CRE8365

Hey y'all! I joined a group the beginning of January, the site is http://cre8365.com/, the purpose is to create something, anything everyday, or nearly everyday and post it there, it's art/drawing/painting related and such, but anything creative is allowed, it can even be something you cook, write or make.

I have been having such a good time with this, I am a creative person, but like many other folk, I procrastinate, I THINK about creative things each and everyday, but allow life to fill all the nooks and crannies of my daily routine.... this site encourages, this site prompts, this site teaches, this site allows you to be creative everyday....  right now, the membership is small so it's easy to get to know everyone, but it's growing each and everyday.

I create something each day and post it there, the other members do the same, we share, we critique (that's NOT a bad thing), we encourage each other. If you can't think of something for the day, there are a list of daily prompts, today's prompt is "house plant", I'm really likely to post a picture of a plant I have inside that just happens to be blooming.

If you can draw, or not, stick figures are welcome, as well as digital art, there are varying levels of talent there, everyone has a good time sharing their daily creations. Check it out, join up, it's free and it's definitely fun!

http://cre8365.com/

When you visit, be sure to check out the forums, that's where most of the action happens. You can see my daily art posts here
http://www.pinterest.com/wrethaoffgrid/cre8365/
and my art blog
http://westtexasdoodleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/CRE8365 
I hope to see you there :)

#CRE8365



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Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Here I am....

Hmmm, I really thought I'd written something here since October, but apparently I haven't, shame on me :)

So here I am, back again, let me tell you what has been going on since Oct., that job I was working and LOVED, well it has fizzled, turns out there isn't enough work for 2 people in this area, although the 2 of us seemed to be doing just fine, apparently the boss' boss doesn't agree. I am still on the payroll and will still do team jobs, but for now it's just slow going. So I decided to take a bit of time off from working, mainly on account of finding a long lost friend.

A couple of months ago, I did a search on FaceBook for a friend I knew back when I was 12-13 years old, long story short, I found her! And it happened that she was going to be passing through around Christmas, she agreed to dip a bit further south and stop in for a visit.

She spent a few days here and it was so much fun, we picked up right where we left off, it is amazing the similarities of our lives since we were parted so many years ago. She must have some gypsy in her blood, she loves to travel and does so, living in her full size van, she lives off grid too, but mobile. Now we will be one of her stops when she passes through this part of the country.

Another tidbit of info, on Dec 22, we celebrated our 8th year living off grid, it's hard to imagine that it's been 8 years, and yet, I almost can't remember our life before this, I certainly can't imagine living any other way. Even with the so called inconveniences of living off grid, I wouldn't go back to city life for all the money in the world.

Tonight I sit here, next to the wood burning stove, it's frigid outside, it would be considered cold inside by most people's standards, but I'm happy, happy, happy!

As far as working goes, I'm still employed by that merchandising company, but chances are I'll be going back to work as a caretaker for my friend, we have taken a break from that and it's time to get back to doing that job, even though I don't consider it a "job", I enjoy doing it, wish there was more money in it, but there are other rewards :)

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year!






All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Updates and random pictures...

This week has been a very light week, my work partner and I got all of our work done on Monday, for the entire week! So this week has been almost a vacation...

A couple of weeks ago, PB's brother and friend came in for a visit, a bit of a surprise visit, that's fine though, they are fairly low maintenance guests and they helped PB around the sky castle, they even got in on some bridge building.

I made my monthly pilgrimage out to the big city (3 hours away) on Tuesday but didn't do much shopping this time, I just picked up some staples, a 25 lb bag of sugar and 4 big creamers from Sam's, I tried to find some black polo shirts at WalMart, but they had every color BUT black, so I'll order them from Amazon, I found Dickies black polo's for around $10, so I'll snag a few of them. I wear these to work, the companies want us to blend in with the employees there, which is somewhat confusing to the customers.... oh and I have learned a few Spanish phrases for when I'm on the border, there are many non-English speaking customers, I know how to say "I don't understand Spanish", I decided I needed to know how to say "I don't work here", so I got on Google and found the phrase, including the pronunciation "No trabajo aquí" or more properly "Yo no trabajo aquí". I haven't had a chance to try out my Spanish on anyone there yet, I'm sure I'm butchering the pronunciation, but it will get the job done, or at the very least, allow me to get my job done :)

One of the things I got done this week while work was slow, I took Casper (Raggmopp) to the vet to get a check up and get his shots, I am mainly concerned about rabies with him, he is allowed to roam around, he doesn't go far and he is very well behaved, he mainly goes to visit the neighbors, but while outside of the fence, he is exposed to more risks than Zoe is, so he got his vet visit first.

He was very VERY well behaved, it was my first time taking him anywhere, I had never put a collar or leash on him, he seemed to enjoy the whole thing, he stood very still for me while I leashed him up, he acted almost proud that he was getting leashed up and taking a trip. At the vet, he did very well for his exam and shots. I now know he isn't a problem for car trips.

Here is a random shot of the small gate, it is painted red and looks quite interesting, especially in the semi-wet of a late summer/early autumn shower.

Here is some history, this plant is garlic chives, I originally planted this when I was a pre-teen in my dad's backyard, the seeds you see here are the direct descendents of that original plant, I dug it up before moving away and have kept it alive and thriving every since, I may be incorrect in calling it descendents, it is actually part of the original plant I grew, dug up, divided and brought with me.

Here is another shot of the sky castle.

All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Updates on life....

Well, here I sit, trying to put on my best sad face because I haven't been here in a while, but I'm in such a good mood that my sad face just will not appear :)

A volcanic plug just around the corner from us :)

It's the tail end of our rainy season, and this year we actually HAD a rainy season, in fact there were times it was a bit much, not that I am complaining though, we NEEDED it and it was good to have it. The only problem I have is when it's raining so much, it makes the unpaved roads a little difficult (sometimes impossible) to navigate, I got stuck on the main ranch road coming in, fortunately I was able to get myself moving again, it was good experience, and if I had been truly stuck, someone would have picked me up and brought me in.

Well I have some good news, I've been working working working, I am no longer a caretaker, I did that for 5 years for my friend, it was time for both of us to take a break from that, we are still good friends though, I chat with her most days and am still available if she needs me for something.

You can just make out the sky castle in the lower left....

My new job is merchandising, something I did for 10 years at Best Buy, I loved doing it and missed it very much, but never thought I'd get to go back into that field again, then a friend who lives nearby (CS) asked me if I wanted to ride along with her and help her do some jobs, I jumped at the idea. Next thing I know, I'm filling out an online application to work for a major merchandising company.

We drive all over west Texas servicing all the dollar stores, Alco, WalMart, we have even gone into a few of the bigger truck stop fuel stations to set up displays. I've never been one to like traveling, but this is quite pleasant, I get to see the sun come up, and often get to see it go down. We work long days, and we work hard, but having a great teammate to work with is such a pleasure, we work great together.

Same view as above, but not so close, can you see the sky castle?

Mostly what we do is move merchandise around, reset displays and shelves, we are given a set of instructions (planograms), along with price strips, peg labels, and other materials, sometimes it's as easy as just changing out a couple of shelf strips, other times it's as involved as removing everything from a section (or two, or more), changing out the shelves, placing new price strips (or peg labels) then stocking the shelves with the product. We have "regular" weekly and biweekly jobs that are the same each time, stocking-straightening-counting inventory, when we are done with a job, we take a picture of two and that gets sent in to the company along with a report.

I have been slowly putting together my "kit", my working gear, the first thing I purchased was a set of knee pads, I crawl on the floor-a lot, these are concrete floors and not forgiving to knees. Today I purchased a bag to carry my tools and such, it's really a baby-bag, but it works just fine for what I need.

In the beginning CS and I were working 12+ hour days trying to catch up on the backlog of work that had been leftover, jobs that hadn't been done and needed to get done. That was hard, but even harder on CS's hubby and mine, leaving at 6am and not getting home until 7-11pm, fortunately I think those long days are behind us now. I expect to be busy through Christmas, then it should ease off but we will still have lots of work to do. We turn down work on a regular basis, work that would require us to be gone for a few days at a time, for now it's not something either of us wants to do, but it may be something to consider in the future.

I'll leave off for now, I need to go to bed so I can get up early in the morning for another day, one last thing, I thank the Lord above for dropping this job into my lap when I needed it, it was time to move on from the caretaker job, this merchandising job came around at the perfect time, I am truly blessed. :)

All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Water, water, beautiful water!

As of tonight, technically last night as this is now the morning, I finally have running water again. PB had been wanting to move the small tank (300 gallons) from the porch just outside of the kitchen to the ground, either under the skycastle or under the porch. So earlier this week he drained the remaining water out of the tank, removed the various hoses and the pump and moved it.

It is in a better spot, and with the pump outside of the kitchen, it's much quieter now. He re-assembled all of the hoses, hooked up the pump, turned it on, and viola, no water.... so all week long I have been doing what I used to do, walking down the hill to my neighbor's house and hauling up 2 gallons of water, we are pretty frugal with our water to begin with, this week we have been uber-frugal! Few dishes have been done, very little cleaning that required water....

PB decided there was an air leak in the hose on the pickup side, he was able to get to it yesterday evening, disassemble the pump and determine for certain where the air leak was, he had to use another hose, one that fit better, he put everything back together, turned on the pump, and for an agonizing few seconds nothing came out of the faucet. Then water, wonderful wet water began to flow.

I just did a big batch of dishes, I think every plate we own was dirty, certainly all the silverware and pretty much everything else, I can't believe I'm getting excited about doing dishes, I think that is the chore I like least. I planned on taking a shower before going to bed, but someone who will remain nameless, who took a shower, left the light on and the windows open in the shower, so it's full of bugs right now, june bugs and all sorts of other flying creatures.... I'm not interested in fighting them tonight, I'll take a shower when I get up in the morning.

Hope your week has gone well :)



All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

It finally happened, I've been called sexist..... :)

I wondered when it would happen, and quite frankly I'm surprised it's taken this long to occur.... on the other off grid site where I write, I was accused to being sexist because of something I wrote, sigh.....


Rather than copy and paste the comment, I did a screen cap of it, here it is

As moderator of this site, one of my duties is to moderate comments, I get to decide if a comment gets through or not, and it's on MY article, I considered hitting the trash button, then figured I would take this opportunity to educate Nik, hopefully what I said broke through his or her feminist agenda. Here was my response:

I just don't know what else I could say, I kept my religious views out of it, I just stated fact, and the fact is that men are generally physically stronger than women, I have no problem with that, sometimes I wish I could open that really tight jar, or heft a piece of plywood on my back and carry it up a ladder, but wishing it isn't going to make it so, I LOVE it that I get to live in a mostly traditional heterosexual male-female pairing, I LOVE it that my man builds for me, I LOVE doing the cooking and other domestic goodies, I certainly don't expect him to work on the sky castle all day then cook dinner that night, we are a TEAM, he does what he does best, I do what I do best, it works. The reason I say "mostly" traditional is because I am the breadwinner in the household, I certainly don't mind that, if he were to go out and work a 9-5 job or anything else that would take him away from home, then we wouldn't have what we have now, we would have to pay someone else to build for us. We have managed to set ourselves up in a pretty good situation for us, I make no apologies for that.

So what do you think about this? If you wish to read the article I wrote that sparked this debate, you can find it here:
http://www.off-grid.net/2013/08/25/how-to-go-off-grid-with-little-money/


All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Fridge and Batts... It's a Done Deal

We finally got our batteries and fridge straightened out... For the batteries, we went with real golf cart batteries this time, got them from Sam's Club, these are Energizer CG2, they are 6 volt batteries so I bought 4 of them, had to hook up 2 pair to make 12 volts, each battery is 220 amp hours, so now we have 440 amp hours to use. They are deep cycle batteries, true deep cycle, not hybrids like I had been buying before.

In the image above, you can see the 4 batteries, they aren't hooked up to anything there, you can also see the metal tray they are sitting in, that is in case of a leak, and in the upper left, the green thing, that's the Xantrex C35 charge controller, I have the front removed to expose the innards, I needed to change the float and bulk settings on the unit to work with the new batteries.

The biggest drawback to this particular type of battery is the posts on them are small, they were designed to be used in golf carts, so they didn't need a large post to hook up multiple things, but we managed OK. They charge fully each day and have gone through a couple of days of clouds without running out of power.

We hooked up the batteries and allowed them to do their thing for a few days before we plugged in the freezer-fridge conversion, I wanted to make 100% sure my inverter wasn't being a problem, it had been shutting down and the fault light coming on, turns out it was because of the dying batteries we had it hooked up to.

Now we have the new fridge hooked up and it's working great, that fridge is a bit smaller than our old one, not that big a deal, but the baskets I had for the previous one are too big, I can use the smaller basket, just barely, fortunately that freezer unit was still very new and it still had the wire basket that comes with them from the store, that has been a MAJOR help.

We use an external thermostat to convert a chest freezer into a refrigerator, you can learn more about that process here: http://wretha.blogspot.com/2013/02/freezer-fridge-conversion.html

The graphic below is the way we have the batteries hooked up in series and parallel, click on the image to see it full size.

All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

I'm baaaaack, again :)

Well, again it's been a while since I've been here, sorry and thanks to all those who check back in from time to time to see if I have really forgotten this site. :)

Much has happened since my last update, I mentioned before about our community's churches taking turns hosting the Christmas and Easter programs, Christmas was at the other church, this year Easter was hosted at our church, I was pretty excited about it, we had 10 people in the choir (half from each church) and we sounded pretty good, after the Easter service (which was mostly singing) we had a big breakfast, it was quite fun, and filling :)

The two major things that have happened since writing last, our chest freezer-fridge conversion died on us, the actual freezer (not the external thermostat), I was working online one day and heard some strange snapping/popping sounds, I got up to investigate and found smoke coming out of the back of the freezer, I shut off the power immediately, it was one of the most vile odors I have ever smelled. I am very thankful that it happened during the day and I was here when it happened, I don't know if it would have gone any further, but I have to assume that when there is smoke, fire is usually what happens next.

So for the next month or so, we were without a fridge. It isn't a major problem we have lived without refrigeration before, it's an inconvenience to be sure, but not a deal breaker.

The other thing that happened was our deep cycle batteries were just about on their last leg, it got bad enough that it was messing with the inverter, causing it to shut off and go into fault mode at random times during the day, it didn't seem to happen at night, only during the day while the batteries were charging. It also did a strange thing, when the fridge would come on, everything would be fine, but when the fridge shut off, it would cause the inverter to shut off and go into fault mode. It would only stay off for a few seconds and come back on, I suspect that MAY have been what caused my fridge to die, or it could have been that freezer was old (it was used when we got it) and it was its time to die.

We did get another freezer (I'll write more about it later) but didn't want to hook it up until I had fresh batteries, couldn't take the chance of losing another fridge if that was what the problem was before. I finally got a fresh set of true deep cycle batteries, golf cart batteries (I'll write about those later), we have them installed, hooked up and they are working like a charm, the fridge is hooked up and running like a charm as well.

I'll post a detailed article on the new fridge and batteries soon, I promise :) Oh and I'm thinking about a re-design on the old blog, it needs a facelift.




All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Merry Christmas!

Surprise! I'm still alive and well, it has been far too long since my last post, life has been good to me and is being good to me, been really busy. :)

Let's see, to update everyone as to what has been going on since I last posted, which was about my latest MP3 player, the verdict is in, I love it, I do wish the text on the screen could be enlarged, but I've used it long enough now to have the menu pretty much memorized so it's not such a struggle as it was in the beginning, one of the things I really REALLY love about it is the long battery life, it's supposed to be 50 hours, while I don't have stats on my real use, I can say that at the most, I charge it every couple of weeks.

I am still a caretaker, but only have one lady now, I randomly get called for/about other people, but it's just the one that I am taking care of more or less full time.

I am still living off grid of course, and loving every minute of it. We have been living off grid for 7 years now and I can't imagine living any other way. Last night I had a nightmare, I dreamed that we moved back to Dallas, PB was building a home in a semi-affluent neighborhood, I was crying and begging him to move back here, I couldn't imagine how we would live in a big town, how would we afford it? What would we do? What about the property in west Texas? I am sooooo glad it was just a dream!

One thing I have been doing is Zentangle or doodling, it might not sound like much, but it's very fun, I did a set of Christmas cards for my closest friends, many of them attended a class I taught on zendoodling, I am not a certified Zentangle teacher so I had to teach zendoodle :)

Here is one of the cards, you can see the rest of them here http://westtexasdoodleblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/christmas-cards-2013-doodle-17-35.html

This was part of my "spend less money DIY Christmas" thing, I'd say it was successful. I'm even thinking of starting soon on making cards to sell for next year, and even making other kinds of cards, birthday, thank you, get well/sympathy, inspirational...

I have been busy testing out some off grid goodies, I'll write more about those later (teaser!).

PB's family came out for Thanksgiving, it was the first time we had guests stay over when it was really cold, it was quite a lot of fun, the day they arrived, we had just had a major ice storm and the neighborhood had lost power, of course we still had power, but no internet, that lasted a couple of days. We kept everyone warm with a propane heater that came out of an old RV, it worked pretty well, though it did suck up the propane, I'm glad it was only for a few days.

Zoe and Casper are doing well, we finally found out what Casper was, his mom was a lhasa apso and his dad was a basset hound, that certainly explains a LOT about him! All good things.

It's been very busy this month, today is the first day I've been able to slow down, we had our annual Christmas eve program at church, we have 2 churches in our neighborhood, we take turns doing Christmas and Easter programs, next year will be our church's turn, it's quite fun, but a LOT of work getting ready, especially for those of us in the choir. It turned out really great though, it was fun to see all the people.

PB is doing well, right now he is out on the deck fabricating a grill for me, we have been grilling outside and have decided we love it, but buying charcoal is expensive and it's messy, so we can use propane or a combination of propane to start a wood or charcoal file, we do hamburgers mostly, but having a better setup, I'll be able to grill other things as well.

That's about it for now, I hope everyone has a great Christmas, I know we are, God has blessed us greatly! :)



All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Quickie Update on the MP3 Player

A quickie note about my new mp3 player, I'm still getting used to it, the physical size of the unit is great, the storage size is good for me, the interface is taking some getting used to, it's not as intuitive as I think it should be, either that or I'm just used to my old Coby... the text on the screen is tiny, I can barely read it without glasses, a bit of a problem when I listen to it at night in bed, I suspect once I get used to the interface that will not be a problem any longer, with my old Coby I didn't have to really look at the screen to know what I was doing, I had the interface memorized and I instinctively did what I did... with this new one, well I'm sure once I use it enough my fingers will learn what to do without having to really look at it so much.

I do like the fact that the battery lasts so long, I haven't even begun to put a dent in the first charging. It also functions pretty well as a voice recorder, last Sunday in church I used it to record the sermon, I also used my laptop, the laptop had better sound quality, but there was nothing wrong with what was recorded on the mp3 player.

All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!