Happy birthday to the world's best sister....

My sister turns 60 today. That's right the big 60. And the most wonderful part about her being 60 is that I have been with her for 58 years and 10 months of that time. We are only 13 1/2 months apart and have been inseparable our whole life. We live 5 1/2 hours away from each other, but are still as close today as we have been for the last almost 59 years. 

This is one of my favorite pictures of me (L) and Rachel (R) with Daddy. Look at our long curls. They were natural. 

As the years went by, we shared our toys. We shared our room. We shared our friends. We shared our secrets. 

We have always been best friends and will always be. 

We have taken trips together to the beach. But my favorite trip with her was when we went to watch our nephew Jake graduate from the USMC.

Here we are at her daughter Amy's baby shower. (L-R) Rachel, Amy, Mom and me. We had a great time.

She is always there for me and I know that I can call her any time. I love you Rachel and hope that your 60th birthday is the best birthday ever. I love you for your heart, your kindness, your sense of humor. But I also love you because no matter how old I get, you will always be older than me. Just kidding. Have a very, very, very Happy Birthday.

Weekend Wrap Up

This weekend was just full of surprises. I started off with a friend of mine showing up unexpectedly at my office with a goody basket. I was so glad to see her and not just because of the goodies. 

I love my new notebook and pen. 

And what a beautiful box of tissues. That is such a pretty scene.

She knows me so well. I love hot chocolate and Believe is one of my favorite words. 

With fall arriving, I have been wearing my new socks all weekend. My feet have stayed warm and toasty. I always tell anybody that the way to my heart is warm socks. 

As you have probably noticed, I love to monogram everything with B (my nickname). Now I have a note pad in the shape of a B and a new box of Junior Mints. The Junior Mints didn't make it through the weekend.

Another friend brought me over a box of yarn. I love the fall colors. I will use it for some of my plastic canvas projects. 

My sister came to town this weekend and she bought me this lovely Women's Devotional and a new cook book, which also has some crafts. I love them both. 

A year or more ago, my sister had a yard sale. She sent me pics of the display tables and I shopped by phone letting her know what I wanted. We haven't been able to get together since then. So when she came down this weekend, she brought me what I had bought. I am so happy with it all. The mermaid pic is going in the beach bathroom. 

A nice warm afghan for my blanket basket. I love having different blankies and afghans to choose from. 

A beautiful beach picture. This may go in my home office. 

A cute little primitive pillow for my bedroom.

I loved this vase but don't know where I might put it. 

And this wonderful craft basket. I have wanted one of these to set at the end of the couch to hold whatever current project I am working on for my yarn crafts. 

Sunday we had a little "carnival style" party for the kids at Children's Church. These were the games I created for them.



Don't you just love the spiders and brooms. Made them up myself with no instructions. Kind of proud of them.



Came home from church and had lunch. Then I just vegged out the rest of the day. Felt great.

Sunday Song

Loving Laundry

After over 20 years of having a small stackable washer and dryer, I bit the bullet and bought a new set of normal size. I am in love. They are LG brand with all kinds of bells and whistles. I couldn't wait to get home yesterday just so I could do laundry. Me, who hates laundry, actually went around the house trying to find things to wash after I finished the last load.

My laundry room is just a small hallway type room that heads to the back door. Right now, the dryer sets out too far because the hose on the back is too long and they didn't have anything to cut it off to shorten it. I will get it fixed in the next day or two so it can scoot back even with the washer. 

I am thrilled to have gotten rid of the stand up freezer and stackable w/d and now my laundry area actually is beginning to feel like a laundry room. 

I had a lot of stuff stacked on top the freezer so I had to rearrange some things to find a place to store stuff. So I used this little shelf we had to put my detergent and softener on. 

I moved our jackets to the spare closet and used this to put my clothes on the hangar when I take them out of the dryer. I never had room to do this before. It made doing laundry so much easier. Once I was done, I just carried them to the closet. Talk about simplifying things. 

And my poor ironing board has been stuck in closets, behind doors, tons of places that I didn't like having it. So now it has a new home. 

The only down side is that the new washer dryer does not buzz when it is done like the old models. It plays a little tune that sounds just like the ice cream truck is coming around the neighborhood. So every time a load gets done, my body knows to go fold clothes but my mind says "Hmmm. Think I'll have some ice cream."

Christmas Ideas

What a great idea! Give the kids a gift bag on Christmas eve early enough that they can put on new jammies, maybe have a pack of popcorn they can pop and a new movie to watch, book to read, or coloring book and crayons. Something to keep them occupied.

These bottles are similar to Yoo Hoo chocolate drink. Hubby drinks about 4-6 of these a week so I am saving the bottles to make some gift jars with. 

I think I showed you these before but I can't help it. I just love these little guys. 

Adorable. And made with a pickle jar. Something I use about one jar a week.

More pickle jar crafts. Love these.

This is very cute if you know someone who does primitive Christmas decor. 

This has nothing to do with Christmas other than it glitters.  But oh, I do love this manicure. 

Happy crafting.

Snack time....

I go back through my old posts sometimes and look at some of the things I posted. I stumbled on one from last December that just absolutely starved me to death. Now I want to make a dessert. Here are some of my personal favorites of things I make. These are all actual pictures of things I have baked or made over the years.

Orange Christmas cookies from my mother-in-law's recipe. Makes over 70 cookies. I only make them at Christmas because if you make over 70 cookies...you have to frost over 70 cookies. This is a whole day project.

My mother-in-law also had a great recipe for applesauce raisin cake. We make it in loafs and in small Bundt pans.

Santa brought me a mini donut maker a couple of years ago so I tried my hand at cinnamon sugar donuts. This are perfect for cool fall morning. I need to make some of these soon.

I always make Mom's recipe for chocolate candy and peanut butter candy any time the mood hits. These are the old fashioned fudge, not the kind with marshmallow cream and chocolate chips. The chocolate is actually made using Hershey's cocoa powder and the peanut butter is with Jif peanut butter. We actually don't even call it fudge. We call it chocolate candy and peanut butter candy. 

I like making a lemom 7-up pound cake. It is SOOO good. One of my favorite things to make. The recipe is on the side of the Duncan Hines Lemon cake mix for a pound cake, but I use a bundt pan. Instead of water, I use a mixture of 7-up and lemon juice. I make the glaze with confectioner sugar, lemon rind, fresh squeezed lemon juice and a splash of milk. I drizzle it over while the cake is warm. They don't always come out of the pan looking this good, but I got lucky last year.

I like to make brownie cookies (recipe on the side of the Duncan Hines chewy brownie mix) and I always make a batch of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. They are probably the one cookie I make that Hubby and I both enjoy the most. Sometimes, I make the frosting recipe for a Texas sheet cake and put it on the brownie cookies. If I do that, I always put a teaspoon of cinnamon in the brownie cookie mix. 

Of everything, my favorite is Mom's chocolate candy I mentioned above. It is so simple so delicious. It literally melts in your mouth. 

And I like to always make some of my peppermint hot chocolate. I simply fix a cup of instant hot chocolate, miniature marshmallows and use a nutmeg grader to grade "candy cane dust" on top of the marshmallows. Then I stick a candy cane on the side for garnish. Best peppermint hot chocolate ever out of my favorite cup ever. 

If you see anything that you want a more detailed recipe on, just leave me a comment and I will send it to  you. Happy baking.

Something wicked this way comes....

I came out of the grocery store one evening last week and this was the sky.

It was really wicked looking. I just had to stop and take some photos. When I got home I posted the pics on Facebook.

Check out the 3 lights in the clouds on this one. It kind of freaked me out. 

Then a friend of mine commented that she thought it was the space station. Her grandson, who is also my great nephew, is very interested in the space station and he told her that it was going to be close enough to earth to see it. She sent me a link he sent her. So I went to the link and saw the time chart and it was supposed to be over my area around 8:00 that night, which was around the time I took the random picture. So I guess I accidentally got a picture of the space station. She said they had this online showing the shape of it in the night sky. I bet if the dark blue clouds were not in the sky I wouldn't have gotten such a cool picture of it. 

How cool was that?