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 Christmas Eve Eve! 🙂  Ready or not, here Christmas comes! Hope you’re having a good time with the things you need to do. I think we’re just about ready except for a little pie baking on Saturday. Our goal was to get done by the time my oldest son got here rather than by Christmas. In the midst of all the happy activities, I’m thankful for a few minutes to sit down and recount the blessings of the week.

1. My husband would be a favorite every week, of course, but this week I have so appreciated his pitching in to cook, wash dishes, do all the “before someone comes to visit” cleaning while I’ve had to be off my foot because of a broken toe. I hate that he’s having to spend his vacation that way, but I’m grateful he was on vacation to do so. Thankfully the cleaning is caught up so we can relax and enjoy the next few days, and I am starting to be able to hobble around a bit more.

2. Our 37th wedding anniversary was Wednesday. My husband brought me flowers, candy, a sweet card, and took me out to a very nice dinner, plus we had a little more time to talk than we normally do.

3. An anniversary dinner made by my daughter-in-law a few days before our anniversary. Plus cake!

4. Christmas cards and family newsletters. It seems like fewer people do this each year, but I love receiving them.

5. Our oldest son coming home for a much-anticipated visit. 🙂

I hope each of you has a special, meaningful Christmas. The first Christmas wasn’t “perfect” by our standards today, but it was just the way God planned it. No matter how many people are there (or not) and what’s under the tree (or not), we can celebrate the best gift of all: the Son of God who willingly came to Earth to keep God’s law perfectly in our place, to atone for our sins, and to make a way for us to be reconciled to God and experience His presence. “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:23). God with us! In the forgiveness of our sins, in our everyday needs and fellowship. “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15).

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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.

I’m grateful for a regular time in a busy week to count blessings that I might otherwise overlook or forget. Here are a few from the past week:

1. Making Christmas cookies with Timothy. I’m not sure why we didn’t do this last year, but he was full-fledged into it this year. He liked the rolling out better than the cutting, but he seemed to like the star cookie cutter best of the choices. And he enjoyed the icing and sprinkles as well.

Sugar cookies aren’t my #1 favorites (that would be anything with chocolate chips, and with both chocolate and peanut butter, all the better!), but sometimes they hit the spot, both the ones we made from a gluten-free mix (Pillsbury, I think) plus some store-bought ones Jesse had leftover from an event he went to. I didn’t grow up making sugar cookies at Christmas, and did them off and on when my kids were little, but now they seem a definite part of the season.

2. Numbing agents. I wrote yesterday about breaking and dislocating my toe. Any time on TV that you see someone having a dislocated bone reset, there’s a lot of yelling and pain, so I was glad the doctor numbed my foot for the proceeding!

3. Clinics with evening hours. Our doctor’s office has had weekday evening hours, usually with a nurse practitioner, for some time now, but I didn’t know that specialties like an orthopedic clinic had evening, walk-in, no appointment needed hours as well.

4. Warm showers. This is one of those everyday blessings we don’t even think about until we can’t have them for some reason. I was thinking about showers this week when a major character in a book I was reading was homeless and had to clean up in public restrooms as best she could. Then I skipped a shower on the day after my toe injury, and was fine that day, but the next day my skin and scalp felt awful. It felt so good to get under warm water and wash and rinse off.

5. Dinner and a sweet card. Last night Mittu sent over dinner and this card she and Timothy made.

I hope your Christmas preparations are going well and you have a few quiet moments to relax, reflect, and enjoy. 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.

Are you making good progress on your Christmas plans? God hs given me some productive days this week: I knocked a few things off the list, and the schedule’s looking pretty good, but I’ll relax more when everything’s done. Here are some highlights from the last week:

1. Flowers. I don’t often buy flowers for myself, but I spotted these in a nearby bin while I was bagging my broccoli in the produce section of the store, and when I saw they were only $5, I succumbed. I love how the sparkly babies’ breath makes them festive. Roses may be my favorite, but I have a soft spot for carnations, and they are one flower whose scent I love (and doesn’t make me sneezy!)

2. Coffee, even though I don’t like flavored coffee, have been drinking it without sweetener since I had to learn to when I had gestational diabetes with one pregnancy nearly 30 years ago (once I learned to like it that way, I figured I may as well keep with it since I get plenty of sugar other places), and have to have decaf due to heart rhythm problems. It still hits the spot, and now that the weather is colder, I drink more to keep warm.

3. A nice meal prepared by my daughter-in-law, including cookies!

4. Rain and sunshine. As many of you know, we have been under drought conditions for months here in Eastern TN, so I didn’t begrudge the rain at all. In fact, I welcomed it. But after about three days of cloudy skies, I did rejoice to see bright sunshine again. I’m not sure if we are back up to normal conditions or not, but it looks like we’re predicted to have a couple of days of rain in each of the next couple of weeks, so that should certainly help.

5. Church Ladies’ Christmas Party. This is the first time since I’ve been here that this annual event hasn’t been in a home or at the church. We had it in a historic inn that was lovely, if a little cramped (“open concept” was not known in the old days!) Had a very good time, enjoyed the testimony given, and the night out did me a lot of good.

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.

It’s been a super-busy week here, and I think it must be nearly everywhere. Most of the blogs I read have been fairy quiet since Thanksgiving. December ushers in some extra tasks, but they’re fun ones for the most part. Here are the favorite parts of the last week:

1. Decorating for Christmas. My little grandson’s family has an artificial tree, so they came along with us so he could have the experience of shopping for a live one. Then they brought over apple cider and donuts and made lunch while we decorated. Timothy had a lot of fun opening boxes of ornaments and decorations and helping set them out.

“This looks like a good one!”

Tall uncles help us reach the high places. 🙂

2. Cyber shopping. We got the great bulk of the the Christmas shopping done between Black Friday and Cyber Monday online, and I think I got most of the rest of it done in town today. I think it is fun to get out in stores a little bit, but I really love shopping online. Came across some good deals, too!

3. Another eBay auction win. While looking at the linens I mentioned last week that go along with my Pfaltzgraf Tea Rose dishes, I saw a couple of casserole dishes listed as well. I kept an eye on them til the auction was due to close this week and got them for about $8 each! And now I am staying away from eBay for a while….

4. Rain. This area has been so abnormally dry for months now, and we got a little rain last week, but one day this week we got 6″ in one day. There have been so many fires in the area, the most recent being in the Gatlinburg area, as I am sure many of you have heard. We need more good, soaking rains.

5. A printer at church that folds and staples. I compile a ladies’ booklet once a month for church, and I used to have to go in after it was printed to staple and fold them. We don’t live close to our church, and sometimes it was a nice excursion out alone, but sometimes when life was busy it put a crunch in the schedule. A few months ago the church got a new printer that assembles and staples them all, and I haven’t thought to mention it til now. At first I still felt like I should go over and make sure they all came out all right, but I resisted. With a busy week like this one, it was really nice not to have to.

I hope your first few days of December and your Christmas preparations are going well!

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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.

It’s officially the Christmas season! At least, I count the day after Thanksgiving as the beginning, though I’ve cheated a little bit by listening to some Christmas music already. And though winter isn’t officially proclaimed for a few weeks yet, winter weather has arrived here with several nights down in the 20s. But as I write this, it’s warm and cozy inside and I’m ready to think over highlights of the past week.

1. Making and giving ornaments to Timothy, discussed with more pictures here. His parents put his own little Christmas tree up and asked me to make some ornaments for it. I think he likes them. 🙂

2. Rain. We’re still way behind the amount of rain we need, but we did get some this week with more forecast for next week.

3. Winning eBay auctions. I don’t do a whole lot with eBay, but somehow I came across a sale of some hand towels and hot pads that match my Pfaltzgraf Tea Rose pattern dishes. Some of the dishes and accessories can be found thee pretty easily, but linens are rare. I was watching the countdown of each bid and even got into a bidding war on one item – but I won them all. It was rather exciting! Thankfully they were all from one seller, so she combined them with a lower shipping price than stated.

4. Shelves. My husband put up shelves in Jason and Mittu’s garage and had a couple left. He asked me if I wanted them in the laundry room. At first I didn’t think so, but the more I thought about it, the better the idea sounded. I was so pleased with them! All that stuff was either on top of the dryer or on a counter. Much neater now!

5. Thanksgiving. I so enjoyed the emphasis on remembering our blessings and thanking God for them, the time with family, and the delicious food we had been looking forward to for weeks!

Last week I mentioned being thankful that the big tree our neighbors were having cut down didn’t fall on the fence, or, worse yet, the house. I didn’t have a picture then, but here it is now. As you can tell, it came awfully close!

Hope you’ve had a great week! 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.

I can hardly believe Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK! Where did November go?! I know I comment probably too often on how fast time is flying – but, man, it’s crazy!

But no matter how fast the week goes by, I am grateful for this pause on Fridays to remember and recount and appreciate some of its special moments.

1. Going to a craft show. I wrote more about it here. It had been a long time since I had done anything like that, and it was so much fun.

2. Safe tree removal. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that our neighbors had a grass fire that spread quickly. A huge pine tree in their yard was scorched pretty badly, and they told my husband they were going to have it taken down. One day as I pulled into the driveway, I noticed this tree was leaning towards our house. I don’t think that was totally due to the fire – the trunk just grew in a weird way. I wish I had taken a picture of it. That night I was a little afraid to go to sleep in my room, afraid the tree would come crashing down on me during the night. When they finally had someone come out, I was nervous most of the day lest part of the tree fall on the house or the fence. It did fall right next to the fence – my husband said another foot and it would have taken it out — but they got it down with a minimum of damage.

3. Snuggling with Timothy. He’s usually on the go too much to sit beside me or in my lap for very long, but this last Sunday afternoon he did, and it did my Grandma’s heart good. 🙂

4. The Frazor Evangelistic Team is at our church this week. We were only able to go on Sunday, but I was so blessed by the music especially.

5. Mini apple strudels. I hadn’t seen these in quite a while, and the last ones I saw didn’t have the glaze on top, which to me just makes it. So I was glad to spot these again in the store. They look big in this photo, but in reality each one was only big enough for a bite or two.

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.

This has been and up and down week, but so far it seems to be ending nicely. Here are some of the best parts:

1. Roses still in bloom. Most of our flowers are gone now, except for one planter of petunias and begonias out back, but our roses are still looking nice.

2. A calm, quiet, no obligation day after a very busy one. My mother-in-law’s regular bath aide is out with a knee injury, and the substitute aides vary in when they get here. So that put me  little late going to the grocery store. I may have to plan my week to avoid needing to go out on bath days for a while. Anyway, the hospice chaplain came while I was out, and the hospice doctor, who comes about once every three months, came just after lunch, and the nurse came an hour later. And I usually do laundry on her bath days, so between all the people coming and everything else. I decided I may as well give up on trying to get anything else done that day. That was Election Day, and I was so glad I had voted early. My one consolation was that, with all the hospice people coming in one day and errands having been taken care of, the rest of the week should be a lot quieter. We stayed up late watching election results, and it was so nice on Wed. to have a peaceful, quiet day with nothing that “had” to be done (though of course there are always things that could be done). It was refreshing both to my body and my spirit.

3. The election is OVER. Whichever side you’re on, I’m glad it’s over for this year. 

4. An extra hour Saturday night. I hate giving it back in the spring, but I love turning the clocks back in the fall. Except now it gets dark so much earlier.

5. A non-cooking weekend. Jim indulged my request for take-out Chinese food Saturday night, and my daughter-in-law made delicious hamburger pie for Sunday dinner. I hope you don’t mind me listing this kind of thing so often, but it’s always a favorite part of the week when it happens. 🙂

This is Veteran’s Day in the US, and I am so thankful for the men and women who protect, defend, and serve our country, as well as their families and the hardships they endure with their loved ones away.

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

This week started out with a bang, but thankfully calmed down later in the week. Here are the highlights:

1. God’s protection. I wrote on Sunday about how a fire started in a neighbor’s yard (due to not completely putting out a leaf fire) and spread quickly because it has been so dry here. In this picture that my son took, our fence is on the left, and the fire went neatly around it, though it did warp it a bit and melt the edging Jim had placed for a planting area. All that black area is from the fire.

Some of you remember our tree saga earlier in the year, when a row of 52 trees had to be cut down because they had caught a disease and were dying. They were right where the fence is now, so if they had been there, I am sure they would have caught fire and spread as well. We were thankful they were gone and no one was hurt and the damage wasn’t any worse.

2. Pizza and movie night with the family. We hadn’t done that in a while. We re-watched Finding Nemo.

3. Christmas cards. I wasn’t thinking about Christmas cards while shopping at W-Mart until I passed the Christmas aisles. I had a bit of time so I decided to look, and ended up buying all my Christmas cards. I’ve found that that is really the cheapest place to buy them, and do they have a section of inspirational ones. I’m particular about how mine are worded, so I like to shop for them before the selection is picked over. Now if I really wanted to get ahead of schedule, I’d start addressing them – but that’s not likely just yet. 🙂

4. A cheerful checker. At the same store, the sales clerk where I checked out was exceptionally cheerful and friendly, and it totally brightened my day. I’m not naturally like that, so I admire people who are, but it did convict me that a smile and bit of conversation and interest in others is better than being always caught up in my own thoughts.

5. Online shopping successes. I’m going to combine two in one here. 🙂 I had seen something on Pinterest that I was interested in getting Timothy for Christmas, but when I clicked through to the Etsy shop the item was from, it said they were all sold. I messaged the owner to see if there was any possibility she might be making more, and she told me she had one left and would be willing to sell it to me! Then I saw something else while out shopping and came home to compare prices and similar items online, and found it at Target. It was a little more there, but they had a 20% off code for kid’s toys and free shipping, which made it lower than anyone else had it. (No affiliate ads  or links here – just sharing what I found.)

Bonus: Early voting. I had thought you could only vote early if there was some reason you couldn’t vote on election day. I was happy to be found wrong, and avoided the long lines by voting this week. Although I’m not always thrilled with the choice of candidates, I’m thankful for the privilege of voting and don’t take it lightly.

That’s our week – hope you had a good one, too, or at least can find some good in it. 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.

It’s so hard to believe this is the last FFF of October! What a fast-moving month. Here are some of my favorite parts of the last week:

1. Gorgeous fall weather. I’m not fond of the sauna-like humid heat of the summer or the cold and ice of the winter, so I am soaking up this wonderful in-between weather while we have it. Cool mornings, warm afternoons, a crispness in the air, crunchy leaves on the path….lovely! Plus we had a bit of rain a couple of days after having a lack of it for several weeks.

2. A Saturday excursion. Home Depot is one of my little grandson’s favorite places to visit, and he has certain spots he likes to stop at in the store. His parents invited us to come along this past Saturday, both just for the experience with Timothy but also to confer on a paint color for their living room. Then we went to eat lunch at Salsarita’s (Jim and I had never been there) because Timothy likes their tortilla chips. It was a fun morning.

3. Animal crackers. I had been looking for some for ages but could only find the huge containers like for a nursery or daycare. Finally a while back I found the kind in the traditional little red box like I and my kids had grown up with, then more recently I found some in a little plastic cup with a lid. Timothy likes them, and it’s just fun to see him enjoying them.

4. Dinner. Mittu texted me one day that Timothy hadn’t been eating well for a couple of days (teething), and apparently there is something magical about our house because he usually eats pretty well here, so she asked if they could come over and she’d fix dinner here. The chicken fried rice was really good!

5. A surprise vacuum cleaner. I don’t know how it came up in a conversation one night – I think we might have been talking about cordless or wireless things – but I mentioned that I wished someone would make a cordless vacuum, or at least one with a retractable cord you could control with a button, because it’s frustrating to me to have to let out or gather up a long cord in the course of working my way around a room. Jim answered that they had been invented.I don’t know where I have been that I haven’t seen them. Then without telling me, he saw one online for a decent price and bought it. It’s very convenient to use. I don’t think I’ll get rid of my regular one, because I do use the attachments often, especially the one that gets into that edge right next to the wall that the vacuum doesn’t quiet reach on its own. But I don’t use the attachments every time, so this will be great for a quick whisk around the room.

Bonus: I’ve been working on a crafty project for Timothy’s Christmas. His parents are planning to get him his own little Christmas tree so that he can take the decorations on and off and move them around and hopefully leave the big one alone, and Mittu asked me if I’d make him some little ornaments for it. It’s been a long time since I have done anything crafty besides an occasional card, and I’m really enjoying it. No sneak peaks yet, but I’m looking forward to showing them to you when I am done. OK, I changed my mind. 🙂 Here is a sneak peek:

They’re not put together yet – I’ve just been working on the tops so far. The top two are from a free pattern here; the others I’ve just been winging from ideas I’ve seen on Pinterest.

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 just zooming right through this month, aren’t we? Here are some favorite parts of the last week:

1. Generosity of my son and daughter-in-law who made dinner twice this week and brought me flowers and my husband chocolate-covered peanuts plus a card from Timothy.

2. A Little Casar’s pizza place with a drive-through. For various reason’s we don’t like them for dinner but think they are perfect for after church on Sunday nights, and there is one on our route now with a drive-through window. 🙂

3. A whole weekend without cooking. Between the first two entries here and then my husband getting McAlister’s Deli for lunch Sunday, I had the weekend almost completely “off” in the kitchen.

4. Fall color. If it’s not at its peak, it’s pretty close to it. Sometimes it goes by pretty quickly but this year it seems to be taking its time, and I love it. I love seeing how our neighbor’s tree in particular looks every morning and wish I had taken a photo of it day by day for comparison.

5. Two favorite foods. I’ve mentioned both of these before, but it’s ok to be thankful for them again. 🙂 One of my favorite things to do with leftover meatloaf is to make a grilled cheese sandwich with the slices for lunch. Kind of like a patty melt you can find in some restaurants but without the droopy onions.

Then I also made Choco-Peanut Butter Dreams (recipe here).

They’re not specifically fallish but I tend to want them in the fall. So Mittu would have a gluten-free option, I also made Quick Peanut Butter Cookies (recipe on the same link as the other) except instead of drop cookies, I put dough in mini cupcake pans and then after taking them out of the oven, I placed a mini Reese’s peanut butter cup in the dough and then let them cool. After this and making cookies a week or two ago, I decided I need to lay off the cookie baking for a while – it’s too easy to grab a couple off and on through the day. But they were good while they lasted!

Hope you’re having a wonderful Friday!

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