What are you thankful for?

At this time of year everyone is talking about Thanksgiving, football & Black Friday Sales.
I think that we should be thankful every day for the small things.  I am thankful for a kiss from my five year old, a smile from the 11 year old.  A husband who can pop a pizza in the oven, on evenings that I am busy.  I am thankful for the nights the puppy decides to sleep all night.  Days like today when the sun is shining and the leaves are so vivid.  I am also thankful that my good friend Gay Lynn is improving and that her chemo is not making her to sick.
My life is so busy at times that I wish for simple days when I can turn off the alarm and snuggle in the cozy warm bed just a little longer.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and that you all have the opportunity to just be still and enjoy the time with those you love.

I made the front cover!

I know I am usually telling you about an article I have written.  This time I am the subject of an article.  If you go to http://nowmagazines.com/onlineeditions/editions/1011weatherford.pdf you can read about some of my activities. 

This morning at church people kept stopping me to tell me they read the article.  I was shocked, it just came in the mail yesterday.  I hope you all enjoy it.
Loree

Thoughts on writing & this blog

Some days I get down when I realize that I started trying to write in 1994.  If my book were a baby it would be graduating from high school this year.   That book started out as a typical Civil War Historical Romance.  Then in about 1995 I discovered that Time Travel was the hot thing selling so I transformed this story into a time travel.    Then a couple of years later learned that Time Travels were no longer selling so I cut out the time travel elements and went back to the original format. 
Fast forward to 1998 when the thing in romance was the modern day cowboy/baby/cop book.  If a book was to sell it had to have one or two of those elements.  Then paranormal & vampire stories were all the rage  and I said this is for the birds.  I am going to write the story I want and not worry about what is the popular thing to write.

In 2000 I had my first child so all my stories revolved around heroines who had babies.   By the time daughter # 2 was born in 2006 I was so sick of trying to follow market trends I just gave up on writing.  Also some where in there my hard drive crashed and my stories were all gone.

2010 I decided the best way for me to write was to blog.  As you can tell I am not posting that often and when I do my post are random, (Hmmm like me) Someone ask me once how do I characterize my blog.  It is not a home decorating blog, or a quilting/sewing blog, nor is it a travel blog, or even a christian devotional blog, certainly not a healthy life style/exercise blog.

So if you are into Sewing/Quilting, crafts, cooking, bible study, writing/reading, genealogy, history, civil war reenacting hang out for a while and I am sure we will cover the topic

Garner Girl has a little bit of all my interest, my followers are few and that is ok.  Because I do this for me.  Sure I would love to have 100's of followers, but I am just fine with the few I have.

Wow all of that to say, I would like to share a cool site I found today.  http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/
Grammar Girl has answers to those grammar questions we struggle with.  I tried to enclose a link I hope it works.

A family in Need

I personally don't know Mr Mathis but I do know some of his friends in the Garner Community. They are asking for prayers and donations for his family as he is in the hospital battling cancer. I added a link to the donation page earlier today you can also go to
http://jackmathis.chipin.com/jack-mathis-fighting-cancer
to make donations if you would like to.
Thanks Loree

Bragging on another Garner Girl

Can I brag for a minute? It is not often that we have the opportunity to brag that one of our own is a published author. My cousin Keisha who also grew up in the Garner community will soon release her first book. We are all so happy for her, and I just wanted to take the opportunity to toot her horn.
Keisha is an amazing lady who has learned so much about living with diabeties and has written a book to help parents and students learn to prevent this disease. Please check out her website http://stompoutdiabetes.com/

Love ya Keisha and can't wait to get my autographed copy :)

Scrap'n evening in store

I am so excited I am meeting 5 or 6 of the ladies from church to scrapbook tonight. I haven't worked on my scrapbooks in ages. I am torn between working on my 5 year olds baby book and starting to work on photo's from my trip to England, Ireland & Scotland. Hmmm I think the trip is looking pretty good right now. Not that I don't love my baby girl...

But there is a special place in my heart for London.

The Food...

Big Ben....

Parlament...

The Tower Bridge....

Then there is the silly art that just makes me happy....

I usually don't care for cities. But I loved London, and would love to go back and see even more of it. Just tell me when and this girl will be packed and ready to meet you at the airport.

Clouds

Each afternoon we gaze at the sky hoping to see clouds.  Some days a few will form, but so far there has been no relief from this scorching drought.  I keep seeing things about a group planning to pray on Sunday afternoon for Rain.   I am not waiting until Sunday.  I am praying for rain every day.  I am urging my friends to all pray daily for rain. 
When you look out the window at this dry land,  stop for just a moment and ask the Lord to send us rain.  

Me a published Author!!

I have put this off as long as I can stand it.  I am going to be published!!!!!
It is not novel length fiction, but hey it is a start.  I will be doing some freelance articles for the Fort Worth edition of www.examiner.com  I found out about 2 weeks ago.  I am super excited.  I will Be the Fort Worth Christian Living examiner.  As soon as the first article appears I will be sure to let you all know.

Crazy Texas Weather

My husband called me just as I was about to leave town to tell me there was a bad storm near Millsap and that there was large hail in it.  So I decided to play it safe and go back to the office.  Just as I parked the hard rain started, then people from all over town started showing up to try to park their cars under the covered parking at my office. 
I sat there for about 20 minutes till I got the all clear call from my husband and then the call confirming it from my parents.  We lucked out with very little hail at our place and none that I saw in town. I drove home watching the clouds, once I got home I started watching the news coverage.  We had some scary storms in North Texas and Oklahoma.  My husband kept going back out to look at the clouds.   It seemed that every few minutes another cloud was forming in our part of the county and then they blew up into huge scary storms as they moved  north east.
One Tornado touched down near Springtown and then there were reports of storms in Saginaw.  I text my friend in Springtown to see if they were OK, she assured me that all was fine.  I was a little nervous about the Saginaw storm when I couldn't get my cousin to answer.  He finally posted to FB that they were OK. 
By nine o'clock I was exhausted and decided I couldn't do any one any good by worrying so I decided to call it a night.

Next Monday morning bright and early I will Leave for England, Ireland & Scotland.   The trip of a life time.  I am excited beyond words.  I will try to post some shots and updates along the way. If I can learn how to do that from my mom's iphone.  We have decided that my phone will stay at home in the states.  (Let mom & dad pay the international phone bill ;)