Friday, March 26, 2010

A Lamp For Mom...


My folks got a couple of rooms of new furniture in 1965. The style was country/early American. It was comfortable and cozy and colors to suit the era. While trying to decide what to get my mother that year for Christmas I came across this lamp. It cost $59.95 plus tax which was quite a lot of $$ for a lamp in 1965. I knew Mom would like it so I bought it for her. She enjoyed this lamp for nearly 23 years. After she passed it came back to me. I've had it for nearly 22 years and it now sits in my guest room. It's not a very efficient lamp but, of course, that isn't why it was purchased in the first place. This lamp fits in the category of those 'gotta have' pair of shoes that look oh so gooood but just kill your feet. Know what I mean? This little beauty is about 31" from base to top of chimney. PS-the bottom half of the light is a night light. Fits right in with my fetish for night lights.

I know I know. . .

I'm suppose to be downsizing but I couldn't resist! Besides Lanette made me do it, I swear. Oh wait, I have a current temple reccomend...okay, she was 'with me' when I found these. This was a large sum of $$ to my way of thinking. Two quilts and two identical frames for $4 a piece!


The quilts both need repair but I prefer used rather than perfect. The frames outside measurements are 24.5 X 26. One frame is a future mirror the other is a future cork board or chalkboard instead of a mirror. Any ideas?

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Trouble. . .

Is anyone else having problems with their blog? I haven't made any changes to settings but things are changed. What's up with that? I can't customize fonts and colors, my comments have changed, instead of photos posting it's text and then I have to figure out how to put my text in with all the gobbledeygook.
I cleaned my cache of cookies as suggested but to no avail.

Nightlights...


I have nightlights all over the house.

I probably have more nightlights on 24-7 than most people have lights. I don't like dark! As a matter-of-fact I don't care much about anything dark. I like light!

These houses sit a top a cupboard in the guest room. They look homey,warm and give off a soft glow in the night. The dollhouse is lit too but doesn't look like it in the photo. Sorry folks, I'm not a better photographer.

The round globe glass shade at the left I found at the curb. The bottom was from the dumpster. Dave put them together for me and mounted them to a piece of wood for stabilization and voila a nightlight.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. . .


Are you anxiously awaiting these too? There are several Lilac bushes along our alley way which I can't wait to see unfold their pretties. My lilies are about 3" above ground as are the flags (iris). How is it in your neck of the woods?

Monday, March 22, 2010

Friday was. . .

61 degrees, sunny, breezy, capri weather.  
Saturday was. . .
33 degrees, snow, wind, winter coat weather.
Sunday was. . .
36 degrees, light rain, winter coat and umbrella weather.
  This photo shows the snow melting after an hours worth of rain.
Today. . .57, mostly sunny, windy, and we'll see what kind of weather.
I hope you're having a lovely day wherever in the world you are.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Relief Society Meeting and Birthday Party

Tuesday the 16th we celebrated the birthday of the Relief Society at our monthly evening meeting.  We also honored past presidents still residing in our branch boundaries, gave out a couple of pat-on-the-back awards and a certificate and blue ribbon to the visiting teachers.  Peggy did a lovely job on the program and awards. Thanks Peg!  We had a salad bar with everything you could think of for a salad along with macaroni/shrimp salad, bowtie pasta salad and potato salad.  Robin and daughter-in-law Elizabeth did the cupcakes and pretty glasses with candy. Thanks ladies!  Kathleen, the education counselor, gave out the pat-on-the-back awards, Anita, the secretary and VT coordinator did the VT awards and I gave out the presidents recognitions award.  Nearly everyone helped clean up... a big thanks for all who helped.  
We had several quilts on display that we have put together over the last few months that will be donated to the oncology unit at out local hospital.
All in all it was a lovely evening with good food and fellowship all around. 

Birthday and Visiting Teaching Companion...

My visiting teaching companione is a wonderful gal named Vickie.  She is cute, funny and very intelligent.  I like her a lot.  After we did our visiting teaching last week she took me to lunch at our favorite watering hole.  I went to the water closet to wash my hands and when I came back the little plate you see in the photo was in the middle of the table with a green snowball lunch cake and a pink squiggly candle in the center.  I had to make a wish, the birthday fairy must be asleep on the job cuz she ain't answered my wish yet, and blow out the candle.  She gave me a lovely card with a sweet message inside and a small photo album for my purse which I'm going to fill with recipes.  Please note the message on the birthday plate.  That was me!  Thanks Vickie, you're a plum.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Look What I Got . . .

My Canadian daughter made these for me.  I also have a bright blue one with bright yellow sunflowers on it. (that apron was in the laundry when I took these photos)  I wear an apron whenever I'm in the kitchen and love these bib aprons.  I have several aprons but these bibs are my favorite.  I also especially like the apron that ties at the sides and is reversible.  Cheyenne made me one of those several years ago, last year I finally had to do away with it as it was beyond looking presentable anymore.  
Hint to my Canadian daughter: no more flowers send me an apron instead. Thank you so much for these.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

From My Son-In-Law...

I received this from Greg and thought it was worth sharing.  I wanted to add, life doesn't have an expiration date as the author states at the end of his story but mortality does.  Make good use of it, eternity is a long time.
Enjoy. . .  

This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed. Here goes...

  My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car.
  He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.
  "In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."

  At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:
"Oh, bull----!" she said. "He hit a horse."

  "Well," my father said, "there was that, too."

  So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.

  My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

  My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.

  But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.

  But, sure enough , my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.

  It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.

  Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.

  So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.

  For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

  Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.

  (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

  He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church.
She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home.

  If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."

  After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."

  If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"

  "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

  "No left turns," he said.


  "
What?" I asked.

  "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.

  As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."

  "What?" I said again.

  "No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer.  So we always make three rights."

  "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support.
  "No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works."
  But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."

  I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.

  "Loses count?" I asked.

  "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."

  I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.

  "No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day.  Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."
  My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.

  She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.

  They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)

  He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.

  One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.

  A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."

  "You're probably right," I said.

  "Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.

  "Because you're 102 years old," I said..

  "Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.


 
That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.

 
He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said:
  "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet"

  An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:

  "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."

  A short time later, he died.

  I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.

 
I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life,
  Or because he quit taking left turns. "

Life is too short to wake up with regrets.  
 
So love the people who treat you right.   Forget about the one's who don't.   Believe everything happens for a reason.   If you get a chance,take it & if it changes your life, let it. 
Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would 
most likely be worth it." 


ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE!

Monday, March 8, 2010

A Longtime Friend...

This is my friend Dusty (aka Rogean).  Isn't she just a little doll face?  We look like Mutt and Jeff together. We met during the summer of 1965.  Her future husband Skip and my husband were childhood friends. We were at my in laws house where my hsb was working on a car when Skip drove up with this girl in the car.  After they were married we went around together along with several other couples for several years until I moved out west.  We would get together at each others homes, b-b-q, play with the kids and then put them to bed (in playpens we hauled all over creation) and then the adults (we were still kids ourselves) played cards and board games.
I had my first baby in April, Dusty had her only child in May.  The four of us had been playing cards and the guys went for pizza when her labor increased. I kept telling her to hang on until the guys got back, which thankfully they did.
 This is one of her toys...Is that bright or what?  In person you almost need sunglasses to look at it.  She loves it and anything else that is BRIGHT!!

 
I wish this photo did better justice to this mixer, it is brighter yet than the photo shows.

More Birthday. . .

 
I received these on my birthday.  Thank you so much Cheyenne, Keston and boys, I'm still enjoying these beauties.

I received this from Jan Ericka and Family.  Thank you so much, it's a nice addition to my collection of 
'chick flicks'

 I received these from my bosom buddy Lanette.  They are so pretty and hang very nicely from my scrawny earlobes. Lanette also got me a candle which smells like a flower garden.  Thanks sister.

 
This is what my hubby gave me... A trip home sometime in the spring. Whooopee, thanks honey!!
Lanette also took me to dinner which is our yearly tradition.
Dave was on the road on my birthday so he took me to dinner when he got home.  
I had a lot of birthday wishes which were well appreciated and loved.  Thank you friends.
A lovely birthday all-in-all.
I have decided that next year I will celebrate my birthday all week, something special every day.  Too much??





Tuesday, March 2, 2010

A Happy Chef. . .

LKT and I were out and about a couple of weeks ago and I found this for a mere $.50.  He is a 1950's Noma Happy Chef market reminder.  Isn't he cute?  He looks like he's had a little too much of what he's cooked, just like me.
 
This is the back side of Happy Chef


A Winter Morning Moon. . .

As I looked out my front door this morning I saw this . . .
 
Click to enlarge.  I wish I had a telephoto lens so you could see what I 'actually' saw. The time is on the photo.  She was a beauty!

Empty Nesters & a Shamrock Cake

 
Last night was  our Empty Nesters Family Home Evening group.  I made my casserole and went over and to my surprise Peggy came in with this birthday cake for moi!  Actually they're cupcakes and as you can see the other half of the shamrock pair is gone.  It was delicious! Peggy said there were no candles because the fire department couldn't put out that much fire.  She's a character! I took this photo when I got home as I had no camera with me.  I was so tickled they thought of me.
Our group consists of 2 senior missionaries (hsb & wife) , 2 Elders (male junior missionaries), and the  rest of us which usually consists of 5.  We are a happy group of about 9.
We have a potluck every Monday evening at 7, fellowship,  and at present we're working on Family History.  Our FH leader was under the weather last night so we had a history quiz supplemented by Hershey miniatures.  We did  pretty well, I'm uncertain if it was because we're really smart or we were really inspired by the chocolate.! 


I received this yesterday by post from my Canadian daughter for my birthday which is the 3rd.
My daughters and I love anything Jane Austen or English.  I have the original Cranford and was tickled to receive this one.  I had mentioned to Cheyenne only recently that the Return to Cranford was on our local PBS station, I had no idea it was even out and voila here it is.  The girls have sent me several movies over the years and I've watched them many times over and enjoyed them anew with each viewing.  Thank you!