What's shakin' bacon?

Here's a little of what's shakin. :)

The reading theme for this summer at the library was a Universe of Stories. To promote this theme, the teens made a a space-like-picture t-shirt. There were extras, so I made one for myself. It was an easy project and has limitless possibilities. The orange background was made by spraying a bleach solution on the shirt. The other colors came from sponge painting. We used to get Astronomy magazine and there was a picture in the same style on every cover, so I think the universe theme was carried out well. However, the shirt fits Theo better than me, so I passed it on.

And this is why we have AAA. One of our cars wouldn't start recently and we used our AAA membership to have it towed to the garage. AAA is expensive, but one use recouped all of our money and more. With only a couple of days of car shuffling, the car got fixed and all was well.

It's that time of year again when we have the community fair. I entered several things and won several ribbons. However, I am proudest of a 2nd place ribbon for this mini flower arrangement. Flower arranging is a stretch of my abilities, so I was happy to be rewarded for my efforts. I was especially happy since I grew the flowers for it.

Recently, I tried a tip from Kris that if you add a teaspoon of cornstarch to your cookies,  it will help soften them. I was skeptical, but it worked like a charm in the recent batch of cookies I baked. These were part of a host gift for a family we were staying with for my niece's wedding.

This year we added a meadow garden bed to our yard. We are still learning about these kind of flowers so we went to a local park to look at this one. It was a Girl Scout project and contained both annual and perennial flowers. I particularly liked the splash of red the fire hydrant provided.

This weekend Ward and I will be going to my family reunion in West Virginia. After that, we will be vacationing and visiting several sights in the state. For most of our visits to my parents over the years, we have been very focused on the getting there and spending maximum time with them. Now we can go to some of the places we have wanted to along the way. I hope to do a travel log, so tune in starting Friday to see where I go. (Of course, all is contingent upon connections, etc.)

Until next time...

Thankful Sunday, September 22, 2019

I am thankful for good endings.

Several days ago Ward and I were driving along a busy highway when we saw a truck rush through the light in front of us. It looked like something fell out of the side of the truck, but we weren't sure until the truck cleared the intersection and we stopped for the light. Then we saw a stunned golden retriever puppy standing in the middle of the intersection. We didn't believe it, but we had seen a dog fall out of that truck.

Representative picture from
thehappypuppysite.com

Luckily the traffic had stopped going the other direction, so I got out and led the puppy off the highway. He seemed to be okay and we knew soon that that was true when he wanted to play just like puppies do. I kept him on the side of the road in sight so the owners could see us when they came back. Ward went into a nearby parking lot and then helped me look for any identifying information on the collar the dog was wearing. There was none to be found.


After what seemed to be a very long time (although time can play tricks on you when your adrenaline is rushing), the pickup returned and a young woman got out. She was visibly shaken and very happy to see her dog. She said something about they thought they had the childproof lock on, but maybe not, and the dog stepped on the control and fell out. She also said something about a disagreement she had with her dad, who had been driving, about the best way to travel with the puppy. But mostly she was happy to see her dog in one piece. And so was I.

So for a good ending to what might have been a very bad situation, I am very thankful.

Thankful Sunday, September 15, 2019

I am thankful for my dishwasher.

I don't like to wash dishes. I suppose it's not on my list of horrible things, but it's not on my list of fun things, either.

We saved this metal dish pan from my
 parent's things. This held our rinse water
while washing dishes.

When I was growing up, we didn't have a dishwasher. My parents always said why should they buy a dishwasher when they had four perfectly good ones already--meaning me and my sisters.

Every night after supper, my parents would retire to the living room to watch the evening news while we cleaned up the kitchen. My oldest sister was a good singer and knew a lot of songs so she usually led us in singing while we worked. I really liked that part. But the washing, rinsing, and drying were not so much fun.

However if truth be told, I spent the lion's share of my time goofing off and left most of the work to the others. One of my go to activities was to soak the label off a jar, tear it into little pieces, and put it back together on the cabinet fronts like a puzzle. The wet pieces clung well and I tried to make the pieces fit exactly right. While I enjoyed doing this, I had even more fun irritating my oldest sister. My younger sister and I knew just what to do to push her buttons. I'd like to say that I was mature and didn't bother her, but I wasn't and I did. We could always get to her by singing, "I Want to Be Loved by You" in the style of Mary Ann in one of the Gilligan's Island episodes. 

As time progressed and my two older sisters went to college, I assumed more responsibility in the kitchen. Eventually I went to college and my parents finally got an automatic dishwasher. They said it was time since most of their "dishwashers"were gone now.

Not having had a dishwasher growing up really made me appreciate the one I had when I moved out on my own. I have been happy to have one ever since. So for the convenience and help of a dishwasher, I am thankful.

It Takes a Village

You've heard the expression, "It takes a village to raise a child." Well, apparently, it takes a village for me to have people over. August was my month to host my book club and as I was preparing for the meeting, I realized that I was using a village to pull it off.

First I made some chocolate chip cookies because I just happened to have the ingredients for them. See the mixer? That was my mother's. I got it recently when we cleaned out her house. Before that, I had been using a hand mixer that I got when I went to college. It's much easier to use the stand mixer, let me tell you. Also, the canisters in the background were a gift from a high school friend.

After the cookies came out of the oven, I cooled them on this heavy duty cooling rack that was also my mother's. The metal is about twice as thick as the one beside it.

I served the cookies on this pottery dish from my sister in Maine made by a local potter there.

Next I prepared a vegetable plate with dip. The divided vegetable tray came from my mother's house and the dip bowl was my grandmother's. The cucumbers for the dip and tray came from Uncle Billy.

Then I fixed a fruit tray with yellow watermelon from Uncle Billy and the tray was new to me from my mother's things.

To add some salty to the mix of food, I had crackers and hummus served in a plate made in Kentucky given to me by a friend.

The drinks were served in glasses that were a gift from Ward's grandmother.

The napkins were from a friend at work who was giving them away.

And tablecloth (not pictured) was a gift from Ward's aunt in Guatemala. I didn't get a picture of the tablecloth so I'm using the cookies again. They turned out delicious.

So with my village of things, we had a successful meeting with good refreshments. 

But Wait, There's More for Inquiring minds:

Why did you spend over 30 years using a hand mixer when you wanted a stand mixer?
I ask myself the same thing. Have I ever mentioned that I have a hard time spending money?

What did you use for these plates and trays before you got them from your mother? 
I made do with whatever I could cobble together. I'm into practical solutions which sometimes comes at the expense of pretty.

Do you entertain very much?
No, and it's usually outside where we supply the meat and others bring the sides. Then we use our picnic plates which are melamine ones we got from MacDonald's years ago that feature the movie Aladdin.

What recipe did you use for the cookies?
The standard one on the bag of chips. I added a little less butter because I like chewy better than crunchy cookies. 

Thankful Sunday, September 8, 2019

I am thankful for my sisters.

My mother and father
with my oldest sister.

At the end of August was the first anniversary of my mother's death. It was also my sister's birthday. My mother died on the same date that she gave birth to her first child many years earlier. That may or may not mean something depending on how you feel about the cosmic connection of things. I feel like it was a coincidence. Maybe.

What I do know is I didn't want my sister's birthday to forever be overshadowed with the sorrowful day of our mother's passing. So I told her to start thinking ahead on how she wanted to celebrate. We couldn't ignore our mother's passing but that day needed to have more to it than the sorrow we were feeling.

My sister thought about it for a while and came up with the following. We should each say a prayer of thanksgiving for our mother's life and how well she lived it. And then have a hot dog with everything on it to celebrate my sister's birthday. So amid the tears, we each said a prayer of thanksgiving for our mother and then had a really good hot dog. Because of the distance between us, we weren't actually able to be together for this experience but we shared pictures of our special meal, some of them complete with birthday candles. We had a fun time seeing what each of us chose to make our perfect hot dog and wishing my sister happy birthday.

Here are all four of us,
ten years after the above picture.

So for shared experiences with my sisters, I am thankful.

The rest of the story:

I am not sharing the picture of the hot dog I had because I put candles on it with my sister's age. She may not want me to share that for 50+ various reasons.

Also, sharing common things from a distance is something my sisters and I have started to do. On my father's birthday, we have ice cream to remember him because that was something he loved. We all share what we did whether it was a trip to the Dairy Queen or a big bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce at home.