My favorite time of year...

Today kicks off my favorite time of year. I have a busy work schedule the first few days of week so I have to squeeze a lot in during the early morning and late night. But I am up for the challenge. Thanksgiving day I will be watching the parade. It's just something I never miss.

I don't eat turkey so I will be having baked ham glazed with orange marmalade. It's my favorite way to have ham.

I always have baked beans. I just can't have ham without baked beans. It's not Thanksgiving otherwise. Still on the fence as whether I have mashed potatoes or potato salad. We will have to wait and see.

And I have Black Friday and Saturday off so there is some major Christmas shopping plans in my future. I have been searching the online ads, but I will do the major looking at the paper ads on Thursday.

I always love looking at the Walmart ads for jammies and fleece. Plus I love the snowman Christmas sweater they have this year for $9. I will be checking that out for sure.

I go by myself on Friday, but I always hook up by phone or in stores with my daughter-in-law and we usually have lunch somewhere near wherever we are at lunch time. Saturday I go with my daughter and granddaughter. We normally end up at Steak & Shake for lunch over near Turkey Creek shopping complex in Knoxville. I love those two days of shopping. Usually end up with most of my Christmas gifts bought those two days.

Then I start my decorating around Saturday evening and finish on Monday. This is my favorite Christmas display in my house. This picture is from last year, but I always try to recreate this every year in my kitchen. Love the aqua and blues together.  

This was my HUGE tree last year. I loved it but I had to sell it because when I downsized, it won't fit in my new living room.

But these 6.5 foot ones would from Target and they are on sell for $30. That will be my main thing to look for on Friday. If they are out, Walmart has some similar and the regular price at Walmart is $39. So either way, I'm getting a tree with the multi colored lights.

I see lots of list making over the next few days to make sure I know what I'm looking for.

Be Thanksful

As we move into the Thanksgiving week, please take a moment to remember all the wonderful things in your life that you have to be thankful for...

Rain, blessed rain

For the past several weeks, firefighters have been kept busy from Chattanooga, TN to Asheville, NC and in our own area in Cocke County and Sevier County. They have been fighting wild fires in our beautiful mountains. It has been devastating. We are in a horrible drought and the fires keep raging. There are even a couple of them that are suspected arson. A local school in Walland, TN had to evacuate this week because of the fires. But we woke up this morning to a beautiful sound. Rain. Wonderful, wet, glorious rain. It has come in a few downpour bursts, but mostly is a good steady rain that will surely help with the fires around here. Here are a few of the pictures of the mountains around us as the fire burns on out of control.

Please pray for our mountains and the people that live near these fires.

Happy birthday!

As we near Thanksgiving, it reminds us of the many things we are thankful. I am so thankful for God bringing this amazing woman into our lives. Happy birthday to my beautiful daughter-in-law, Jamie.

God made a perfect match for my son. She is the epitome of what a wife and mother should be. She has an inner strength that has helped me through some tough times and has always been there for me when I needed a shoulder.

Anybody that meets her knows that her family comes first in her life. She and my son have given me three beautiful grandchildren. 

I love you Jamie. I hope you have an amazing and very happy birthday!

Why we blog...

I was sitting here trying to decide what to blog about and it hit me...I can blog about blogging. Seriously, I was that desperate for a topic. It reminds me of an episode of Big Bang Theory where Penny says to Sheldon...."Oh my goodness, you are going to jibber jabber about jibber jabber." So, here goes my blog about blogging. Mostly just funny humor about them. But this first one is so me. It makes me ask the question, do I blog about baking, crafts and beautiful skies because I like baking, crafts and beautiful skies? Or do I LIKE baking, crafts and beautiful skies because it GIVES me something to blog about. Hmm? Food for thought.

And yes, I am one of these type of people. I'll never forget when Caleb was about 5 or 6 and we were getting in the car at his house and there was some animal in his yard and he said "Watch out, Mamaw will probably blog about it." And I think I actually did.

I thought this was cute. Glad my comments I get are not like the comments on this cartoon. It's kind of like somebody raining on your parade.

Do you ever have a day where you don't get any comments and you are like "Oh no, nobody read my blog! I have lost all my followers! It's the end of the world" Then you go to your stats and realize a TON of people visited, just nobody commented and you feel relieved that you can live to blog again.

If blogging burned calories, I would weight 110 pounds again.

At least I still call my friends and family and don't wait for social media posts that I can comment on. 

And I just HAD to post this one. I just burst out laughing out loud when I saw it. There is probably not many bloggers out that at one time or another has thought "Hey, I'm going to (fill in the blank) so I can have something to blog about tomorrow. 

Well, there you have it. A totally 100% useless blog about blogging. If nothing else, I have given you a good laugh and you can feel free to talk about it on your next blog post. 

Some random thoughts today....

I need to find some round head clothespins. I want to make some of these little angels. Super simple looking. I want different material though. I'll have to go to Hobby Lobby and check out some fabric.

The snowman I posted the other day is for a friend of mine. I have agreed to make him for 5 different friends/family members. So, I am going to do it as a gift set. They are each getting a snowman, one of the little crochet wreaths and a no sew runner. They are going to enjoy them.

Oh if I was skinny again! I absolutely fell in love with this and would wear it in a heart beat if I was slender.

I am looking for an extremely skinny primitive style tree for my corner of my dining room. I am going to look at clearance sales after Christmas because I want to make homemade ornaments to hang on it and I won't have time this year to get it all ready before Christmas. 

If you need an easy, simple gift idea to take to a hostess of a party or for someone you just need a little something for, here's an idea. I usually use a white gift box and pretty Christmas ribbon for it. In the box, I put an orange, a few cinnamon sticks tied up with a skinny red ribbon, and about 10 whole cloves tied up in tulle with a skinny gold ribbon. I stick a handwritten card with instructions to slice the orange and add all the ingredients to a pan of water and let simmer on the stove for a festive holiday smell. 

Remembering Marshall...

"In the middle of Huntington, West Virginia there's a river. Next to this river there is a steel mill. And next to the steel mill there is a school. In the middle of the school, there is a fountain. Each year on the exact same day, at the exact same hour, the water to this fountain is turned off. And in this moment once every year, through out the town, through out the school, time stands still."

At 7:35 pm on November 14, 1970, an aircraft crashed into a hill just short of the Tri-State Airport, killing all 75 people on board. The plane was carrying 37 members of the Marshall University Thundering Herd football squad, eight members of the coaching staff, 25 boosters, four flight crew members, and one employee of the charter company. The team was returning home after a 17–14 loss against the East Carolina Pirates in Greenville, North Carolina. At the time, Marshall's athletic teams rarely traveled by plane, with most away games within easy driving distance of the campus. The team had originally planned to cancel the flight, but changed plans and chartered the Southern Airways DC-9.

Many things touch our lives in many ways over the years. But I will never forget a dark November night 46 years ago today. We were all in the living room watching TV. They interrupted the normally scheduled programming to tell that a plane had crashed at the Tri-State Airport carrying the team, coaches and boosters of the 1970 Thundering Herd football team, killing everyone on board.

The Tri-State Airport was nestled snugly in the hills of Kenova. No one liked to fly in there because of the surrounding hills and difficult landing strip. The television showed horrific photos of fire being fought as it licked the trees and hillside surrounding the wreckage.

The area was in a state of shock. Marshall fans love their football. To lose the entire team including the coaches, was a monumental devastation. The loss of so many young lives was just to hard to understand. We lost doctors, businessmen, sportscasters and many more that were on that plane. 

Some wanted to shut down the football program completely. Some wanted to continue on in support of the memory of those who died.

Over the years, the football program grew and Marshall University once again became the unstoppable Thundering Herd. Documentaries have been done. Movies have been made. Many articles and blogs have been written. But when it all is said and done, 75 people lost their lives that day and a town was changed.

I went out to the cemetery several years back on one of my trips back home. I have family buried in that same cemetery and went to visit the memorial for the graves of the ones who are buried there.  There are six players buried there who died in the crash but they were never able to identify who was who so they have no names on their tombstones. As I stood there looking at their gravesites, it made me realize WE ARE MARSHALL and we always will be.

Many loved ones still remember that tragic night and many still relive it every November. The movie We ARE Marshall is not just another football movie. It is about a town and how it suffered a tremendous lost. It is about the lives that were changed forever that day. It is about a town torn apart that rebuilds to face a new era after experiencing a major devastation. It's not about football. It's about spirit and strength and community. Today, my blog pays homage to those who lost their lives 46 years ago. May you each rest in peace.