Gratitude for 3-31-2013 and Living a Happy and Productive Life.

Today I am grateful for realizing that I can live a happy and productive life.

I am very grateful that I get to indulge in crafts the way I do. I love being creative, it nourishes my soul and helps me heal. And if I bless someone else with my talents, well all the more nourishment I feel!

I love bright colours, all of them!! I love that we can get bright colours and make them brighter or softer. I love how colours go together especially in a field of wildflowers!  I love that we all have different colours of hair, eyes, skin tone.

My crafts are simple, but they get the point across. My point, what I want to say about my work, how I choose to express myself. 

Gratitude for 3-30-2013 and Being Grateful for My Sewing Machine.

Today I am grateful for my sewing machine and for the fact that I can research online how to adjust the tension!!

I enjoy sewing even though I stink at it. There are so many beautiful fabrics and just TONS of ideas to put together!! And I don't even know a minute fraction of them and it still blows my mind!!

I am also very grateful for the fact that I can go online and research how to set the proper tension. Without being able to do this from my own home, well, I would not be sewing much at all, I don't think. I would have to get a book or get to the library to find the info I need. I am grateful that I can research this from home!!

I love crafting and making pieces I can use with my own two hands, it feeds my soul! I am very grateful that I can do several different crafts! I get to cover a LOT of bases!!!

Gratitude for 3-29-2013 and How Healing Close Friends Are

Today I am grateful for my closest friends and how our interactions heal me.


There is a group of women in my life who have been and are every day a strong and positive presence in my life and they have helped me heal in ways that I so desperately needed over the years. I could no more have realized what I was missing out on until I met them and began to experience some of life's joys. Simple pleasures that are everyday occurrences in these women's lives that were completely missing in mine.

I am so very grateful for these women who are in my lives and I hope that everyone can experiences what I experiences with these dear friends of mine.

I seek fulfilment and I know that these women are a big part of getting me to that goal. I can only hope that I have the impact on their lives that they have on mine. 

Gratitude for 3-28-2013 and Eating Healthy

Today I am grateful for all the online websites that provide the information and recipes for eating healthy.

To me, it is mind boggling the information we have access to online. I have found a kazillion recipes and information on eating healthy for losing weight, heart problems, diabetes and on and on and on.....There are websites where you can enter what you have eaten that day and track your progress, weight loss, etc.

I think it is really astonishing what all we can look up and find. Kitchen short cuts, exercises on targeting this part of the body or that part of the body. Getting rid of stretch marks or acne scars, it is all there! Just GOOGLE it!!

Gratitude for 3-27-2013 and Being Creative

Today I am grateful for the Sun shining, for the fact that I get to set up my own schedule, for my sewing machine that works and is older than I am and for beautiful and fun fabric. I am grateful that I am blessed with being creative and talented.

It is all of 24 F, -6 C here in my little neck of the Missouri Ozarks. The Sun is out and shining beautifully so that helps. That always helps, I think.

I love that I get to be creative! It feeds my soul to make pieces I can wear, gift to friends and use in my home. I love making unique pieces, true one of a kinds. I get to pick out the style I want, the colours, how it fits, make it whatever size I want and need. I can not beat that!

Do you get to craft? I would love to hear about what you make too!!

Gratitude for 3-26-2013 and Uses for Baking Soda.

Today I am grateful that there are so many beneficial and healthy  uses for such inexpensive products like baking soda.

I went on a search for an inexpensive alternative to shampoo and came across a kazillion different uses for baking soda!! I am on a fixed income and the shampoo I have will not make it to my payday in April. I am so glad I went looking because a whole new world has opened up to me!!

Google it if you don't believe me, LOL I have been mixing up a paste of 1 part baking soda and 2 parts of water and I have been washing my hair with that. The benefits so far are that my hair has a fraction of the static electricity that it had before, how I comb it it has pretty much stayed in place and it looks and feel clean. I wear my hair short and most of the time I am trying to keep my hair out of my eyes because it falls forward so much. Not any more!! WOW! I had no idea!!

I will be experimenting with sprinkling it on my carpet then vacuuming it up, also adding baking soda to the water I will be using to clean my kitchen and bathroom floors. 

I am also using my baking soda paste to wash my face and I like the results, it feels clean!

 I am washing my dishes with a mix of baking soda and vinegar and I also  lemon juice if I want to and it works beautifully!! You simply can not beat the price!! I am going to incorporate more baking soda into my daily life as I go and in April when I do my shopping I am excited about the money I won't have to spend on cleaning products and not having to smell those chemicals!

As I use baking soda and other economical products in my home, I will be sharing my results on here but I encourage you to look it up and see how many different uses it has!! It can benefit you too!

Gratitude for 3-25-2013 and Our Armed Forces.

A Facebook friend of mine posted this graphic and therefore Today I am grateful for the courage and devotion of our Armed Forces, deceased, retire, inactive, and active, also the Reserves, without their sacrifices all of our lives would be totally different, I believe.

                                                                                      

  I believe that their families serve along side them. I have lived overseas in Venezuela in the 1970ies and I have made 2 trips to Mexico. Every time I returned to the States, I remember being so grateful to be back on American soil. We have our problems, of course we do. I would rather live here than anywhere else in the world.

Gratitude for 3-24-2013 and Being Warn, Dry and Mentally Fed.

Today I am grateful for our weather reports because as much as they vary, most of the time, we get plenty of advance notice so we can be prepared for messy weather events. I am also grateful for all the Internet offers, I get to read up on whatever my heart desires!!


It is snowing here now and I am very grateful to be inside where I am warm and safe. My kitty is also safe and warm, we both have plenty to eat and drink. I am very grateful for this and I thank God daily for this. I am also grateful that I had plenty of advance notice so I could get to the grocery store and purchase what I needed to buy. I am set until I get my next disability check on 4-3.

Any subject I want to read up on is available on the Internet. I LOVE Wikipedia!! If I have a million and one questions, I can find a million and one answers on there and also a ton of other websites on the net.

I think that ROCKS!! And I am very grateful for the information that feeds my mind!!

Gratitude for 3-23-2013 and Freedom

Today I am grateful that I have choices and for the fact that I can actually put those choices into my reality. I am grateful to be an American and to enjoy the freedom we have here. I am grateful that I live in the US and that I was born here. I am grateful to our Military who have fought for us and for those who fight today.


I have lived overseas and have travelled twice to Mexico. I believe that hands down, this country is the best place to be. I am very grateful to have been born here and to live here. And to live where I want to. I decided that I wanted to move here many years ago. No one told me to move here. I am free to make that decision on my own. 

I can write a blog if I want to or not. Obviously there are guidelines I have to abide by, which is my choice to make. I know that this freedom has come with a terrible price and while I can not fully comprehend everything that makes up that price, I am very grateful that it has been paid for me.

Gratitude for 3-22-2013 and Setting Goals

"Today I am grateful for being able to set realistic goals to accomplish and to be able to believe to do more".


I have been working on goal setting for a couple of months now and I love it! I am doing simple goals and working my way up to bigger things. I started with statements of gratitude on 1-1-2013 and it is truly life changing and I am just getting started. I am confident that I will be able to voice daily statements of gratitude until the day I die!

I have so much to be grateful for, I believe that everyone does. It is amazing to me the change it has had on my attitude! I firmly believe that attitude is everything. My life is far from perfect but my attitude about my life means everything in how I conduct myself. 

My Memory Placemats

 I am merging both of my blogs into this one:::

http://seekingfulfilmentandbeinggrateful.blogspot.com/



I have designated a wall in my home to items close friends have made for me, sent to me and I am adding pictures to it. I am having company over on Thursday night. It will be the first friends I have had over since I moved into this apartment in June of 2009. Long story, lots of psychotherapy and dealing with severe depression and ploughing thru personal issues which I hope are forever behind me.

This is my Memory Wall::

                                                                       

Anyway, I worked on crocheting some place mats for my kitchen table but that didn't seem right. So, I thought about it and came up with this idea::

I have some 14 inches long by 11 inches high stencil sheets. They are simple plastic sheets that you can make stencils out of. I ordered them from somewhere online, I'd have to find the invoice to remember who I ordered them from. Anyway, I bought some simple muslin fabric and I have made sleeves or pillowcase like pieces to fit the plastic sheets inside. I also bought some permanent markers in lots of colours so my guests can write on the placemats, on either side or both if they want to. I am using the plastic inside so the permanent markers won't bleed through to my table.

This one is my very first one, so it is very ,shall we say, primitive? LOL I haven't sewn in a while. As I make more, I will improve and play around with them. I sewed by hand because I want the thread to come out easily so I can display both sides on my wall. 

I love the idea and I think it will be a LOT of fun!!  Now, I gotta crochet some napkins!!!

Later, yawl!! XOXOX