Author: Lisa -Southern Patches

Hello everyone, my name is Lisa I am a southern girl born and raised in East Tennessee. I love discovering new places and things to do. I have a lot of favorites, shopping, traveling, knitting and photography are all at the top of my list. I am married with my fur babies my only children. This blog is actually named after my beloved basset hound Patches. She passed away a few years ago but will always have a huge part of my heart. Come with me and we will explore some wonderful places and discover some really fun things. Are you ready?

Friday Favorites

Hello and happy Friday!!! The weather here has been very nice, so that is definitely a favorite for this week. The temps have been in the low eighties and the humidity has been low. The mornings have actually been chilly, sweater wearing weather. This has made for some wonderful pre-summer days. Lots of people are starting to take vacation and it is just a lovely time to be out enjoying the sunshine.

First and foremost I have to tell you my that my Friday Favorite of all time happened today. I have been keeping you up on the journey with my sister, Sandy, who has Lymphoma. She had her last treatment about five weeks ago. Last week she went for a PET Scan to determine if there were any cancer cells present and today we went to the doctor for the results. SHE IS IN REMISSION!!!!! This is just the best news that we could have ever hoped for. She is feeling so much better and moving around much better. I think we were both so excited we could have hugged and kissed the Doctor and the NP and everyone at the hospital. It has been such an incredible time for her. She has truly been through it. She is such an incredibly strong person.

Of course after the doctor visit we decided to do a little shopping. I have to be honest with you. I just wasn’t feeling the shopping vibe today. Hubs and I are going to the beach in a couple of weeks and I was thinking I probably could use a few things. But you know what? I need nothing. I have actually been going through my closet and I am getting ready to purge about half of it. I’m talking about clothes I don’t wear and keep pushing around in the closet until I am sick of it!!!! They are going!!!!! So with all of the clothes I have, and many that I don’t even realize I have because of all the closet clutter, why would I go and buy more? It just doesn’t make sense and I am going to stop it. I am going to shop my closet first. I started doing this several years ago and then went back to the mindless buying of things I really didn’t need. So I am going to make a conscious effort to use the things I already have. Clothes, purses and shoes are plentiful in my closets. I do not need to bring in more. And to be honest with you sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the amount of things I have that I am not using. Do you ever feel that way?

Here are a few other Favorite Things I am loving:

I had lunch with my friend Lorie last week and she gave me a beautiful orchid. I named her Clementine. She fits in perfectly with my other orchids. Lorie always knows exactly what I love and we have the best time together. We have made a pact to try and have lunch at least once a week. Even if it means her coming to my work with lunch or me going to her house with lunch. I think the important thing is just being together and sharing much needed time together. I fully believe in cultivating your friendships.

Have you tried the new Blue Bunny Soft Serve? I had been seeing it all over FB and TikTok so I finally found some in town at Walmart. Our Walmart only had the vanilla. It’s pretty good. I do want to try the chocolate I think it would be really good. I’ll keep you posted on some different flavors.

I was at CVS earlier in the week and a few impulse items were near the counter I saw this Dove cream. I know it says body cream but I like putting it on my hands throughout the day. It was only $1.19 and I got one to put on my desk at work. It’s a fairly good size tin of cream. Check it out if you are at CVS. My hands get so dry sometimes from working in flowers and dirt and washing them all the time. I just love some of those little impulse buys. I am a true sucker for them.

I just had to show you these oven mitts I got today at T.J. Maxx Only because they are so cute and yellow and yellow is one of my favorite colors right now.

I got my kitties some of these flavored lickable cat treats. I got the tuna flavor. I was hoping to lure my outside kitties a little closer to me. They were more curious than willing to lick it. But I can report that my big boy Gus who stays inside the house absolutely loved it.

So how was your week? Any favorites that you want to share? Have a wonderful weekend!!!!!

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!

Wordless Wednesday 6-7-23

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!!!

Hello Monday, The Week of The Cats

Happy Monday!!! The last week or so is what I have been calling “The Week Of The Cats”.Remember that song by Al Stewart back in the seventies called The Year of The Cat? You may be too young for that song. This has been our Week Of The Cats. Yes it’s that time of year again. This past week was the week we, over the course of several days, take all five kitties to the vet for annual vaccines. Plus Gus actually had to be shaved because his long hair had gotten so matted in places. We can’t take all of them together it’s just too hard. Luckily the vet is only about a ten minute drive from our house. This is how it went down:

Allie (mama) cat went first. She is still a bit feral and I was afraid she would tear my face off. But she actually did great. Well as long as I was right with her that is. The vet got me a long pair of gloves and I just reached into the crate and lifted her out. We weighed her and then she got her shots and she was just an Angel. She made Mark and myself look like liars because we had told the vet how wild she still is.

Next was Izzy I took her early one morning hoping to get both her and Sadie but I had no luck with Sadie. She saw immediately what was happening and ran and hid. She has been rescheduled. Izzy did great. She even let the vet pull her out is the crate. Again, my little feral girls surprised me. Of course there’s still Sadie to be taken.

Next was Kitty Kitty and she is so sweet and tame Mark was able to take her by himself. Everyone at the vet clinic fell in love with her sweet little face.

Gus was scheduled for last Friday morning so I dropped him off at 8:00 AM. He also had to be shaved. He hates being brushed and his hair has gotten so matted we couldn’t get a brush through it. He had to be put to sleep to cut his hair. And I felt just terrible having to do that. When I brought him home he was out of it and not himself for about thirty six hours I will never put him through that again. I told him he would just have to adjust to the brush. We will work with him until he isn’t afraid of it.

Sadie, or I should say Houdini, is scheduled for this week. The problem will be catching her and getting her into the crate. I think it will be fine after that. I hate tricking her to get her into the crate but she has to have her shots especially the rabies vaccine. My three outside kitties, Allie, Izzy and Sadie are out during the day. We bring them into the garage at night because of coyotes. So being out they could come in contact with another animal.

So that has been my last week and a half. The Poison Ivy is finally disappearing. Work has still been a bit hectic but that is expected this time of the year.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

Weekly Catch Up & Memorial Day

Hello and happy Memorial Day to everyone. Especially our veterans who gave all for us. Let us never forget them and what they have given for our freedom.

The weather here has been chilly. I’m not sure if this would be considered Whippoorwill Winter or as some of the old timers call it, Woolen Britches Winter. Whippoorwill Winter usually occurs middle to late May so that is what I think we are actually experiencing these last few days. Woolen Britches is the last winter we have before late spring or summer temperatures hit us. I know my jacket felt really good this morning.

Being in tourism the days leading up to and including Memorial Day is very busy for me. People have started vacations and traveling is on everyone’s mind. My work has been so incredibly busy. I actually worked part of the weekend. Memorial Day is our kick off to summer and the Labor Day sort of ends the busy tourist season. All of the days in between are busy.

Because I only had one day off I had to cram a lot into it. This included visiting my mother in law and taking her supplies, buying groceries, doing laundry and trying to get some time in to chill and do a few fun things.

I had a few minutes to catch up on a book I was reading and have some coffee and a muffin.

I made a blueberry cobbler. I love to make one of these on Sunday and have it for the entire week.

I also wanted to try these lasagna cupcakes that I had been seeing all over Facebook and TikTok. These are made like lasagna but instead of using pasta you use wonton wrappers. This makes them very calorie friendly. I will trim the wonton wrappers on top next time because they stuck a little bit. I used a muffin pan. I made my usual lasagna sauce for regular lasagna. You can use whatever you want. You can also use grilled veggies or anything you might want to chop up and use. But you don’t have a lot of room in the muffin tins. I used ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese. I layered a wrapper then ricotta cheese then my sauce, then mozzarella and parmesan. I then added another wrapper and repeated the layer. For the sauce I used marinara sauce with ground beef but you can use ground turkey or whatever you would like. Basically you can make them just about any way you want to. They are delicious.

I finished the sock I have been working on a cast on the second sock. The second sock is never as much fun to knit as the first one. I can see the striping will be off a little but that will just make it interesting. Nobody will notice when they are inside my shoes. HA!!!

Other than working all I have had time to do is SCRATCH!!! The poison Ivy is slowly starting to dry up. I told you about the IVAREST I had been using. It really does the trick. It is so soothing. I think it has calamine lotion in it or something like that. I listed it on my Friday Favorites last week. If you missed it you can catch that blog post here But the problem was the biggest area affected was on my wrist and it easily spread to a few other areas.

So how was your weekend? Did you do something fun? Have a wonderful week!!!!

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!