Hello Monday

Hello friends, how are you? There’s not a lot going on with me right now but I did want to catch up with you. I am quite okay with nothing going on. I have been working and taking care of all of the babies. Taking care of the babies is actually a lot. Four cats and a very large dog can take up a lot of your time. I have been to some thrift stores and a couple of estate sales and I will show you a few of my favorite finds. I have several knitting and crocheting WIP’s. That stands for Work In Progress. I am working on a new shawl, some socks, an afghan for a Christmas present, and a Halloween cross stitch. So I have a lot to do to finish all of those. I will keep you posted.

I had a visit to the dentist last week to get my Invisalign Braces checked and possibly to see if I was finished with this little season of torture I have been in, Just kidding it hasn’t been too bad and I have lost sixteen pounds since starting. so that is a very good thing. I knew two teeth were not quite together and touching the way they needed to be and sure enough more trays were ordered. I will be in these another two to three months. Boo, I am little sad but I want them to be the way they need to be. If you missed my post about getting my braces you can check it out here.

A couple of weeks ago my sister and two nieces and I went to Knoxville with my future niece in law. She had reserved a time at a bridal shop to try on wedding dresses. So fancy. My wedding dress actually came from JC Penney’s. I ordered it. That was a different time. I am overjoyed that she is experiencing everything possible on her wonderful day. I was so happy to be invited for her dress shopping. I had never been wedding dress shopping. The shop was beautiful and they served us champagne and took photos and it was just lovely.

It was a family effort to help pick the dress.
Isn’t she beautiful?

My sister and nieces and I took advantage of being in Knoxville and decided to check out Vintage Market Days. This is a fairly big show with antiques, crafts, lots of Christmas and Halloween decor and it happened to be going on the same weekend. It was a lot of fun but I didn’t really find a lot. I bought two small pictures and a small basket. I am collecting baskets to make a basket garland to hang on the side of my kitchen window. It’s not one of the huge garlands that some people are hanging around their mantels. Mine will be small compared to those. All of my baskets are fairly small. I saw a post on Instagram where someone had done this and I loved it.

All of these baskets could fit in the palm of your hand. I like the small ones. It is so much fun looking for them and not as easy as you might think to find them.

I have been working on a granny square blanket. I am using eleven different colors. Each square has four different colors. I put all of the colors into a bowl and randomly draw out four. Those are the four I use for that particular square. I am loving this. Some of the colors seem weird together but when I crochet them into a square they look very unique. I try to do at least one a day.

Here are the colors and a few finished squares.
I put a piece of each color in this bowl and draw them randomly.
My big bag I use to keep everything together

One of my favorite thrift finds so far, is this precious clock that I found at a garage sale for $1.00. It is about 8 inches tall. I told my friend I was with, that even if it didn’t work I could replace the clock movement. The woman selling it told me that it chimes every hour and drove her husband crazy. I took it home and put batteries in it and it works perfectly. It also keeps perfect time. It chimes a different tune every hour. I love it!!!

I wanted to mention a few books I have recently finished either by reading or audio book. I will do a much better review of more that I have read very soon.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. I can’t believe I hadn’t read this book before. I love Ann Patchett. But it was not one of my favorites of Ann’s. But I did enjoy it. She is such an amazing writer. I would give it a 3 out of 5.

This is the story of Lara and her three daughters who return to the family orchard in Northern Michigan. Lara tells her daughters about her past when she worked for a theater company called Tom Lake. She also shared her romance, or most of it, with a famous actor Peter Duke. Delving into her past makes the daughters consider their own future. It is definitely worth a read especially if you are an Ann Patchett fan.

The Correspondent. This was an audio book for me and it was a little long in places. But the letters that Sybil Van Antwerp wrote to her brother, her best friend, to famous actors, etc. makes you want to consider writing a letter, not a text, to correspond with whomever you want to. Why not? I grew to love Sybil and felt totally in tune with her. I would give this a 4 out of 5.

Theo, oh Theo how I want to be you when I grow up. I was a little late to the game of reading Theo of Golden, but it is a book I will treasure. Theo arrives in a small southern town and visits a local coffee shop. He notices pencil portraits of people of Golden hanging on the walls of the shop. Theo begins purchasing these photos and gives them to each person in the photo. There is a reason Theo picks this town and you will discover that when you read the book. Theo made me want to be a better person, a more loving and forgiving and kind person. How many authors can do that? I give this a 5 out of 5. I will always have this book in my library. Read it!!!!!!!

So that is what has been going on with me. How about you?

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!

What A Crock!!!!

It was actually about 7:00 PM Saturday night, Labor Day Weekend, that I started this post. I was thinking about the days events and suddenly it was hilarious. Not all of it just parts of it. I guess I just had to laugh or cry about the whole day. This is what went down:

It started Saturday morning last week. My nephew Chris and his wife Amy and another nephew Tyler met at my house to hang a picture, put down a big rug and go to the Mennonite Market near Tellico Plains.

After getting the rug down and the picture hung and furniture placed we took off for the market. We also decided to visit some of the local antique stores in Tellico Plains. We first had a delicious lunch and then split up to visit the shops. Things were going great!!!

I have a favorite shop on the corner square and just as luck would have it I found a large jug/crock to add to my collection. It was quite large and heavy. It was sort of buried in the back of a shelf and I almost didn’t notice it. I told the store owner that I would swing back by to pick it up as we started out of town.

After visiting a few other shops we started to leave town and I had Chris, who was driving, swing by the shop to pick up my jug. Tyler, the other nephew jumped out with me to get the crock and carried it to the truck. We decided to put it in the backseat between us so it wouldn’t get damaged.

As we were driving out of town Tyler said that he smelled something really bad. I said maybe the fields were being fertilized. Tyler said no, that it smelled like death. He leaned over the jug and said “it’s coming from this”!! I too leaned over to sniff and it was really bad!! The top of the jug was too narrow and deep to see what was in the bottom. But we were pretty sure there was something dead at the bottom.

We were about fifteen minutes from my house and as soon as we got there Tyler jumped out of the truck with the crock. He ran over and started beating the crock on the ground. I yelled at him to stop because I was afraid he would break it. No sooner had the words left my mouth, that he yelled out that he had broken the handle off. I’m not going to lie I was so mad at him. I was furious. I had just paid a lot of money for that crock and because he was careless it was ruined. He told me he would pay for it and I said “forget it, it’s ruined” It’s an antique I yelled out.

After several shakes of the crock a lot of gross things started to come out. It appeared to be a nest. A rat’s nest!!! Sure enough a small rat carcass came out. We grabbed the water hose and started filling it with water. I turned around for a second and heard my niece say that the crock appeared to have blood in it. Nope, Tyler said, “that’s my blood” The crock was wet and slippery and it slid down the inside of his hand. Slicing his hand as it went.

When I first saw his hand the cut looked much worse than it actually was. A lot of blood will do that. He had sliced the part of his hand just under his thumb. At first it looked as if the gash went all the way down his wrist. I am not one to be calm in situations like this and I freaked out!!! Luckily Chris’ wife Amy is much calmer. We washed the cut, and got a better look at the gash, and all agreed he needed stitches. Amy and Chris wrapped his hand and I drove him to town to the Urgent Care.

Luckily we were the only ones in the place and he got right in to see the doctor. She said she had to make sure there didn’t appear to be tendon damage. Luckily there was not. He got four stitches and we were headed out within the hour.

Tyler is actually my great nephew and though he is 24 years old I guess I still feel responsible for anything that happens to him when he is with me. I felt so bad that he had cut himself. I knew it would affect his job for the next week or so. I felt just terrible that I had gotten so mad at him.

Tyler went home and I went back to my house. I went back out in the yard, to the scene of the crime, and continued cleaning the crock. Two more rat carcasses came out. I also felt bad that the rats had gotten into the crock and couldn’t get out. Tyler said at least they all died together.

I cleaned and cleaned the crock and finally filled it with bleach and let it sit like that for a couple of days.

I glued the handle back on and it doesn’t look too bad. But more importantly I did learn a lesson that day. “Things” can be fixed a lot easier than people can. And I need to be more forgiving when accidents happen.

What a story, one we will never forget. I know I won’t.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!

One Year

Hello friends I hope your Tuesday is going well. It has now been one year since my sweet husband left this world for his permanent heavenly home. Actually Saturday the 22nd was the day. I spent all of last week reliving that week from last year. It played like a recording over and over in my head. No matter what I did I could not stop the thoughts and pictures from being there. Grief is such a painful ache that simply does not go away. I think you just learn to live with it day by day. But that is all I will say about that for now.

We are out of the “Dog Days of Summer” I’m sure you have heard that expression. Especially if you are from the south. The month of August for us here in Tennessee is just miserable. The humidity is really what hurts us. High temps and high humidity makes for some uncomfortably hot days. The good thing is the evenings start to cool down pretty quick. Dog Days ended on August 11th but I think someone forgot to tell the weather.

I always thought it was called “Dog Days of Summer” because it was also a miserably hot time for dogs. Come to find out that’s not it at all but a dog is involved. I did a post a few years ago about how this hot time of year got its name. You can read it here. I think it is very interesting.

I have been to a few more estate sales with my nephew and his wife. We have so much fun. I bought another crock: I don’t know why I am so obsessed with these crocks. They take up a lot of room but I just love them. I have been collecting them for years.

This is my most recent one.

These are a few from my collection of crocks. I put them on the stair landing. I have several others spread around the house.

I also found more of that Temptations glassware. This was such a pretty green I couldn’t pass it up.

This is not a big piece I just wanted you to see the detail.
I can use this for baking.

My family and I attended a sunflower festival last month. It was hippie day. Lots of people were dressed up, and you could pick your own sunflowers and zinnias. Seeing all of the hippie outfits was so much fun. I picked a huge bundle of sunflowers.

Several interesting booths.
Tractor rides through the sunflower fields.

In July I had to have the gutters on my house replaced. The gutters have been on the house since we built the house in 1999. They were terrible and I knew I would never be able to keep them cleaned out. Living in the woods is such an issue for gutters. I got a couple of estimates and finally chose a company with a gutter guard system that is easier to keep clean. It was a huge investment but it has a lifetime warranty for the house. Even if I sell the house the warranty goes to the new owners. Making decisions on things on my own is not something I like to do. Mark always took care of those things. I always wonder if I am doing what he would want. It’s really hard to make decisions on your own. You never really think about it until you have to do it. Of course I ask advice from my family especially my sister and she always helps me decide. But I know the ultimate decision comes down to me.

The guys who did the work were great. I was so worried about them on the back of the house where it is three stories high. They were awesome and cleaned up everything after they were finished.

I would not want this job.

Remember those two old chairs I got at the antique store a few months ago?

They were in rough shape but very sturdy.
I finally got them painted and added to my deck. I love them.

I leave you with a picture of my goose, Mille. She is still sporting her summer outfit.

Millie the porch goose

So that is just a little of what has been going on with me. What have you been up to?

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!