Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been 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.

1. A perfect Saturday: didn’t have any place I had to be, got some work done, but had time to read and relax, too.

2. Sunshine and 70s! There was only one time I noticed the temperature was up to 70, but it was in the high 60s for much of the week. I’ve known that the daylight has been increasing ever since Dec. 21, but this week is the first time I’ve really noticed that it has been getting dark later. Spring is coming soon!!!

3. Wellness. As I mentioned here, both Jesse and the dog have been very sick recently, and it’s nice to have everyone doing better — and nice as well that it didn’t spread to all the rest of us.

4. Our Valentine’s Day.

5. Emile Pandolfi. I have a few of his CDs but somehow had forgotten about them for a while. I wanted to play some love songs while making our special Valentine’s Day meal and dessert, and went through parts of The King’s Singers‘ Chanson d’Amour and the Irish Tenors‘ Heritage CDs, then decided I wanted just something instrumental, flipped through my CDs, and saw a few of Emile’s. Love his style and can’t believe I hadn’t played these in so long. Perfect. Beautiful, Peaceful. Just what I wanted. This first clip is from one of the songs I listened to, the second is one I discovered while searching YouTube, excerpts from one of his concerts. He even lived in our area of SC when we were there, but somehow I never went to see him. Wish I had now!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been 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.

Here are a few favorites from the past week:

1. Blue skies. It’s still been cold — in the 30s most days — but it has been so uplifting to see blue sky instead of gray overcast.

2. New uses for old things. We talk with my oldest son via “face time” on the iPod 4, but you get tired of holding it after a while, and it’s not easy to prop up. He sent us this business card holder, which works great to hold the iPod while we’re talking.

3. New, eagerly anticipated books —

— even though I already have a stack more than twice that high on my nightstand….

4. Finishing two non-fiction books. It’s unusual for me to have two non-fiction going at a time — they do usually take me a little longer to get through, and I’ve been reading a little here and there from one for months. I enjoyed it, but it felt great to get it finished. I reviewed it earlier this week and hope to have a review for the other one soon.

5. This, in light of Sunday’s big game.

And a bonus — peanut butter Rice Krispie treats with melted chocolate chips on top:

🙂 Hope you have a great weekend. Thanks for those who prayed for Jesse — he was doing better yesterday but was sick again this morning. I am praying he is back to normal soon — and that none of the rest of us gets it.

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been 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.

Here are a few favorites from the past week:

1. Fifth Sunday Fellowship. Our church had one of these last Sunday night. It’s kind of funny that I can approach these things with a first-day-of-school type anxiety (“Will I find anyone to talk to?”) But some people did sit with us and talk to us, and we had an enjoyable time.

2. Thoughtfulness. My husband had to eat dinner with a visitor at work but brought a piece of chocolate cake home for me. Very sweet. Both hubby and the cake. 🙂

3. The end of January! One month closer to spring! We had a few nice days in the 60s, but now it is back to the 30s. Thankfully the big “snowpocalypse” missed us. But my daughter-in-law’s mother lives in OK and was stranded at the hospital where she works for four days. That’s not a bad place to be stranded, but still, no one likes to be stranded anywhere.

4. Living room chairs. Finally. We had ordered them months ago, but first one problem after another came up — first the manufacturer ran out of the material we ordered, and then the store delivered the wrong chair –with several weeks of waiting for each problem to be resolved. We got two just alike which face each other. They’re very comfy, and it’s nice to have that room be more usable and closer to being finished — now I can figure out where to place the rest of the wall decorations.

5. An adorable commercial. I included this in my previous post — but I love it, and not every one who reads that post will read this one, and vice versa.

And a bonus: this sign, seen on Facebook:

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been 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.

Here are some standouts from this week:

1. We finally joined the church we’ve been attending since we moved here. We had been planning to for a while, but various things came up. Even though belonging to a church doesn’t “earn” you any merit before God, and even though people were very nice to us as it was, and even though we had had some good talks with the pastor, there is just something special about taking that step and having an official church home and being pastored. My heart was especially touched when our pastor got down on one knee beside Grandma’s wheelchair (we use that on Sunday’s rather than her walker) when we came forward to welcome her and tell her he wanted to be a good pastor to her.

2. Safety, especially when I do something stupid. I was talking on the cell phone while driving yesterday, which isn’t usually a problem on familiar, straight roads. I usually pull off to talk if I feel it is not safe, but for some reason I was on the phone while trying to turn into a busy store parking lot on a busy street. There was someone facing me in the turn lane whom I couldn’t see past, but after several cars passed and then there was a lull, I decided to go for it — but there was a black car, I think an SUV, coming at me who thankfully swerved — and thankfully had room to swerve — and I instinctively hit my horn, not because he did anything wrong, but just to warn him. He was probably horrifically angry at me — I wished I could apologize! Believe me, the lesson has been learned. I thank God for protecting me and the other driver from my own foolishness.

3. Heart pan and dish towels that Jason and Mittu saw and got for me:

4. New frame. I’d been wanting some sort of photos of my family on my desk. I saw something similar to this in gold at Hobby Lobby and almost got it, but I was glad I waited, because I saw this in a Lillian Vernon catalog. The lighter color helps show the photos better plus doesn’t get lost in the darkness of the desk.

5. I forgot to mention last week that we were privileged to have the Galkin team visiting our church then. They weren’t there for meetings — they were taking a week off to get some much needed work done on several projects — but they did sing a few times on Sunday night and Wednesday. I got their new CD, Consider Him, and have been just about wearing it out. The title song as well as “More and More Like You” (very convicting, especially the line “Do whatever you must do”) and “There Is a Higher Throne” have stood out to me, but my favorite is “Does Jesus Care.” It is an old hymn, but the new melody brings out the meaning and makes it new again. You can listen to a portion of it or any of the songs here.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been 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.

It’s been a good week.

1. I made progress on several fronts after a week or two of feeling foggy.

2. Jason (middle son) had two job interviews last week and was called back for a second interview with one company this week.

3. Sunday nights are some of my favorite times. Though we’re not legalistic about it, we try not to do regular work on Sundays and try to keep the TV off that day, so after a big breakfast and dinner and kitchen clean-up, I’m “off” the rest of the day. We come home from church Sunday night and everyone gets a snack and we either play games or read, or just generally relax. And lately Sunday nights have been time for…

4. Face time. All the males in my family have an iPod 4 which has a feature called Face Time — kind of like Skype except on the iPod. Jeremy has been calling on Sunday nights and it is nice to talk as long as we want for free and to be able to talk to all of us at once or to pass the iPod around.

5. A new Bible. The cover on my old one was staring to tear. I’d been wanting one with a more decorative cover but at first had only seen them on versions other than the KJV. I use the NASB sometimes and my kids have an ESV, but I use the KJV most of the time and especially at church. I found this one during a Bible sale on the already marked-down price, plus it is large print without being too big and clunky — so I don’t have to put my reading glasses on and off between reading the text and looking at the preacher. The brown part of the cover is really soft — I have to keep myself from rubbing it.

I asked Mittu if it looked too teen-ager-ish, and she assured me it looked fine for any age. 🙂

Have a great weekend!

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been 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.

1. Surprise Snow as the weather forecasters called it Wednesday. It started up in the late afternoon, stopped by nighttime, and the roads were clear with a one hour delay for school.

2. Computer access to libraries. I’ve been able in other places to look up and place a hold on a book online, but the system here even lets me renew a book online.

3. Harvest loaf cake. I usually make this in November or December but just never did this year. But I couldn’t let a winter go by without it! I was craving it and made some mini-loaves this week and sent one to Jeremy. I wasn’t sure how it would do after 2-3 days in the mail, but he said it tasted fine.

4. Back to routine. I love breaks in routine but by the time the break is over I am pretty well ready to get back to it.

5. Notepads. I got this from my dear friend, Carol, just before Christmas, but I just unpacked the box yesterday.

I keep a magnetic notepad on the refrigerator all the time for grocery and to-do lists, and I use the little tab ones to mark places in books I want to remember. Plus I use post-it notes all the time. And to have them all really cute like this is so much fun! I have my January pad on the frig now!

Edited to add: Someone asked me who the artist or designer was for the notepads. I meant to take a picture with the label on, but I forgot. The designer is Debbie Mumm. I did see she had the notepads on her site here but they are out of stock. I don’t know if my friend ordered them online or got them in a store.

They’re forecasting a heap of snow here this weekend — we’ll see. I just made my run to the store this morning, so we’re pretty well set. Already we’ve gotten much more snow here that we did in SC, but I don’t know if that’s normal for TN or if they’re getting more than usual — need to ask the neighbors. But, whether you have snow or sunshine, I hope you have a great weekend.

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been 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.

This is a hard week to narrow the favorites down to just five! But I’ll try.

1. Christmas. Everything about it — the food, the family time, the right blend of…everything. I could make a “Fave Five” just from Christmas! It was a wonderful day — our first white Christmas with a bit of snow. Being able to have all the family together was the best part. And getting to have Jeremy home for an extra couple of days due to problems with his flight was a special bonus.

I mentioned this briefly in my Christmas post, but Jim had received a certificate for Heavenly Ham for something he did at work three years ago — only them we didn’t have one of their stores where we lived. That’s one of the hazards of working at a place where you don’t live, I guess. I suppose we could have gotten one near his job and kept it in a cooler to bring home — but we just never did. But now we live in a city where there is a Heavenly Ham store, and the certificate didn’t have an expiration date and wasn’t confined to one location, so we were able to use it. I hadn’t realized how expensive those things were — we still did have to pay some, but it was delicious.

2. Games. I mentioned earlier a couple of rousing games of Apples to Apples. Another friend told me they found that game boring. It’s always a riot with us. We always read all the descriptions on the cards (though you have to watch out for a very few of them that are inappropriate), and the voices and inflections everyone uses are so funny, and the way we each defend or try to discredit the cards everyone else plays. Then at the end we each read the cards we won as if they described us. In one game I got “Woebegone” and “Friendly” and remarked that that was an odd combination, then Jeremy said, “You are the Eeyore.” Maybe it was one of those “You had to be there” moments, but that was a time I most wish I could have recorded all the funny things people said. Then Jesse got a Kinect as his “big” present and it’s been fun as a family to play games on it.

3. Found money. This was actually before Christmas. Earlier in the year Jesse had accumulated some money from allowances and gifts, and I told him he shouldn’t carry it back and forth to school but should take it out of his wallet and stash it somewhere. So he did — and forgot about it. Even through our move it remained hidden until he discovered it in December. He was thrilled to have a little more money to use for Christmas — he said he always felt bad always having to get the cheapest things on everyone’s lists, like socks, though I assured him that was always fine.

4. Fondu. Mittu got a fondu set for Christmas and she and Jason made a meal for us with it Sunday night. It was only the second time in my life I had ever had fondu. It was good and enjoyable.

5. Mulled cider. Jim got a mulled cider mix on a recent trip and I made it one night this week. I hadn’t had it in a long time and it was so good.

I keep thinking of several “bonus” faves I could mention, but I’ll be a good girl and obey the rules this time. 🙂

Happy New Year to you all!

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share our favorite things from the last week. This has been 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, it’s Friday again already? Here are some favorite things from the last week:

1. On our anniversary Tuesday, Jim took me out to a cute little tea room for lunch:

Sorry about the blurriness — I’d forgotten the camera and we were trying to use cell phones. I took a picture of my lunch, but it turned out even blurrier. The proprietor was a big Paula Deen fan:

Then we had a great meal at a local restaurant for dinner, and when we got home, Mittu had made a cake for us as well as some peanut butter cookies and peppermint bark:

2. Lights!

The light over our dining room table was very dim, partly because of the covering:

And partly because it just had two little dinky bulbs in it. Jim replaced it with these:

Much better — although almost too bright now. We need to get some 40 watt bulbs! But it is nice to be able to read the newspaper or do paperwork at the table now.

Then the living room light fixture was just not to my liking, either in style or color:

The little shapes inbetween the green lines looked like rooster heads to me. Bleah. Jim put this up instead:

Much prettier and more peaceful!

And I didn’t get a photo, but I have been wanting those little battery-operated candles for the front windows for years, but kept missing them. I finally found a package of two — but I had three windows. Then I discovered Jason and Mittu had a package with some extras that they’re letting me use. I really like driving up to the house with the lights in the window.

3. A fixed dryer. It broke down Tuesday and I was afraid with the holidays that we’d be unable to get it fixed for a while, and that a part would need to be ordered that wouldn’t get here til the end of the year, etc. It’s a gas dryer and we thought the igniter was out. But someone came out Thursday, and it was just a fuse, so we’re back in business. I am SO thankful!

4. Winning! I won one of Thom and Quilly’s prizes for a 12 Days of Christmas, Island Style as well as one of Mocha With Linda’s Booked For the Holidays prizes. Plus I won fourth place in our Sunday School teacher’s annual quiz over the Biblical Christmas narratives and won a yo-yo he made. I neglected to take photos, but Linda’s prize was two books, always a good prize for me, and Thom’s was several items from Hawaii — macadamia nuts, dried mango, keychains, a note pad, a T-shirt, and my favorite, a little bottle of shells. Here’s Jesse sporting the T-shirt:

5. Jeremy’s home! It’s nice to have the family all here again. We’re very much looking forward to Christmas Day.

A very merry Christmas to you and yours!