressing the stencil against the wall, she pressed paint against the cardboard. She would only get two or three going, then need to come down and move her ladder. It was quite a hallway, and she seemed to enjoy the art. 

Something was pressed into me at the moment. It marked a memory in my mind, something good about it. I think it was the effort poured into a hallway. An otherewise, inane place for a seven year old child, just a road to get to one's room, my mother had painted something special into it. She had made beauty. This beauty stuck with me, and years later, I find myself doing the same thing. Pressing beauty into walls...making our children's nest, our abode....lovely.

South Texas Snow dribble

This is probably as thick as the snow will get here this year. A few dribbles of ice on the trampoline. But for seven year old Michael, it is the best day of his life. Miley has found a couple of wet logs stashed underneath the bushes for an end of year fire, and pulled out some items from the ski supplies that will keep him just warm enough to eat icicles, jump on a frothy trampoline, and slide down a somewhat pathetic hill in our granola bowl. Life is good.

Piles and piles of snow surrounded our Kentucky home like dunes in a desert, but the negative temperatures sharply reminded everyone in the tiny town of Kelat, we were in record-breaking snow storm that would not let up for well over a month. I think the number was 28. Twenty eight inches of snow was enough to keep us out of school for weeks after our Christmas break. It was so many weeks that the school system announced there would be no makeup days as that many makeup days were as formidable as the snowstorm itself.

Benjamin and I would sit by the radio with our fingers crossed every morning, hoping that it was yet another "snow day", and when the announcer named our county, we whooped for joy and got all our snow clothes on. We would get our metal bowls and run to the top of our sled hill, letting the wind and snow blow around us as we skidded down that embankment for hours. So many hours that Lady; our labrador; got arthritis from frozen paws and loyalty to her kids that only a good dog knows.

Looking back, there were so many details that my mom alone bore. How did we get groceries? The roads undrivable, I do not even think mail was running. She was in the house alone with my little brother Joshua, and while we careened at speeds faster than humans should go in the open air, what was she doing? Was she poring over bills or fretting about laundry? We hung it outside on the laundry line, and snow meant days of drying time. Now, as a mother, I wonder more about the things that I was blissfully spared as a child. I wonder too about the people in northern states right now, sitting in the same snow I was in as a child. I always remembered hearing of people dying during those storms and wondered how. Looking back, I am a bit surprised we fared as well as we did.

So. I am weary with winter, yes, but so grateful to be this far south as winter dredges on and even the children are wondering when it will be over.