I thought I would share a sunrise picture that I took the other morning as we were enjoying our morning coffee.  Short post today as I am having a terrible time getting it to work correctly.

Enjoy your weekend and God bless.

Okay, so I can’t believe I am showing you all how BAD the attic looked!  But this was what it looked like yesterday morning.

This is what it looks like now.  I know it still looks cluttered but at least the clutters look better.  We decided to take the day off from school and just work on the attic.  The joys of homeschooling.  We had one load of trash, one load of donations and one load of baby things to take to Jess.  Jess supplied us with supper so that really helped.  It was nice not to have to cook after working all day.  I don’t know if you can tell from the pictures but the room slants down.  The only place I can stand up straight is right at the door.  The rest of the area I have to stoop over and in the back I have to be on my knees.  Needless to say, parts of me ached last night when I went to bed.  Well worth it though.  This job is now behind us.

Time for me to get started.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

The other evening this was the view from our sitting room window.  I thought it looked so pretty.

Same view just a little different angle.

I couldn’t decide which picture I liked the best so I just used all three.

We had a really nice weekend.  We did have the Critter Chompin at church Saturday night.  Not as many people showed up as usual though.  Some probably thought it was called off or they just didn’t want to take a chance on getting out on the ice.

Yesterday was a good day at church.  We had several visitors and some of them said they plan on coming back.  Our little church has grown slowly but steadily since our new pastor came.  He does a really nice job and has a wonderful family.  They all really care deeply for the Lord and it shows in all they do.  That is hard to find sometimes.

Last night for our Sunday night bible study meal we had a FEAST!  We had chicken and dumplings, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, rolls and lots of desserts.  Good food.  Then we did our study.  We are finishing up Max Lucado’s study “Expericencing the Words of Jesus”.  It has been a really good study.  We have one more lesson to do and then we will start a new study by John MacArthur “Twelve Unlikely Heroes”.  It looks like it will be really good also.  Our little Sunday night group as grown as well.  We actually even have a youth class on Sunday night’s now led by our pastor’s wife.  I am so glad.  For years, it was just our two girls.  They would bring something to do and go into one of the classrooms and occupy themselves until class was over.  Having other youth there is so much more fun.

I am putting something down in writing so that hopefully that will keep me accountable to do it.  This week I want to clean out our attic!!!  It is truly a mess.  Years and years of accumulation of stuff.  It will be a major undertaking and will take several days to finish.  I have put if off for WAY too long.

I hope you all have a great day and God bless.

Good morning everyone!  Yesterday and last night brought ice to our little town of Floyd.  It makes everything pretty but very dangerous.  I am NOT a fan of ice.  I would rather have snow any day over ice but the Good Lord knows what He is doing.

Everything is covered in ice!

Our grapevine.

Clothesline post.  No hanging clothes outside today.

So they will have to dry inside.  I LOVE the drying rack Hubby made for us several years ago.  It certainly comes in handy.  I did some research on using dryers a while back.  From what I could read, every time you use your dryer it cost about 50 cents to operate.  I estimate  I wash about 30 loads a month.  That’s a savings of $l5.00 if I don’t use the dryer.  I do use it occasionally though so I am still saving about $l0.00 a month.  I like that!  I put the clothes in front of the fire at night and they are dry by morning.    My kitchen is small so during the day I move the rack to the back porch area that we boxed in a few years ago.

Well, that’s all for now.  We were supposed to have our Critter Chompin tonight at church.  I need to find out if it has been cancelled or not.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Hello everyone!  I thought I would share a little of what I’ve been doing.  For several years, we have used cloth napkins that I make.  It saves a ton of money.  The ones we have been using had definitely seen better days so I decided it was time to make new ones.  The sunflower ones are re-purposed from an old apron I had.  The striped material came from Mrs. Sally’s scrap box.  I love it.  Using something old to make something new.

II also made some bread this morning.  We love homemade bread.  The recipe I like to use is here https://merryheartcrafts.com/2011/12/30/butter-rich-roll-and-bread-dough.

Jess and I made this yesterday.  It is a chocolate banana bread and will change your mind forever on how banana bread should taste.  I’m not a big chocolate eater but this was really good.  I’m not for sure but I think the recipe came from  http://www.spendwithpennies.com/triple-chocolate-banana-bread.   That’s all for now.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

We have had some absolutely beautiful days here in Floyd.  Our temperature today as we were coming home was 55 degrees.  AMAZING!!  I have hung clothes outside on the line to dry yesterday and today.  I love it!

Today was chemo day for us.  He had to take the iv and then  he will take 6 chemo pills every day for 14 days.  We will go back to see his cancer doctor after that and she will schedule a CT scan.  Then we will see what the plan is after the scan.  He is doing really well and we want to thank all of you for your prayers.  Please continue to pray.

Well, I think that is all for now.  I want to get outside and enjoy this warm weather.  God bless.

Everyone, meet Ezzy (short for Esther).  This  little lady became a new addition to our home yesterday evening.  Thanks for finding her for us, Vicki!!  She is already much loved.

Many of you may not know but this beautiful boy is no longer with us.  He died in his sleep this summer and has been tremendously missed.

Jasper has been missing now for over a month.  We think someone may have picked him up.  He loved to ride so it would not have been hard to get him into a vehicle.  So now we have Ezzie.   Vicki found her for us yesterday online.  The lady who had her told us she had been dropped off at her house.  We think she was dropped off just for us as she already seems to be part of the family.  She will be our first indoor-outdoor dog and already promises to be more indoor than outdoor.  We are still looking for another dog as I think they do better in pairs.

What do you all think of my new look?  The picture is of the back side of our home.  Thanks so much, Dave, for fixing it all for me.

I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless.

I stopped by Jessica’s today and we decided to make laundry soap.  She had a new recipe she wanted to try.  She got the recipe from here http://aprons-n-pearls.blogspot.com/2012/11/homemade-laundry-soap.html.   But first a picture of our helper, Miss Katie.

Doing this was lots of fun.  I still think it is amazing that I can just drop by her house and we can do stuff like this together.

We did change a few things on the recipe.  Our store was sold out of Fels Naptha soap so we used Zote.  Also we used all fabric powder bleach instead of oxi clean and we used purex crystals in the place of the downy unstoppables.  Okay so maybe we changed quite a few things but the basic recipe was still the same.

When all was finished, she had a pretty good amount of laundry soap.  I think this will be a really good soap to use.  It smells wonderful and has the powdered bleach to keep whites from getting dingy looking.

That’s about it for today.  I need to go start supper.  We are having chicken quesadillas.  I hope you all have a wonderful evening and God bless.

Most of you probably don’t know but this summer Grace had Lyme disease.  This knocked her out of getting to go on the youth trip to Gatlinburg.  She was disappointed to say the least.  She was SO looking forward to seeing the aquarium.

So yesterday and today we were in Tennessee.  This was our Christmas gift from Dave and Jess.  Thanks again both of you.  We had such a great time.  I think you can tell by the look on Grace’s face she is very excited to be there.

We saw so many interesting fish!

Grace even got to pick up a horseshoe crab!When we came out of the aquarium, this is what we saw!

Very exciting!  All the Christmas lights were still up.  It was very beautiful.  The girls and I love Christmas lights.  Hubby doesn’t seem to get as excited as we do but he was a good sport during the trips around town so we could look.  Notice I said trips-we didn’t want to miss anything!

Our view from the balcony of our room.

Julie and the Avengers!

We spent a LONG time in here!  We had a great two days.  This trip was something we had been needed for a while.  Thanks again, Dave and Jess.

That’s all for now.  Enjoy your evening and God bless.

I FOUND THIS POST AS I WAS GOING THROUGH MY PICTURES.  I AM SORRY THIS DIDN’T GET POSTED UNTIL NOW JAN 10, 2015.  IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE POSTED ON JUNE 22, 2014.  MOST OF YOU ALREADY KNOW ALL OF THIS BUT I WANTED TO POST IT ANYWAY,

So much has happened since my last post.  First off, I want to tell you all that I am still having trouble making posts so that is part of the reason it has been so long since I made one.  I am on facebook though as Donna Mitchell Dawson if any of you want an update on Hubby and I haven’t put anything on here.

Two weeks ago, Hubby had a complete bowel obstruction from the tumor.  They admitted him to the hospital on Wednesday and on Saturday they finally decided to do surgery.  They bypassed the tumor completely with a colostomy.  He is recoverying from the surgery.  He stays very tired but is in good spirits.  He starts chemo on Tuesday of this week.  He will taking chemo pills twice a day and iv once every 3 weeks.  At first they told us the chemo could add years to his life, now there are saying months.  Not what we wanted to hear but as I have stated many times-GOD IS IN CONTROL!

I will try to keep updates on here but if not check on facebook or email me.  I think most of you have my email address.  If not it is d-forgiven58@hotmail. com  Thanks so much for all your prayers and God bless.