PAD 4/4/12

I took lots of pictures today as Michelle and I finally got to have the picnic I promised her last week. But, since it is late, I am only going to post one of them. Here is my smiling girl who was so happy to have a chance to be outside and play at the park after a week of Mommy being sick.

We definitely had a full day today...a picnic at the park, piano lessons, mowed the pasture, bathed both dogs, made pita bread for chicken gyros for dinner (yum!) and I only needed a 15 minute nap after dinner to have enough energy to teach class at church this evening. Yep, definitely feeling better. :o)

Well, I'm going to go get Mike off his computer and make him get into bed as he is still battling this a bit. Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/3/12

So far, so good. Of course, it's only been 3 days, but that's a pretty good blogging record for me. :o) I'm happy to say that by about 5 o clock this evening, I was feeling much better than I have in about a  week. So good, in fact, that I was able to do this...

That, my dears, would be raspberry jam, still boiling and ready to go into cans. I noticed the leaves opening up on the berry canes this morning and realized I should probably get busy canning the rest of the harvest from last summer. I used 1 1/2 of the 6 bags of berries in the freezer for this batch. Looks like I still have a bit more canning to do, but I've got to go get more cans. I think the next batch will be raspberry topping and some syrup. YUM!

My canner only holds 7 jars, so the big jar in the back was the extra from the batch. It will go straight into the fridge. Hmmm, I'm thinking maybe some toast and jam for dessert tonight. ;o)

I'm so glad to be feeling better. Just in time to take care of Mike now too. :o) Poor guy, he had some kind of cold before I caught this nasty thing, seemed to get better, but now he's feeling bad again. I hope he has a better immune system than I do.

Well, I'm off to figure out what we need to do to catch up on the school work we missed while the teacher was sick.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/2/12

I have 3 photos for today. I started out the day feeling much better than I have in almost a week which was great until I looked around my house. It was a mess! Not really a mess since my family is pretty good at cleaning up after themselves, but the carpets desperately needed vacuuming and you could write your name on most of the furniture. So, Michelle and spent a good part of the morning getting the house cleaned up and looking better. Angel was home, but she had a headache, and since it is her one day to sleep in, I didn't want to bug her.

Here is my favorite shot of the day. Those are my grandmother's frames she's wearing while she's dusting. Isn't she just stylin'? 

These next two are of Layla. She was favoring one of her legs this weekend. We had no idea what she did, just that she did not want to put any weight on it, so Mike took her into the vet today. Xrays showed nothing wrong, but she tested positive for Lymes. The vet wasn't super sure that was causing the pain since it usually doesn't manifest itself in just one body part, but he didn't have any other answers. So, she got some pain meds and antibiotics and is already doing better. As you can see, she doesn't have any trouble chasing the ball with Coco. :o) Glad to see her up and moving about again. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings

Starting over...again

Yes, once again I've proven that blogging just isn't my thing. Sometimes I think I should just give it up, but then I go back and read past posts and relive that time all over again. So, I'm going to attempt to start over with this blog as our family journal. Hoping to use it as a place for our family and friends to keep up with what's going on here.

For the month of March, I started a Photo A Day (PAD) Journal on my Facebook page. I enjoyed it for several reasons. First, it was an easy way for me to share with Nick and Angel some of the little things going on here at home while they are gone. Secondly, it forced me to get my camera out every day and figure out something to take a picture of. I even took my camera off the auto setting! And you know what? I actually did it! I might have been a day or two late posting the pic, but I did take them and get them posted, except for the last 6 days when the nasty cold that has been going around finally caught up with us. I've spent the better part of this past week trying to sleep it off. I still have a lot of congestion, nasty cough and no energy, but the chills, body aches and fever seem to have subsided (I think).

Anyway, I've decided to move that journal to this blog. This way if I want to give more details to the photo I can. Also, I have a few family members that aren't on Facebook, and now they will be able to keep up with us as well.

So, without further ado, here's my pic for April 1, 2012

Today's picture was an easy one to figure out. My beautiful Angel turned 18. She has turned into such a beautiful young lady. Although the last few months have been difficult with her being away at school, I enjoy the weekends when she comes home and I love to hear how much she is enjoying the career choice she's made.  I could get all sappy on here about how great and wonderful she is, but since I'm still not feeling well, and I tend to get all teary-eyed anyway, I better stop here. Crying does not help a stuffed up nose. Nope, not one bit. I love you, Angel! (Too late, here come the tears.)

Ok, now I need to go find another box of tissues. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings

Wednesday's Walk-Meet Mr. Snowman

I can't believe it is already the middle of January! Yes, the time is going fast, but that fact that we've had little to no snow this year makes it hard to believe we're so far into winter already. Although we usually have a pretty good layer of snow on the ground here from mid-November to the end of March, we seldom get snowman snow. You know, the heavy, wet kind that sticks together to make snowmen and snowballs and stuff. Ours is usually pretty light, dry and flaky, which makes it easy to shovel, but more difficult for a little 8 year old to get out and do something fun in it.

Although we didn't get snowman snow, the weather warmed up enough to start melting what snow we had and Michelle was ecstatic to find out it would stick together enough to make a snowman. I wasn't dressed to play around in the wet stuff (no snow pants on, and NOT wanting to play around with wet pants), so I stayed on the shoveled sidewalk and took pictures while she made her very own snowman for the first time. We've made them before, but this was the first one she made on her own. She was so proud of him. :o)

Aw, I think he's blushing!

Till next time...God's love and blessings!

Misc. Monday-Nerf war!

So Michelle and I thought it would be a fun idea to get Mike a couple of Nerf guns for Christmas for the two of them to play with. I'm not sure exactly where my common sense was when we made this decision, but the decision was made, and the guns were bought. The guns sat in their package for several days after Christmas without being used. Finally, one afternoon while Mike was at work, Michelle got the guns out, set up some barricades in the office, and left one gun, some ammunition and a note stating that they were at war, by the door. There was a ton of giggling going on all afternoon as she waited anxiously for him to arrive. Needless to say, when he did get home there was total chaos in the house. :o) I had to finally call a truce for dinner. We were trying to have a family game night that night since Nick would be heading back to OK soon, but those guns kept coming out from under the table and around corners and nerf darts were flying everywhere while we tried to play cards. I have to say it was one of the funnest nights we've had in a while. :o)

A day or so later, Nick took Mike out for his birthday and they picked up a couple more guns, only these two were semi-automatic--less reloading of ammo. This time I was determined to get some pictures of the fun. Here's a couple I took from my fortress in the bathroom.

Nick's hideout was in the office.

Mike, with his semi-automatic, took over the living room.

Michelle had her headquarters in my bedroom. Please don't shoot the unarmed civilians!

While I was a bit worried about something getting broke in the house during these wars, the only casualties were the nerf darts that Layla found and shredded. :o)

How about you? Did you get anything fun for Christmas? What kind of family games do you like to play? I better close this here. Till next time...God's love and blessings!

Through the House Thursday-kitchen remodel

I LOVE having our own home. I love being able to do more than just rearrange furniture when the room isn't working for us. Our downstairs family room/now turned office was one of the first remodels we tackled, but I still don't have any decent photos of it yet, so I'm going to wait before I post on that.

Recently, though, I was tired of rearranging and moving things to try and make things work in another room of the house-the kitchen. Don't get me wrong, I have a pretty nice kitchen, it just has a few quirks that were making it difficult to work in. The most difficult quirk is that it is located on the second floor of our house. Yes, I know, our house is upside-down. Lugging the groceries up stairs isn't quite as annoying as taking a wedding cake down the stairs. The kitchen also isn't all that large, whose is? So a lot of my cake decorating (cake pans, plates, etc) and canning supplies were kept in the garage, but as I needed them more and more often, and being too lazy to go up and down the flight of stairs in the rain or snow, I found myself leaving them in the kitchen and trying to find a place to hide them. It wasn't working-definitely, not working. And don't get me started on the weird, dark wood ceiling.

So, with a $450 budget, I decided to see what we could do. Enter my handy-dandy hubby with his power tool skills and my trying-to-be-patient-and-not-rush-this-job staining skills, and we now have a kitchen that is both beautiful and functional. Since I spend about 50% of my weekend time in there, that makes for a much happier me. :o) Here are some of the before and after shots.

The far end of our kitchen is supposed to be a breakfast nook. This is what it looked like when we first moved in. We didn't have an extra table, so I used a card table. No one has ever used this as a breakfast nook. Ever.

Our dining room is part of the living room. It is open on 2 sides, one side has a window, and one side is a half wall where the stairway goes down stairs. Since there is no place in there for the china cabinet, it was put in here. As you can see, it doesn't quite fit properly.

Here I tried moving it to the other wall. In the foreground you can see the table Mike made for this room. It's used more as an extra counter-top than a table. This is where I do all my cake decorating. The china cabinet drawers housed a lot of my decorating tools, but as you can see, I needed additional storage. I had already started clearing things out of the china cabinet when I remembered to take some pictures. This is just ugly!! I can't believe I lived with it like this for almost a month before I finally decided it was time to renovate.Don't worry, I didn't get rid of the china cabinet. I love it too much. It found a new home in our daughter's room as a toy cabinet. She has lots of drawers for the little things and display area for her pretty stuff. I'll have to take pictures of it to post later.

We picked up some unfinished cabinets, stain, counter-top and wood from our local home improvement store. I stained the pieces and then Mike and I put it all together.

Since the window is lower than the cabinets, we decided to simply make a desk area there. Mike put a shelf up underneath for additional storage.

I used some material I already had and an old, tension shower rod to hide the clutter underneath. I like the fact that I can change this out with the seasons if I choose.

This is where Mike's wood working skills came in. He took some simple pieces of wood and made this awesome set of display shelves for me to match the ones he made earlier on the other side of the window.I love that my teacup collection is out where they can be seen and used.

Sorry about the poor picture, but this is what it looks like all finished.I LOVE it!!! The cabinet on the far right is all drawers, and I was able to totally organize my cake decorating supplies. My favorite and unexpected part of the whole remodel is the desk area under the window. This is where I now sit to do any of the fondant work for my cakes. I used to stand at the table, and I still do for most of the cake work, but for the sculpting, I get to sit there and watch the birds or, this time of year, the snow fall. Have I mentioned that I love this? I am so excited that we were able to do this for under $450.

I need to figure out a window treatment. This is one room that changes with the seasons so I'd like to find something that is pretty neutral that doesn't cover too much of the window. Someday I'd like to figure out a way to change the ceiling, but for now I think we've learned to "tune it out". :o)

Anyway, I better close for now. Thanks for taking a peek at our "new" kitchen.

Till next time...God's love and blessings!