~♥ Things That Make Me Smile ♥~

There is no place I'd rather be than at H♥ME...seeing certain things puts a smile on my face...here are a  few of them:

A large fork, knife and spoon...my dear Gram had something similar on her wall when I was growing up.

 A picture of my sweet M♥M when she was a little girl.

 This whimsical vase

 Buttons that belonged to my dear Gram that she collected over the years.

 A picture of the log house my dear Gram grew up in.

 A picture of my dear Hubby when he was a year old (sorry for the glare).

 A picture of my hubby and his older brothers in their cowboy hats and western wear...

And of course, visits from dear blogging friends always puts a smile on my face as well!

♥ Kim



WISDOM

WISDOM Exhibition from Andrew Zuckerman Studio on Vimeo.

Another Crazy Weekend!

Happy Friday!

I LOVE the weekends but we have been extremely busy the past couple and nothing has changed for this one, lol!

There are a couple of things that I do around the house to help make our weekends less hectic and more fun!

I try to keep a full load of food in the house!  (Yes, we love mushrooms-fried with butter and garlic…yum!)

 

We keep lots of healthy, available snacks to grab on the go.

 

I have all our eggs and milk delivered to us.  (That’s one less thing for me to worry about.)

 

I have ALL the laundry done!

I also try to keep the house picked up and neat.

When all those things are in order,  I feel like the weekend can get crazy and I will not have to stress out about the house. 

I can just try to relax and have fun!

What do you do to help keep your busy weekends less stressful and more fun?

Do you have have great tips?

Have a great, fun weekend! 

Don’t forget about our November Special,

FREE LIFETIME SHAKLEE MEMBERSHIPS with a order over $70 (member price)

A Get Clean Starter Kit qualifies!

A membership gets you 15% off all Shaklee products and there are no minimums to keep your membership!

THE EVOLVING EYE

(Beached wale near Beverwijk, 1601. Jan Saenredam. 1602. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

This 1602 engraving by Dutch artist Jan Saenredam records the actual beaching of a sperm whale at Beverwijk on 19 December 1601. Crowds of curious onlookers are gathering—some arriving by foot, some by horse and carriage, some splashing through the shallows offshore. 

 

The scene heaves with the industry of Lilliputian townsmen scaling the impromptu mountain with hobnails, hands, and knees. In this close-up you can see two men probe the whale's eye with a sword.

Saenredam's engraving records in Latin the whale's measurements: 60 feet long by 14 feet high, with a circumference of 36 feet, the flukes 14 feet wide and the lower jaw of 12 feet long.

That's the uppermost known size of sperm whales. In life, he might have weighed some 60 tons.
 

The artist pictures himself in the left foreground sketching the whale. His assistants are creating a windbreak from his outstretched cloak. 

In front of Saenredam's self-portrait you can see the whale's shredded tongue—a characteristic signature of killer whales. Some orcas seem to favor tongue above all other whale meat and might only consume that and leave all the rest untouched. 

The state of the tongue in this picture indicates the sperm whale was probably dead before beaching. 

The small inset view of the dead whale also shows the peeled skin characteristic of the work of killer whales.

The whale wears what looks like a tow line around his tailstock. So maybe some townspeople rowed him ashore. Or are they planning to row him offshore (since he appears to be getting stinky already)? 

Seems like the two men behind the tailstock are taking the measurements. Maybe they're planning to divvy the whale up. Even if the meat's rotting, it would be of value to, say, swine farmers. 

The spermaceti oil alone would provide a huge windfall for the town—or whoever "owned" the carcass. Would love to know how they worked that out. A large bull sperm whale might possess three tons of waxy spermaceti. Here's some of what I wrote about that in Deep Blue Home:

This was the treasure lusted after by whalemen of old, an elixir for nineteenth-century medicine and technology as ubiquitous as petroleum products are today and used for many of the same purposes: lubricants and rust-proofing in watches, lenses, and scientific instruments; oils for transmissions and engines; waxy elements in lotions, ointments, glycerines, pomades, detergents; as well as additives to vitamins and medicinal compounds. Spermaceti was, in the words of the eminent whale researchers Hal Whitehead and Linda Weilgart of Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, the oil that lubricated the Industrial Revolution.[i] It was also the finest fuel for candles and such a standard of its day that candlepower—once an official unit of illumination—was calibrated against the light emitted in the course of an hour by burning a spermaceti candle.

Meanwhile, these two jaunty fellows are arriving on scene with a flensing knife, ready to disassemble the remains. 

Though these two flensers seem to have gotten there ahead of them.

We know about the whale's decay thanks to the man at the centerpiece of Saenredam's engraving—the figure of the Count of Nassau-Dietz, a hero in Holland's war of independence against Spain. 

Handkerchief held to war-weary nose, he stands alongside the whale's unsheathed penis, averting his eyes. A delicate hero, outsized.

According to BibliOddyssey (warning: prepare to disappear down an absorbing blogger-hole), Saenredam's engraving is actually a disaster allegory:

This elaborate illustration... belongs to a narrow genre of disaster allegories—of which Saenredam's print is perhaps the finest example—that found a receptive audience, chiefly in the 17th century. Beached whales were regarded as significant... because beachings were a part of the folklore, seen as bad omens and associated with disasters and tragedies... In a series of slightly obscure vignettes, Saenredam alludes to other circumstances that are associated with or thought to be attributable to the whale's appearance on the coast. In the far background we have both solar and lunar eclipses which occurred shortly after the whale's appearance and, like comets and other irregularly occurring natural phenomena, were seen by contemporary observers as harbingers of doom. An unhappy face has been caricatured onto the moon(s). An angel bearing the coat of arms of Amsterdam, watched over by the ominous looking father time, is shot by death and falls from the sky, and may represent the epidemic of plague fatalities in the capital in the first couple of years of the 17th century. In the cartouche below the lion, the cartographic wind symbol can be seen blowing the land away in reference to an earthquake that occurred at the beginning of 1602.

The Latin verse at the foot of the print is by the Dutch poet Dirk Schrevel. I've started to work through a Google translation but it's going to take me a while.

If you want to explore this image further, there's a high-resolution zoomable view of it at Beeldebank.

For a modern image of a sperm whale, complete with radically evolved thinking since 1601, check out this video of Bryant Austin's powerful work.

Trailer: In the Eye of the Whale from MMCTA on Vimeo.
 

[i] From Whitehead's and Weilgart's, The Sperm Whale: Social Females and Roving Males, in Cetacean Societies: Field Studies of Whales and Dolphins, edited by Janet Mann, et al. ISBN: 9780226503417.

Halfpenny Home visits the Hitcham After Seven's!

Sitting here at my kitchen table I am remembering the evening we spent in the company of the Hitcham After Seven's. These ladies started to meet up every fortnight 35 years ago and the current Chairperson Sadie is one of the clubs founder members. They have a guest speaker every time that they meet up and always have a splendid time!
We were invited along after a few of 'The After Seven's' had visited Halfpenny Home and being a crafty lot they knew that we would be able to organize a quick make that they could all enjoy...

We packed up our wicker hamper with goodies and treats from HH...

The china chicken that you usually see on the big table at the studio came along and made itself useful ferrying threads from table to table...

Decorating haircombs, brooches and hairbands with Suffolk puffs, buttons and colourful feathers kept us all busy until coffee time!

Rosina, seen here sitting to the right of the picture is the events co-ordinator and works hard to make sure that the diary is full and that the ladies are always entertained.
I even had a little time to start on a little something for myself, I've wanted to use this lovely brown spotted fabric for ages and then when this gorgeous rose print poplin arrived I couldn't wait any longer!

I'll post the results when I have finished, Nic x

Winners, Review, Giveaway and FREE MEMBERSHIP

Hey there!  I hope that you are having a great day today.

I have a lot to tell you today but first I want to announce the 5 WINNERS for my Basic H Sample Giveaway.

 

 

Joely said...

I'm very interested in trying this product!!! I see it all over blogland and hear so many good things about it!! It makes me want to clean! Lol.
Joelster87 at hotmail dot com

 

 

So-Sew Me said...

My oven! I have tried everything.

Tabitha said...

i am interested in them since they are so economical. Plus I love they are not harsh chemicals and it means less clutter since you dont have as many bottles!

apmantilla said...

I cleaned my bathroom yesterday and had to open a window and put a fan at the door way, time to try this stuff. I am ordering now.

LINDA BARES said...

I'd love to try a sample of this as I've been meaning to purchase some since I stumbled across your blog a couple weeks ago! Thanks for hosting the giveaway!

Congrats and Thanks everyone for entering and also thanks to those who ordered!

Please email me at DonahueWellness@HotMail.com with your name and address and I will get your sample out to you! Oh yeah, please write SHAKLEE WINNER in the subject line.  Thanks! :)

Alright, moving on…

I want to let you know about another review and giveaway going on at Michelle Underwood’s Blog called This Crazy Life.

She is also the Owner of 2 Peas in a Bucket.

To read her WHOLE REVIEW and ENTER to WIN a sample of BASIC H, go HERE!

Here is a some of her review…

I read the info about Shaklee cleaners and how much money you can save...and well, the rest is history. I am converted. I will not buy harsh chemical cleaners any more. I have been converting all of my household cleaners to green products, and when I found Shaklee I was overjoyed with the choices! Everything you need is there...AND it's eco-friendly...AND it's economical!

Let's talk about the savings. Bear with me, this is going to be quick. I won't overwhelm you with numbers. It's pretty simple.

You would have to spend $3400 to get the same amount of clean in the Get Clean Starter Kit.

Now, let me talk a little bit about why this product is eco-friendly. When you buy the Get Clean starter kit you keep 108 pounds of packaging waste from landfills and eliminate 248 pounds of greenhouse gas.

Now that's not only smart, but that's cool.

When I first got the products I was amazed by how little of the product you need to actually clean your house! In the spray bottles I followed the directions (right on the bottle) and mixed the appropriate amount of

Basic H2® Organic Super Cleaning Concentrate with water. The bottle of Basic H2 is going to last a LONG time! I like that!

On to the pictures! I want you to see how great these cleaners work!

(When you see the before pictures....Don't judge. lol)

As ashamed as I am to show you my oven, I feel I must. Look if you dare, but be warned...it's not pretty!

I was so excited with the results that I cleaned EVERYTHING in the house that I could get my hands on! My house was so clean when I finished. After I cleaned there was no harsh chemical smell. My house just sparkled and smelled clean.

To Enter to WIN a sample of Basic H, go to Michelle’s Blog now! 

Each sample will make 2 bottles of powerful cleaner when diluted with 16oz of water.

There will be 10 WINNERS!

Ok, now I want to tell you the BIG NEWS!!!!

PLEASE KEEP READING!

For the month on November,  Shaklee is offering

FREE MEMBERSHIP with ALL ORDERS OVER

$70MN (Member’s Pricing)!

YAY!!!!

I am so excited because this a AWESOME DEAL!!!

A membership gets you 15% OFF ALL SHAKLEE PROUCTS and there is no minimum to maintain it.  The membership usually costs $19.95.

This special does not happen often and this is a great time to save money right before the holidays!

A Get Clean Starter Kit would qualify for the FREE MEMBERSHIP.

If you are planning on ordering the starter kit, I want to let you know that you should add a Scour Off to that order because they changed that kit a little to make it cheaper and took that out.  I can’t believe that but anyway don’t forget to add it to your cart because it is amazing!

Remember that these products make excellent Christmas gifts!  Really they do!!!

With these tough times, people are loving practical gifts especially ones that are great for the whole family, will last for a long time and save them money in the future.  And- they are cheaper than getting a maid for a day, lol!

Ok, I am done!

That was a lot of info.

Thanks for staying with me…if you even got to this point, lol!

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Oh wait, I need to add something else, lol.  I have been getting emails from people wondering how to order in Canada.  You can go here to read how to do that but I recommend ordering through my downline Canadian Distributor named Bette.  You can view all of our Canadian products and pricing on her site.  The FREE MEMBERSHIP DEAL is going on through HER SITE too! 

Have a great day!

SEA POOL 2

Sea: Canon 5DmkII native 24p from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Another Philip Bloom short, set in San Francisco's melancholic extinct sea pool at Sutro Baths.

Music by James Newton Howard from M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water.

(Photo by Bread Crumbs 2006 - 2008, from here.)