Blue Monday

This is my first time to participate in Blue Monday. I have plenty of blue things around my house. I just had to decide what I wanted to start with for the first week. I may sometimes post Blue Monday on my craft blog and sometimes do it here just like I do for Pink Saturdays.
Today I will show you my collection of blue dala horses. I have orange ones too. But for now I will just show you the blue ones with the white one thrown in for contrast. But the white one has blue in the painted design. This is a reflection of my Swedish heritage. My grandmother on my father's side was born in Sweden. Thank you to Smiling Sally for hosting Blue Monday. Hope you have a happy Blue Monday!

Saturday Shopping

We had signed up for flowers for today at church in honor of our 29th anniversary which was last Monday. Scroll down for Pink Saturday post about that last week. Anyway, last time we did flowers we had done plants in pots which worked out very nice as an alternative to a vase of flowers. Besides I did not feel like arranging flowers this time and we forgot to call the florist on time for a nice arrangement from there.

So off to Home Depot we go. I had a $25 gift card for Home Depot that was burning a hole in my pocket. When we visited a few weeks ago I saw this Garden Rocker seat and decided I needed that to make it easier on my back when working in the yard. Notice the price in the corner $24.95. So I figured my gift card would take care of that.

I also spotted this portable potting tray and saw that it was on sale for $6.00. Because we live in a mobile home in a park, we are not supposed to have a lot of extra stuff around the outside of the house except for garden related things and patio furniture. Not everyone adheres to that though. But we as good citizens try to do the best we can. So I thought this portable potting tray would be very helpful in giving me a place to repot and what ever. I can put it on one of the side tables on the deck and sit in a chair to work with it. Another way to ease my back. After all the pain I had been going through earlier, I need to be more conscious of what I am doing to prevent my back from getting so bad again. Physical Therapy sessions helped me to heal.
Below are the plants we decided to get along with the two new blue pots. Here is how they look in the altar area. We were very pleased with the effect. The first picture is to the left side of the altar.
And this second one is to the right side. The dark fabric you see on the edges of the photos are banners that hang to the outside of these shelves. After the service we take the plants home. Now I all I need to do is keep them alive. I saved the care tags to help me know what to do.
Now for the fun part. After we checked out I looked closely at the sales tag and realized I had gotten the Garden Rocker for $18 something. That means both the Garden Rocker and the Portable Potting Tray were covered by my gift card. How cool is that?

Happy and Blessed Sunday to you!

I'm Entering Another Give Away

Elizabeth at Thoughts from an Evil Overlord is hosting a special give way starting Oct. 5. Go visit her to find out how you can enter. She is celebrating her 2 year birthday since receiving a bone marrow transplant from an anonymous donor. That is a special thing to celebrate. Sign up if you want to join the fun.

More Decorating

Today I got some more decorating done. Fall and otherwise. The first picture is the top of my linen press. Sometime I will post a picture of the whole thing. My father made this linen press one year for me. I saw the plans in a Country Living magazine and fell in love with it. I asked my dad if I bought the plans for it, would he make it for me. He said he would buy the plans himself and make it too. So the year he made it, it was considered our anniversary, my hubby's birthday, my birthday and Christmas gift all rolled into one. It was worth it too. It is very well made and prized possession of mine. Made even more special because my father made it for me.

Some new things are added this year in my fall decor. The pumpkin in the middle I found at a Hallmark store marked down to be sold as is. There are some marks on it, but on the back side. So displayed the way I have it, the marks don't show. The one to the left I got recently at Hancock Fabrics. The three smaller ones to the left I got a Walmart for 99 cents a piece. The garland is new this year too. On the shelf the scarecrow bears are also new which I got at Walmart. The basket of fake flowers I got on clearance last year at Michael's and the sprigs in the vase on the left I also got at Michael's. That vase is actually a pitcher and it sits on a matching trivet. I think that was a wedding gift. If it was, I have had it for 29 years! The pictures above show us and our daughter. You can also see two of my teacup and saucers from my collection. That is the last of the stuff I have for fall decor. I need to get more things or something because I have more areas I can decorate.
Today I also took the time to hang up some signs I had bought, but had not gotten around to doing anything with them. So yay, they are up where I can enjoy them. I have several old timey type signs, in wood or metal. Above is a new sign for my laundry room. I found it at a craft store called Beverly's. It is sort of like Michael's. Beverly's has fabric and Michael's doesn't.
I already had the top coffee sign. I got the bottom one at a local store that was closing and had things marked down. The grinder on the right I found at an antique store one day. I saw coffee mugs displayed with cloth napkins on small shelves like this in a restaurant earlier this year. So I adopted the idea for a couple of my coffee mugs. The little metal pitcher was in the stuff that had been my husband's grandmothers things. I have several old things of hers.
The peanuts sign is another thing I got from the same place I got the coffee sign. This is in the soffit area in my kitchen. Those little white marks on the cabinets are exploded whip cream. I have one of those whip cream things like they use at Starbuck's to dispense whip cream. I had a hard time getting the lid off of mine one day and it exploded whip cream everywhere. Today when I climbed up onto the counter to put the sign up and rearrange things to accommodate the sign, I found spatters of dried whip cream up there. That was last winter when that happened and I am still finding bits of exploded whip cream!
This laundry room sign I already had up, but moved it to another location and hung the new one where this one was originally. This one was a gift from a former co-worker. It was a good feeling to finally get those signs hung up. That has been on my to do list for awhile.

Pink Saturday

Visit my sewing and craft blog for this week's Pink Saturday post. Thanks for visiting.

I Entered Another Give Away

Suzie at Suzie's Button Creations is hosting a give away. I decided I had to enter that one too. She will be doing her drawing on October 6th. The picture shows one of her loving pets.

I hope I win something. It would be fun!

Friday Ramblings

Yay! It is Friday. Sometimes, ok all the time, I am so happy when it is Friday. I can unwind, and most Fridays I look forward to not needing to hurry up and go somewhere the next morning. Tomorrow is not a hurry up and go somewhere day. But we will have things to do that need to or should be done tomorrow.

DEVOTIONS

But I wanted to share with you something I have started doing. I have made several attempts to have a regular devotional and prayer time for myself and God. And guess what? I started doing that on Monday morning and have continued all week. I do it first thing in the morning. Well, actually going to pee is the first thing I do. But after that, doing devotions is the next thing I do. At first I had to force myself to focus on it. Now that I have done it all week, today I noticed it was easier to focus on what I was reading and try to take the time to reflect on what I read. I hope it will get easier as time goes by. I know it will evolve as well. Reading some of what you blogger friends do as a prayer/devotional time inspired me to get with it again. Thank you blogger friends.

Another reason I wanted to start doing devotional time again is a new bible study we started at church. It is called, "Opening the Book of Faith". It is a book of Lutheran Insights for Bible Study. The first class was last night. It is a five year plan to help us open up the Bible and deepen and broaden our experience in Bible study. The first portion is 7 sessions long. I am excited about this and plan to participate as fully as I can.

COOKING ACTIVITY
The cooking activity for Stuffed Soup went well. And tasted good too. It was made with Chicken and Corn Chowder Soup, Chicken flavor stuffing mix and shredded cheddar cheese. I was going to buy preshredded cheese and I realized just in time to get the block cheese and take one of my cheese graters with me. I am glad I did. That gave me an extra task to have some one do. One of the patients has dementia and needed instruction for every step I wanted her to do. Another one kept saying "I can only see out of one eye." She needed reminding that she can still do these tasks. It worked out great. We had people, grating cheese, measuring out the stuffing mix, cutting fruit, squeezing oranges(which had to be cut first), stirring the stuffed soup mix, scooping it into my special cooking unit, scooping it back out when it was done and finally tasting everything. Successful but tiring. Don't know yet what we will do next Friday. Depends on who we have and what we can do with them. We may do a baking activity next time.

DRIVING VIEWS
There is a favorite view I drive by on my way home. I always tell myself I need to stop and get a picture of that view. Well, today I finally did that. The colors on the grapevines are starting to change. The color will increase as the season goes on. Also the lighting changes as the sun sets earlier. Then if it is a cloudy rainy day it is a different look altogether. I should try to get pictures as this scene changes. I just love this view. I have to look for it as I drive home otherwise I miss it if I blink as I drive by. This is looking south west which means the sun is coming from the left in the picture.

No Time to Post

Nikki at Blah Blah Blah Blog was complaining about not having time to post on her own, because she used up all her time checking out everyone else's blogs. Which I have to say are fun to read. There are so many interesting bloggers now it is hard to limit my time reading them all. My list that I follow keeps growing. But I do so enjoy it. I love seeing how others decorate their homes and get ideas from their posted pictures. I also enjoy reading what others do with their days, besides work. A sneak peak into other parts of the United States since you are all from everywhere.

Now I need to get going and pull my stuff together to take to work. We are going to do another cooking group today. We are going to try to do that as a regular thing. This will be the third week we have done this so far. Today will be Stuffed Soup, hand squeezed juice and fruit salad. Plenty of things for people to do to prepare this snack meal. Should be fun. Tiring too for me, but fun for the patients. That is what counts.

Happy Friday!! Yay! It is Friday.

More Fall Decorating!

The top of my pie safe is now decorated for Fall. Here I have the 3 pumpkins I made some years back. Prior to 1994. I say that because of where we were living at the time I made them. Also in that same house I made the two apple miniquilt wallhangings. And you can see a couple of my old time kitchen items hanging to the right. In the upper left is a strange looking container/vase I made when I took a ceramics class. It was part of the requirements for my Occupational Therapy Assistant degree. I borrowed the idea of using upside down wineglasses to add height to my display. You will see I did that in my header picture also. I got the idea from the blogger who decorated with dentures and right now her blog title escapes me. I will have to look for it and insert it here when I do so you can see what she did. Unless you have already seen that wild decorating idea. My husband made the three little pumpkin baskets that are in front of the larger cloth pumpkin. They are made out of plastic canvas. He made the ghost ones in the header picture as well. I still have a few more areas I can decorate. I will do them as my energy allows. Hey, it is not even October and I have two areas done already. I have never done that. See what all you wonderful bloggers inspire me to do! And I appreciate that too. I love seeing what others do with their fall decorating. I don't get many visitors, so you all are my visitors. Smile!


Oh, I was also going to tell you that we bought the pie safe unfinished prior to 1986. And again I know that because of which house we were living in at the time. My husband did the finishing and it has served us well. Mostly we use it to help with kitchen storage, but we have used it for other things too. It was office material type storage for awhile where we are now. But I have since switched it back to kitchen storage. My cookbooks are on the bottom shelf and I store boxed items like cake mixes, muffin mixes, pudding and jello boxes, stuffing and that kind of thing there. I am so glad I have it. It is one of the things I have that I really love.

Update: Here is the blog I got the wine glass idea from as mentioned above. Dana at the Stone Rabbit is a fun blog to read, Check her out. Her post about decorating with dentures is funny.

Miscommunication Fumble/Rehab Week

Ever have one of those days where miscommunication just totally messes you up? That is the kind of day I had. But in this case it is misreading the info. I thought that today was the day of the Rehab potluck lunch at the home of one of the other therapists. I stopped at the store on my way in to work to get the bagged salad to make a cesaer salad and also got precooked sliced chicken to add to it. I brought my ice chest to keep it cold. I had my salad bowl, tongs, a cutting board and knife with me as well. Just being safe since they recently moved in.

So I pick up my schedule and start seeing patients. Since we had a inservice scheduled in the afternoon I was trying to overlap the treatment sessions so I would not find myself working late into the day. Lunch was supposed to be at 12. No one appeared to be getting ready to leave. Especially the one who was the host. And it was getting closer to 12.

Finally I asked, "Are we having the lunch today?"

Someone else told me "No, it is tomorrow"

"WHAT?!?"

So I checked the posted note. Sure enough it said the 24th. Not the 23rd. Darn!

"Oh great, I did not bring a lunch of course."

Someone else told I me I would just have to eat out. Oh well. Then to top it off, I also did not bring my book like I usually do, since I figured I was going to be too busy to read during lunch. Well, I will tomorrow. I played games on my Sidekick II while eating lunch.

It just really bummed me that I messed up. Because I did not bring my lunch, I also did not have my waterbottle with me that I usually sip from on the drive home. I keep them in the freezer, that way it acts as an ice pack keeping my lunch cold. Then it is just perfect to drink from it on the way home. Not having it with me seemed to make me extra thirsty.

On the plus side the inservice went well. This week is National Rehabilitaion Week. And we did the inservice to educate other staff on sensitivities. My portion of the presentation was on "How to improve communication with someone who is hearing impaired". As a hearing impaired person since birth, I can give some qualified tips on that. The sun was coming in the window and one person was sitting in front of that window. I pointed out how we could not see his face which would then make lip reading impossible. That was a good opener, besides explaining why I knew what I was talking about. I got compliments on my portion of the presentation, so I guess it went well.

There were two other stations. One was about understanding how to position people who have troubles swallowing with a chance to taste thickened liquids and pureed food. The second was attempting to do lower body dressing with adaptive equipment because you had a total hip replacement with 3 pairs of gloves on and sunglasses with vaseline smeared on them. The purpose of this was to help them realize how hard it is for people who are losing their eyesight due to glaucoma, macular degeneration, and other reasons, to do every day tasks. Also with the gloves, especially with 3 pairs, you can get a sense of how it feels when people are losing their sense of touch due to neuropathy. The focus of the inservice was to help the staff aware of how hard it is for our patients who arrive for therapy or to live there long term and to be more sensitive to their needs.

The day ended on a good note, until I realized I did not have my water bottle for the drive home.

A Give Away Drawing

I have been noticing other bloggers doing give aways when they get to a certain number of posts or for any other reason. I had not entered any of them until I saw this one. Edie Marie's Attic is hosting a give away in honor of her 100th post. Since it is a vintage tea cup and saucer I had to give this one a try. I have a collection of tea cups and saucers that used to belong to my grandmother and to my godmother. I treasure those tea cups and saucers so adding to my collection is okay with me! Maybe I will have beginner's luck and win this time. Wish me luck!!

A Present For Me!

When I got to church today I found a present for me. Whoopee! It was from my secret sister. I won't find out until January who is my secret sister. The gift was for our anniversary. Here is a picture of what I found inside the gift bag.

Inside was an assortment of chocolates. Yummy! All of which I had never tried before with the exception of the Ghirardelli Square chocolate. I promise I will not eat it all in one sitting. Besides I would probably get an upset stomach if I do. Instead I will enjoy it bit by bit and make it last several days. And yes I will probably share some with my hubby since it is good chocolate. He has a tendency to break out with the cheap chocolates.
This is the card that came with the gift. We thought it was hilarious. I had to share it with you. I know the flash shows in the picture above, but I managed to get one without the flash making it hard to read in the bottom one which shows what it says inside the card. The question marks are because I am not supposed to know who it is from. And truly I don't know who it is from. I don't have a clue this time.
So it was a good day. We will treat ourselves to dinner out later in the week. Need to wait until my payday. It was nice to be remembered. My parents gave us a card today too.

Joys for today----

A gift from secret sister---

A chance to visit with my parents---

Noticing more fall colors---

Worshiping at church and seeing friends there---

What are your joys?

Pink Saturday

TO US!!

This is us 29 years ago. I made my wedding dress(except for the zipper, mom did that part by hand) and my grandmother made the headpiece. The frame of the headpiece was my mothers at her wedding. My colors were blue and pink. There is in pink in my bouquet and in the boutonniere my hubby is wearing.

My mother made this for us a few years ago. I love all the pink and blue in the design. Totally goes with the theme we had at our wedding.

This is our caketop. It is looking kind of aged now. I handle it gently. I think it is missing one bell and one dove, but I'm not sure. Need to check our wedding album to check the picture of our cake.
My sister-in-law asked me for scraps of the fabric used for my wedding dress and the bridesmaids dresses. I could not imagine why and did not find out until our first Christmas why she wanted my fabric scraps. These ornaments are the result.

The bridesmaids dresses were made of the blue/pink print with the blue lining. All the white fabric, lace and trim was from my dress. A very nice way to remember our wedding. I hang them up every year. Well, most years. We did not have a Christmas tree the last two years.

Our anniversary is actually on Monday the 22nd. But I thought I would do this as a Pink Saturday post since pink was one of my wedding colors. I can't believe it has been 29 years. We are hoping to do something special next year for our 30th.

Thank you to Beverly for hosting Pink Saturday. Click here for more blogs participating in Pink Saturday. It is fun to see what others do for their Pink Saturday blog.

My Friday

Today the sun never came out to say hello. And it started raining too. At work anyway. We have started to do a Cooking Group on Fridays and today was the second week. Other employees come wandering down wondering what is smelling so good. Last week it was waffles with fruit salad and fresh squeezed orange juice. Today was grilled sandwiches. The OTR and I do the group together. Makes for fun times. I am going to try and design a notebook to hold the successful recipes we do to make it easy to choose what to do each week. Also we can allow the patients to help us decide what we are going to make during our cooking group by browsing through the notebook/cookbook. I will probably use scrapbook paper to make a cover sheet to slide in the front of the binder.

Today the Activities people planned a Classic Car show with a picnic for the residents and their family members who come. The car show was still held, but I guess not many people went out there to check them out in the rain. I did take one patient out there before it started raining too much. I also managed to get a few pictures of the cars. But the picnic was moved indoors.

On the way home I decided to stop at Walgreen's after reading about things other bloggers were finding there for their fall decor. I did find a few things I wanted to get. Here is a picture of what I got. What fun! Now I need to get going on the decorating.

Joys for today...

-Seeing 2 deer grazing in the field on my way to work.

-Success with the cooking group.

-Making it to a gas station before running out of gas on the way home.

-Seeing deer again grazing in a field on the way home. This time there were 3 of them.

-Making it home safely. First day of rain is always makes for slippery roads around here.

What are your joys today?

Puttering in the Yard and Questions

Today I took the time to putter a bit in the yard before it got dark. It is really getting dark noticeably early now. First I hung up my two Fall/Autumn garden flags. This is my second year for both of these. I really like changing my garden flags with the season.

I need to do some trimming of the foliage below this one so it will hang better. It is getting kind of tangled with the grassy bush thingie there.

This is the top of my red ruffle leaf coleous. I notice these things coming out the top. I am not sure why they are there. This is my first year to plant coleous plants. I am not sure if I am spelling that correctly. Anyway, it has been interesting growing these. They are in my wine barrel that you see in the picture in my side bar. Next year I will do it differently now that I know how big they get.

There was a planter box in the yard already when we moved in. This is my first year to actually plant something there. I have petunias and snapdragons growing there. Very successfully too. I use Miracle-Gro Liquafeed and it seems my flowers have thrived. It was a thrill to have some success with growing things. I am encouraged to do more next year. Anyway, this strange plant came up in the planter box as well. This is the first time I have seen it and we have no idea what it is. So this is my question "Does anybody recognize what this is?

I took the picture with the berries in my hand for size reference. It starts with the white star flowers and then I noticed the green berry type things, then I noticed them turning a dark purple. I may have to take a clipping to a local nursery and ask there what this is. I don't recognize it at all!

This last picture shows the clusters of berries, if that is what they are really called. I don't dare try it in case it is poisonious.

So I hope someone who reads this recognizes it. If not, I will just have to go ask at the nursery. I just thought it would be fun to ask here first.

While browsing blogs, I noticed one person likes to end each blog with her joys for the day. I thought that is a great idea. Look for the happy things in each day and encourage us to appreciate each day. This is similiar to how meetings and bible studies are started now at our church. We start each one with some reflection time, thinking about what God has been doing in our lives the previous week. It was hard at first for some people to have to sit quietly for a bit and reflect. Then if you were comfortable we were invited to share those things.

So my joys for today-------

-Hearing how my help was appreciated from a patient during her therapy session. Her roommate told me she raved about me to the adminstrators and even mentioned me by name. So nice to get that praise from appreciative patients.

-Getting an "I love you" text message from my daughter.

-Staying with a young woman, whose car was smoking until her boyfriend got there. I had to show her how to open the hood of her car. This is a "pay it forward" for all those times some one nice stopped to help me when I was stuck. I had just gotten a Starbuck's coffee and was about to leave when this happened.

-Puttering in the yard and noticing changes taking place bringing me smiles.

What are your joys?

Procrastinating...

If you are familiar with Flylady.net then you would know that today was anti-procrastination day. "Fly" means finally loving yourself. I have not been very good at following the routines to have my days flow smoothly. But I do have the timer and use it sometimes to set it for 15 minutes to get something done.

So I decided to do something I have been putting off. Well, actually it was 3 somethings. First I changed my garden flags to the fall/autumn flags. I will take a picture of it later. It was too dark to do that when I put them up. Then I got my two bins of Halloween/Fall decor items from out of the shed. I could not see very well, so back into the house to get a flashlight so I could see which ones I needed to pull out from the mess. And brought them in the house.

The third thing was doing something about the coffee grounds. We save the coffee grounds to put around the plants in our yard. I had a good size mixing bowl full of them and it was beginning to smell ripe. Ewww!! So back outside I went in the now getting darker outside and got my trowel and spread the coffee grounds around the roses and other plants. When I came back in I noticed the ripe smell was gone. Yep, must have been the coffee grounds.

That takes care of Anti-procrastination day for this week. Now I need to decide how I am going to be more comfortable for work now that I am getting multiple hot flashes everyday. I am hoping to be able to put up with it without having to go to the doctor to get something to take for it. I don't want to put stuff in my body if I don't have too. Soon we will be wearing lab coats as part of our work wear. It will help to make the rehab team stand out more from the CNA's and other staff. And increase the professional look too I guess. Problem is I will be getting too hot in it. I need to figure out what kinds of lightweight tops I can find to wear under the lab coat. They will look nice with the name of the facility and our names embroidered on them. I may have to make myself some tops since it is the time of the year when that type of clothing may be hard to find. I prefer to wear knit type tops for ease of movement when pushing wheelchairs and transfering people and whatnot. I will wear the lab coat unbuttoned to keep it from binding too much. So what to do, what to do....

Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to start my fall decor. And yes I will take pictures. I want to use one as a new picture in my header instead of the Peace Rose from our yard that I have there now.

Pictures from Holy Cross Sunday

There were an interesting variety of crosses on display. Those who wanted to had a chance to explain how they got the crosses. There were a few of us that did including myself.

This picture includes two handmade crosses using plastic canvas. Looks like that would be a fun thing to make. I will have to find out if there is a pattern.

The two crosses we brought are in this picture. The one with the heart cut outs in the front and the marriage cross with the white background to the right. And in the far upper right is one my mother brought.

This one includes a beautiful cross stitch cross made by a member that was given to our pastor on the 25th anniversary of his ordination.

The wooden cross I believe also belongs to our pastor. I did not catch what he said about that one. But I have seen it used during a service before. The paraments were changed from green to red for this day. Plus we were encouraged to wear red which quite a few people did. I wore a red top. Plus as the assisting minister for the day I had a red rope to cinch in the alb I wore. We have different color rope belts to go with the different seasons.

B-Daddy's Coffee

After my daughter finds out she comes out as the same coffee as me (a Frappacino), my hubby decided to find out how he comes out. This one fits him pretty well.

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

What Day is This?

This morning I woke up and thought "Boy the weekend went fast" and I was trying to think of what all I wanted to get done before I went to work. Then as I sat down at the computer I realized "You silly, it is Sunday!"

I know why I got confused though. We went to a funeral yesterday and it was done very much like our worship service is done with communion included. Then we went to my parents house which we frequently do after church to visit for a bit. Then we went grocery shopping which we also frequently do after going to church and to my parents. No wonder I thought today was Monday. So no, I did not lose a day there. Whew!

But we will go to church today and stop at the fabric store after and then get our usual Starbuck's. Oh we did that yesterday too, which added to confusing the days. I need to get some ribbon for my latest sewing project. The finished product will be posted on my sewing blog when it is finished.

Today is known as Holy Cross Day. We have never really done anything about that at our church, not that I remember anyway. We are this time. We were asked to bring a cross. One we hang or one we wear. There will be some kind of a display. My husband took a couple we hang over on Wednesday when he went to choir practice. I have no idea what to expect. I will try to get a picture of the display. I am also assisting minister today too. That is something I really like to do to contribute to the worship experience. I get my turn every 6 weeks or so. There are several of us who do that role.

Then after church I will try to do those things I was worried about doing this morning. Silly me confusing the days. I know it happens as we get older. But I was not expecting that to happen just yet.

Pink Saturday Post

My Pink Saturday post is on my sewing blog this time. I put it there since it is a sewing related post. Next week I am planning for my Pink Saturday post to be on this blog. It all depends on what I am posting. The week after will probably be on the sewing blog. It is planned already, I just have not taken the picture(s) yet. This week is my first time to get involved in the Pink Saturday post and have my blog listed on Beverly's list. Click on the Pink Saturday in my side bar to see the list.

It will take me awhile to look through them all since we need to go out of town to a funeral Saturday morning. Or I should say this morning since it is now after midnight. Boy I am up late. The wife of a former pastor died last week. I was shocked and sadden to hear that. So we will go pick up my parents and take them. That way my dad does not need to drive. We are starting to do that more now. Go along with my parents to an out of town event so that we can do the driving. Once they bought our tickets to a concert so that we could do the driving. Now they are invited to a long time friend's 75th birthday party. Don't know yet if we also are invited. We tend to get things in the mail later than them. But if we are, that is another time where we should drive. Kind of strange to be now doing the things with my parents that they used to do for my grandparents when they were living. That is the cycle of life.

After work on Friday, we went over to my parents house for two reasons. One my husband goes to the VFW post meetings in there town. He knows more people there. Now is the post Chaplain. He was told they really like having him be the Chaplain. He really adds meaning to the stuff he reads out loud. Secondly, my mom and I were working on our photo posters for our presentation to our Women's group event at our church. We used 3 poster boards to display as many pictures as we could. They are stuck on the boards now. Tomorrow, or rather today after we get back from the funeral I will add the lettering under each picture. The presentation is about the Women of the Lutheran Church of America Triennal Gathering in Salt Lake City that we went to in July. It was held at the Salt Palace Convention Center. That is a big place. It was the first time for both of us and it was a wonderful experience. They had large screens so that you could see the speakers and other things easier. It was a very large room. From the back the speakers are too far away to see clearly. Another thing I was thrilled about is that they captioned the entire convention. Now as a hearing impaired person, that was awesome. I would have missed so much of the speakers presentations if the captioning was not there. The next one will be in Spokane, Washington in 2011. I am planning to go to that one. We are hoping my daughter will go also from whatever church she may be attending at the time.

Now I really better get to sleep if I am going to function at all later on. Happy Saturday. Keep those in the path of Ike in your prayers.

Ok, So I Got the Group Wrong

Michelle pointed out to me that her blog title is a Simon and Garfunkel song, not Peter, Paul and Mary. I guess I just had a senior moment there. I have those now and then. LOL. I remember now that it was their song. Just got my singing groups mixed up. Hope you all have a good Friday. Pray for those in Texas as Ike nears. My husband has a first cousin in Houston. We are praying for their safety as well as everyone else.

I Got A Blog Award!

I received this award from a new blogging friend Michelle at The Froggy Bottom Blog. It was her title that caught my eye. One of my fav authors, Margaret Truman, calls one of the Washington D.C. neighborhoods in her books "The Foggy Bottom". So of course I was curious how Michelle got the name of her blog. It was not because of the Margaret Truman books. Thank you Michelle for selecting me.



Now to find 3 other to pass on the award too. I am not corresponding with a lot of other bloggers yet so here goes.

One will go to my daughter-in-law Shawna whose blog I follow faithfully. Of course I need to find out what my granddaughter has been up to lately.(Smile)

The second will go to another new blogging friend Lisa. I have been enjoying her blogs and hope she will accept this award.

And the third one will go to Michelle(and Shannon). Michelle is another new blogging friend whose blog title also caught my eye. It reminded me of the singing group Peter, Paul and Mary who sang a song called Scarbrough Fair. I had loved that song. Uh oh, that probably ages me!

Now, for you recipients of this award, here's the deal:


* Display your award.


* Link back to the person who gave you the award.


* Nominate at least 3 other blogs.


* Put links to those blogs on yours.


* Leave a message on the blogs of the people you've nominated.


* Enjoy your award!

Happy Thursday!!

Timing Couldn't Be Better

Good thing I got the family room cleaned up, well mostly, and got the table cleared off so it can be used as a place to sit and eat again. My niece is in the area on a short leave from the Air Force while she is between bases. She is also our goddaughter and we consider her very special to us. She came over to visit and had dinner with us on Monday. We just ate a simple salad and had grapes from our grapevine. And yippee we were able to sit at the table together instead of trying to balance our plates on our knees in the midst of the mess. It was a wonderful visit. Almost as good as having our daughter home, but not quite. Our daughter did call while our niece was here. From this end it sounded like they had a crazy conversation. Of course that is not unusual, they always do. The girls are close even though they are 5 years apart. When the girls were growing up I sometimes would have my niece with us when we were out and about and people would think both girls were my daughters. I would have to explain one is my niece and one is my daughter.

Now it sounds like I will be hosting Thanksgiving this year. So that means I really need to get to the rest of the house and put up my fall decorations. On to other projects to help me get ready for that. Now that it is cooling off, that should make it easier to tackle more housecleaning. These hot flashes make it hard to stay focused on things if it is also hot out there.

Hope everyone had a good Wednesday.

Cleaning the Family Room

I have been inspired by some of the beautiful rooms and corners and other special areas other people share on their blogs that I decided to jump in to start cleaning the family room. This is where we hang out most of the time and the mess has been driving me crazy. I needed to feast my eyes on something nice when I relax in my recliner. The picture below is the before mess. Now you know why it is driving my crazy. Plus the dusty smell we were getting was getting annoying. I would wrinkle my nose and say to myself "time to do something about this." Time to vaccum really good.

I went over the carpet several times to really get up the dust and dirt. What a difference! You can really smell the difference when you walk out of room and then come back in again. That makes me smile! Also got down most of the cobwebs and did most of the dusting.

This picture shows how much better it looks now. I can't believe I actually got the entire table cleared off. We took out a the center leaf to make it a circle. Takes up less space that way. That table is a very good maple table that used to belong to my late Godmother. I know the table cloth does not really fit that table, but I don't have any round table cloths. I have a fall theme table runner somewhere around here that I want to use. But I need to get a round fall color tablecloth first. Then I need to find that table runner. Right now I can't remember where I put it!

This morning my husband said, "what a different feeling to walk in here!" He is right. It does feel different and better too! I still need to finish straightening up the bookcase by the table and along the right side of the picture out of sight still needs to be cleaned up and straightened and dusted. I am starting to smile at my room now and that is what counts. I am now motivated to continue and perhaps get some of my fall things out do some fun decorating. I have a set of 3 cloth pumpkins I made one year. I usually put those out each year. Happy Monday!

Happy Grandparents Day!

This is the card our granddaughter sent us for Grandparents Day. It arrived yesterday and I tell you it really made our day. It was so cool to get that. It was hot and miserable and it was a breath of fresh air to get a special card in the mail. Thank you to our kids for helping Shaylee to send the card. I know her mommy helps her with the writing right now. Next year Shaylee may be able to do her own writing. Well, her name anyway. I remember doing that kind of thing with my kids when it came to signing cards for various events.

Grandparents Day is still a fairly new thing. I remember it started after my kids were born and I think they were half way through their childhood or maybe in their teens already by that time. But my grandparents were still alive and I did honor them by giving them cards when I could. I remember I found it hard to remember it though since it was not ingrained into me like their birthdays, Mother's Day and Father's Day. Actually sometimes it fell on their anniversary which was September 8th. They were married 80 years ago tomorrow. Now I wonder if anyone ever reached their 80th wedding anniversay. I have seen celebrations in the newspaper of people married for 75 years, but I don't remember seeing 80 years. My grandparents made it to their 68th anniversary before my grandfather passed away at the age of 92. Our anniversary is this month too. For us it will be 29 years. We have a long ways to go to make it to 68!

The day finally did cool off. I hope today is much cooler. I hate that hot heat. Yuck! See my craft blog for more on today. Scroll down to by blog list to click on my sewing and craft mess. :-)

Pink Saturday and Other Things

This is a picture of pink things for Pink Saturday. Here is the link to the blog where I found out about Pink Saturday and she has the link to person who came up with the idea with lots more Pink Saturday posts.

I feel like my Pink Saturday is not up to snuff as some I have seen posted, but it is a start. This my collection of Linnéa flower items. I wrote about the Linnéa flower in an earlier post. I may play around with this theme more and see if I can get the bowl to show up better. There are Linnéa flowers painted around the bowl. It was made in Sweden. The napkin I found in a local Scandanavian shop. I bought them for my daughter and granddaughter who have the name Linnéa for a middle name. The folder at the bottom has stationery in it. It started with 10 sheets and envelopes and now there ae 7. I may never use the rest of it. I want to hang on to it. It was given to me a long time ago, before I was married, I think. . . Now I can't remember for sure. I also have paper napkins still in their original wrap but did not include those because of the light bouncing off the shiny wrap.

I really did not imagine that earthquake yesterday. Besides it actually being on the earthquake website it was also on the news last night. And I read this morning on the Internet news about how it was felt at the Giants game in San Francisco. We have an Efla shelving system for the computer desk that we bought at the Container Store. So it is actually hanging from the wall. That means it does not take much to jiggle it. It could have been my movements jiggling the thing. Except that I did also feel it through the floor and as I mentioned before I was sitting still with chin in my hand. So I was pretty sure that was an earthquake. It was nice to confirm that it was and not me going crazy or insane.

I am proud of my kids. On my daughter-in-love's blog there is a blurb about them being on the news because they were donating blood in readiness for Hurricane Ike. You can see them both sitting across the aisle from each other. My daughter-in-love actually gets to say something! And yes, I prefer to say daughter-in-love instead of daughter-in-law.

Well, I need to see if I can get something accomplished today before it gets too hot. It is supposed to be a hot one. Happy Saturday! And yes Shawna, we will be praying for your safety during Ike.

Was that an Earthquake?

As I was sitting here reading other people's blogs I thought I felt an earthquake. I was sitting very still with my left elbow on the desk with my chin in my hand and my right hand on the mouse. All of a sudden the desk, moniter and desk lamp started to sway a little. Plus I could feel the floor jiggle through my chair. I got up and asked my husband did you feel that? He said he thought he felt something, but wasn't sure since the hanging fruit basket was not swinging. He said to wait a few minutes before checking the earthquake website. If there was an earthquake it will be posted on there. I am going to check now and then come back.

Ok, I am back. I checked the earthquake site and I was not imagining things. We really did feel the earthquake. It was a 4.0 centered in the East Bay of the San Fransico Bay area. About an hour drive or so from where we are. There was a place to report in if you felt the quake and how strong and your reaction and so on on the quake. It was cool to do that. A little unexpected excitement in my otherwise quiet evening. Crazy. But that is earthquakes for you. Never know when the are going to hit. In my life time I can only remember a couple handfuls of earthquakes, in other words less than 10.

Tomorrow I may do a Pink Saturday thing. I did not sign up on time to participate in the Pink Saturday post on a craft blog. Maybe next week. But I did take a picture of pink things that I will put up tomorrow. Maybe. I have to decide which picture I like best. I rearranged my items a few times for the pictures trying to get the best effect of the pink. Happy Friday even though it is close to being over.

The Brain Catches Fire???

Click here to read an interesting article I came across titled "The Brain Catches Fire at Menopause". Since I am in the process of going through "the change" as it used to be called or maybe it is still called that, the article title caught my eye. I found it very interesting, especially the part about the SAD(Seasonal Affective Disorder). It made sense to me that it is related. I do have issues with SAD. Some years it is worse than others. I still don't like dark rooms. That is why all the paneling in our home has been painted a soft white. Otherwise I would feel like was living in a cave. I can't stand that. I need the light to come in. Then in the summer it is frustrating to have to block it out to keep the house from getting too hot. Seems I can't win here.

At one place we lived, our room was paneled. But since it was a rental, I could not paint it or change it. In the summer time it was especially dark in there because of the sun's position being nearly directly overhead. In the Fall, Winter and Spring it was much better with the sun position towards the south. Our window faced south. There was also a tree outside the window so in the winter more light came in because the leaves had fallen off. So I started trimming some of the branches so there weren't any touching the house. That allowed more light in during the summer even with the leaves on them. I did my sewing in that room and had the ironing board under the window. The light became important to me while we lived there.

When I think of the brain catching fire, I think of the numerous "Hot Flashes" I am getting these days. Last night I had one so intense I had to open the other half of the window near my side of the bed so I could get the flow of the cool air from outside. Finally I was able to go to sleep and actually got cold eventually and needing to close the window again. My body can't make up its mind. But when I get the hot flashes, it feels like it starts with my brain and rushes from head to toe. I used to get hot flashes periodically. Now I get them daily and nightly too. But that is the stage of my life I am in right now.

These Things are Fun

I have always admired the harp and those who play it. I sometimes wish I knew how to play it. Since I do play the piano and organ and flute, I imagine it would not be too hard to learn. Knowing how to read and understand the music is half the battle.

You Should Play the Harp

You are a sensitive soul, with a great admiration for beauty. You definitely have what it takes to make beautiful music, but most instruments are too harsh for you. You are subtle, shy, and even a bit spoiled. You're very picky about most aspects of your life. It's just your style to play an eccentric, hard to transport instrument like the harp that few people consider. Overall, you have the relaxed demeanor of a leisurely upper class person, and your music would reflect that. Your calm yet soulful harp playing would be sure to help people forget their troubles for a while. Your dominant personality characteristic: your zen-ness Your secondary personality characteristic: your quiet independence

What Musical Instrument Should You Play?