Monday, November 18, 2024

Variety is the Spice of Life

When you have been blogging as long as I have, it is easy to wonder if I will have anything new to write about? Understandably, one would think that after nearly 18 years worth of stories there would be nothing new to cover. And yet, there seems to  always be new experiences to put in this little space on the web.

Let's get right to it because, as is so often the case, I've got a lot of ground to cover.

Scanning through my photos I'm thinking that maybe I never included the quilt I pieced and hand quilted for baby Christian, who is but weeks away from making his long awaited appearance. Fallon and Bill are so ready to see his sweet face and who could blame them? I mailed this down to Nancy who brought it to the shower. BTW--that card table has been very helpful indeed.

Being fully aware that not everyone, especially young folks, love quilts like I do, so instead of re-inventing the wheel, I saw a version of this on the Pottery Barn website and thought that might bring some cache to my humble efforts, using the fabric that Margie was kind enough to give me.

Speaking of Margie, she invited us to a Friendsgiving celebration Saturday night where not only were we thankful for all of our many blessings, the fact that David, Margie and Bruce were finished caning the chairs that once belonged to her grandfather! She estimated it took 60 hours total!

Unfortunately, Bruce's chair does not show even though I backed up as far as possible in her dining room! It was lots of fun with delicious food and good company. 

Margie's husband, Ricky, pictured in the reddish shirt, smoked both a brisket (a nod to Margie's Texas heritage) and a turkey.

At the same time that Bruce was working on the chair, sometimes at home, he was building a cabinet for the parlor, my fancy name for the front room! 
Unlike me, he uses no pattern, designing and building it, well, I don't even know how! It has been decades since he built a cabinet, but you would not know it as he never missed a beat. The process took maybe a month, working on it when he could. That might be off by a little bit, but let's just say, you cannot build a cabinet quickly!

He also built those little sawhorses out of the old wood from the valances that used to be in the living room.


Originally he'd planned on using oak, but as it was difficult to procure, we agreed on paint and doesn't it just look lovely? 

I am also very, very happy to report that we found a new rug at Lowes for that room. At the moment it the paint is curing, so in a week or so, we will begin using it as we could definitely use the storage!

In my last post, your favorite blogger was working on a quilt. It was an upstairs/downstairs situation around here for the last week or so. I kept my phone handy in the upstairs sewing room while Bruce was downstairs in the basement,  Thus I could call him, rather than go down two flights of stairs. For a long time I've wanted to do some spiral quilting and now that desire has been fulfilled. As I believe you have come to expect, I am okay not being perfect because, well, only Jesus was perfect, so who am I to imagine I could be too? I spent hours and hours going round in circles, only to discover something was not quite right when I was nearing the finish line. 

Do you see what I see? Yup, it went haywire while I kept turning it and I was too busy going round in circles to notice!! The family member who always tries doing his best came to the rescue. We had to cut off about half of the outside squares to make it work, however, in the end, I think it turned out kind of fun.

Another project Bruce tackled was the driveway which was somewhat precarious before. Adding about ten bags of dirt, along with concrete and paving material, he laid the pavers back down and it is a huge improvement.

Things look very different without the leaves. No surprise there, but still we had no idea what we would be seeing as late fall came around. Now we do. Bruce never realized that the library was but two very small blocks away as it was hidden behind the full trees..

Which brings me to a sweet story that happened in a sweet town. Friday morning I was heading to the pharmacy and realized that using a restroom was in my best interests, so I popped into the library, finding the key hanging beside the check-out desk. I don't know about you but I can't go into a library without looking at something; in this instance it was a big quilting book on the sale table for, ready? Ten cents. Flipping through the pages, it wasn't long before I was flipping out because, when I came to the back of the book there were some magazine pages torn from a 1987 Family Circle magazine. Get this, all those years ago I had torn out the EXACT same pages!!! Because I had come with a debit card only, the librarian told me to take it and return when I could. Now that is what we are talking about when we say how much we love it here! Something else to like. "Take what you need."

Another awesome thing happened last week and that was, as I was standing very near to the suet cake holder, this cute little Downey Woodpecker came over and did not leave!

It's the little things folks! I am so sure that you agree.

As to the bare tree situation, I took this from our street and now we know how we saw the house from the church! 

Not only is there a free lunch every other Thursday at our church, there is now free produce available that Liz drives to Franklin to procure from a farmer co-op.

She made some little salads for folks to try using the arugula.

Look who is getting the hang of this baking thing again. I may have included this link to the most amazing muffin pan before, but if so, it needs to be shared again.  No oil or liners necessary! These are apple/rosemary muffins btw.

A cool full moon the other night both in looks, and the outside temperature. Really it has been very comfortable, so much so that I wore a tank top while playing pickleball this morning. Starting out with an over shirt, layering is the answer at this time of year.

The Japanese Maple is just beautiful. Mary is coming to visit on Wednesday! Hurray!! Here's hoping that tomorrow's storm does not blow off too many more leaves. 

Look what else I can see from the front porch as well as my kitchen window!!!

These are the two houses on our side of the street. I never imagined that I would have a mountain view here.

The pickleball ladies have been such a blessing to me, taking me in like I am not the stranger that I am. Many of these women have been playing together for nearly a decade! Friday we went to Crane Creek Winery and the adjacent restaurant called Paris & Company, where we enjoyed delicious food and scintillating conversation. Well maybe not scintillating but it sounds good!

This picture is pretty funny, at least to me, because three of the women decided to walk to the tasting room from the restaurant. One such woman left her phone there and Lori is standing waiting. She was also waiting for a few of us who were riding with her. Waiting is not her strong suit. :)

This is a place, even near wintertime, that is very photogenic.

I am showing great restraint, showing only a few of the photos that I took.

Yesterday afternoon I went to a ladies meeting at the parsonage. The group of about fifteen was made up of lots of young mothers including two women who have four children. Listening to some of their challenges it occurred to me that living here has been such a joy for many reasons, one of which is that we are old. I know that sounds crazy, but seriously, we have no responsibilities and that feels very nice indeed. Sometimes I wonder how in the world we did it.

your friend,

Gail

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