Things I Love…

December 29, 2014

I have been sick with a respiratory virus (or maybe “the flu”) for the better part of a week now.  I haven’t really had enough energy to do anything that is worthy of writing about.  However, since I’ve had an additional blog “page” in progress for a while, I think now is a good time to publish it. 

This page contains reviews and ideas on things that I use around the house that make my life easier, more organized, or just more enjoyable.  To access this page, just click on the tab at the top of the blog that says, “Things I Love”.

Here’s to hoping I’ll have more to write about next week.  Happy New Year!

God Bless Donna Dewberry…

December 22, 2014

One of my “greatest fans” recently asked me for updates on the kitchen renovation and the progress on the braided kitchen rug.  Well, I need to ask her (and you) to hang in there just a little longer until the kitchen renovation is completely done and decorated (which will definitely happen in January, I promise).

However, I haven’t been completely idle.  I’m including an update on the snowman centerpieces that I was working on last week, which I decided to change.  I’ve told you what a control freak I am and I just couldn’t be happy with the bland “balloon” face so I let ideas flit through my brain for a few days until I came up with the improved version below.  We used these for the raffle at my sister’s Christmas party and they were well-received, especially by Charming who was vying with my brother Jeff for the cookies inside the snowmen.

Recently I have also started working on my beloved “family heirloom” washtub.  I’ve probably told you that this washtub was discovered more than ten years ago by my brother and me at my grandfather’s old home place way up in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Although my brother tried to persuade me to leave the washtub where we’d found it and let nature continue to take its course, I would not be persuaded.  So, good brother that he is, he gave up and even toted that dented, rusty, bottomless washtub down the mountain…complaining all the way. 

I have held onto that washtub despite years of teasing from my brother.  I have ignored my sister’s comments about my being a candidate for the TV show about “hoarders” as she rolled her eyes.  I have also defended the washtub’s honor and worthiness when Charming repeatedly insisted that we needed to, “Take that worthless thing to the landfill, for Pete’s sake”.

When the kitchen renovation came about, I drew up a floor plan and penciled in all of our kitchen furniture.  In the end, there was an obvious blank space in front of the sink that needed to be filled with something.  So I took a look around the house at our furniture to see if anything could be re-purposed to that spot.  Nothing…hmmmmmm.  While doing laundry in the basement one day, my eyes landed on my old washtub friend sitting in the corner.  Bingo!

Now when Charming goes somewhere without me (which is rare…Christmas shopping for me one day last week and a few hours of deer hunting this week), I spring into action with my rubber mallet, paint, and paint brushes.  So far, I’ve hammered out the dents in the washtub, sanded the entire thing, painted a medium grey base coat on both the inside and outside and let that dry. Then I sponged a slightly lighter grey coat on the outside of the tub to resemble the original galvanized look.  It has actually turned out pretty well so far.  My plan is to turn it into a prep table to go in front of the kitchen sink.  The 4”x4” legs, with rollers, will be painted black and the top will either be made of wood that I will cover with several coats of white enamel paint or use a left over section of the new kitchen counter top.  I plan to paint red apples around the bottom of the tub and add a bible verse around the top of the tub.  (Thanks to “how to” videos by Donna Dewberry that I purchased several years ago, I can paint fairly decent apples, pears, grapes, and some flowers.  With her easy tutorials, anyone can learn to paint.  She is absolutely wonderful!)  Below is a picture of the sketch of my prep table idea.

Charming often makes comments about how creative he thinks I am.  I sure hope he continues to think that when he sees my addition to his lovely handiwork in the kitchen. I'm trying to keep it a secret from him (as he really does have a dislike for my poor beloved tub) and will spring it on him as the last bit of the decorating process.  Cross your fingers for me on this one!

Revised cookie-filled snowman centerpiece.
The original "balloon face" snowman was
shown a couple of posts ago.

Six of the snowmen.  (The happy guy on the right looks like he
might have had a little too much eggnog!)

This shell of a washtub has made me the butt of many jokes
from family members.

This is the washtub's "best" side...after all, if you didn't know
it has no bottom and you ignored the rust, it would look
perfectly fine.

I painted the inside and outside of the tub a medium grey.  Then
"sponged" a lighter grey on the outside to loosely mimic the
original galvanized look.

A close-up view of the sponge painting.  I think it turned out
rather nice.

I drew this sketch of my prep table idea
using the "draw" feature on my computer, then
printed it and took a picture of that with my camera.
The top appears to be tilted, but this is just
camera distortion.  (Hopefully the finished
table will not be leaning like this picture.)

Finding Your Bliss...

December 15, 2014

Well folks, our Christmas decorations are up and almost all of my shopping is done.  Presents are wrapped and under our tiny table top tree.  Other than the daily ritual of rearranging the tree and ornaments due to our mischievous cats’ antics, I’m pretty much happy with where I am as far as Christmas preparation goes.

Although I’ve still got some craft work in progress for the kitchen like making a small prep table from what I like to call “a family heirloom”, putting the last couple of rows on my braided rug, and making curtains I’m really happy with life. 

I’ve had some time to reflect on things over the past few weeks and I’ve come up with some astounding (at least to me) conclusions.  I know I’ve previously mentioned how thankful I am that I no longer have to commute to a day job for work, but it has taken a full year for me to get comfortable with the idea of not working for a salary.  Prior to quitting work, I was a bit worried that we would not be able to afford the things that we were used to having.  Then after I quit work, I put pressure on myself to get things done around the house to pay for my keep…like cleaning out drawers, closets, and other things that had fallen between the cracks while I was working.  It was Charming who finally sat me down and told me that it was silly to try to do all of that stuff at once because I had the rest of my life to get those kinds of things in order.  Huh?!?!  Since I tend to be task-oriented and somewhat compulsive, that really hadn’t occurred to me. 

So over the course of the past year, I have slowed down a bit and relaxed.  I no longer feel the need to clean the entire house in one day.  In fact, I’ve found that you can actually clean the bathroom toilet one day and then go back and clean the bathroom floors another day.  Who knew?  There are actually no rules to cleaning!  I’ve learned to keep the house tidy and live-able without the pressure of being a Stepford Wife.  (“The Stepford Wives,” if you remember, is an older movie where all the women in town wore perpetual smiles, always dressed like they were going out on the town, kept their houses spotless, and did whatever their husbands wanted whenever they wanted it.) 

Charming and I get to spend almost all of our time together.  Luckily, we’re best buddies so that works out well for both of us…no Stepford Wives or Stepford Husbands in this house.  I’ve also found that with some minor changes in our lifestyle like growing and preserving more of our food (which I love), cooking more from scratch (which I love), changing phone and TV systems to less expensive alternatives (I have found the difference to be barely noticeable), we have found that we can live a really good life on the cheap that I can only describe as “blissful”.  I truly wish that everybody could find the happiness that I’ve found this past year.

Our tiny table top tree, with Walker and Powder (our cats).

A close-up of the ornaments, many of which I knitted.

Presents under the tree with Walker contemplating
how to get to the ornaments on the tree.

Another reason to be happy is our new (and sometimes bad)
addition to our house.  Jax's behavior is greatly improved.
When we first got him, he had almost no social skills and had
had no training at all.

Jax is now house-trained and will bring us his leash when he
needs to go outside.  We are firm, but fair pet parents and
the hard work does pay off.  Life is GOOD!

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas…

December 8, 2014

Today is my deadline for putting up Christmas decorations.  I’ve pulled the small tabletop artificial Christmas tree from its box and placed it on a table in our living room.  Charming and I will decorate it later today.  I’ve also brought up some other decorations from the basement.  I didn’t really realize how many Christmas decorations we own until I saw the empty storage rack where they live in our basement eleven months out of the year.  We don’t normally decorate a lot for Christmas.  This is due, in no small part, to the fact that we have two extremely inquisitive cats and a rambunctious dog.  Another reason we don’t decorate much for Christmas is that, invariably, our house is in disarray every Christmas due to some renovation project.

Although these projects aren’t usually huge in nature, they do seem to necessitate that our furniture ends up in unusual places.  For the past year, in addition to our living room furniture, we’ve had a kitchen table and antique sideboard in our living room.  Our bedroom has a small rectangular table in it that also belongs in the kitchen.  Some additional kitchen furniture is in the basement and in Charming’s office.  Although the kitchen re-do is coming to an end, it will still make Christmas decorating a bit difficult this year.  (By the way, the “big reveal” as they say on HGTV should take place within the next few weeks.  Charming is having a small medical issue that has put the work on hold temporarily, but he's looking forward to this project coming to a close as much as I am.)

I’ve also been working on an idea for table center pieces for our family Christmas party, which is coming up in the next couple of weeks.  My sister, Betty, organizes this big bash for our family each year.  She does a magnificent job at making the season bright for all of us.  Below are pictures of what I’ve come up with so far.  I wanted the center pieces to be edible, but they also had to be in keeping with the decorating theme.  This year’s theme is snowmen.  A few months ago, I found some small black felted hats at our local thrift shop.  These fit in perfectly with the snowman them, so I built the center piece around these hats.  I baked some of my Gluten-Free Cranberry Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip cookies, which will make up the body of the centerpiece.  These center pieces are easy and relatively quick to create.  Since my family loves to eat (especially cookies), I’m hoping they’ll be a hit.

I found these little black hats at our local thrift shop.  That
got the ball rolling and my imagination going.

I cut some strips of red and green felt for the hat bands then
added artificial greenery from another craft project along
with small pine cones that I found at our town park.

This dressed the hats up quite a bit.  

I tried in vain to find white 4" Christmas ornaments for the
snowman's face, but apparently white is not "in" for Christmas
this year.  So I had to improvise and came up with a white
balloon for the snowman's face.  

Here's is the assembled snowman.  The body is
made up of cookies in a clear cellophane "goody"
bag that I purchased at a Dollar Tree store.  The hat
came from the thrift store.  The scarf is a strip of
wool that was left over from the braided wool rug
that I made for my kitchen.  The head is a white
balloon with a face drawn on with a permanent
marker.  It should look okay on the tables surrounded
by a few small branches of pine.

Home For The Holidays…

December 1, 2014

Thanksgiving Day has passed, but not without a snafu or two.  My sister, Sis, had asked about six members of the family (including Charming and me) to her house for Thanksgiving dinner at 2:00 p.m.  I volunteered to make chocolate cheesecake, a strawberry/rhubarb slab pie, and spinach squares.  My brother, Jeff, was bringing corn pudding.  Sis was making the turkey, gravy, dressing, honest-to-goodness mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce.  Capital YUM!!!

Since I’m a bit of a control freak, I made the cheesecake the day before and got up at 6:00 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day to make the slab pie and spinach squares.  Everything was going fine until I got a phone call from Sis saying that her electricity had gone off.  She phoned the electric company, but only got a recorded message asking her to leave a message if her call was in regards to a power outage.  It was strange that her electricity went off when I live just two houses down from her and our electricity was still working fine.  Oh well, no problem…just bring the turkey and fixin’s to my house and we’d cook it here.  So she loaded the uncooked food into her car and brought it to my house. 

I put the turkey into the oven and life was good…for about fifteen minutes…UH OH!!!  I quickly phoned the electric company and got the same recording that Sis had gotten previously, except they had added a sentence that said, “We are aware of power outages in your area.”   Hmmmmm…what to do?

I phoned Sis and we brainstormed for a few minutes.  I hung up from Sis and made several attempts to call the local Chinese restaurant…no answer.  (Wow…that solution worked so well for the folks in “A Christmas Story”.)  I phoned the pricey restaurant that sits up on “the hill” and got cut off after having already been transferred to two different people.  I took that as a sign that a ritzy Thanksgiving dinner on “the hill” wasn’t in the cards for us. 

I phoned Sis back to give her the bad news.  We were down to two choices: going to the local grocery store and buying bologna and bread or partaking of the free meal that was being given by the American Legion.  We hung up so that we could mull over those choices, while praying that the electricity would magically come back on.

Now you know I can hardly let a post go by without mentioning my wonderful husband, Charming.  After he discovered that our electricity had gone off, he casually mentioned that he was going out to our garage/shed.  Then he came back in a few minutes and said, “Using the generator, I think I can get you lights and one burner on the stove, if that’ll help.”  I know it sounds corny, but after ten years of marriage, he’s still my Prince Charming riding in on a white horse to save the day!

Then a light bulb went off in my head.  I had canned pork tenderloin back in the spring!  You may not know it, but canned tenderloin has traditionally been the equivalent of steak to the “mountain folk” in our area of the Blue Ridge.  As a child, I remember Momma opening up a couple of quarts of tenderloin when we got unexpected company.  She would heat up the tenderloin on the kitchen woodstove and use the broth to make the most mouthwatering gravy you could ever imagine.  Making a meal from canned tenderloin can be done, literally, in a matter of minutes.

Since it was getting awfully close to the appointed time for dinner, I phoned Sis one last time and offered the tenderloin option as a final solution.  She agreed.  As it turned out we had a good meal of tenderloin, gravy, instant mashed potatoes, corn pudding, and spinach squares with cheesecake and pie for dessert.

Each person at the table took a turn to say what they were thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day.  Not surprisingly, there seemed to be a common theme…we were all thankful for family, friends, food…and generators!

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I had time to take of our memorable 2014
Thanksgiving Dinner.  This was part of my brother, Jeff's "doggie bag" to take
home with him.  At the top of the picture is the chocolate cheese cake.
The rest is the strawberry/rhubarb slab pie.