Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week, a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

Wow, I am running super late this morning, but here are some of my faves from the last week.

1. Spring break! A little earlier than I am used to, but I’ll gladly take it whenever it comes!

2. Eating out. This one is actually a “leftover” from last week when Jesse was on his senior trip. It wasn’t planned this way, but Jim and I ate out twice, we brought pizza in one night, and then I got take-out from Cracker Barrel for one lunch. Plus Jason and Mittu had us over for dinner Saturday night. It almost felt like vacation, not having to plan for meals, cook, or clean up. A bonus is that in most cases there were leftovers! It’s probably not healthy financially or physically to eat from restaurants that often regularly, but I felt very rested.

3. Jim’s belated birthday celebration. We ate out at a restaurant right on the Tennessee Riverand got a table right at the window.

By the way, the bottle in front of Mittu is root beer. 🙂

4. Cleaning the stove-top — the result, not so much the process.

Before:

During:

After:

5. The Settlers of Catan iPhone app. I resisted getting it for a long time because it is one of the more expensive apps, but then I reasoned that I paid more for the board game and we don’t get together to play it all that often. I figured the app would help me learn how to strategize better. Well….I may be getting a wee bit obsessed. It’s fun, and it has improved my game!

Bonuses: A good report at my first dental visit since we moved here, and NOT losing power in the storm last night. We knew it went off while we were out because the computer was off and all the clocks were blinking when we got home, but we were thankful it was on and stayed on the rest of the night. Our first year here the power seemed to go off a lot so that’s a concern in any bad weather.

That’s my week. How was yours?

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Last week I almost didn’t post a Fave Five because at first I couldn’t think of five highlights of the week. It wasn’t a bad week, but it was a fairly ordinary one. But I did come up with five after thinking about it. This week…my cup overfloweth and I have way more than five! That’s how life goes.

1. Ironing is not one of my favorite things, and thankfully I don’t have much that needs to be ironed any more. I tend to let it sit for a while, but I finally knocked it out in an afternoon this week while catching up on NCIs and The Amazing Race.

2. One of the things I ironed: a new-to-me shower curtain. This was left in our house when we bought it, and I loved the design, but the color was peach: not only is that one of my all-time least favorite colors, but it didn’t go with the pink I do have.

I used Rit color remover on it, but it still seemed to have a peachy cast to it. I had planned to dye it pink, but I felt that might be a little too overwhelming, even for me. So I put it away for several months, got it out this week, and decided in some lights it looked pinkish rather than peachy, ironed it, and hung it up.

I like that a bit of color was left in the thread.

Sometimes it still does look a little too peachy to me and I may still try to dye it. But for now it really does lighten up the bathroom, and I love the design.

3. Jesse has been away this week on his senior trip, and though that’s not a favorite in itself, he seems to be having a great time. I’ve enjoyed not revolving life around the school schedule this week, especially not having to set an alarm. You’d think I would have gotten more done this week….but it didn’t work out that way!

4. Jim’s birthday was Tuesday, but because Jesse was away we planned to celebrate some time next week. But I didn’t want to let the day go completely unacknowledged, so we went out to Outback using a Christmas gift card, and then Jason and Mittu surprised Jim by bringing a cake over that evening, and we each got him a card and a little gift. It was a fun night.

5. Jim also had an out of town trip this week, which, again, is not on my list of favorites, but Jason and Mittu offered to come over and spend the night when he was away. It was nice not to be completely alone.

So — I managed to work in just about everything. 🙂

Happy Friday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Late to the party this morning, but here are a few favorites from the past week.

1. Getting Jesse’s truck back. I think I mentioned that Jesse had a minor accident back in December. There wasn’t really that much damage to his car, but the shop had it for five weeks — and they’re still not done because they didn’t have all the parts they needed. But it is drivable and they’re supposed to call us when they get in what they need. He has an early class MWF, so I am very glad to let him take himself there once again rather than Mom taking him. 🙂 Plus, even though I try to be home when he is, it’s nice not to have the pressure of watching the clock while running errands to get to school in time to pick him up.

2. An impromptu date with hubby at Ruby Tuesday’s last Friday. For some reason we don’t go there often, but I really like their grilled green beans — and their white cheddar mashed potatoes and BBQ ribs weren’t bad, either!

3. An unexpected gesture. My husband was fixing a leak in the toilet valve last Saturday and somehow went from that to scrubbing out tubs and showers in two bathrooms. Very nice!

4. An unfulfilled weather prediction. Very bad storms and tornado warnings were forecast for last Wed. evening, so severe that prayer meeting was cancelled, but our area only got a bit of rain. We have a similar forecast for this evening — and I am hoping for a similar outcome.

5. These:

They caught my eye in the store the other day and looked very much like a cookie I really liked as a child, though I have never heard of this brand. Oh, man — so good. The only problem now is going to be avoiding the temptation to buy them very time I go to that store.

Happy Friday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few favorites from this past week:

1. Celebrating my daughter-in-law’s birthday.

2. Seeing the first daffodils in bloom. This winter hasn’t been bad, but those first signs of spring are still uplifting.

3. Working on my recipe book I mentioned a few weeks ago while watching episodes I’ve missed on the computer. There are a few shows that I am interested in but my family isn’t, but it seems a waste of time to just sit and watch them by myself in the daytime, which is my prime work time. But while putting clipped recipes in a notebook at my desk, where I can spread everything out, it’s been enjoyable to catch a few of those shows online while working on it. And a subpoint here: I love those network sites that put their shows online the day after they run rather than waiting a week or even 30 days!

4. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge. It’s been so fun to just immerse myself in books by and about her this month. Even while I am looking forward to moving on to other things, I am going to miss stopping the series…but I need to save some for next year. This may be a good way to explore other authors in the future as well.

5. This is a life favorite rather than just a favorite from this week, but recently I’ve had a renewed appreciation for being able to be a stay-at-home mom and homemaker. I’m so grateful.

Overall it has been a pleasant week here. I hope it has been for you as well — and if not, may next week be better.

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few favorites from this past week:

1. Puff’s Plus tissues with lotion. These feel so soothing and help keep my nose from getting all red and chapped when I’ve got a cold (I’m thankfully feeling better now).

2. Fellowship. After not having much going on socially for quite a while, we had our “dinner for six” with our new group and a Sunday School party both this past weekend.

3. Valentine’s Day. One of my favorite holidays though it was a bit more low-key this year.

4. Lindt milk chocolate truffles from both my husband and son and daughter-in-law.

5. Encouraging e-mails from readers of my latest newspaper column, saying they had been or are currently taking care of elderly parents and could identify with and appreciate what I had to say. Once I send the column to the editor, then my mind thinks of several ways people could take something I’ve said the wrong way, so it is very encouraging to hear that someone has gotten something beneficial out of what I wrote.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week, wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

Here are a few favorites from this past week.

1. Safety in an accident. We ran into the back of a truck on the way home Sunday afternoon. The truck was ok, but our van had hit their trailer hitch, which did a good bit of damage to our front bumper, grill, and radiator. But thankfully no one was hurt. We were especially concerned about Grandma, who was with us at the time, but she was fine.

2. Getting my van back after repairs from the accident.

3. Sunshine. It hasn’t been as cold or icy or snowy as last winter, but it has been rainy and overcast for a number of days. But this week has been very sunshiny. (I wrote this yesterday afternoon and it is overcast this morning…oh well, it was nice while it lasted. 🙂 )

4. Hearing Jesse’s school choir and an ensemble compete in a regional fine arts contest. They won and are going to the State competition!

5. Having an unexpected day off school. I knew this coming Monday was a day off due to a teacher work day, but Friday (today) is off, too, and it wasn’t on the original school calendar. I was so excited about getting to sleep in til I remembered I do have to be somewhere this morning. Oh well. But I think I can sleep a smidgen longer than usual.

Happy Friday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Barbara Harper

I’m late to the party — it’s been a busy morning to a busy day. But here are some of my favorite things from the last week:

1. More daylight. I mentioned just after the winter solstice that I was glad the days were beginning to get longer even though I had to take it on faith since I couldn’t really tell it yet. But now I can tell! A couple of days this week I was surprised to look up at the clock and see it was time to start dinner — it still looked like bright outside.

2. New smooth pavement. We have to cross a set of railroad tracks on most of our journeyings, and it has been pretty bumpy. They just paved that area recently and it’s much nicer — hardly any jostling now when we go over them.

3. A good visit with my mother-in-law. Lately it has been kind of sad to go see her: either she’s asleep or too drowsy to really talk, or, even when she’s been awake she just hasn’t been conversant. We weren’t sure if she was just tired or was continuing to decline or what. But this morning she was pretty awake and had that old sparkle back in her eyes, and we had a good visit.

4. Inspired Reads. Lizzie mentioned this last week and an author I follow posts some of their offerings on Facebook. They post “free for a limited time” downloads of Christian books for the Kindle. And these days you can download a Kindle app to read e-books on your computer or other device. I’ve gotten several through them — enough to keep me busy for a good while.

5. Learn Out Loud. They have similar “free for the day” downloads of audiobooks. I’m currently listening to one I downloaded from there by Terri Blackstock, and today’s free download is the Chronicles of Narnia. Good deal!

Off again for a bit — I’ll be back later on to visit with you. Happy Friday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Wow, it’s hard to believe January is almost over. Here are some of my favorite parts of last week:

1. Mom’s day out. I had some gift cards for Michael’s, which is too far away from us for a casual stop in, so I finally had a day where I could plan to go to there and JoAnn’s, which is nearby. Just down from JoAnne’s is Tuesday Morning, and I had time for a stop in there, too. Found some good deals, had lunch on the go at Chick Fil-A, and then my husband took me out for Mexican food that evening. A fun day overall!

2. Surprise discoveries. While tucking my gift cards away in my purse, I discovered a forgotten JoAnn’s gift card and $20 in an envelope from my last birthday. Sweet! I didn’t think the gift card had much left on it, but after I made my purchase the clerk told me there was still $12 left.

3. Antibiotics and healing. This week I’ve been recovering from what was a worrisome infection. A former pastor used to say God heals “with medicine, without medicine, and sometimes in spite of medicine.” 🙂 I’m so glad for these tools He has allowed men to discover.

4. Kids pitching in. My son and daughter-in-law made some delicious lasagna for us last Sunday, and my youngest son cooked his first meal ever last Monday, and all of them loaded the dishwasher afterward. Jesse ran to the store for some essentials for me, the first time since he started driving that I asked him to do that. He even brought me back some M&Ms.:)

5. A new quilt. I had been looking for one for a long time. The bedspread we had was deteriorating. I wanted something with pink, blue, and green, and kept finding various combinations of those colors but nothing with all three. Finally I stumbled upon this at Tuesday Morning:

It’s still not exactly the shades I was looking for, but it is closer than anything else I’ve seen, and it was inexpensive enough that if I find something I like a lot better, I won’t have any problem storing this for company use.

Bonus: My son Jason, who has been unemployed since Thanksgiving week, starts a new job Monday!

Despite recuperating, it’s been a pretty good week. I could add that receiving a few notes, e-mails, and Facebook posts that people were praying for me was a blessing, too.

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Another week has flown by! Here are some of my favorite parts of it:

1. The little doohickey that enables me to listen to an audiobook on my iPhone through my car speakers….a car which only has a cassette player. I forgot what you call it, but one end plugs into a CD player (what we used to use it for) or an iPhone and the other end is a cassette tape that goes into the player. It was hard to hear just the iPhone over car and traffic noises.

2. A thoughtful husband, who, after just overhearing me talk about the above device in a conversation with my son, while I was wondering where that device might be since we hadn’t used it in a long time, quietly found it and set it up for me so it was all ready to use next time I drove.

3. Enlarging small photos. I mentioned last week going through a box of my mother-in-law’s old photos. The majority of them were only 2 x 3 inches, and I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to see them well enough to identify any of the people. I scanned them in and printed them out 4 x 6, and I was so glad that worked well.

It’s been fun looking at them with her.

4. Working on a Cooking for 2 recipe book. With just three of us at home, and sometimes just two, often I just make regular meals and then have leftovers for lunch or another dinner. But I do have a lot of recipes for just 2-4 from when Taste of Home used to publish a Cooking For Two magazine (I miss that one!) I’ve been wanting to pull those out and compile a separate recipe book so I could find those without digging through the others I’ve pulled out of magazines. I was especially glad to find a scaled- down Texas Sheet Cake recipe — I love that but rarely make it since the original recipe makes a cookie-sheet panful.

5. Having the Frazor team at our church last Sunday. Always a joy.

Bonus: Finally getting decent pictures of these guys, as decent as I can get through a glass window and screen.

I didn’t think rabbits ate seeds, but apparently they found something in the bird feeder they like!

Have a great Friday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Barbara Harper

It’s been an overcast week here in eastern TN with the possibility of snow tonight. No accumulation expected, though many students, as well as parents and teachers, hope that part of the forecast is wrong! (Update: that part was written yesterday afternoon. We did get a bit of snow, but only got a 1 hour delay for school.)

Here are some of my favorite things from the last week:

1. Audiobooks. Wow, that has really transformed driving time! I’ll say more about it when I finish the first one.

2. Looking through a box of his mom’s old pictures with my husband. Jim’s sister had sent it just after their mom moved to be near us and we had been meaning to get that down from the attic for a long time so she could help us identify some of the people in them, but thankfully Jim knew who most of them were. We found several of his mom as a child, which Jim had never seen before, and several with her sister, who had passed away many years back.

3. Twice-baked potatoes using this recipe. I’ve had them a couple of times, but this was the first time I made them. So good! And though I am not the best planner in the kitchen, I did even plan ahead for this by making extra baked potatoes for a dinner earlier in the week.

4. These:

They say you shouldn’t go shopping when you’re hungry. They’re right. :blush: I dashed in for some supplies for Jim’s mom, saw this, and grabbed it. It’s a layer of brownie with a layer of chocolate chip cookie on top. Wonderful.

5. Finished projects. Jim’s mom’s new place has a shadow box outside each resident’s door for photos or whatever. My main project this week has been working on a collage for that (thus the looking through old pictures mentioned above). I wanted to include some older ones and some more recent ones. I got that finished yesterday — but forgot to take a picture of it! But here’s one of my favorite pictures of his mom:

And this is hot-off-the-press just finished last night — I haven’t even rinsed or pressed it yet:

Normally I like to use as much as floss as possible and not leave any white space behind the Xs, but this was a kit and I didn’t know if there would enough floss to use more strands than called for, so I just followed the instructions. But I like it overall.

Hope you have a great weekend in your part of the world!