In Memory...

Of an amazing man. My Grandfather. He could lift the back end of a tractor off the ground with one arm, skin a deer in seconds, grow the biggest tomatoes, and tickle your ribs until you peed your pants! Rest in Peace.




Chester "Buster" Forry
(Died December 25, 2009)

Chester Emmert “Buster” Forry, age 93, of Clarksville, Iowa, was born at home on a farm south west of Clarksville on November 28, 1916, to Frank and Charlotte (Doty) Forry with twin brother, Lester “Bob” Emmerson, the youngest of seven brothers and sisters. He received his education at Jackson #1 Country School near his home.
He married Glendora Smith on April 9, 1939, at the Forry Farm, rural Clarksville. A double wedding was held with brother Bob and Gracie. Buster and Glendora had two daughters and three sons: Judy Drenth, Dixie Thurm, Bill, Dan and Jim. They were divorced in 1970.

He then married Harriet (VanDeest) Bohlen on November 2, 1975, at the Immanuel United Church of Christ in Clarksville. They established their home southeast of Clarksville at the Butler County Conservation Headquarters. They were members at Immanuel since 1967. In June of 2008 they moved to town after their home was flooded.

Buster enjoyed hunting (deer until December of 2008), farming, trapping and fishing, but most of all he enjoyed working for Heery Woods State Park for 32 years. He made many of the trails and first campgrounds in Heery Woods. He received a plaque for his many years of service and support to the Parks Program given in 2006 by the Butler County Conservation Board. He was awarded “Wildlife Conservation Lifetime Achievement Award” on March 12, 2005, by Butler County Chapter #64 Pheasants Forever. In 1988 he began serving as a Butler County Reserve Deputy for several years. He was a cancer survivor since 1955, had participated in Relay for Life every year and was one of the oldest cancer survivors in Butler County.

Buster passed away on Christmas Day, December 25, 2009, at the Community Nursing Home in Clarksville, of natural causes. He was preceded in death by a grandson, Scott Thurm; his parents; four sisters, Mary (in infancy) and Martha Ciavarelli Purcell, Wava Voss and Lela Biekert Chandler, two brothers, Nathan and Bob; and two sons-in-law, Lawrence Drenth and Gerald Thurm.

Buster is survived by his wife, Harriet, Clarksville; two daughters, Judy Drenth, Decorah, IA, and Dixie Thurm, Denver, IA; three sons, Bill (Becky) Forry, Castle Rock, CO, Dan (Bonnie) Forry, Clarksville, Jim (Jenny) Forry, Grundy Center, IA; and step-children, Randall (Trish) Bohlen, Parkersburg, IA, Sharon (Jim) Leerhoff, Clarksville, and Scott (Jackie) Bohlen, Durant, IA; 20 grandchildren; 20 great-grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews.

YES! I am still alive!!!

wOw! What a month! I mean seriously, I have met myself coming and going since before Thanksgiving, and word has it, Christmas is in 9 days!

Let's see, I've been busy with this...



and this...



oh- and how about this...



and that's just my home life!

Then there is work... adopted a family in honor of our boss a great Veteran with three small kids, so I was out shopping for them. Then as HR, I got to purchase 43 different gifts at different price ranges for all our employees. Add Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Volleyball and basketball practice and you have this...




So, this is my tree... I wasn't going to put one up, but figured I should, it is Christmas... or is it Easter... or maybe Halloween... oh who cares... it can fly with any season!





Hope you all have a great Holiday Season! I am off to my internal office Christmas party, then maybe, just maybe, between my next Christmas concert, wrestling meet, basketball scrimmage, and floor Christmas party, and 13 year anniversary celebration... I will see you again!

The Junk Fairy

Look!


The junk fairy was at my house last night! O.k.... that's not my house, nevertheless I was visited!

Lying in bed last night around 9:30 (getting up early to work out, work, parent teacher conferences, running Wiley to wrestling, supper, laundry) I heard knocking, scraping, shuffling outside.

The dog is her kennel, the kids are sleeping, Mike is in the next room who could it be? Robbers, ghosts, my imagination?

I asked Mike to check, he found nothing... nada... zilch... sleepier than I thought

Got up this morning, worked out, grabbed my big thermos of steamy good caffiene and headed out the door...

*gasp* what's this...



ooh... and this...



It was the JUNK FAIRY!!!

I snapped a couple quick pix of the treasures and headed off to work... didn't even get to go digging.

I have discovered my Junk Fairy was my mother. She attended the auction that I missed last night, and this was all stuff they were going to throw into the dumpster...



yes- my fairy junk mother loves me!

Is it too soon...

Is it too soon to be looking forward to Spring?

Fall is in full force (27 degrees this morning on my way to work)Yeah, I said fall... the leaves are off my trees... all thirteen truckloads are down at the city compost pile... thanks to some great teamwork by my children and their friends... (for $20.00 of course!)

HOWEVER... I miss the green trees, the flowers, the smell of living things... all things that don't occur in the midwest in fall. Nope, everything here is pretty much shriveled up and dying. (talk about that in another post)



So, I have decided to share some of my niece's talents behind the camera. One afternoon last spring she decided to have my daughter (the one with the umbrella)and two other nieces dress up in some of my mother-in-law's cedar chest treasures. I absolutely LoVe these pictures. They mix vintage with nature.



Enjoy! They brightened my mood on this dark dreary fall day... hope they do the same for you...

I done good!

Well- last weekend I had my first craft booth at the high school where I grew up. My mom has been doing it for years, so I thought I'd see if my junking tastes would fit in with the crowd.

Whew! What a day! My head was SO big I was afraid I wasn't going to get back out of the building!!! I had people lined up and backed up in my booth! Many great comments and a couple invites to other shows... yep, I done good!

Here's some pix of my booth! Thanks for stopping by and have a GRRReat day!

It's a BOO Party!

The air is cool, the season is fall,
Soon Halloween will come to all.
Ghosts and goblins, spooks galore...
Tricky witches at your door.
The spooks are after things to do,
In fact, a spook brought this "BOO" to you.
The excitement comes when friends like you,
Copy this note and make it two.
We'll all have smiles on our faces,
When we see who Boo'd who's places.


I was boo'd by Robelyn at http://www.redneckchic.blogspot.com/. And I'm passing on the BOO to these four:

1. Sue at http://chiccottagejunk.blogspot.com/

2. Jill at http://jillruth.blogspot.com/

3. Janelle at http://www.thefarmerswifeiniowa.blogspot.com/

4. and Ann at http://magpiecottage.blogspot.com/

This BOO party was started by Toni at the Tattered Cottage.

Please keep the fun going by following these instructions:

1. You have 24 hours to work your spell.
2. Copy and post the Halloween Boo Poem with the instructions for playing.
3. Pick 4 blogs you enjoying visiting and tell why you enjoy visiting them, with a link to their blog and remember to link back to me.
4. Go to the original BOO party post at the Tattered Cottage and add your MckLinky.
5. Let's see how fast and far this spreads between now and Halloween.

The silver lining...

Well- today is a very crappy day! (view from outside my office) One of those days where you would pay anything to just stay in bed. The sun started to finally peek out from behind the large rain clouds around 8:15 this morning. It was so dark so late that my kids chewed Mike a new butt this morning for getting them up so early! (they were actually running behind!)

So with the weather report... my tub is delayed and my drywall compound isn't dry, so my husband gets a 'free day' today. AND we're a day farther from my new bathroom! HOWEVER... we did lay out the tile last night to figure out a pattern... I see the silver lining to all this.

It's close... so very close...

Whoo Hoo!! Look at my tub!!!!!

O.k. I'm a little excited (I sleep with this pix every night!) my tub is on it's way. This bathroom remodel has been time consuming and drawn out! I dream of my beautiful bathroom where I can relax in a tub for the first time in 8 years!

I ordered the tub last week and they sent me this pix of what I should be receiving at my house tomorrow! Granted, we're not 100% ready for the tub yet, but with an extra week or two we should be on the home stretch!

So far I haven't killed my husband and buried him in the backyard... only because I need his help to carry up the tub! I will most defintely post pix of the bathroom when it's ALL DONE!!!

Camping

Last weekend we dusted off the old pop-up camper for our 'one weekend a summer' camping trip.

This time we took it to Mike's old family farm, right along the river. It was a great family weekend... no plumbing, no electricity... just us and nature!

After a few mishaps with the camper... we had to sleep in the back of the truck, about as primitive camping as we could have got.

However- my niece and I took some great pix of the farm... and all the cousins...

It was a great relaxing weekend!

Pictures

I haven't gotten to really play with my camera lately... but I did play with the pix of my nephew.

On the large frame, I found scrapbook stickers that say, "Always remember to wonder" and the small pix I put "Cherish" on it...

Now if I'd just make time for myself and get camera happy again!

I'm horrible!!!

A MONTH ago I said I was going to try to get back on here and be diligent... I'm HORRIBLE... a procrastinator... that's it.

I really have no excuse, work is still slow, DH is still at home taking care of the family and house... he gets to work on projects while surf the internet at work looking for ideas....

The one thing we are both procrastinating on is the bathroom. I was gung-ho to tear it out... and have created more headache in the process. In fact, two more rooms to demo now. That's the bad part of remodeling an old house. I've cracked open the big bag of jelly beans and they are EVERYWHERE!

Where do we start after tear out? Call the plumber, right? I'm scared too... because the plumbing, like everything else is original... and scary! (that's how we got to remodel the other two rooms... corroded copper plumbing). I hate to think of the dollar amount he's going to tell me it takes to make it 'right'...

We have another bathroom... maybe we could just use that one forever?

A long intermission

Well- I'm going to try to be back again... baseball has ended for the year, no more Cub Scouts for a couple months... my husband is stay-at-home college dad... so my life should just revolve around work and junkin!

Spend some hard earned money on a nice Nokia camera so I could take pix of the farm, my grandparents flooded house... haven't gotten a chance to do either- but did get to take some pix of my nephew and Mike a couple weeks ago... always wanted to be an aspiring photographer since my newspaper days in high school!!!

Happy Easter!

Easter weekend was another busy weekend. Full of family, food and fun. I have a secret dream, besides opening my own junk store, I would love to decorate cakes professionally!
That being said, I am an avid fan of Duff Goldman and Ace of Cakes, or any Food Network Challenge that revolves around cakes. They all use fondant on their show, so I figure how hard can it be? How pretty would my cake look? I decided to spend Friday all day, literally, to find out!
Couldn't find all the necessary supplies to make it from scratch, so I headed up to my local bulk food store and purchased dry fondant to use. Decided to make a butter cake with raspberry filling... made it double layer and carved it into an egg. Rolled out the fondant, tried picking it up with the rolling pin, stuck to the counter, tried it again, stuck to the counter... AH HA! I'm going to beat it the next time... I rolled it out on a cookie sheet... and ta da! Draped it onto the cake, then it started cracking... grrr, not as easy as Duff makes it. So here is my first attempt at a fondant cake!
The bunny cake is an attempt with the kids... I discovered my cake decorator was broken, so we had to hand frost it all... didn't turn out too bad with a 7 year old and 9 year old's help... although they couldn't help but to eat some of the jelly beans before it was served.
So it was a great Easter... we'll see what next year's cakes turn out like!

Is it Spring yet?!?

Friday was a beautiful day... but the forecast wasn't looking so good for the rest of the weekend... I decided to add a little spring to my porch before the snow fell again... in about 15 minutes, and after digging though my garden shed, garage and basement, this is what I came up with. Good thing I decided to do it on Friday.

Saturday was one of the largest farm machinery auctions in the area... they always have some flat racks of goodies, after heehawing around I decided to go... grabbed my coveralls, gloves, boots and hat, I headed out. Got a few goodies I will have to post later... when it started to snow and sleet, I called it a day. 36 degrees outside. Not my idea of auction weather.

Sunday continued to snow... got about 3-4 inches of huge fluffy flakes... am really hoping this is the end of winter here in Iowa... but you can never be too sure!

A day to play!

Yesterday was the first day that I actually didn't have anything to do after work! Kids got their homework done, I picked them up McDonald's and a game for the Xbox... it was all good!
While Mike was at class I decided to give the house a little spring decorating! I can't do anything outside (besides it's too depressing!) So it was easier to take my junk and bring spring in!
I think my favorite piece is my window! My sister and I have a decal business in my house and I have wanted to print some off to decorate with... accomplished it with this mirror. It's so much cheaper to make them yourself than have to buy them!
Hope this gives some inspiration to the others like me still stuck with the prospect of snow... spring can still come inside!

Win the Necklace!!

BTW- speaking of my friends at the Junk Revolution, if you are into creating things out of cast aways... please check out the site! We are a great group of people who have ideas galore! http://junkrevolution.com/community/

Busy this weekend!

I finally got some nice sunshine and warm days to get outside and get some projects done. Thanks to all my friends over at Junk Revolution for the inspiration. I've been stockpiling junk for years and am now finding that a little paint can make anything look great! Bring on spring!

The winter blues

It's the beginning of February and no end in sight for winter to be over. Although the temperature is suppose to be tipping the 40 degree mark by Friday. Yeah! That's shorts and t-shirt weather in Iowa during winter!
I've been itching for an auction... I need new junk, or stuff, to play with. My garage door is snowed shut, and so is my shed, so I can't go play out there. My basement is so cold I can't go and play in my craft room and I hate to drag all my stuff upstairs to the dining room table, that is what my craft room is for!
Looking forward to the next 6 weeks flying by... here's to the countdown!