Thank You and Craziness

First of all I want to thank everyone who commented and gave me such great advice on my last post you are all now entered in my Giveaway.  There is still time to put in your 2 cents if you haven't already, I will be selecting a winner tomorrow.

I'm sorry if I confused people by having them think that those color stripes along the sides, tops, or bottoms of the images would be in the finished product, they will not, and neither will the obnoxious watermarks.  But I put them in obnoxious places for a reason, to make it harder to edit them out, so I'm afraid they were meant to cover up parts of the image. :(

Ok, now on to why I haven't replied to any of your lovely comments, returned emails, or even had time to eat lunch until 3:00 every day.  Yesterday my day started with a phone call from our daughter Angelfish.  It went something like this...ring, ring..."Hi, I'm fine, but can I talk to Dad?"  Ok, for those of you with grown children, you know that that is never a good way to wake up in the morning!!!

It turns out that on her way to Ash Wednesday service she was stopped at a green light waiting to let a firetruck go through the intersection on a call when the person behind her wasn't paying attention and ran right in to her!

Thankfully Angelfish was fine, and so was "S" who was riding with her, but her brand new car didn't fare quite as well.  It did really well all things considered, but she will need a new bumper and some other repair work.  Based on the pics of the other car, we are all just VERY thankful that she and S were not badly hurt.  They are both sore with neck and back pain and are working with their doctors to make sure they didn't damage anything that may not show up for a day, a week, or more.  Thank you S for being there and helping out, we really appreciate it!

As the day progressed we got news that our appraisal had come back, and it was low...which is a bummer and will probably mean that it won't be worth it for us to refinance and save a little money.  In what seems like another life, I was a mortgage loan officer, so I understand all too well what Private Mortgage Insurance means, and it adds a lot to a monthly payment...sigh!

I know there are so many people who have homes that are now valued at half of what they payed, so I won't moan and groan too much.  Plus we don't need to refi, it's just that the rates are so good right now, and we haven't been in our home that long, so we thought why not?!  But we are fortunate, we didn't buy at the height of the market, and our house is still valued above what we paid, so all is not lost.  Kind of like our daughter and her friend being ok yesterday, there is always a silver lining to almost everything.

Just when I was feeling bummed about how the day was going, I heard the mailman at our front door and that can only mean one thing...that he has dropped off a package...yipee!

It turns out that my sneaky husband (who had agreed that we weren't going to exchange Valentine's Day gifts), had sent me something I've been pining over for 2 years!  I rarely pine over anything, much less for 2 whole years, but the moment I saw these etched hyacinth bulb vases on the Cox and Cox website a few years ago I knew I had to have them!  I even have proof that I've been drooling over these for 2 years because you can read about them here!

But because they hail from a company located in jolly old England I put them on the back burner and added them to my list of all things European that I can't get here in the US!  So when I saw the box sitting on my porch yesterday and saw where it was shipped from I almost jumped for joy! 

Mr. Tide was bummed that they hadn't made it in time for Valentine's Day, but I thought their timing was absolutely perfect!  It was a very bright spot in an otherwise nerve-wracking day!


 

I know some of you are saying...umm those are cut flowers not bulbs in your "bulb" vases missy!  I know, and I may even be too late to force hyacinth bulbs at this point, but I don't care...I've wanted these dang vases for forever so I'm going to use them.

I have had a vision of them sitting in my windowsill filling my kitchen with the lovely scent of hyacinths for so long now that I may just go buy some planted hyacinth bulbs at the nursery and remove all of their dirt and plunk them in these vases and pretend they started as tiny bulbs...yup I'm that crazy!

For now, until I go crazy and go on the hunt for hyacinth bulbs, they will serve as little vases for my pale pink ranunculus.  And if you see some woman shaking dirt off of perfectly planted bulbs, just back away slowly and don't ask her what she's doing...she's on a mission and you don't mess with a woman on a 2 year mission!!!