5 beauty products I can’t live without

I’m not one who needs to feel fully made-up to run to the grocery store. But there are two things I won’t leave the house without, and a few others that I use on a daily basis.

1. Foundation

First is my foundation. I love love love this bareMinerals Matte loose powder foundation by Bare Escentuals. It has amazing coverage, while being so light you barely know you’re wearing anything. I have these little veins that show on my upper eyelids, and this stuff covers those right up so my eye shadow has less work to do! It comes in 20 different shades. (I use medium, in case you were wondering.)

It's too dry for cows

We are having bigger problems than my dry garden this spring.

Our pastures are so dry that we are already feeding hay to the cows! Poor girls, there’s just not much to eat out there!

That doesn’t stop them from trying, though. They are eaters!

My little office helpers

I’m lucky to have some “helpers” who hang out with me in my home office all day long. Some are more helpful than others.
First, there’s Orleans. He’s pretty happy hanging out on top of what has become “his box.” (He’s going to be mad at me if I get around to unpacking it!)

It’s hard to garden in a drought

Our garden goes in late every year. This means that while our friends have zucchini and cucumbers already, we barely have plants above the ground. This also means that when everyone is out of fresh tomatoes in September, we’ll still be growing strong!


The nice thing about not a lot of rain? There’s not a lot of weeds! Of course, it’s hard on the plants we want to keep around, so I guess I would prefer some rain now and then…

We plant a combination of seeds and plants. This dry weather has been really hard on our garden. I’ve been going out about every other day to water the plants, but I just can’t keep up with the rows of seeds. They’re sort of on their own.

Most of the tomato plants are doing pretty well. I’ve not given up hope yet!

Remodel Mondays – Master bedroom

The master bedroom was one of the first rooms we put together. It still needs a few decorating touches, but it’s getting close.


I love the blue accent wall against the soft gray of the other walls. Would you believe this is a queen-size bed? This room is so big it dwarfs our large furniture.

Remodel Mondays – Home office

The new house has been fabulous. It has been a lot of work to move back in and get everything settled, but I’ve been loving the job.

The first rooms we really moved into were the kitchen, the master bedroom, and my home office. My office is on the front corner of the new addition. It is the only “bedroom” on the front of the house with two windows. And it gets a great cross breeze!

My dog has too much fur

Sadie is part Husky. She is incredibly fuzzy.

We had a small porch on our old house, and Sadie never came up the steps. I’m not sure she knew how. And she has bad hips (she’s around 12 years old), so it was hard for her to climb steps. Now she’s on arthritis medication every day (and feeling great!). And Buddy came over not too long ago. He taught her how to climb steps.

Remodel Mondays – Settling into the kitchen

We’ve been living in our new house for over a month already! It still doesn’t quite seem “normal” – it’s so different from the old house, I sometimes can barely believe that it is ours! (Well, ours and the bank’s…)



After almost six weeks, I am finally feeling like we are pretty well settled in. If nothing else, the house looks “lived in” now…

We set up our fish tank set in the hallway next to the kitchen. This is also where three of the four cats get fed. We only have one fish in that tank right now… he is the lonely trooper who survived the move to the apartment and back. We need to get him some new friends now that the tank is in it’s final place.