Friday Favorites

Happy Friday everyone I hope your week was great. As I promised this will be a weekly post to share with you some of my favorite things from throughout the week. O.k here we go:

1. Some books that I am currently reading. I recently joined a book club and Monday night was my first time attending. I really enjoyed it. There are about 19 ladies in the group and we will meet at a different person’s house or a restaurant every month. We met at one of the members’ houses on Monday and she made baked spaghetti and Christmas punch and several other people brought salad, garlic bread, and dessert. We discussed the book for that month and gave it a score. And then all the scores are averaged to determine what everyone thought of the book. Each person picks a different book each month and the books are already picked for over a year so you have lots of opportunity to get the book and have it read. This is the book for November:

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I loved this book it is about firefighters but not about them fighting fires throughout the entire book. This is not a book I would have normally picked but I loved it. This is what I love about our book group there are so many different kinds of books. This book scored a 3.59 out of 5.00 from our group but I liked it a lot better.

I am also reading the Girl In The Blue Coat . This book is set in 1943 Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. A teenager, Hanneke Bakker, delivers smuggled goods on her bicycle until she is asked to help look for a missing teen who was being hidden in a neighbor’s house.
This book scored a 4.09 out of 5.00 from our group.

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2. I am also loving this mascara by Revlon, it is not clumpy or messy and it goes on very nice.

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3. This journal. It is called, Me A Personal Journal, I ordered it when we were at the Gift Show in Gatlinburg a few weeks ago. If you are interested I can get you the information for it. It has a place for events that are going on, hopes, goals, new ideas etc. and then a full page to write whatever you want. I love this and have been keeping it beside my bed so I can write in it every night.

4. This hair spray is amazing. When I went Black Friday shopping last week Penney’s had this on sale for $7.99. It is usually $12.00-$13.00 and up when you buy it on Amazon or at a beauty supply shop. You can also get it at Walmart at the hair salon but it still is a little pricier than what I paid at Penney’s. This spray is light weight and adds texture to fine or thin hair. It also boosts volume and hold for any hairstyle without heavy buildup. Love it!!!

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Last Friday when my sister and I went black Friday shopping we went to see this move. Instant Family. It is wonderful and heart warming and will just leave you with the best feeling. We loved it. You have to go see it. Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne and Octavia Spencer do an awesome job in this movie. We laughed so much. Watch this trailer.

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I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Love your day your way!!

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The Art Of Saying “Thank You”

“Have a good one” This is probably what you hear, quite often, when leaving a retail shop or really any shop. I noticed it about a year ago. Instead of saying “ Thank you” for a purchase or act, people now say “have a good one” or often times in the south, where I am from, you may hear “have a good un”

I know this is probably just the personal rant of an old school southern woman but it bothers me that saying “thank you” and “you’re welcome” or “have a nice day” seems to have been taken out of the everyday language. If you will notice even if you say thank you to a cashier, when it’s actually them that should be thanking you for the purchase, they will often say “no problem”. And sometimes add “have a good one” Saying “have a good one” seems to have taken the place of, “thank you and “have a good day”

I always wonder. Have a good what? A good day is, I am assuming, what the person means but it could be anything. Have a good meal, a good trip, a good tour, a good time, a good whatever. So I guess in reality it could be anything. But why not just say it. It makes it so much more personal.

I Work at a place where there are several shops and ticketing and I am constantly telling our team members to use an appropriate closing after a transaction has taken place. It is actually part of the criteria on our mystery shopper reports. “Thank you” is so easy to say. I still feel that saying it makes people feel valued.

I think a lot of people actually have grown up not hearing this and it is just something they don’t think twice about. Is it sort of falling by the wayside like cursive hand writing?

Hospitality. We are big on that in the south so why am I surprised when I do get a thank you from a cashier at Walmart, or wherever I have dropped a good amount of money for groceries. Shouldn’t it be the norm? And it’s not just Walmart or the other big box stores it’s everywhere.

Oh well as I said just the rant of an old fashioned, old school, dang I guess just an old southern woman. Thank you for reading and Have a good day!!!

I will leave you with a couple of pictures of my fur babies.

Love your day your way!!

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I am Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving for my American friends. Today I hosted Thanksgiving at my house. One of my friends wanted to know if I was going all “Betty Crocker” and I think I just may have. We only had eight people for Thanksgiving but man it was a lot of cleaning (the house) and preparing food and cooking and then cleaning. We had sort of a blended bunch today from both of our families. Mark’s mom came from the assisted living facility, where she is staying, and Mark’s brother. My sister and her husband and my niece and then my sister in law came so we had both sides of our family there and I loved it!!!!!

I cooked from about 7:00 AM until 2:00 PM just before we ate. I also hate for anyone to be in my kitchen cleaning so I felt the need to clean and load the dishwasher. After dinner several of us took a long walk through the woods and enjoyed the beautiful day. It was a great day all around but I am exhausted. I am getting ready to head to bed because me and one of the sisters will be heading out for Black Friday Shopping around 4:00 AM. We are not anxious to get the bargains or anything like that but we love the Christmasey feel in the air and the excitement of being out at 4:00 AM shopping. I know I know, it doesn’t take much for us. With lots of people starting their shopping on Thanksgiving night early Friday morning is now a great time to go. Anyway we will get coffee and eat lunch and we may see a movie before we head home so its just a lot of good quality “Sister Time” my other sister HATES shopping so we don’t even try to get her to come with us.

Things have been really busy and crazy for me the last couple of weeks. Next Friday I will start a Friday Favorites on my blog where I will share with you some of my favorite things I am really liking throughout the week. I did want to catch you up on some of the things that have been up to:

This is a cowl scarf I finished last week and have already worn it twice.

I have been knitting a lot!!! I love knitting in the winter it is just too cozy. It is soothing and I am thinking about teaching a beginner knitter’s class so that everyone can enjoy this.

I have joined a book club. Although Monday night is my first official get together with the other members in the club (They meet once a month) I have been keeping up with the books they have been reading. The reason I wanted to join a group like this is because I loved the diversity in the group and the very different types of books they read and shared with one another. These are books I may not have taken a second glance at before but I am loving them!!! I will share some of them on my Friday Favorites next week.

58 Thanksgiving Baskets ready for distribution.

I am serving as Secretary, Treasurer of my local Kiwanis Club. This is a Civic organization that is global and the main priority is young children. Our community has so many needs that sometimes it is overwhelming. On Saturday we gave out 58 Thanksgiving Baskets to families in our area. Anyway, being the Secretary, Treasurer of this very active organization keeps me very busy.

I have been working out, maybe not as much as I should, but I have been trying to make it a priority several days a week.

The struggle is real!!!!

Add all of this to a very busy work schedule and time just seems to slip away. So what have you been up to? I have missed sharing with you and hope to get back to posting on a regular schedule.

I’m off to bed, 3:30 AM will come quickly and a fun day with the sister will be here soon.

Love your day your way

Rainy Days and Mondays

Good Monday friends. First of all Happy Veterans Day to all of our Vererans past and present. Thank you for your service.

How have you been? I know I say this every month but how can it possibly be November already? this year has flown by. It is raining this Monday morning, again. We are getting a new deck built onto the house and the materials have been in our yard for about two weeks. Every time the workers try to get started it is raining!!!!

Last weekend, actually it was weekend before last, I drove back to the Amish Farm market and finally bought one of the braided rugs I have been looking at. There are different ones brought in every week and I fell in love with the colors on this one. It is fairly small and I have it in my entryway and I will probably leave it there.

I also drove up to Bald River Falls a beautiful waterfall in the Cherokee National Forest. I knew the colors would be at peak and that it would be a great time to go. I was not disappointed. My sister and my nephew and his wife went with me and we had a great time!!

On the way back through Tellico Plains we stopped at a little antique shop, Stone Cottage, I hadn’t been in this shop for years even though it is a favorite of mine. The owner dries flowers from her garden and makes amazing wreaths and arrangements. I bought this dried arrangement of Nigella, or Love In a Mist it is also called. I love that name. When they are blooming they are a beautiful purplish blue color. These are full of seeds that I can plant now or in the spring. Let me know if you would like some of these pods.

The last couple of weeks have been very busy for me. I had to be gone earlier this week for a couple of days for a Gift Show in the Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge area. This is about seventy miles from me so I always spend the night. I am not actually the buyer for my work but I like to go when I can and check out any possible new merchandise. The drive up to Gatlinburg is beautiful this time of year and I always have to stop and get a few pictures.

We discovered a great restaurant in Sevierville that has only been open for about two months. It is called Five Oaks Farm Kitchen. They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and we ate there for breakfast. I highly recommend the Belgian Waffles. Check it out if you get a chance. www.fiveoaksfarmkitchen.com I also got to spend time with some of my caving buddies who were at the show. And in typical “me” fashion I realized when we were getting ready for dinner Monday night I had left my jeans on the bed at home and hadn’t packed them. Soooo at 10:00 that night we had to make a run to Ross Clothing, the only thing open that time of the night in Sevierville, and get me a pair of jeans. I hate shopping for jeans. There is nothing that can make you feel worse about your body than trying on jeans, except maybe trying on bathing suites hmmmm. But I went into Ross with only thirty minutes to spare and gathered six pairs of jeans and took them to the dressing room. Ross is the kind of store you usually have to dig for what you want. It is an overstock type of store so you can find some good deals if you really look. I got a pair of Jones New York jeans and I love them!!!! Go figure it takes me hours normally to pick out a pair of jeans and I run in at 10:00, after having a big meal and a full tummy, and find jeans I love. Go figure.

We stayed in Sevierville where one of the shows was taking place and I got this early morning sunrise pic the morning I left.

Anyway I was gone for a couple of days and then drove straight back to work on Wednesday morning because we were doing a Teacher Appreciation night for our local teachers. It went very well and we are having another one on Wednesday night. We did tours and food and door prizes and our teachers loved it. We are so thankful for them.

We celebrated my husband’s Birthday on Friday so I took an extra day off from work. I was in Gatlinburg on his Birthday and felt bad for it but he also had to work. So we celebrated on Friday. On Saturday I went to visit my mother in law in the assisted living center where she is staying and took her out for a ride. I try to do that every week so that she has an outing to look forward to. I also went to a house-warming party of a co-worker and saw some friends there I hadn’t seen in a while so that was very nice. I finished up the day with my sisters watching the Tennessee game and had pizza and beer. If you know me you know I am not a football fan I actually could care less about it. But being with my sisters is always a good time, and I took a cowl neck scarf I have been working on and actually finished it before the end of the game.

With the traveling and eating out and not having time to work out I have felt a bit sluggish. I try to remind myself that I have to make time to work out and eat better anyway. I can’t use the excuse of special lunches, dinners and being gone. I am doing those things all the time. A day at a time progress I suppose. It’s back to the gym for me today. No more excuses!!!!!

What have you been up to?

Love your day your way!!!