Happy Thanksgiving

May you and yours enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving for the blessing God has provided.

I've created an epidemic....

You remember my three-tiered stand I did the Christmas display in? Turns out my cousin Patty loved it so much, she made one herself. Loving how hers turned out.

And one of my other cousins, Amy, saw them both and decided to do one. Another beautiful one was made.

One thing I didn't consider was the storage of the tier stand. Then it hit me! Take the stuff out and put it in a storage container BUT leave the stand out and redecorate for each holiday. Here are some ideas I found on Pinterest. 

January - snow theme. 

Valentine's Day love theme.

St. Patrick's Day and you could just remove shamrocks and add Easter items at the proper time. 

Or you could just do the whole month of March as the Easter one.

Once Easter was over, you could do a spring one with lots of pretty flowers. 

The favorite I found is one I want to do for May, June and July for all the Patriotic dates. I am so in love with this one. I want to try to copy as much of it as I can.

August back-to-school one would be fun. 

And I love sunflowers for fall.

Halloween would be a blast to do.

Here was a cute idea for Thanksgiving.

There you have it...year round ideas. I would wrap everything and tag it and then store it in a couple of storage containers. How cute and how fun to change out every month.

What I've been up to....

I didn't do my normal Weekend Wrap Up yesterday so I wanted to update you on what I have been up to. Well, let's see...

On Saturday, I had to work a 14 hour day. On Sunday, I had to work a 10 hour day. On Monday, I had to work a 13 hour day.

Oh, and I did manage to eat and sleep a little bit each day. And when we work long days they always feed us.

How's that for a weekend wrap up. But the good news is that I haven't had my two days off yet this week and I plan on enjoying them. And the best news is I get to spend time with my family this week. Going to miss my oldest grandson who can't make it to our gathering, but I will get to see him on Christmas break.

The other good news is once this week of Thanksgiving is over, my schedule will return to normal. Which is good since I have  Christmas parade, birthday celebrations, decorating my house for Christmas, and the church choir Christmas program, all coming up in the next few weeks. 

So you would think I would rest on my days off. Nope. Christmas shopping to do, gift wrapping to do, decorating to do, baking for the holidays to do. 

Busy, busy, busy. And loving every minute of it. We have some black out days the first week of January and I don't plan to leave my house. I'll catch up on my rest in January and early February. But for now, I'm loving my hectic schedule.

Some feel good Sunday Songs

Happy birthday, Jamie

I want to take a moment to wish my daughter-in-law, Jamie, a very happy birthday. I thank God that he sent such a wonderful person into our family. She's an amazing wife and mother and has given me three beautiful grandchildren. 

She is not just my daughter-in-law but she is also a good friend. I have always been able to talk to her about anything. She has a good level head on her shoulders and gives great advice. I will forever be grateful to her for all she does for our family. 

Happy birthday Jamie. I hope you have a wonderful day.

Missing you.....

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of the loss of my sweetheart, my husband, Allen. Words are so hard to explain how I felt that day and how I still feel. For two years, I keep thinking "We were supposed to grow old together." But God had other plans. I will never understand them. I don't know why he had to go when he did. But I can be thankful that I was with him when he crossed over from this life to heaven. My head knows he's in a better place but my heart wants him here. I love you sweetheart with every breath I take and I always will. Today I rejoice in that love and thank God for the 34 1/2 wonderful years we had together. 

 

 

One more week.....

I can't believe Thanksgiving is just one week away. It will be here before you know it. I will be having my Thanksgiving family gathering on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. Since they go to in-laws on Thanksgiving day and Hubby did all the cooking for us in the past, we have a pizza bar for Thanksgiving and focus on the desserts which is my specialty. We also celebrate my daughter-in-law's birthday at our Thanksgiving gathering. I know the whole family will be happy with what she has chosen as her birthday dessert. The Reese-peanut butter-brownie trifle. My grandson Garret loves this but he won't be here for our party so I will have to make sure we send him some.

Thursday, I do have to work for part of the day. Just not sure what part yet but it won't be a full shift. Probably no more than 4-6 hours. But whether I am home for lunch time or supper time, I will still fix myself some of my homemade baked beans (one thing I can make good).

And I will make my potato salad. It's not Thanksgiving to me without baked beans and potato salad. I can handle missing out on anything else, but not those two things. (By the way note I even serve in my Pyrex bowls for myself.)

Instead of a big ham since I'm the only one here, I make ham and cheese roll ups for my Thanksgiving. I adore these things. They give us a whole ham at work for Christmas so I will fix my ham on Christmas.

Are you getting tired of me blogging about food? I can't help it. This is one of my favorite holidays to plan eating for. And I keep mentioning the Graham Cracker pie because I haven't had one since 2014 and I have missed it. I am going to make one this year no matter what. I'm looking forward to it so much that I almost did a test run on it the other day. But I didn't want to ruin looking forward to having a piece when I look at my Black Friday ads Thanksgiving night.

Black Friday is not as fun as it used to be because they started having the great sales and you find the biggest crowds on Thanksgiving evening. I refuse to go black Friday shopping on Thursday. So I will get up about 5:00 a.m. Friday and hit the stores for the fun of it. Just about everything I am looking for isn't going to be on sale anyway because they aren't "hot" or "big ticket" items. But I will go anyway just because I like the thrill of shopping that day. I won't be able to shop all day since I will be working on Friday, but I can shop until noon. So much to look forward to.