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

The first Friday of 2018! We’re almost a week into the new year already. Monday, when my oldest son left to go back to his home, seems so long ago already! Taking the Christmas decorations down isn’t a favorite per se, but, though I miss them, it’s nice to have things back in order and change gears to start making plans for the new year. I love putting up the brand new  calendars. Here are some of the best parts of the last week.

1. Wonderful family time. I don’t think we’ve ever had a bad visit, but this time just seemed especially good. Jason only had Christmas Day off, but everyone else was off more, and we had some fun outings as well as some quiet times just hanging out at home together. As I walked past the hallway while my oldest son was here, I heard him and my youngest son talking together in their rooms, and thought, “Just like old times!”

2. A bowling outing. Saturday we visited a really neat new-to-us old bowling alley in downtown Knoxville. My husband had been there for someone’s retirement party and suggested we try it. Instead of one big, open room, there were smaller spaces with four lanes each and nice couches with pillows.

It was in a really cool old building downtown. And they served really good food, a waitress taking orders and then bringing it out to the lanes.

I don’t think I’d go there at night – they emphasize alcohol and go “adults only” at 9 p.m. But on a Saturday morning it was just families. Afterward we walked around downtown a bit and ended up at a dessert/coffee place.

3. Chocolate Pretzel pie and more games! Jeremy had made this pie for us once before, so it was requested again this visit.

4. Lollipop cough drops. We ended the time together with half the family catching colds. Timothy was particularly pitiful. I remarked one night that it was too bad kids couldn’t use cough drops, but they’d probably try to crunch them instead of letting them dissolve, and it would probably be a choking hazard. Then either Jim or I remembered that they used to make cough drops for kids on lollipop sticks. I hadn’t seen them in years, but then I hadn’t looked for them in years either, and I didn’t know if they still made them. Jason went to the store, and they do still make them! Mittu said they helped immediately. He’s doing better now with just a bit of a lingering cough.

5. Warmth. We’ve had temperatures in the teens and single digits this week, so I have especially loved central heat, a snug house, sweaters, throw blankets, and coffee to keep warm.

I hope your New Year is getting off to a good start as well! And if not, well, we have 360 days to make it better.

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

The last Friday’s Fave Five of 2017! I’m hoping to do a retrospective post before the year runs out. Meanwhile, here are some favorite happenings of the last week.

1. Christmas, of course. It was a fun day of showing love, giving gifts, and eating!

2. Time with family. My oldest son is here from out of state, my husband has been off since last Thursday, and my youngest son has been off since Tuesday, along with Christmas Day. Once all the stuff for Christmas was done, the rest of the week has been like vacation. I don’t take for granted having all the family together for this time: we’ve had two Christmases where one was missing, and that may happen again in the future, but I am enjoying it to the hilt while I have it.

3. Games. We really don’t play games much unless everyone is here, so we’ve been catching up this week. Fun!

4. Ham! The ham I got for Christmas was on sale, but they didn’t have any big ones. We had enough for Christmas and a few sandwiches, leftover plates, and breakfasts, but not enough for a couple of other things I usually make with ham leftovers, like Swiss Ham Ring Around. So after Christmas we got another one about the same size, marked down even lower than the first one was.

5. Air Fryers. My oldest son and I both got one of these for Christmas, so we broke mine out Thursday morning to experiment a bit before trying it for a full meal. As it turned out, it was more than sufficient for lunch. This recipe for empanadas was what made me want an air fryer in the first place, and my son had seen and wanted to try that recipe, too. We had to adapt it a bit – we couldn’t find empanada dough, so we used puff pastry. The empanada dough comes in five-inch circles, and in looking for something that size to use as a guide, we discovered an unused CD fit the bill! We washed it over beforehand and after, so we’ll probably keep it as a guide until we can find the empanada dough. For filling I browned ground beef and flavored it as for tacos – salt, pepper, onion, garlic powder, and chili powder – and then added a bit of tomato sauce and topped the mixture with cheddar cheese. Jeremy did the dough work. They turned out great! I think next time I’d leave out the tomato sauce, but I loved the texture of the air “fried” puff pastry. While we had it going, I tossed in some frozen French fries, and they came out good, too.

We were trying to use tongs to take them out, which dented them a bit, so we switched to a spatula, and that turned out better.

Happy Friday and Happy New Year! My wish for you all is that whatever 2018 brings, it will draw you ever closer to our Savior.

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

The last Friday’s Fave Five before Christmas! And the next to last one before the end of the year! I hope you have a quiet moment in the midst of all the Christmas activities to count the blessings of the last week.

1. A Christmas potluck lunch. A small church we visited a couple of weeks ago announced they were having a Christmas potluck last Sunday. Normally, due to needing to get home so Great-grandma’s caregiver can get off on time, we can’t stay for things like that, but this church meets a little earlier than usual, so we thought it would work out ok, and we explained to the pastor that we might have to leave before everything was over. The timing turned out to be just fine, and it was quite an enjoyable time. We don’t know yet if this church is “the one,” but I really enjoy the people. Updated to add: I forgot to mention, the pastor and his wife are from South Africa and brought everyone one of those crackers – the wrapped gift you pull on and it makes a loud pop and opens to reveal a small gift. These contained little gifts – a bouncy ball, a small top, a miniature skateboard key ring, etc. – and a paper crown and joke or riddle. It was fun to see what everyone got and to read the jokes and riddles to the others at the table. But what was most fun for me was that I had heard and read of those but had never actually seen or received one, so I particularly enjoyed that!

2. A salvaged meal. I generally make a chicken/potato/carrots crockpot meal for potlucks and company, and got up early to assemble it for the dinner last Sunday. But I miscalculated the time, and half an hour before time to leave, the chicken was almost as raw as it was when I started. It would only have a little over an hour in the crockpot once we got there, which wouldn’t be enough time at all for it to get done. I resigned myself to not being able to take it, figuring I would just turn it on low and we’d have it as a family later. But Jim suggested putting the inner pot in the microwave – so we tried it, and it worked! We put it in for five minutes increments, stirring in-between until time to leave, then did so a couple of times there. Though some of the potatoes weren’t quite as done as normal, overall it was ok, and I was glad to have been able to contribute. One boy in his early teens asked the pastor’s wife who made it because he really liked it and wanted the recipe. That touched my heart!

3. Christmas cards. Though we receive fewer every year, I’m glad a number of people still send Christmas cards. I love both sending and receiving them and I especially love the family newsletters and catching up with loved ones.

4. Our 38th anniversary! Jim and I celebrated 38 years of marriage this week by going out for breakfast and then for dinner. It’s almost the only time we go out for an evening meal, since we have to pay extra for someone to stay with Jim’s mom, so it was a treat in many ways.

5. Time to talk. Of course, my husband and I do talk every day, but at our anniversary breakfast we had a more extensive time than usual, and it was good to have that time to talk more in depth. He had started his Christmas break that day, and though we both had things to do, we also weren’t rushed and were able to enjoy the time.

We’re looking forward to having the family all together as our oldest comes home this weekend, and then we’re highly anticipating Christmas, especially with a three-year-old! I hope you all have a wonderful time with family celebrating the birth of our Savior!

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

In this busy season, I love the opportunity to pause and reflect over the best parts of the previous week.

1. Sleep. A couple of nights in a row, I woke up during the night and then couldn’t get back to sleep for a couple of hours. Sometimes when that happens I pray, most often I turn on some soft music. I want to keep everything conducive to going back to sleep, so I don’t get up except to use the bathroom. I was particularly frustrated when this happened on a Saturday night (as it too often does), afraid I’d be sleepy, draggy, or irritable all through church, but thankfully that didn’t happen. I took a long nap Sunday afternoon, but when the same wakefulness happened that night, I set my timer for a short nap Monday. And Monday night and following I went right to sleep and didn’t wake up til morning.

2. Rest. It’s a busy season, and I pushed myself more than normal a couple of days. I always look forward to evenings – I try not to be on the computer or working on a project at night when my husband’s home. Even if we’re not doing anything directly together, I enjoy being in the same room while we read our tablets. But those couple of days, I especially looked forward to getting the day’s work done and sitting with my feet up for a while.

3. Getting Christmasy things done: packages mailed and Christmas cards sent this week.

4. New Christmas decorations. I’m not sure why I’ve felt inclined to add to our Christmas decor this year – a combination of half-price sales and Hobby Lobby gift cards, I guess. 🙂 I decided to look for a very small tree for what I call the spare or front bathroom, and found this:

Though this bathroom is a lot smaller (we don’t have much more counter space than that), it’s also less messy and cluttered, so this fits well there whereas in the others it would be just one more item. And this is the bathroom guests usually use.

Then, I saw this neat idea on a friend’s Facebook page: using oversized balls outside on plant hangers. I put one where we usually have the hummingbird feeder, outside my kitchen window:

And this one is by the front door (amidst my sadly overgrown rose bushes that need cutting back):

The flowers are a circlet that I usually put around the globe of the sconces in the family room, but just hadn’t done it yet this year. But the hole in the middle fit the ornaments perfectly. I think I’ll take them off, though, and replace them with a bow lest the sunlight fade the flowers. I don’t usually do much red – we have some red in the Christmas decorations, but no red in the house otherwise. I got silver at first, but returned them. The red shows up outside so much better. I have a few plant hangers outside the window by my computer and I am thinking of adding some there…:) But then, I don’t know if these are meant for outside, so I might wait a bit and see how they hold up in the weather.

5. A sweet exchange between Timothy (my grandson, 3 1/2) and Mittu (my daughter-in-law). Mittu has been recovering from an infection and not feeling well. She was drinking some tea, which Timothy thought was coffee.

Timothy: Coffee make you feel better?
Mittu: Coffee makes everything better. But you know what always makes me feel better?
Timothy: Me! Me! Me!

Happy Friday!

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

We’re really feeling the winter cold this week, but thankfully no snow yet! Here are some highlights from the last week:

1. A new Christmas tree. I saw a mini white Christmas tree with pink and blue ornaments at a store and just loved it. Unfortunately that store didn’t have any more of that tree or ornaments, but after looking around I found what I wanted. I decided to put it in my bedroom – I have never had anything Christmasy in my bedroom, and I have gotten a ridiculous amount of pleasure from this. Ironically, I have been asking myself if there are ways we should simplify or cut back on our decorating, and here I go adding more. 🙂 One tip for others with mini trees: I have some in other rooms, too, and I store them individually in a container with the decorations still on. When we get them out again, all I have to do is fluff them up a little and put back on a few ornaments that might have fallen off rather than decorating the whole thing again. So that helps.

2. Alexa. I wasn’t a big fan at first, but my husband enjoys having it, and he doesn’t buy any gadget without searching for deals on it. But what I especially love is that he programmed it to turn the Christmas lights on and off on our tree and outside just by speaking to it. 🙂 The one switch for the tree was in a hard-to-reach place, and the one for the outside lights is outside, and I always hated having to go out in the cold and dark night to turn them off. So having those switches programmed in is nice!

3. Surprise help with the dishes. I usually clean up the kitchen after dinner while my husband feeds his mom. One night I had gotten the dishwasher loaded but still had to hand wash the pots and pans and the blending equipment to puree his mom’s food. I had to step away for a bit, and when I came back, he had returned from feeding his mom and cleaned up her dishes plus everything else I hadn’t finished. A nice surprise! And I think I’ve mentioned before that he always does the Sunday morning breakfast dishes. I just don’t have time to tend to them – unless I want to get up even earlier – and it’s so nice not to have them still sitting in the sink when we get home.

4. Being almost finished with Christmas shopping and wrapping.

5. Timothy’s imagination. He was playing a fishing game with his dad on the couch, and the carpet was transformed into “freezing cold” water which he occasionally jumped into and even swam in. He had us all laughing without trying in the least to be funny.

Happy Friday!

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

It’s the first Friday of the last month of the year! And here are some of the best parts of the last week:

1. Christmas decorating was especially fun this year with Timothy, age 3 1/2. He brought his toy saw to help us cut one down. 🙂

Then we went home to put the “ormanents” on and “so many colors” of lights. Throughout the morning he kept saying he was “having so much fun!”

Mittu made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for us. I’m so grateful the whole family helps with this – it would take days if I had to do it by myself, and would be a lot less fun.

It was fun discovering ornaments in unexpected places. Timothy had some new ideas about decorating!

Years ago the house where we lived had a hook in the ceiling, I think for a hanging lamp from a previous owner. One year one of the boys hung a snowflake ornament there, and that became a tradition. We don’t have such a hook in this house, so they improvised.

2. Dusting cloths. I use a Swiffer duster for most things, but some of them benefit more from a little more attention. I usually use the dust spray and an old tee shirt, but decided to try these. They worked great!

3. Non-Christmasy Christmas snacks. I don’t know how we got started having these around Christmas, usually shortly after putting up the tree. We could get them any time of year – but we only want them at Christmas.

Chocolate covered potato chips are new to me and surprisingly good, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because they are ridiculously expensive. But I guess that’s good, because it will deter me from getting them too often.

4. Turkey Bone Soup is a tradition a few days after Thanksgiving. Yum!

5. Celebrating my friend Melanie‘s birthday by going out to lunch.

Happy first day of December to you!

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

The last Friday of November, and of autumn! Though technically autumn continues a few weeks longer, in my mind, Dec. 1 marks the beginning of winter. It also used to mark the beginning of Christmas season, but now the weekend after Thanksgiving ushers that in for us.

On to this week’s favorite highlights:

1. Thanksgiving: the food, the family time together and FaceTiming with the one absent; the opportunity for a special emphasis on what have to be thankful for and the One to whom we are thankful.

2. A nice husband. He not only went to the store for me on Thanksgiving morning for a few items I hadn’t realized we were low on until then, but he also washed all the pots and pans that wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher – and there were many of them for Thanksgiving! He traditionally takes care of getting all the meat off the turkey carcass and then cleaning up roaster pan.

3. Plants. We’ve been wanting to do some planting along the fence we put up a while back, but hadn’t been able to get to it. My husband has been wanting to transplant some small bushes that were in a semicircle in another part of the yard, which was not only an odd place for them, but they impeded lawn mowing. So he transplanted those along part of the fence. Then he went to a couple of nurseries to look for the kind of tree he wanted in the corner. He ended up not getting that one, because it was over $400! But he found a group of trees and bushes for 75% off, and got one tree and three bushes for less than $30.

A nice start! Now we just have the rest of the fence line to go…

(The fence isn’t really leaning forward as it appears to in the photo – my camera angle was just wonky.)

4. Things that didn’t break when they could have. I was trying to work a small item into the full dish drainer one day and accidentally dislodged the lid to my big crock pot. I reached for it as it fell, but knew I wouldn’t reach it in time. Thankfully it didn’t break, though it made a lot of noise when it hit the counter. Then I dropped a glass pan in the sink while washing it, but thankfully it held together, too.

5. Thanksgiving leftovers. It looks like there was just the right amount this year: some to send home with Jason and Mittu, some for sandwiches and warmed-up Thanksgiving night dinner and Friday lunches, some for turkey bone soup some time this weekend, and the turkey salad my husband makes.

Are you shopping this Black Friday? I’m staying inside where it’s cozy and calm and warm and doing my shopping online – another thing I am thankful for!

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

We’ve crossed the halfway mark of November, looking forward to Thanksgiving next week, and then the Christmas season! But before we get ahead of ourselves, here are the blessings of this week.

1. An outing. We went to a holiday craft fair on Saturday, which was actually overcrowded and many of the items were overpriced. Then we went to a restaurant for lunch, where my food was great, but my husband’s and daughter-in-law’s both had problems, and the waiter was weird and almost made Timothy cry by teasing him. But – even though all the circumstances weren’t perfect, I enjoyed the time together.

2. Extended time with Timothy. I watched him for the longest time yet this week, and all by myself! Usually either Jim or Jesse, or both, are home. Everything went well and we had a good time. One thing we did was to make some fall sugar cookies with leaf-shaped sprinkles. He liked the sprinkles part. 🙂

3. A medical procedure that a family member had this week went well.

4. One-cup dessert mixes. I’ve mentioned before various recipes I’ve found online for making one serving of a cookie, cake, or brownie in a mug in the microwave. They’re nice when you want something sweet (and fairly fast) but you don’t want a whole panful in the house to avoid the temptation of overindulging. Recently I found the same idea in a ready made, just-add-water mix. Nice! There were several flavors, but I tend to go for the chocolate. 🙂

5. Solitude. I love my family dearly and enjoy time with them, but some times of quiet and solitude are essential to my sanity and well-being. Those times have been a little hard to come by since we moved my mother-in-law here and have had hospice people in and out. This week I actually had the better part of one whole day to myself. It was bliss. My m-i-l was here, of course, and her caregiver was here in the morning. But even then it was a pretty quiet, peaceful day.

Happy Friday, and Happy Thanksgiving!

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

It’s been overcast and cool this week, and maybe that’s contributed to it also being a drowsy week for me. But here are some of the best parts of my waking moments. 🙂

1. Fall color in the neighborhood. I’d mentioned a few times that I had seen some fall color in other areas of town, but not in my immediate vicinity. It finally came last week! One day while out running errands, I stopped here and there to take some pictures of it, but none really captured it (it happened to be on one of those overcast days). But there are some lovely photos posted at the local TV station’s “Your Photos” section.

2. Time with Timothy. We baby-sat (or had a play-date, as his parents called it) last Saturday while his parents had some time to themselves. I’m always just a little apprehensive about watching him beforehand, in case he misses his parents too much or just doesn’t have a good day for some reason, but so far it has always gone well.

3. A UT Vols win! I rarely watched football before we moved here, but it’s hard to escape UT fandom when you live right in the middle of it. 🙂 They had been having a rough time of it lately, and finally pulled out a win last Saturday night.

4. Getting an extra hour last weekend. I don’t like giving it back in the spring, and I am not fond of it getting so dark so early after the time change, but I do like having that extra hour.

5. Going through craft books. I hadn’t planned on any deep searching and sorting for the items I was planning to donate that I mentioned last week – it was more just a matter of pulling together items I had set aside or noticed and itemizing them. But I didn’t have them ready to go last weekend, and once I did, I decided to look through a few more places. One was the bookshelf in my craft/sewing room. I spent a very pleasant afternoon looking through craft books, and yes, I did set aside some to give away! That also got my creative juices stirred up!

Happy Friday!

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

November! “Ready or not,” the days and months keep coming! Here are my favorite parts of the last week:

1. An outing. Last Saturday, Jim, Jason, Mittu, Timothy, and I went to Vintage Market Days. It was fun to see all the “stuff” and to get some ideas for creative furniture painting if I ever get brave enough to try them. Jason and Mittu have done just a bit of buying, fixing up and painting, and then reselling furniture, so there was much to observe and take in. Timothy was good as gold.

2. A new Mexican food restaurant. I grew up in southern TX, where Mexican or “Tex-Mex” food is just a given, and I am not a happy camper without Mexican food occasionally. The two restaurants we had gone to since moving here closed (one even had the audacity to email me a coupon this week after closing their nearby location!!) After our outing on Saturday, we were headed for a burger place when we noticed a new Mexican food restaurant and decided to give it a try. We found out it was only their second day in business, and it was really good! Yay!

3. Jim going to the store for me. I had missed my planned grocery shopping Friday due to not feeling well and was planning to go out Saturday afternoon after our outing. Jim volunteered to go for me – and it was a rainy, drizzly day, so I took him up on it. I hate to ask him to go because he works long hours and has his mom’s care on top of that, so I greatly appreciated his volunteering.

4. Pumpkin Spice Cookies, just from a mix found at the store, but very good!

5. Running into an old friend even just for the briefest of moments. We used to go to the same church until her family moved to another area of town and changed to a church closer by. We keep up on Facebook but hadn’t seen each other in person for years. She was coming into the Vintage Market Days as we were going out, we were in the doorway in the rain, she had her hands full and people waiting on her, so we could manage a only brief few words and hug, but it did my heart good.

Happy Friday!

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