Friends For Life - I've Got Many - Feeling Blessed and 111

Friday night I was on an extension ladder cutting down branches on my "Big Tree" in the back yard. 

They tree is leaning towards the house and is rotting in the center and over the years many large branches have fallen, some damaging things, others just into the yard. My worry is with weight of branches and wet snow, that my tree will fall and some of the branches will hit the house. 

I posted about the tree being rotten here. I pruned for months about five years back and then hired someone to come cut the big branches. I can't believe it has grown so big and full again so quickly. Here is the link to the "Pruning Rodeo."

I was pruning and have just done part of one large branch, cutting off the smaller branches that came off the bigger branches that were pruned took me hours. I pruned off lots of the branches and filled two wheelbarrows full of wood to save, and two FULL garbage cans of smaller branches, and didn't even do half of one of the branches of ONE of the bigger branches I want to take off. 

I had someone offer to bring a chainsaw over, but I am afraid if they just cut off the big branches without taking off the smaller end branches, that those will hit my cherry tree, lilacs, house gutters, fences, or windows on the house. My hope was, that I could get the end longer branches off and then have someone come and cut off the bigger branches and chop them up using a chain saw as it took me SO long to use a wedge and cut down the bigger branches with a reciprocating saw.   

I was working until after dark again making sure I got all the branches off the grass in case it snows as those will trip you up under the snow if you don't clean them all before it snows. I had been working hard on cleaning the upper windows on a ladder, squatting and cleaning the window wells and lower windows and then up in the tree holding the heavy saw. I was sore and tired breaking up all those branches for the garbage cans and was so tired that I started to cry. Here it is a weekend night, I don't feel well, having bad news about my methane sewer vent block and feeling very frustrated with all the work I have to do on the house and how I can't seem to get much off the list. 

I KNOW that my Father in Heaven loves me as Saturday morning, he had some wonderful friends call and invite me to brunch. I worked with this woman in the church women's group leadership over 20 years ago in the East when I lived there. I LOVE these people! I met them at a restaurant in town as they were driving through. It was nice to catch up and visit with them for a few hours. 

I went to get groceries as I hadn't been out of the house and yard for a few days, and while out ran into someone who said my friend was in town for a baby shower. I called this friend and she came and spent the evening at my house leaving about midnight. We laughed and visited, and I fed her, and then she went through all my bagged jewelry I am getting rid of, and took some things she thought she would be able to use for the cake toppers she makes for weddings. She made Princess One's wedding cake topper and a doll of my mom as a beauty queen that is just amazing. She is SO talented! Here is a link to the wedding cake topper. 

I was feeling so blessed and was writing about it in my journal. Each night when writing in my journal, I write the number of views on my channel and blog in my journal just to keep track of my numbers over the years. I laughed out loud when I realized the number for my blog that day was 111 views. 

I really felt like God was reminding me that I have WONDERFUL friends, and they are such a joy to me in my life. I would trust any of them with my life! I am TRULY blessed to have a Wonderful Father in Heaven that LOVES me and cares that I feel loved and appreciated. I know I help them in some ways, and they help me in some ways. 

I have so many friends that I havn't seen for years, and then just pick up right where we left off. I don't know that everyone has friends like that, so I count myself very blessed to have so many long term friends. 

One other thing, I was at church today when my back fence neighbor said she has seen me for weeks in my fruit trees and was a bit shocked to see me in the large tree this week. She said it made her realize how hard her mothers life was in raising her as a single mom having to worry about that type of thing by seeing me working so hard in my yard and house. I told her that I was glad to "help" her realize that. She has always had a very helpful husband, so she hasn't had to worry about that type of thing. It is amazing to me how you can inspire or influence others without even saying a word. People do notice your attitude, your work ethic, your influence on others, you standards etc. I hope that I am always on the "good" side of influencing others! 

I hope you are as blessed with such good friends! I just realized this post is on 11/11/19, that is five 1's in a row! Funny how it showed up on a day I am giving gratitude! I really am Blessed!

Fastest Way to Clean out the Window Wells on Basement Windows

Over the years, I have used many different techniques to clean out my window wells in the basement windows and washing the basement windows. 

I have climbed down into the windows. I have lowered my kids down into the window wells, and I have tried cleaning them by opening the windows in the basement, but that was the worst option. 

I have tried shop vacuums, but they suck up the gravel I put down in the wells for drainage and to keep anything from growing in the window wells. 

Then, I finally came up with a this fast and easier method. I use a leaf rake and either a broom or a snow shovel to push any leaves and items in the window well together and pulling them out. I use the broom first to sweep away any spider webs from the well itself and against the window and base. I then sweep all the items in the window well area to one side, and then use the broom to brush all the items into the rake, and then pull them up together, and put it right into the garbage can.

After the well is cleaned out, I wash the window using a long handle on the squeegee so I don't have to get down into the well. Watch my video and check out my blog post on what I use to wash windows that have water marks or minerals on them. 

This may seem like a silly post, but it did take me a few years to figure the best way to clean it, and it was always hard to reach down into there and climbing in and out was hard and buggy. I am glad I figure it out so that I can do it so fast. 

Hopefully, I can help others not have to go through the process, and just go to the fast and easy way to clean the basement window wells! 

Have a Blessed Day!

Best Product to Clean Minerals Off the Windows Tub and Tile Cleaner

I have a product that I really have LOVED for the past 30+ years. I heard of a company in about 1990 that was called "Melaleuca" which had a line of products containing "Tea Tree Oil." 

I tried many of their products and have really loved some. I have used two of their products regularly ever since. My favorite uses for tea tree oil are for burns and for teeth issues. Here is a link to my post about burns and teeth issues. 

The other product I really love is called "Tub and Tile" by "ecoSense" and the company is still called Melaleuca and you can find them on Melaleuka.com. 

I love the product enough that I bought a case of it. I have used it to clean showers, toilets, cleaning plumbing parts, cleaning minerals off the windows, garage door, sinks, etc. 

I have used about half of the case of cleaner I purchased a few years back and really have never found any other product that works like this one. 

I have several posts about using the tea tree oil on burns and pulling teeth etc. I also have a few posts about using "Tub and Tile" that you can search. 

Just wanted to share my favorite product for cleaning minerals. Have a blessed day!

Fixing a Toysmith Classic Pin Art Black Toy - Fun Vintage Toy

For many years, I have had a Classic Pin Art toy in my living room. Currently, I have two in my Livingroom. One large one and one smaller one both in the metal. 

A few years back, one of my grandchildren dropped the smaller one when playing with it and one of the plastic corners cracked. I taped in and then last year, I found one small piece of plastic on the carpet which was worrisome as I have a grandson that put everything in his mouth last year. I taped the corners as I love the toys and they get picked up each time someone is near them. 

I decided a few weeks back that it just wasn't looking good and had put the smaller one in my "get rid of" yard sale boxes I have been collecting. I have the larger one that is intact and figured one size was fine.

I was shopping at a second hand store the other day and found a plastic pin art toy and into my head popped the idea to replace the top plastic piece that was broken with the one from the plastic toy that was $1. I purchased the plastic one for that purpose. 

I get home and can't figure out which box the pin art was in so I set aside the plastic one thinking I may have thrown away the metal one as I searched through all the yard sale boxes.

Imagine my joy when I was getting ready for Halloween, pulling out the boxes of bagged jewelry that I have for donation and in the top of one of the boxes of jewelry was the metal pin art toy! 

I was able to make a video of how I put the new top on and took some pictures that are fairly self explanatory. When taking both toys apart to exchange the broken top for the complete top, I noticed that the screws on the metal pin art toy had metal nuts and bolts and the plastic pin toy had plastic nuts and bolts and think that the metal one was the problem because even my larger pin art toy with metal nuts has some rubber nuts on the top to protect the plastic top from cracking so I think it has evolved over time to the plastic nuts and bolts. 

Either way, I was happy to have a new top on the toy and used turpentine to clean the top of the used one before putting it on the metal pinned toy. It looks great and now I have the large and smaller toy in the living room with my "I LOVE YOU" sign in sign language in it. 

I remember having one of these toys as a teenager so this is a very old, classic toy and I still find joy in playing with them, especially with my grandchildren. 

Have a Blessed and Joyful Day!  

Princess Five Enjoys Halloween in New Jersey

Once again this was a wonderful week!

On Monday we taught English class which was fun as always.  

On Tuesday we had our first District Council of the transfer. It was one of the hermanas birthdays and so she brought cake for everyone! That afternoon we knocked on a door and offered a lady some help, she wasn't really interested, but she let us in and we ended up helping her daughter with her homework, for a few minutes.

On Wednesday we had exchanges, Sister Stos came and joined me here in Plainfield, she's so much fun! We were able to teach our friend Elsa who is just incredible, she understands the scriptures so well! And she loves reading them! Sister Stos doesn't speak Spanish, so I had like 3 people try and convince me that Jesus Christ is the only way we are saved. Which is kind of ironic. And also always a little frustrating.


On Thursday, we had a lot of finding time so to break things up we tried some Walmart contacting, and it didn't go to well this time, but then later that night we were at home planning because we didn't have any appointments and knocking doors on Halloween, isn't the most effective thing to do, but then we got a call from the elders telling us that there were a ton of people on front street, our main contacting street. Apparently in south America, they don't go house to house, but they go to all the stores where they hand out candy. So we hurry and drove over, and there were so many people we took out our free English walking poster and handed out free English class cards, and set up an appointment as well. A man passed us on the street and said, "you be careful, Halloween, in this town." And then walked away, it was really funny in the moment. Also sister Breer made some stellar slow cooker chili, it was so good!!

On Friday we had a super awesome lesson with our friend Marleny. She read the entire restoration pamphlet which usually not many people do, and she had a question about God and how we believe he has a body, so we read in Luke where Christ is with his disciples in the flesh with his disciples and then ascends into heaven. And there was a really cool moment where she accepted what we taught, understood it, and didn't try to argue. It's really sad how often we find contention when we teach people. That night we went to go knock some doors when we were surprised to see that Halloween had been moved to November 1 for some reason. So once again we were unable to knock doors, but we did get free candy so that was good.

On Saturday, we were knocking doors in a new part of our area when the borders were adjusted and we knocked on this house at around 3:30 and woman answered told us she was eating lunch and we asked if we could come back in like 20 minutes, she didn't seem to interested, but we went back any way once we had made our way around the street and a man answered the door this time, it turns out that there were two apartments in this house, his name was Carlos. He told us he used to have a desire to do good things but through time he lost that desire, so we explained the light of Christ with him and offered to study the bible with them as well. He went and asked his wife permission, and invited us right in to teach them a bible study right their. We taught Carlos and his wife (and their one month old named Sam) and their neighbor as well. We were very unprepared, but we ended up teaching a make shift bible lesson about Peter walking on the water, and how we need to focus on Christ. They asked us to come back so overall I think it went well.



Also in that same neighborhood while we were knocking we came to a house and in their mud room while we were waiting for them to open the door there were some odd nick nacks like a human bio mannequin and some broken vintage games. But then a man answered the door and from my line of vision I could see 5 vintage pinball machines, we asked how many he had and he said 30+ as well as skee ball in the basement. He wasn't interested in our message, but it was a fun surprise.

Yesterday was CRAZY! We went to church and one of our incredible members invited her extended family to come and watch her teach in Sunday school! So we had 2 families there but PLOT TWIST! We walked over to introduce ourselves and it was a lady named Mariela who we taught once a month ago, she was the wife of Fernando the Painter who we have had a hard time contacting! She said she works a lot but we will hopefully meet with her soon. We taught 2 really cool lessons the first one we taught was in a laundromat to our new friend Jose it was really loud and not ideal, but he was very curious and had many good questions. hopefully he's curious enough to read the Book of Mormon.😊 And the second one was an English class for a cute family and 2 of their friends in their house they were very grateful for our lesson and said we were welcome back anytime, so we will be seeing them next week as well!

Anyway, sorry this is super long, we just had too much fun this week! So much fun that we didn't take many pictures...😊

1. Exchange pictures! Lighting brought to you by Hobby Lobby.😂
2.Our fun Halloween costumes, thanks mom!

Wonderful Family Day - Signs Of All Kinds

Princess Four attends a young adult / singles church in her college town. The Ecclesiastic leaders sent a letter to each parent of the singles that attend church in their area inviting them to attend church with their child today as a "family day" and then had a dinner after the meeting. 

On a surprise note, Princess Four was asked to be the leader for the women in the church there, and the position is called "President" and the women's group is known as "Relief Society" as they were set up to aid other women and members of the church. Since that time, it has retained that name and the position includes certain responsibilities.

The Relief Society President (RS) is in charge of organizing two ministering sisters (women in the group) to visit other sisters in the group so that each woman has two women who check up on them and visit with them, and help them as needed so that no person is without someone to check in on them as needed. 

They are also over organizing teachers for the lessons, activity meetings, compassionate services as needed, among other things and generally in charge of keeping the women organizations in the local church moving along. 

She was overwhelmed and excited about the opportunity to serve the other women, and get to know them all better. Each president has 2 women that act as assistants or councilors to the president and then a secretary and the have meetings regularly to talk about needs of the women in their area that may be in need of service, help, or love. 

Funny enough, Princess Three is also the RS President in her local church as well currently being put in this past June. This was her first opportunity to be in that leadership role as well. 

Princess Two has been in that position several times now and also was in the more general presidency. There are the local churches, then there are what we call "Stakes" as the stakes support a large tent and without support stakes, the tent wouldn't stand. So, that term has remained from older times as the Stake leaders support all the local leaders in their areas. So there would be a Stake RS President over all the smaller church group RS Presidents. Similar to a principle over the teachers in the school and the district is over the principles of all the schools. So the Stake leaders are like the district over the principles of the school if that makes it more clear. 

Anyway, I hadn't planned on getting that in depth about any of tha,t but it will kind of give you an idea of how it works. 

I drove 8 hours today to picking up Princess Two so we could attend "Family Day" and on the way out of the house, I ran back in to pick up some music CD's I purchased this past week at a second hand store. I didn't look at the song list on the cd's but they were groups I enjoy so I put the first in and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow comes on and I look to my right and the license plate on the car to my right and in front of me has a 111 in it. I then realized the song I was listening to was "Somewhere over the rainbow," which is the song that I hear when I feel my mother near me as she sang it to me each night as a child and we sang it at her funeral. Here is a link to a post about that. 

As the day progressed, at three different stops, we kept finding pennies on the ground and ended up with four pennies for the day. On the way to get into the car and hug Princess Four goodbye, Princess Two picks up a penny just outside our car door and hands it to her sister. As a reminder, they say, "In God We Trust" and I have a post explaining why we pick them up, but basically, it usually is around times when we know we need to be reminded to Trust God in our lives. Here is the original post about that. 

We get in the car to start our long journey home, and put in another CD, and I hoped this CD had "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on it but I hadn't checked for sure as I was in a hurry when I was at the store and figured even if it didn't, my Step-mother is from Hawaii and I thought she would like the CD. I first heard this guy on youtube as this song came up on auto play and I posted about it on a blog as it was weird to have that come up as I usually watch metal detecting video or something that I don't have to watch as I work on projects. So, I recognized this guy on the front of the CD because I posted about him on this post here. I will link the video on youtube here as well as it is such a beautiful rendition! I didn't even know he had a CD  When I watched the video originally, I realized he had passed away as they are spreading his ashes into the sea at the end of the video, so I was excited to see the CD this week. This video has over 798 million views just on the one video and there are many others where people put the words or pictures or rainbows. It is amazing to see that many views on one song by an unknown singer.

I was really happy to know that it did have "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on it. I thought it was kind of funny that I purchased two CD's in a week that had that song on it as I don't buy cd's much anymore as everything is digital, so I really felt like my mother was telling us that she was there enjoying the day with us, especially since I went back into the house after the car was started to get the cd's to listen to while on my long drive! 

As I downloaded the picture of us to post on this blog at the top, I looked at the clock and it was 11:11. I just smiled as that is was just another reminder that my Heavenly Father is aware of our day and how special it was for us to all be together enjoying good things, including my mom. Here is the original post about 111's in my life. 

I also forgot that there are daylight savings issues and that made my day even longer! So, I am excited to hit my pillow in a few minutes and pray for sweet dreams.  

Have a Blessed Day! 

Alternatives to Candy are Still a BIG Hit for Halloween

I was worried that with the cold temperature we have been having, that people may not come out for Halloween.

I had an appointment this afternoon and was surprised on the way home that there were many families out early this afternoon. Usually there are a handful of neighbors with small children that come early, but the neighborhood was FULL of families, cars, and kids running in costumes.

I got home and couldn't get into the house before kids were at my door. I am sure I missed some families already as it was so busy.


I had many of the same faces I get each year, and it is fun to hear the kids or the parents say that they couldn't go home until they had come to get some jewelry, or other fun thing at my house. I was trying to think back to how many years I have been doing the jewelry give away. 

I had to look at my blog for that answer. I started giving out jewelry and other items other than candy in 2015. In some ways it seems longer, as when I look at that post, the kids are so small and my nieces were so young but now they don't come anymore so it is interesting what 4 years changes.

Each year I find some different things to give out as I get new items, or clean out stashes of party supplies, but I have found that many parents appreciate getting options other than candy.

I am including the video I made last year of giving out options for Halloween to Tick or Treaters as it still gives the main information. It is nice that I can take yearly pictures of some of the friends and family that come and post them or share with them as sometimes in your rush to get out of the door, or you are the only parent, it is hard to get pictures of the entire group.

I thought I wouldn't see my sister this year as she has older teens, but she showed up just now and funny enough, I complimented her earrings matching her shirt, and she laughed reminding me that she got the earrings from me when she came and went through my jewelry stash a few months ago! 

Nearly every time I see her, she will tell me she is wearing something she got from me, or will share that she wears the jwelry all the time. I am glad to see that it is getting used and enjoyed!

My nieces showed up as I was shutting things down to wait for a ride from their mom and I got hugs from them both and that was a highlight of my night! 

I hope you have / had a blessed Halloween as it is based on Hallowed Eve which is the evening before the most holy day of the year. They would put on scary masks and run through the house to scare out any evil or spirits of those who have died but not "passed over" spirits that may be lingering in the house, so that their house would be pure and clean before the hallowed day! So, they say it was "pagan" but in reality, it was the Early Christians holiday before more formal and organized religion was pushed upon them. It was that forced religion that called the holidays pagan. Christmas has a similar story.

With that, I hope you have a very Hallowed Day Today!