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 great week in these parts! Here’s why:

1. My birthday. My husband made his famous Grilled Chicken Teriyaki, everyone contributed to the rest of the meal and set-up/clean up, and Mittu made the GF Texas Sheet Cake. Yummy! Plus they took me to Cheddar’s the night before! It wasn’t our best experience at this restaurant, but the food was great. And I loved everyone’s thoughtful cards and gifts.

2. The rest of our stay-cation. I wrote about it more here, but it was a nice blend of activities and relaxation. I enjoyed the time with the family so much. My oldest son headed back to RI Monday – that seems so long ago already! I think this is the first time I have adopted the mentality that I’m on vacation, too. Usually I don’t feel that way because I still have my regular tasks to do. But really, the housework was done before my son came, and besides dealing with meals and dishes, which others helped with, and a bit of laundry and occasional crumb sweep-up, I was pretty much “off,” too. I enjoyed a lot of reading and resting when we weren’t doing other things.

3. 4 days off from cooking. Between my birthday, getting meals out, and other people cooking during the ten days or so everyone was here, I think I had about 4 days in a row that I didn’t cook. It was nice to have such a break!  And that helped me feel a little more like I was on vacation, too.

4. Learning that the print could be enlarged on my phone. I was lamenting that I couldn’t make out much on my phone without whipping out my glasses, and my husband told me I could enlarge the text. On the iPhone you go to Settings, click General, click Accessibility, then Larger Text, and you can manage how big you want it. That has helped a lot!!!

5. The car starting – after it didn’t. I had just loaded a huge supply of groceries into the back of the van and got in to start the car, and it just clicked. I tried several times and the  tried to call and text Jim. I was just getting ready to call my youngest son, Jesse, to come and rescue the groceries and me when I decided to try one more time. It started rather weakly, and I gave it a little gas, and it did fine. Jim took it to have the battery tested when he got home (it started fine for him!), and found that was the problem. It had a two-year warranty, and we’d had it four years, so it was about time to replace it. It was a relief to know it was fixed and not fear to drive it in case it wouldn’t start again. And though I was distressed (not to mentioned drenched in sweat in a hot car in August), it relatively was short-lived.

That’s my week. How was yours?

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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 great week! You’ll understand why from the favorite parts of it listed below:

1. My oldest son is home! His flight was delayed due to weather, which caused him to miss his connection, which bumped him to a flight the following afternoon. But he finally got here last weekend, and we’ve so enjoyed having all the family together again. Lots of talking, eating, and a little bit of playing games. That’s also why I have been mostly absent from the blog this week, except for a post about bookcases. 🙂

2. His birthday was this week!

3. A family outing. My husband had found a deal on tickets to the Ripley’s attractions in Gatlinburg, so we all went to the aquarium on Monday. The best part was following Timothy around and seeing his excitement. Then we stopped at a Mellow Mushroom in Pigeon Forge for lunch on the way back. It’s almost become a tradition to stop there since some years ago we got caught in non-moving traffic on the way to that area to look at Christmas lights and finally gave up and stopped to eat.

4. Finding a frame. I’ve had this Karla Dornacher print for a long time, planning to pair it with a piece I had cross-stitched a couple of years ago. I just recently found a frame that goes in the family room perfectly and got it hung up.

5. Rearranging. I don’t rearrange furniture much, but every now and then as I look at the decorating, I realize something would work much better in a different place. I had several such light bulb moments recently, and it helps me appreciate what I have all the more and see it in a new light.

Sometimes I can get into a “poor me” attitude when thinking that everyone else gets a vacation from their regular duties, but I don’t except in small doses. But, really, I do in some ways: one afternoon when thinking that I should be doing something productive, I thought, You know what? It’s vacation week: I can just relax until the next meal time. And we do tend to have a few more meals out when all the family is here, so there’s a break in that regard as well. Even though it’s been a busy week in some respects, there’s been time for relaxation, naps, and even curling up to read in the middle of the afternoon, a rarity.

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.

How did it get it be two weeks into August already?!  Here are a few favorites from the last week:

1.My son and daughter-in-law’s 7th anniversary. Jesse and I had fun dropping in over at their house to deliver flowers, a card, and some chocolate.

2. Baby-sitting Timothy so his parents could go out for their anniversary. I wasn’t sure how he would do being away from them, but except for asking about them several times, he did fine. I’m glad he enjoys being here. They celebrated early on Saturday, going out for the morning and then out for lunch. Then they came to our house and made nachos for dinner. Trading baby-sitting for dinner sounds like a good deal to me!

3. The Olympics. I don’t watch athletics much, but there is something about the Olympics! I just wish they wouldn’t show the parts I like best late at night. 🙂

4. Spray paint. In addition the the cart mentioned last week, I painted this button decoration for my sewing room. I’m getting better at it! I’ve had the blue and white/beige one for a while, trying to decide where to put them up. They only other color they had was red, which I didn’t want, so recently I got another of the white-ish ones and painted it pink. I may paint that white/beige one a purer white at some point, though I do like the shading. Once again, on sale 40% off and purchased with gift cards.

By the way, I did have the opportunity to use both Cricut machines on their new cart this week, and the set-up worked great!

5. A preview of gluten-free Texas Sheet Cake. Texas Sheet Cake is probably my favorite cake. Last year for my birthday we got a Coca-Cola Cake from Cracker Barrel, which is pretty close to it, but it was humongous and my gluten-sensitive daughter-in-law couldn’t eat it. My birthday is coming up later this month, and I found a couple of GF TSC recipes to see if anyone wanted to try their hand at it for my birthday, and if not, the Cracker Barrel cake would be fine again. Mittu did a practice cake this past week to test it out, and they happened to have it the evening I dropped in, so I got to try a sample. It turned out really well! A lot of GF cakes are kind of heavy, but this turned out just right. I am looking forward to more later in the month!

And a bonus for this week: anticipation! My oldest son is coming to visit from RI soon!

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.

Another busy week has come and gone. I’m grateful for this time to look back over it and remember the blessings I might otherwise forget. Here are a few:

1. Rain and clouds provided a respite from blistering temperatures for a few days.

2. My mother-in-law’s regular caregiver was on vacation last week, and the person who was supposed to take her place, whom we’d had before, injured herself, so we had someone completely new. Things did not start off smoothly — but we all survived the week, and our regular person is back now.

3. Perking up my planters with a few new flowers and digging the weeds out of them brightened up our entryway. While doing that I saw this in the dirt – at first I thought it was some creature’s nose, but my Facebook friends assure me it is a black walnut. Interesting!

I think it looks like a monkey’s nostrils. One friend thought it looked like a pig’s nose; another thought it looked like an owl’s face.

4. A new cart for my craft/sewing room. I’d had my eye on it for some time at JoAnn’s web site (they didn’t have it in stores). It was more expensive than I liked, but I finally caught it on a half-price sale with a coupon for free shipping.

5. Rescuers. I had not liked all the colors of the drawers of the above-mentioned cart, but decided I’d paint a few of them. The white ones went very well, but the pink ones were a disaster. My dear husband finished off both of them for me, and then he and Jesse (youngest son) put it all together for me. I have to be careful of the painted ones because the paint does scratch or chip easily, but I like the look much better.

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.

Hard to believe we’re at the end of another month, but this has been a hot one, so I am glad for it to go and bring us one step closer to fall and cooler weather. 🙂 Here are some of the best parts of the last week:

1. Sunday dinner prepared by my daughter-in-law. They had guests that came in late Sat. night and then left too late for them to get ready for church. So they came over to our house and made lunch while we were at church. So nice to come home to great smells and good food and company!

2. FaceTime with my little grandson. It’s nice to touch base during the week. He’ll chatter and show me things in his room and blow kisses. ♥

3. A new storage solution. I found these stamp storage bags at Hobby Lobby actually while looking for a different kind that I had seen on Pinterest. The ones I was originally looking for were more expensive and just opened on one side. These were cheaper and unzipped all the way around, making it easier to get to the one you want. I don’t stamp too very much any more, but having them organized and out of shoe boxes will encourage using them more than I have been. And, I still have balance on my Hobby Lobby gift cards, so they were free to me.

4. Another storage solution. I was looking for a plastic bin I could put on its side on a closet shelf to keep the items there from getting dusty. I couldn’t find anything plastic that would fit in that space, but I did find an oversized tote that fits just right. It has these wire things that go down the side to keep the sides firm, so it’s not collapsing like something made of fabric normally would. I like it!

5. Sweet comments on my 10th blogging anniversary post. The people I’ve met and friendships that have formed have been some of the best parts of blogging.

Happy Friday and Happy End of July!

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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.

We’re over halfway through July and heading toward August! Here are some favorite parts of the last week:

1. Jason’s birthday. We kind of extended the celebration: since his birthday was on a week day, we had our main celebration on Saturday but then got together to play Settlers of Cataan on the actual day. Always a joy to celebrate God’s gift of my middle son. ♥

2. Grilled pizza. This was the main dish for Jason’s birthday – which Mittu put together and Jason grilled. They were all very good, especially the dessert pizza. 🙂

3. Being back in the gym is an odd listing since that’s not my favorite thing to do or place to be. But I do feel better afterward. Last week I had only been able to get out one day for various reasons, and it felt good to get back to it this week.

4. Power restored. I’ve mentioned several times being thankful for not losing power during storms. We actually did lose power on Saturday evening, but there were no storms – we never did figure out what caused it. Thankfully we had my mother-in-law’s dinner already pureed and heated when it happened, but we also had her flat on her back, changing her – and you can’t raise the hospital bed with no electricity! Yikes! But we used the Hoyer lift to get her in a seated position in her wheelchair and fed her there. I figured evening/nighttime was probably the best time for it to go out, and we’d just go to bed early. But thankfully it came back on later in the evening. Just having it off for that amount of time made me appreciate it so much more.

5. Two more new successful recipe experiments: Macaroni Sausage Stir-Fry and One-Skillet Chicken Parmesan.

Bonus: This photo. ♥♥♥

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.

Another week has zoomed by. Here are some favorite parts of it:

1. An afternoon to myself is rare these days, especially on a Saturday. But everyone else was otherwise occupied, and I got to spend some focused, uninterrupted time on some blog posts that needed more thought than I had been able to give them.

2. Successful recipe experiments.  This one is just called Baked Chicken, but it needs to be called Pesto Chicken or something else a little more descriptive. It was my first time ever to use pesto. Everyone really liked it, and I am sure I’ll be using it again. Honey Mustard Sausage and Vegetables was a hit as well (we used turkey rather than beef sausage). Chicken In a Skillet was pretty good, too.

3. Take-out – two nights in a row! I requested it Friday night, and we got Papa Murphy’s. When my husband suggested getting something out again on Saturday, well, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity. 🙂 We got Red Lobster’s then.

4. Not losing power in a pretty bad storm yesterday. It blinked off for a moment, and we were without Internet for a few hours, but many had it much worse. My son and daughter-in-law have been without power since yesterday afternoon and spent the night here.

5. A “Laundry” sign. I had seen this several months ago and thought it work well with the other decor I had in there, but kept resisting. Who needs a sign that says “Laundry,” of all things, hidden away in a laundry room? But it was on sale 1/2 price this week, making it only about $7, and I still have credit left on a couple of Hobby Lobby gift cards, so I went for it. And I like it. 🙂 This is the first time I’ve had a cheery, decorated space in a laundry area, and it does brighten up the task.

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 start too many of these commenting on the passage of time, but, wow, it sure does seem to be going ever more quickly. I can’t believe we’re a week into July already! But here we are, and here are some of the best parts of the last week:

1. Great-Grandma’s 88th birthday. She can only eat pureed food, so we got her a caramel frappe from McDonald’s (one of her favorite things) and put her birthday candle in it. 🙂 We got cupcakes for the rest of us. Her favorite color is yellow, thus the yellow flowers.

2. Independence Day. Though our country is not perfect and has its problems, I still would rather not llive anywhere else and I am thankful for it.

3. Neighborhood cookout. A couple of neighbors have organized this for the last few years for July 4. One neighbor grills hamburgers, hot dogs, and ribs, and everyone contributes a bit of money for the meat. Then everyone else brings side dishes, desserts, soft drinks, etc. Sadly, I am not as neighborly as I probably should be, so I am glad for this opportunity to get out in my community and talk with people. I especially enjoyed meeting some new neighbors.

Funny moment here: I’m not a huge fan of Sprite, but I drink it sometimes if there are no caffeine-free alternatives. Little Timothy and his parents had come for the cookout, and he had gotten hot running around. He came over to me and kept trying to get to the ice in my cup, but he had been petting a dog, so I didn’t want his fingers in it. 🙂 I asked if I could pour some for him in a cup. He took a drink, blinked, made a funny face, but said, “MMMMmmm!” And he kept doing that, like it was a bit strong, but he liked it. His mom said, “Why are you reacting like that? I said, “Has he not had Sprite before?” She said, “Oh, I thought you had water!” 😀

4. Ceiling fans. We don’t use them all that much, but for a couple of days it was so hot and humid that just the AC wasn’t cutting it. It felt lovely to come in and sit down under the fans.

5. Clean carpets. My husband cleaned my youngest son’s carpet because he had a pretty bad stain on it, and while he was at it, cleaned the carpet in the living room and office as well. The stain came out nicely, and it’s a nice feeling to know the carpets have been done.

Bonus. Rain. It’s been pretty dry lately, so a day or so of rain was a big relief.

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.

Wow, it’s the first of July already! Here are highlights from the last week in June:

1. A neighbor’s bounty. This time of year our neighbor starts bringing over some of the excess from their garden. One batch contained these humongous zucchini. My little tape measure isn’t showing up well, but they were close to 12″ long.

2. Two successful new zucchini recipes.  One night I tried these Zucchini Boats, and wow – we all loved them. I only made a half recipe at first to test them out, but next time I am making a full batch! I used the Jimmy Dean Turkey Sausage Crumbles because that’s what I had on hand, and also because the turkey sausage is so much less greasy. Plus they are already cooked, saving a step.

I was trying to explain to my husband and son that normally for zucchini boats, you cut the zucchini in half lengthwise and scoop out the middle, so it ends up looking something like a canoe. But these were so big, I cut them into quarters instead of halves so the servings wouldn’t be so big and take longer to cook. My husband summarized, “So they’re zucchini rafts and not zucchini boats?” 🙂  I also made zucchini muffins but didn’t get a photo. And both recipes just used one zucchini! Bonus: after typing in “zucchini” so much while searching for recipes, I now know how to spell it. 🙂  I used to get mixed up as to how many c’s and n’s it had.

3. A finished fence! I am so proud of my hard-working husband both for finding it on Craig’s list and then spending so much time putting it up. Unfortunately with the loss of the diseased tress we had to cut down, the weeds along the tree line are shooting up rapidly since they’re getting so much more sunshine and rain. That’s the next phase: getting rid of the weeds and deciding what we want to plant in their stead.

4. Successful surgery. My step-father had hip replacement surgery yesterday, and at the time of this writing I’ve heard the surgery went well and he’s in recovery. My sisters there with him in TX are keeping me updated. Praying for a quick and smooth recovery.

5. One of my favorite meals that my daughter-in-law makes is a chicken cordon bleu variation with chicken tenderloins, ham, bacon, and cheese, and she made that for us on Sunday along with au gratin potatoes and salad. Yum!

Happy Friday, and Happy Independence Day weekend to those in the USA!

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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 love balanced weeks of getting things done yet having time for rest and fun as well, and this has been one of those weeks. Here are my favorite bits:

1. Father’s Day. I felt bad that I didn’t have a post here or on Facebook honoring my husband, dad, step-dad, and son, but I’m just not at the computer much on weekends any more, especially if the kids come over. But I enjoyed the opportunity to honor my husband, especially, on “his” day. And, my daughter-in-law made this awesome cake for the occasion!

It was funny that after the dads in the room opened their presents, little Timothy said, “Cake?” ‘Cause cake always follows presents! 🙂

2. Decluttering done, at least for now. My husband and son took several boxes and bags full of things to donate to the local thrift store. Nice to have that done for now, and I’m enjoying the cleaned-out and more organized spaces.

3. Decluttering spreading. My youngest son got inspired to sort through his room as well. He threw away a couple of garbage bags full of stuff (papers, mostly), added to our donation pile, organized his shelves and closet, and even dusted! It had been…a while!

4. Take-out Mexican food. Yum!

5. Healing. My husband has been battling an infection for weeks now, with I don’t know how many different antibiotics. It’s not completely gone, but it finally seems to be well on its way out.

Happy Friday!

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