Summer Days, Summer Daze

Hello friends how are you? Sorry I have been a little MIA over here on the blog. But just as it happens every year at this time, work has been in the way of blogging or actually the flow of any creative juices that I might possibly have.

I work in tourism and it has been crazy. Don’g get me wrong I am so happy for all the visitors that we have had. I’m glad to see that people are traveling and having fun and spending money. The only problem is we are somewhat short staffed and that makes everything a little trickier.

I have been working ten and twelve hour days and getting home barely in time to eat a little dinner and talk with hubs and love on the fur babies. It doesn’t leave a lot of time to get things done. I feel like I am in a summertime daze and work and sleep is about all I get done.

On Sunday I am hosting an anniversary party for my sister and her husband. It is their fiftieth wedding anniversary!!! They were high school sweethearts and now they are celebrating fifty years. Wow what a milestone. I am making a special cake for them. I can’t wait to show you the pictures, fingers crossed it turns out well. My niece is helping with all the prep work and she is going to come up on Saturday and help me clean my house. We should have about twenty five to thirty people so it is going to be a blast!!! A lot of our family hasn’t gotten together since COVID so this will be a great time to reunite.

My cutter that I use to cut my shrubs suddenly stopped working. It’s not electric so I don’t know why I say it like that. It just wouldn’t cut, I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s one of those long handled cutters. I started to use it last week and it wouldn’t close. Maybe it needed oil? Not sure, but I can’t believe that would make it suddenly stop working. It was almost like it was bent and the blades wouldn’t come together. I hadn’t used it in awhile and you would believe this if you looked at my shrubs right now. So I don’t know what has happened to it. I went to the hardware store Saturday morning and got me a new one. It is so nice, and red. I love red so I am thinking this will make me want to use it more than ever. I also bought some hedge trimmers, a tomato cage, and a spider web thingy that you use to get spider webs off of the outside of your windows. I had a blast at the hardware store. Clothes shopping is fun but there is something to be said about a trip to Lowe’s, Home Depot, or just your local hardware store.

I also went to the estate sale in town that is held about once or twice a month. It is held at the same location. The people in charge of the estate sales place all of the items from each estate in this one building and starting on Thursday they open it to the public. On Friday everything is 25% off and on Saturday everything is 50% off and by Sunday if there is anything left it is usually 75% off. They didn’t have the sale on Thursday this past week so everything was not 50% off until Sunday. This particular sale had a lot of dishes and oil paintings. I almost went back on Sunday but I didn’t really find anything I couldn’t live without.

The temps here have been quite lovely but the humidity feels like you are walking in warm water. I guess it could be 95 degrees and high humidity so the 85 degrees does feel somewhat better. I feel like I sweat all the time in the summer. Hormones could be to blame. Maybe being out of shape adds to the sweat trickling into places it shouldn’t or maybe it is just the hot stinking heat. Whatever, it is hot and sticky right now.

I bought a new comforter for my bed last week and that made me decide to order new curtains. I ordered white lace curtains. They were so white, sparkling white, blinding white. I decided to put them in a tea bath and stain them a little. I didn’t have any tea bags so I made several cups of tea in my Keurig and poured that into the sink with some warm water. I let each curtain panel soak for about ten minutes and then I rinsed them and hung them to dry. I love them. It toned them down just enough to not have the blinding white color.

***You can tell quite a bit of difference in the two colors. After I rinsed them and hung them up they lightened up just a bit and I love them.!!!***

***I wish I had taken a picture of the curtains when they were hanging and blindingly white. I love this soft muted color.***

***Of course Kitty Kitty loves the bed and thinks this is just for her.***

***The berries are starting to ripen we should have enough for a blackberry pie very soon.***

***Beautiful summer scenes. The grass and trees are so green. We have had a lot of rain and everything is growing like crazy***!!!

***Doesn’t this lemonade look yummy and refreshing? I haven’t tried it yet I saw this on Facebook and can’t wait to try it.***

How is your summer going?

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!

I’M ON VACATION!!!!! Sort of.

Hello friends, How are you? I have had such a wonderful few days. I took off a few extra days from work before the July craziness starts. I hate to use the word staycation but I guess that is what I have been on. NO!!! I am on VACATION!!! It started last Friday. My niece and I spent the day going to the Mennonite Market and going to yard sales, moving sales, estate sales, they are called many different things here in the south. I love them all!!!!

One of the sales we went to was a huge Victorian Style Bed and Breakfast that was being sold. The owners were ready to get rid of everything and anxious to move on. They were selling everything dirt cheap. The B&B theme was “Gone With The Wind.” There were pictures of Scarlett O Hara and Rhett Butler everywhere. It was beautiful!!! I just wanted to live in the house. I bought three sets of napkin rings. They were selling them in sets of six for $5.00 a set!!! I bought three sets that I thought could be used together. HA!! when will I ever realistically use cloth napkins? Well you never know, right???

***Look at all of these napkin rings. I loved all of them!!***!

***These are the napkin rings I purchased. I feel that they could be used together if needed.***

***Gone With The Wind was the theme of this Bed and Breakfast. How cool is that????***

***This is one of the bathrooms in the Bed and Breakfast. It was ahhhhhmazing!!!*** ***I want to live there!!!***

On Saturday my sister and I went shopping in Knoxville. We hadn’t been in ages. We had so much fun!! We laughed and laughed and shopped and ate a wonderful lunch and came dragging home tired and spent out. I bought several pairs of shoes. Shoes are the only thing you don’t have to worry about if you gain weight.

On Sunday I did a mountain of laundry. I washed everything that could possibly be washed in this house. Scruffy too.

Monday came and I decided to work in my shrubs. I will not be posting before and after pics because my shrubs look soooooo bad. I don’t know what is going on with them. Some of them are dying and I think they just need to be cut back. I have a plan but I haven’t gotten it all put together yet. You will see soon. So I spent the rest of the day finishing a pair of socks I had been working on and cleaning house and reading and just enjoying the time off.

***Sure I could be that girl on the beach with my toes in the sand but no I am here knitting socks and waiting for winter. I am o.k. with that. lol.***

Tuesday came and I worked on a Fourth of July project. I will share more with you on that later.

How is your week going?

Always remember,

Love your day your way!!!!

The Appreciation Game

Do you ever stop to think of all the little things that you appreciate? No, really do you? how often? This morning I was thinking about things that I truly appreciate in my life right now and I just thought I would share them with you.

My Family.
My Health, My families Health.
Blackberries starting to ripen.
Fresh Strawberries.
The smell of freshly mown grass.
Honeysuckle.
A new knitting project.
Being at home with my precious family after being gone for a few days.
Having lunch with my sisters.
Baking bread.
Walking outside and breathing in the sweet smell of summer.
Friends that love you and never leave you.
An amazing first cup of coffee, You know what I mean!!!
A good book that you can curl up with and read for hours.
The first taste of an amazing meal.
Confidence.
Fresh baked chocolate chip cookies.
Soft rain on a Sunday morning.
Fresh green fern growing wild in the woods.

Don’t ever forget to appreciate!!! It’s not really a game it’s life. Love it, live it!!!!

Love your day your way!!!

A Lovely Lunch

What does a perfect lunch look like to you? A nice restaurant, friends to eat with, maybe co-workers. Or maybe you just like solitude and a time to breathe and re-group. I say make the best of your break time when you can. Especially if you are working whether it be at home, office or otherwise.

I have gotten into a very bad habit at work and that is eating lunch at my desk. For a few weeks we were so slammed and short handed I had no choice but to grab my lunch out of the break room refrigerator and eat it at my desk while I answered the phones, took and changed reservations put out small fires etc etc. So I didn’t really get much of a break at all. And I could tell the difference. It sort of made me a little cranky. Well maybe a lot cranky.

My work place is a little out of the way and not close to any restaurants. We have a small restaurant on site but because of COVID it has been closed since last year and we’re not really sure about opening it this year. I do go into town occasionally, like on Wednesdays when I go to Sister Lunch or when I have a lunch meeting. My co-workers and I get takeout sometimes and bring it back to work but that still leaves the issue of going to the break room or sitting at my desk. The break room is pretty full right now because we have a lot of workers this time of year.

After a few weeks of craziness, work slowed down a little and we had a little breathing room. I decided one day to go out to my car and eat lunch. It was awesome!!! I know this is not rocket science and I have done it before in the past but it was just so relaxing. No phones to worry about, no one coming in to ask me a question, It was great!!! For just that thirty or forty minutes of down time I was able to regroup and re-energize.

The next day I returned to the car and ate my lunch in the warm sunshine and even had time to take a fifteen minute nap. I felt so rested and ready to head back into work. I started putting a book in the car to read and I brought some knitting. My husband always says I have the ability to build a nest anywhere that I am. I guess he is right.

Whatever you do don’t deny yourself the downtime that you need in the middle of your work day. You need it!!! Take it!!! It will make you much more productive and ready to face the rest of your work day.