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 pretty nice week. Cool mornings, a little hot in the afternoons, but not like it will be later in the summer. Here are some of the best parts of the week:

1. Visiting the zoo with Timothy, and his parents and also my youngest son and his girlfriend. Timothy wasn’t terribly interested in the animals yet – most of them were too far away for him to really notice them. But the few he did see, he just kind of took it all in, observing and trying to process. Jason has a cute video of his watching a monkey’s antics. I think he’ll get more out of it when he’s a little older, but it was still a fun outing.

2. Not cooking for three days. For various reasons, we had different things going on at dinner time three days in a row. It was almost like a mini-vacation!

3. A couple of hours with a book. I mentioned in finding time to read that most of my reading is done in 10-20 minutes snatches rather than at long intervals. But Sunday I got in about two hours with my latest Dee Henderson novel. Bliss!

4. Sleep. I could probably name that every week. 🙂 I wasn’t feeling well Sat. night and didn’t get a lot of sleep. Sunday morning was one of those times I felt like I just couldn’t function, so I stayed home from church and slept about 2 1/2 hours and then napped a couple of times during the day. I finally started feeling back to normal later in the afternoon.

5. Roses budding! I didn’t think they would for a few weeks yet.

Hope you have a great weekend remembering and honoring your mom!

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 pretty nice week. Here are a few favorites from it:

1. A new sewing machine!

2. A “puttering” Saturday. Some Saturdays are catch-up days with laundry, errands, or housework, some are event Saturdays with an outing or get-together planned. But puttering Saturdays are when there’s nothing urgent going on, I got all my usual errands and such done earlier in the week, I don’t have to go anywhere, and I can putter around the house taking care of tasks I don’t usually get to or working on a project. Very enjoyable!

3. The teens’ bake sale. The teens at our church held a bake sale to raise money for a mission/camping trip this summer. Always nice to get some goodies I didn’t have to cook! I enjoyed getting a number of small things to sample.

4. Pinterest wins. I have to confess that I pin a lot of things that I don’t go back and look at again, but some of my boards I do peruse sporadically for inspiration. I’ve felt in a rut with cooking lately, so I’ve been looking over and trying some of my Pinterest recipes. Chicken Spaghetti was good, though I don’t like to use Velveeta too much. I might try it with a different cheese some time. Crock Pot Smothered Pork Chops were really good, though it would probably be easier with boneless pork chops. Everything was falling off the bone, and due to bony pieces plus the “goo” from the meat, I ended up removing the meat and running the liquid through a strainer before making the gravy. My favorite was Easy Loaded Potato Bites. We enjoyed them as a side dish with meat loaf, but they’d be good as appetizers or party food.

5. Storms missing us. Last weekend there was a lot of bad weather forecast, and some parts of the city got hail and thunderstorms, but we only got a little rain.

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 been a very good and productive week! Here are the highlights:

1. Easter. Wonderful morning at church, great food, and a fun time with the family.

2. Finished projects. I wrote here about completing some window valances that have been on my to-do list for way too long and got a couple of pillows  done as well. Love how they change the room!

3. Swiss-Ham-Ring-Around, one of my favorite ways to use ham leftovers.

4. Dogwoods blooming! One of my favorite parts of spring! There’s another tree with airy lavender blooms along the roadsides here – I’ve asked what they are before but have forgotten. But it makes for pleasant scenery while driving!

5. Anticipation! My oldest son comes in this weekend for a few days, and we’ve been preparing for our little grandson’s first birthday next week. Can you believe it has been a year already?!

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 another good week. Here are some of the best parts of it:

1. Pi Day. For years I have heard of other people celebrating “Pi Day” – March 14, the same numbers as pi (3.14 – even more remarkable in 2015 because the next numbers in the sequence are 15) by having pie on that day, and I thought it looked like a fun thing to do (and any excuse to eat pie is a good one! 🙂 ). But I had never done it, usually because I didn’t think about it in time. But this year I did! We had hamburger pie for dinner and then dessert via a store-bought chocolate pie and a pumpkin pie from Christmas that had been in the freezer. It was fun.

2. Cracker Barrel take-out. Love that place, but my husband doesn’t really care for it. Yet he agreed to bring some home for me one night. Nice man. 🙂

3. Mittu’s dinner. We came home from church Sunday afternoon to a dinner already made by my daughter-in-law. So nice to just come in and sit down and eat!

4. Ceiling fans. During the first part of the week it was pretty warm out (60s and 70s, even got up to 80 one day), but I didn’t want to turn on the AC yet (although I finally did when it got up to 75 in the house one evening). But for the most part ceiling fans helped cool things off a bit as needed.

5. Starting a project that has been on my mind for more years than I want to admit. Trying to decide exactly what I wanted to do held me up for a long while, and then finding the time and motivation (at the same time) to do the preparatory work was a problem. But I got that much done this week and hope the actual execution will go pretty quickly. I had hoped to be finished with it by now, but maybe I will be by next week. Meanwhile, here is a sneak peek:

Bonus: It’s officially the first day of SPRING!

It turned rainy and cooler the latter half of the week, but I’m still glad it’s not snow and ice any more, and I am looking forward to a sunny weekend. Happy Friday!

Note to Paula – I tried several times to comment on your FFF post but just kept getting a window saying “Error establishing a database connection.”

 

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 a great week. Here are some of the best parts:

1. My husband’s birthday was Friday but we celebrated Saturday. Jason picked up take-out from Jim’s favorite Asian place, and it was a joy to have the family together (Jeremy via FaceTime) and celebrate God’s giving our husband, dad, and grandad to us. One of my favorite things, too, in looking back through the pictures, is seeing Timothy at different places throughout them. He isn’t crawling yet but is quite adept at rolling all over! He may skip right past crawling and go on to walking – he can stand on his own for increasing amounts of time.

2. Wonderful temperatures. It has been in the 50s and 60s all week, so refreshing after the long cold spell we had. It’s been wet most of the week, but I don’t think we got as much rain as predicted, and I’m just glad it wasn’t ice and snow again. We did actually see sunshine  for a while on Thursday – much appreciated!

3. A normal week. I dearly love holidays, birthdays, family get-togethers, and so on, but they do take some time and effort to prepare for. We have Easter, Timothy’s birthday, and a visit from Jeremy all coming up in April, but between now and then there is nothing else on the calendar, nothing extra going on at church, no appointments. I’m enjoyed this first “normal” week immensely and got to rest a bit and then tackle a cleaning project I had been wanting to get to. I have a couple of other creative projects I hope to get to in the next week or two.

4. Being done with the dentist for a while. Since a routine x-ray showed some extensive decay under a filling last November, I’ve had oral surgery plus four dental appointments to take care of all of that and get a new bridge put in. Not something I wanted to deal with, but there was nothing to do but just go through the process. It’s finally done, thankfully. And since all of this maxed out my dental insurance coverage for the year already, my dentist’s receptionist rescheduled my cleanings so that instead of having two this year, I have one during the summer and one right after the new year, so it will go on next year’s insurance claim. Hopefully I won’t have need of the dentist beyond that.

5. Removable shelves. My extra cleaning project involved taking everything out of the shelves in the refrigerator door and giving them a thorough cleaning, something I have been wanting to get to for some time. I don’t know how crumbs and debris get into those when there’s nothing but bottles and jars there. But being able to take the shelves out and to the sink helped immensely in getting them cleaned out.

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 actually had a day in the 60s that felt so wonderful – and then the next day had sleet and ice, but only for 1/2 an hour, so not too bad. I’m still more than ready for spring to arrive! Just a couple more weeks now! Meanwhile, here are some favorite parts of the last week:

1. Girl Scout Cookies, and more importantly, my husband bringing me some unasked when some girls were selling them in front of a store. He ordered some more later through someone at work. My favorites are Tagalongs and Do-Si-Dos.

2. An impromptu movie night watching The Hundred-Foot Journey recommended by Susanne. I liked all the same things she mentioned.

3. Gluten-free snacks. My daughter-in-law has been trying to eat gluten-free to see if that helps with some stomach issues she has been having. If you’ve ever tried eating without gluten, the hardest food items are breads, cakes, and that kind of thing. All that we have tried so far have been very dense and heavy. I found a few things on Amazon to try and got some for her birthday (but they arrived late due to weather). Of the ones we opened and tried that night, My Dad’s Cookies were really good and Glutino GF Chocolate Chip Cookies were tasty as well. The first ones were light and both were soft rather than crunchy.

4. The Aaron Coffey team has been at our church this week. Unfortunately I have only been able to go to one service, but I really enjoyed it.

5. Easy meals. We had enough leftovers from one meal for a complete second meal as well as lunch, enough pork chops leftover from another meal to make a stir-fry the next night, and some frozen chicken fajita meat my husband had found on sale and put in the freezer to heat up for chicken tacos one night. It helps to have a few easy meals in the rotation.

Bonus: Today is my dear husband’s birthday! We’ll actually be celebrating tomorrow when everyone’s schedules coordinate, but I am very thankful for him and his years with us. 🙂

Hope you have a good weekend. I am hoping we’ve seen the last of snow and ice til next year!