What's New Mr. McGoo?

Hello there!  How is life treating you, in your corner of the world?

Without a lot of reoccurring dates, life is a blur here.  Often ask what day of the week it is!  LOL

Here are a couple things I am thankful for, through pictures:

Hydrangea Blooms!

Blooms on a tomato plant.  Got to look for them,

But they are there!

Plenty of other good things happening, too. 

• Working on planner for next year
• County library, now doing curbside pick-up
• Getting back into watercoloring, more often
• VBS still happening, just highly scaled back

Ordinary in the daily routine

During this Covid-19, stay at home, not out of Phase 0, life feeling a touch mundane, finding the Joy. Here is what it looks like:

• seeing my neighbors more frequently.  We meet, on our joined driveway, from a safe distance, for an hour every Friday. This week will be #11.  We've talked about continuing even when the crisis is over.
• Simon has been working at a grocery store for a long while now.  It seemed like he was only getting one 4 hour shift a week.  When busy with college and other activities, that was ok.  He looked for another job, but those were few and far between.  With this pandemic, he has been getting a lot more hours.  Now we happy he didn't find a new job, he might have been laid off. 
• With some birthday money, I bought some journalling stencils.  Been using them in my store bought planner, to make bullet marks; helpful to me for checking things off or highlighting if I didn't get it done.  I have added washi tape, in the back, to designate certain pages as different pages.  Added ribbons, just today, to paper clips, to make it easier to find certain pages, other than the tabbed month.  Yeah, I am a bit geeked out and getting more organized.
• the end of 2019/2020 school year is just days away.  Several subjects have been completed already.  Managed to finalize those grades, package up the work, and get it into long term storage.  Excited by this, because I have been trying to stay on top of the grading all year and it has paid off.
• in our neck of the woods, it is starting to warm up.  Think I have figured out the strategic placing of fans, so that we can keep the A/C off.  Have no firm facts, but seems like a few fans running, certain curtains closed, unnecessary lights off, would be cheaper than running A/C, curtains open and random lights on (a habit I am trying to break).  There is a touch of joy in this for  me.
• last but not least, guys who are content with simple meals and ones they can fix on their own.

What brings you Joy?

Really AWOL

Not sure why I decided to check in, on a blog I haven't touched in over two years.  I am here though.

Things that have changed:

• Oldest is college age and figuring out what the future looks like
• Youngest is rapidly wrapping up Junior year of high school
• Covid-19 has radically changed how life is accomplished around here
• Husband has been working from home since mid-March and we are kinda liking it
• I have taken up photographing, with a dslr camera, and dabbling in watercolor
• I am figuring out what life will look like after the 2020/2021 school year as that is our last year homeschooling

Here are a few photos, of life around our house, as an update:

Resent watercolor& pen postcard

Last strawberry jam from 2019 batch

Theater kid being himself.

Covid schooling doesn't look to different from

regular home schooling.

Some of my favorite flowers. 

Charlotte keeping watch over the front yard.

Hello All!!

Starting to blog again.  Yes, I tend to go Absent Without Leave (AWOL) for long periods of time.  It is usually those times that I either loose focus in a lot of fun stuff or am switching gears and learning a new hobby.

Since my last post (9/10/17) much has happened in our lives.  Some aspects, I am just not willing to share in the World Wide Web, they are just to personal.  Other things have been happening too!  Senior year of high school related items for our oldest, wisdom teeth out, theater shows, rehearsals practices, sports, colds, holidays, outside classes, many holidays, etc.  Do you get the point? 

Anyway, as I surf the Internet for ideas of homemade cleaners, craft ideas, new recipes, watercolor ideas (a brand new hobby as of the beginning of 2018), I have been pondering if I wanted to delete all my various blogs that I've started and fresh.  This got me thinking that just a slight tweak of the purpose of Joy Discovered and I could keep this one going.  My thoughts are that there are so many DIY sites out there; it feels like there isn't room for another.  This is totally fine for me, as I'm not always that original with new topics for posting.  What does work for me though, is sharing the original post, on a craft/recipe/whatever, and how it turned out for me, what I might have done differently, to make it unique for my household and me.

So, changes will be coming to this site, to accommodate these ideas.  It is all fluid, for now.  Hope to get rolling on this soon.  Changes I am immediately thinking of:

·      tweaking the labels to be more concise

·      creating a overall color scheme I like and can stick with, hopefully for awhile

If you get notifications that I have posted or stumble across this blog,  let me know what you think.  Would like to bring a bit of Joy into your life too!

Quick Post

another busy day here.  Lots of cooking, organizing,and desk work.  Here is what I am thankful for:

• figuring out how to print double sided to new printer
• guys doing yard work
• home made meatballs

Know there are more, life has just been a bit busier than usual.  May or may not be able to post in the coming few days.  May go old school and had write out thankfulness.

Exhausted! A Good Feeling!!

Yes, it feels good to be exhausted.  Proof we got stuff accomplished today.  Also proved by getting over 11,000 steps, with out thinking about it and not shopping a lot or being a tourist.

Things I am thankful for today, in random order:

• both kids gone for a couple hours tonight
• inexpensive mums
• beginnings of fall decorating
• impulse purchase
• TV not on, at all, today
• ACTs completed for oldest

Friday Already?

This week has been slow and fast.  A very real struggle between both kinds of moments.  Thank goodness for clocks, lists, and calendars.  Something might have gotten dropped.

It comes down to this for the day:

• happy teenager
• call back auditions going well
• a husband who likes to cook
• being hyper focused, yet flexible
• friendships, yes again, it's been that kinda week
• understanding that life happens
• patience