Hello everyone!  I hope you are all having a good week.   As you can tell by the above picture, we have our tree up.  YAY!  We also finished decorating the mantle. 

We like to keep it simple.  The little nativity scene has sat on this mantle for many years.  We feel like it completes the decoration.

Some of the things we have made this past week.  Pinwheel candy or as we call it peanut butter roll candy.

Chicken noodle soup.

The filling for our chicken quesadillas.  I love making these.  It is a good way to use up vegetables and we all love them.

I have been blessed this week with a “new” stove.  It is new to me anyway.  My friend, Retia, got a new one and she gave me her old one.  Thanks so much, Retia. I love it!  My thanks also to Dave who went with me (after a very long day) to pick it up, bring it home and set it up.

So this is why it was a long day.  Dave and the kids went down to Madison over the weekend.  Dave wanted to fix the dishwasher in their rental house and they were doing Christmas with his family that live close by there.  Anyway on the way home Saturday night, he has a blow out on one of the trailer tires.  A very nice man offered to let Dave park the trailer in his yard until he could get a tire for it.  So Sunday morning,  Dave and I go back down to Madison in search for a trailer tire.  It turns out these are sometimes hard to find.  Took us ALL day to get a tire, get it mounted on his rim, go back to where the trailer was parked, put the new tire on, get back to Floyd and then go get the stove.  Yes I  know that is a long sentence but it was that kind of day. 

Another thing new in my kitchen is this pretty red keurig.  The girls got it for me for Christmas. 

Some Christmas characters Grace drew.  I think they are so cute. 

A pretty sunset.

I love the way the color is reflected on the pond.  God always has such beautiful colors.  I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and God bless.

Hello everyone!  Friday and Saturday we got snow.  Everything is so pretty.  Grace took this beautiful picture of our holly bush.  

I guess all in all we got about 4 inches.  

It made us very happy as we love snow.  I love the snuggle in days.  Snow, rain.  They make me slow down and appreciate the wonderful gifts God has given me.

One of the big exciting things that happened here this week is that my Julie got her drivers license.  A mobile DMV unit comes to our town the first Wednesday of each month. 

It was a long line but worth it to get to do her road test in our little town.  

Another thing that happened this week, Dave and I were on our way to their Madison house.  He was going to put in a dishwasher there and then deliver the table and chairs to his sister when we discovered an antifreeze leak in their suburban.  It was the water pump. So no delivery or set up that day.  

I made some turtle candy to snack on.  It is one of Julie’s favorites. 

This table was gifted to me this week.  I have been looking for something small to set up as a study table on the front porch.  I think this will work.  Sorry the picture is so dark.

My view this morning sitting at the table making this post.

Grace took this beautiful picture of our super moon this week.  So pretty.  

I hope you have a good week and God bless.

Hello everyone.  I hope you are all having a good week.  We have had a lot of fun stuff going on here.  The above picture is of the High Country Lights show we went to see last week.  We had never been to it before but it was very nice.  

On Sunday of last week, our little town had its Christmas parade.  It is always lots of fun!

Grace’s favorite character in the parade. 

I always laugh and say you know you live in a small town when the deputies wear Santa Claus hats.

The girls and I did a little decorating. 

Just for fun, I thought I would throw in some grandbaby pictures.

Daniel was upstairs so I didn’t  get a picture of him. 

I will leave you with this last picture.  The moon has been absolutely beautiful here.  Enjoy your week and God bless. 

I hope you have all had a good week so far.  Today is Thanksgiving day.  I will hopefully have pictures to share of how our day goes but sometimes everything is just too busy to take pictues.  

Grace has finished her Pokemon drawings.  We found a frame at Goodwill for it.  It looks really cute over her art desk.  I am proud of her for seeing it through.   There were quite a few challenges but she stuck with it.  

We have been experiencing colder temperatures here in Floyd which means time to have a fire.  This means time to cook on the stove.  One of my favorite things about winter is getting to use this stove to cook on.  On the stove today: pinto beans, cabbage and pork.  YUM!

I made these granola bars this week.  They are really good and I think they will be my go-to recipe from now on.  I got the recipe from https://www.blessthismessplease.com/granola-bar-recipe.

We also made these.  I guess when I’m inside more, I cook.  I got this recipe from https://www.lifeloveandsugar.com/2016/12/05/no-bake-salted-caramel-coconut-macaroons.  

Just a little funny thing, Grace was looking through a magazine the other day and saw this picture of these swans.  Guess what?

We have one of them!  Julie found it at a yard sale a few years ago.  We thought that was pretty cool. 

 I guess that’s all for now.  God bless.

Hello everyone.  I hope you have all had a wonderful week.  Ours has been nice but a little hectic.   I took this picture last week.  There are still a few trees left with pretty colors on them.  

So pretty!

One of the things we did this week was celebrate my beautiful Grace’s 18th birthday.  Wow!  The Horns surprised her by making this cake.

So cute!

Grace has been busy working on this.  She is drawing all the Pokemon characters from memory.  She has another page to do.  I think she said she will be drawing 150 of them.

She has also been practicing with her watercolor pencils.  

Julie and I made two trips to college this week.  She had to do some of her work on one of their computers.  She also scheduled her classes for next semester while she was there. 

One of Julie’s favorite places to eat is IHOP.   She treated us both to lunch there on one of our days out.  

Since our trip to the tea house, I have been wanting to try my hand at making scones and the Devonshire cream they served.  I made these yesterday.  They were really good and definitely worth making again.  

Now for the surprise part of this post.  The other day, the girls and I were putting away some flower pots for the winter.  Julie carried them out to the building.  She was setting the pots down when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.  This is what it was.

Now I think in all my years of living in the country and all the possums (yes if you live here they are called possums not opossums) I have killed this has to be the biggest one.  He was huge.  

I will leave you with much more pleasant pictures.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Hello everyone.  Yesterday we celebrated this beautiful girl’s birthday.  We went to Mae’s Vintage Kitchen in Kernersville NC.

It was a beautiful old house.

Katie loved everything about the tea party.

Especially the fruit.

From there we went to Build A Bear.

This was quite the experience.  For those who don’t know Katie, I will tell you that Katie LOVES to shop.  She wanted to get all the things.   But with a little guidance from mommy, she picked out just the right things for her bear (which really is a cat).

She helped stuff it,

Bath it and dress it.

And TA-DA!!!

I would like to say thanks to Dave who works hard to make days like this special for his kids.  Also thanks to Jess who planned all this.  It was a great day.  God bless!

Hello everyone!  We certainly have had a beautiful fall here in Floyd.  Just for fun, I went back through my old blog posts and found the picture below.  It is the same tree as the above picture in Oct. 2010.  It was taken from a slightly different angle though.  

Absolutely beautiful clouds.

Our God is so good.  It saddens me to think people get so busy with their lives they fail to notice His gifts. 

We spent some time working in the garden this week.  Grace gathered her Indian corn she planted.  Isn’t it pretty?

We also found a few peppers left.  I plan on drying them and  making the pepper spice we like.

We are drying a few apples right now.  We love dried apples.  They are such a good snack.

One day this week I helped a friend of mine clean the upper windows in her house.

My last picture.  I took this picture this morning.  Just another gift from the God I love.  Enjoy your day.

Hello everyone.  I hope you have all had a good week.  I wanted to share a few fall pictures I have taken.  This little creek runs on the back side of our road.  It is always so pretty.

Last week on Friday and Saturday we helped a friend move.  Then on Sunday I went with Dave,  Jess and crew to West Virginia to get Dave’s new toy.

We stopped by Chuck’ s house on the way home.  Everyone needed some time out of the vehicle.

Jess’s kids had fun riding with Chuck’s kids while we grown ups visited.

Since Dave has the side by side now, Daniel gets to move up to what was Dave’s 4 wheeler.  Fun stuff!!

I am making a new yogurt.  Vicki and I went in halves and ordered this heirloom variety pack of yogurt starters.  The thing I really like about it is no heating of milk and then cooling it down.  You just put the yogurt starter in the milk and leave it sitting out.  So much easier.  So far, I have made 2 hatches.  I really like it.
I spent the day yesterday at Jessica’s.  We made a double batch of these popcorn balls and enjoyed homemade chili that she had made for lunch.  I LOVE fall!

I will leave you with a few more fall pictures.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Good morning everyone.  I hope you are having a good week.  I enjoyed this beautiful sky this morning as I was letting out the animals.  

I am so blessed to live here.

We have had rain this week so we decided it was time to do an inside project.  This is the new colors in the laundry room.

This was the before. We will be so glad when all the soot is gone from all the rooms but we are taking it one room at a time.

The ceiling before and after. We love the colors.  So bright and cheerful and the entire room is done. YAY!  

Today we will be getting some groceries, cleaning house and just enjoying the day. 

God bless.

This week we have had the most beautiful moon.  At night, everything looks so pretty.

We have been pretty busy here this week.  The first of the week was just normal stuff, haircuts, groceries, cleaning vehicles,  things like that.  

We had a picnic with our friends the Horns yesterday evening at Smartview Park.  It was SO nice.  Many deer came by.  They didn’t seem afraid of us at all.  It was fun eating our meal and watching them.

Then today we decided to tackle another building.  We will certainly be glad when all of them are done.  Three more to go!  This is the before picture and …

This is the after picture.  Definitely an improvement.  

Then off to the dump.  YAY!  This old truck sure earns its keep here.  We are so thankful we have it.

Then for fun, we did a little fall decorating.  Something we haven’t done in years.  All in all, it has been a good week.  I hope yours has been a good one as well.  God bless.