Scrapbooking is not just for Photos!

My daughter, Mishel, teaches Kinder-garten-aged children at a Bilingual school here in Montana (yes, Montana!) I saw what she has been using for Calendar Titles in her classroom and offered to make her some new ones. (I admittedly love any excuse to "scrapbook" something!)

I sorted through my paper stash and found printed paper and stickers that seemed appropriate for the months of the school year. After making them and decorating them, I matted each strip with cardstock, to give them some sturdiness.

I cut out the letters with a stencil I like to use, called a Coluzzel. But you could also

use a Cricut....I was just too lazy to get mine out and set it up. I matted around each letter on the names of the months, but the days of the week I left alone. I also matted around each sticker, to give it more definition.

Mishel glued magnetic strips on to the

back of each title, so they will go on her calendar board.

We are both very pleased with how

these came out!

My Pet Coati

When I was 13 years old, my parents sold the family farm in Oregon and drove our family of seven, in a red jeep pulling a small house trailer that was loaded to the gills, over 3000 miles to Chiapas, Mexico, to be self-supporting missionaries there. As you may very well expect, our life there was entirely different in just about every imaginable way.

Over the three and a half years that we lived in Chiapas, we accumulated many "pets". At times, our back porch looked like a petting zoo!

One day, a local man brought a tiny ball of fur to Daddy and asked if he wanted this little creature. None of us has ever seen what he told us was a Coatimundi. I fell in love with this little creature and took it upon myself to feed it - first with an eyedropper filled with milk and gruel, and soon after with fruit. The little guy was very attached to me and would curl up in my lap whenever I was sitting and or at my feet when I was in bed.

This is what Wikipedia says about Coatis:

"Adult coatis measure 33 to 69 cm (13 to 27 in) from head to the base of the tail, which can be as long as their bodies. Coatis are about 30 cm (12 in) tall at the shoulder and weigh between 2 and 8 kg (4.4 and 17.6 lb), about the size of a large house cat. Males can become almost twice as large as females and have large, sharp canine teeth. The measurements above relate to the white-nosed and South America coatis. The two mountain coatis are smaller.[7]

All coatis share a slender head with an elongated, flexible, slightly upturned nose, small ears, dark feet, and a long non-prehensile tail used for balance and signaling.

Ring-tailed coatis have either a light brown or black coat, with a lighter underpart and a white-ringed tail in most cases. Coatis have a long brown tail with rings on it which are anywhere from starkly defined like a raccoon's to very faint. Like raccoons and unlike ring-tailed cats and cacomistles, the rings go completely around the tail. Coatis often hold the tail erect; it is used as such to keep troops of coatis together in tall vegetation. The tip of the tail can be moved slightly on its own, as is the case with cats, but it is not prehensile as is that of the kinkajou, another procyonid."

Of course, in 1970 we did not have the lovely access to the internet that is available nowadays. I don't even know if anyone on the compound had a set of encyclopedias. Daddy may very well have questioned some of the locals about the habits or eating patterns of coatis. Under any circumstance, the little guy flourished and lived happily as a house pet for some time.

One day, he disappeared! I was just heartbroken. We looked absolutely everywhere and questioned everyone, to no avail. I eventually gave up and figured he had either wandered off or been stolen. A couple of months went by...

One morning, Mama, called to me. I found her with her head in one of our storage closets, rummaging through a box of winter clothing. "Look what I found", she told me. And there in the box, snuggled into her winter coat with a fur collar, was my little Coati, sound asleep! None of us knew that coatis hibernated! (And how in the world would a person know when a hibernation period for an animal would be due, considering that in Chiapas the median temperature was 70 degrees --year around??)

Our mission was located in a pine forest locale, and as Coati grew up, I took him more and more often to hunt for bugs and grubs on the forest floor. I remember how excited he would get when he was after something...he would make a funny little squeaking sound and dig furiously in the dirt or decaying matter of fallen logs. Grubs seemed to be his favorite thing to eat, although he was happy eating fruit and would dig through the kitchen compost as well.

Eventually, we allowed him to just wander in and out of our lives, his time away becoming longer and longer. One day, he just stopped coming home. But I was ok with that. He had filled a spot in my heart that needed a friend. I have never forgotten him.

Starting African Violets

For our 5th anniversary, Larry bought and installed a garden window in place of our regular kitchen window. As it is a north-facing window, I knew it was ideal for growing African Violets--something I have been doing since my grandma started one for me in the early 1980s. All she did was cut off a few healthy leaves from one of her many plants, put them in a small glass of water, and keep them in her north-facing kitchen window for several weeks, until they developed roots growing off the stems.

Ever since, I have kept Grandma's violets growing by rooting new ones when the old ones become old and unhappy. I have this cute little vintage jar I picked up at a garage sale, which works perfectly for the job. I will let these roots double in length before I plant the starts in potting soil.

I like to use potting soil made especially for African Violets as they require a certain amount of porous material for their roots to spread. In a couple of months, tiny little leaves will appear around the planted stems. A few months later, the violet will be happy and healthy and reward you with lovely blooms.

Violets do not like to be watered from the top (for some obscure reason), so about every 2 weeks, I set the pots directly into a bowl of water, add one drop of liquid violet fertilizer and let the plant soak up the water on it's own time.