Veteran's Day

My Daddy. He was in the Navy during WWII on an air craft carrier. When he got out of the Navy, he joined the Coast Guard.



Thank you to Veteran's everywhere for your undying loyalty to protecting our great nation.

Weekend finds...

I found these two cute Christmas decor items at Food City (local grocery store) for $1.99 each. I fell in love with them. 

I went to an estate sale over the weekend. I have never seen so many cat figurines in one place at one time. I love the tall slender one. I also have a weakness for sleeping kitty figurines so I had to have it as well. 

They had a bag of vintage doll clothes for $1.00 each. I had to have this little dress. Not sure what I am going to do with it, but I am now looking for a vintage doll to put it on. 

But my favorite find was a miniature tea set. One of my favorite collectibles. It is just so precious. I can't wait to put it out at Christmas. 

I was very pleased with my finds. 

A rainy day...

How do you deal with a rainy day when you have to work? Simple, you fix a cup of hot chocolate with peppermint marshmallows in your favorite mug and open your blinds and watch the rain. 

This weekend I found me a new favorite glass at Walmart. It was from the Pioneer Woman collection. Loving it! I am reading Sandra Brown's Smash Cut. It is awesome. It is 366 pages long and I can't put it down. I only had about 74 to go last night and I settled in to read, eat Junior Mints and drink Pepsi from my new glass. I only made it through 12 pages before getting sleepy. I will finish it off tonight I hope. 

Come back tomorrow to see some cute finds from an estate sale this past Friday. Have a good Monday. We are closed on Wednesday so we get a four day week!

I recollect when.....

rec·ol·lect

ˌrekəˈlekt/

verb

remember (something); call to mind.

Do you remember sitting around listening to elderly people who talk about "back in the day" and say "Well, I recollect when...." 

Well, today I recollect when.....

Laundry day was actually a whole day.... or two. Mom washed our clothes in a wringer washer. We had well water and it wasn't a very deep well so we had to watch how much water we ran in a day. 

She had a galvanized tub that she used to put the rinse water in. She would fill it with cold water the night before so she would have enough water to wash the next day. 

No spin cycle on a wringer washer. So you had to literally run them through the ringer as many times as it took to get all the water out after washing. (by the way, this is a stock photo, not my mom).

Then you had to swing the wringer portion over your rinse tub, rinse them by hand and run them through the wringer again.

Then you would go out and hang them on the line to dry. 

Once they were dry you "brought them in" to be ironed and/or folded. I remember her having a sprinkler bottle and there were certain things she would sprinkle and then put them in a pile and tie them up in a tablecloth and put them in the refrigerator. Apparently, keeping them cold helped get the wrinkles out when she ironed.

She always ironed in the living room while we watched Hazel, Pete & Gladys or Dick Van Dyke. 

And if it was something like dress shirts or our pretty little dresses, she would use Niagara Spray Starch.

So doing laundry was a two day sprint, not just "toss a load in...do something...move it to dryer...do something else...fold and put away" like it is today. 

So yes, I recollect when laundry took more than a day. But I also recollect that her efforts were all worth it because we made a fine looking family. 

Friday Foto Friends

I love the idea of Friday Foto Friends. 

I am linking up today to show you a photo of one of my favorite fall blankets. For the past ten years or so, my Mom has been doing primitive stitchery on fleece blankets. She did this one about 5 or 6 years ago, which would have made her around 79 - 80 years old. 

Every fall when I get it out and I admire each individual hand stitch she did, not to mention tracing the patterns and cutting them out, I am amazed at how talented she is. I will cherish this forever. She is 85 now and going strong and still crafting. 

Right now she is making some new ornaments for her Christmas tree. I hope to get pics of them to share. But in the meantime, here is my beautiful blanket my mommy made.

Pop on over to Jeremiah-2911.com and link your Friday Foto.

Pizza Hut Twisted Crust Review

I took the opportunity to order a pizza last night from Pizza Hut. I decided to try the twisted crust. I was told that the crust was similar to their hand tossed crust only they twist breadsticks to for the crust. I place my order for it with double pork sausage. 

The twisted bread stick looked very good. I couldn't wait to try it.

You can see where they laid it on the pizza dough to bake it right into the crust.

So I pulled it apart and....yuck. Talk about unappetizing. Where they laid it has no pizza sauce, no topping under it and because it was laying right on the naked crust it did not brown when baking. It looks uncooked but it did feel cooked, not dough-y.

I tore off a small piece of the top that I peeled off and tried it. Bland. There is not hardly any seasoning on the breadstick like there is on an order of breadsticks. And again, because it was laying on dough, the bottom is not brown or crisp. It is actually a little soggy.

So next I tried a bite of the pizza. Just let me say that the "amost like hand tossed" dough was NOTHING like hand tossed dough. If anything, it was more like the fat on a piece of meat. Very tough to chew and very unappetizing to look at. Needless to say, I didn't make it past the first bite.

The whole experience was very disheartening. And thought I love Pizza Hut and eat it all the time, this new pizza has me so turned off that I doubt I go back for a long time. 

So do I recommend the new twisted crust? NO WAY!

Tomato Cage Trees

We usually put out 2-3 tomato plants each summer, but the past two years we haven't. But I could not part with the tomato cages because in my mind I kept thinking I could use them for something some day. Well, that day has come. Thanks to Pinterest, I have many options on what to do with these tomato cages. Some are super simple and some are a little more adventurous. Here are some ideas.

I would love to have a couple of cute trees on my porch. So I like the ones that are just garland and lights wrapped around it. 

But I do like it embellished a little, though I am not a huge fan of this one. It does give me ideas though.

These are probably one of my favorite since they used the garland that looks like Douglas Fir. That is what I normally get for a tree and for Christmas wreaths each year.

I love this one. It looks extremely realistic. I checked out the site and saw the steps and it is garland and lights. But it looks like a real tree. I think it would look cute to wrap some concrete blocks in Christmas vinyl Dollar Tree table cloth and put a big red vinyl bow like presents around the tree.

This is simple but cute. I would need to spray paint my tomato cages because we bought bright yellow.

Here is one done with burlap ribbon. Even though I like the look of burlap, I hate working with it.

These are too cute for words. But if there is one thing I hate working with more than burlap, it is mesh ribbon. I do not like it and it does NOT like me.

What a beautiful angel made with the tomato cage. This is really cute but far above my talent level.

This is a cute tree turned into a snowman using the white garland.

Another cute snowman. Again, the evil mesh. But it is really cute.

This one looks simple as well. These snowmen would look cute on my sister's porch. She should try to make some of these. 

Mom would love these. She always has poinsettias out everywhere at Christmas. These would be super simple but I am not sure how much it would cost to have that many poinsettias fill a tree.

I am so happy that I now have a plan for those tomato cages I have hung onto.