It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne and other friends at Living to Tell the Story .

I hope those of you in the USA had a happy 4th, and belated Happy Canada Day to my Canadian friends! It’s been a good week here. Some of the best parts:

1. Independence Day. Our country has serious problems, but there’s still no place else I would rather live. I’m so thankful for the freedoms we have here and those who sacrificed to make them possible. We celebrated with family, feasting, and fun.

2. Mini cheesecakes. Cheesecake is not my favorite dessert, but every now and then it hits just the right spot. Some years ago someone in the family got me some mini cheesecake pans. I got ingredients for them for a potluck at church a few weeks ago, but overlooked an allergen in one of the ingredients that would affect several families, so I ended up not making them. I wanted to use the ingredients soon, so, even though cheesecake isn’t a traditional 4th of July dish, they were a nice treat. I put mini chocolate chips on some, mini peanut butter cups in others, mixed coca in with the batter for a few. Then we had strawberries, blueberries, and a peanut and chocolate shell for the plain ones. And the fruit did make them look more patriotic! The nice thing about little cheesecakes is that you can try more than one kind.

3. Bathroom makeover. Several months ago I mentioned we had replaced the carpet in our bathroom with new flooring. In the meantime, we’ve tried several sample colors on the walls and did an extensive search for bath mats. This week my husband got the walls and cabinets painted. I love it!

What it originally looked like:

Before

What it looks like now:

I love these knobs! I had wanted something just a little different, and I was glad to find them. The walls are a very light grey. The floral towel racks were here when we bought the house, and I love them! The shower curtain was here, as well, in another bathroom, but it was a peach color – about my least favorite color in the whole spectrum. So I used Rit color remover on it, and it came out this pale pinkish shade, with just a touch of color left in the topstitching.

I so appreciate my husband’s time and hard work! I didn’t get a picture of the light fixture above the sink, but that’s one last thing left to do. It’s a brass finish, and I wanted to replace it, but he’s going to try to spray paint it white and see if that works.

And, you know something else that’s interesting . . . months ago I bought this plaque with a Hobby Lobby gift card just because I loved the floral lettering. We didn’t have grey in any of our decorating: all the walls were beige. But I figured grey is a neutral, and I have pink in several rooms, so I could put this anywhere. We didn’t choose the bathroom colors with this plaque in mind – I had forgotten about it. Now it’s perfect for our new bathroom!

4. Time off. My husband’s company gave employees Thursday and Friday off this week, so he decided to take the rest of the week as vacation days. He’s been mostly working on the bathroom and doing yard work — he’s happiest when he’s getting stuff done. But we do have a family outing planned for Saturday.

5. Chick-Fil-A biscuits. I love breakfast biscuits! But since my days of driving kids to school and picking up breakfast on the way back are long gone, I don’t get them much any more. Jim had a hankering for Chick-Fil-A this morning and went out to get them Yum!

Happy Friday!