So here are a few more pictures showing the soot damage from the gas logs.

Isn’t it awful.  As long as I kept everything right where it was it wasn’t so obvious how bad it looked.  But when everything came off the walls, it was YUCKY! I just praise God no harm came to the girls from it. 

We took everything off the walls in the living room and the sitting room because Steve and Bev came back up today to paint some more.  He got the walls in both rooms painted.  YAY!  This above picture shows the difference.   Believe it or not the original color of the wall was light blue, not that strange color you see above the mantle.  

I knew it all looked bad but I guess I just didn’t realize how bad until he started painting.

Just look how beautiful it is now.  

I love it!  All we have to do is paint the trim and both rooms are done.  God is so good. 

At the risk of bragging (which I totally am) I think we live in such a beautiful place.

Today we did a picnic with the Horns and then a hike on Black Ridge Trail.  It is about a 3 mile trail and it took us about 2 hours.  

It is so easy to tell from these pictures why they are called the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

The views along this trail are breath taking.  

The trail itself was so nice.  Some strenuous hills, some flat land.

And some really strange things along the way.

Look at this branch.  Doesn’t it look like a snake? 

You know sometimes when walking a trail you just have to stop

And look for deer.  God bless.

Yesterday the girls and I spent time with some dear friends of ours, Tom and Sally.   Some of you may remember them from other posts.  He is our previous pastor.   

We picked some beans, ate lunch and then just visited and walked around their farm.  It was a very nice day.  They live in a beautiful place.

Tom and his new toy.

Their apples are looking very good.  Makes me look forward to fall.  Speaking of fall, we have had very fall like weather here for several days.  For two mornings our temperature here was 52 degrees.  It felt wonderful!  Great sleeping weather.

On our walk we had to visit this beauty and her babies.

She’s looking for her treat.

Mrs. Sally’s ducks.

It was a good day.  

Happy Saturday everyone!  I hope you are having a great day.  Today has been very nice here.  Temperature has been about 68 all day. Amazing!

And getting some MUCH needed rain.
So for days like today I love to light some candles. 

Today the girls and I cleaned house and tried to decide what colors we wanted to use for paint in the sitting room.  I think we have decided but will wait until it is done to show pictures.

I guess that’s all for now.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Hello everyone.   So some of you know the story of what happened with our gas logs and some of you do not.  For those of you who do not know, here is the rest of the story.

When George was hospitalized before his passing, something went wrong with our gas logs.  Wood is our major source of heat.  The gas logs were our backup heat source. Anyway the flame wasn’t exactly right or something and it put this BLACK film all over everything.   And I mean it was on literally everything.  Dishes, light switches and reciprocals, floors, walls, ceilings.   You get the picture.  Everything! Even upstairs!

So many friends offered to come help us with the clean up however at that time we were not up to a major project.  So the girls and I have worked on it a little at a time.  Yesterday my friends, Steve and Bev, came up and he started painting the ceilings.  He started in the living room as it was the worst. That is where the gas logs were.  You will notice I said WERE!  Right after this happened, Dave came over and took out the gas logs and replaced them with a wall mount gas heater. 

Steve was able to do the Living room and the sitting room ceiling.  I love them.  They look so much better.  Now on to picking out wall colors.

Hello everyone.   Another busy day for me and the girls.  Another building done.  YAY! This is the after picture.

This is what it looked like before.

We took 2 truckloads of trash to the dumpster and had about 1/2 truckload to donate.   

We all love this old truck!

One of the reasons we did all that work on Saturday was for this.  I wanted to set this room up as a place to can and cook using the propane cookers.   It is usually too windy here to use these outside.

I have lots more I want to do to make it prettier.  I want to paint the walls white to brighten it up.  I also have to figure out how to run power up there for a light and a fan.  I know it looks dark and gloomy right now but it is a work in progress.  I am hoping it will not be too hot.  As you can see the room has one window.  I want to put a valence of some type there.   In the meantime it is totally functional now just not as pretty as I would like.  However, pretty will come later.  The goal right now is to not heat up the house.  

Just in case you were wondering what was cooking in that pretty green kettle. Fresh picked green beans.   YUM!

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

This is one of the many swings we have in our yard.  I love sitting and resting after a hard day’s work.  And today we worked hard.

Our friends the Horns came over and helped us clean out one of our buildings.   Before–

After! Another before picture– 

And after

Last ones.  Before

After!!

It was a long HOT day but we got it done. Now I want you all to know that I hesitated a lot about putting the before pictures out there for everyone to see but my blog is about real life.  My real life.  So there it is.  

God bless.

We had a really fun day yesterday with our friends the Horns.  We went to Grayson Highlands State Park.  It had been a long time since we went there to picnic and hike.  We got there somewhere around 12:30 and the temperature was low 70’s.  When we left at 5:30 it was mid 80’s and we never hiked up to where the temperature drops.  It is a beautiful place.  I highly recommend visiting there if you get the opportunity. 

Good friends just hanging out.

Time to eat.  Good picnic food.  Hamburgers, hot dogs, chips and macaroni salad. 

Then off on our hike .

It was a beautiful trail.

It was filled with these little ponds.

And then the grand finale!!

We spent a lot of time here playing in the cold water.  So refreshing.

The water was cold and felt wonderful on hot feet.  

It was such a nice day and reminded me how much I enjoy hiking and how much I have missed it.  Hopefully we will go again soon.  

Enjoy your day and God bless.

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, you know we have quite a lot of wild life around here.  Well last night we had a coyote right here in this section of our yard.  Of course, it was gone before I could get a gun.  Hopefully he was just passing through and won’t be back.  We have a lot of coyotes here but normally they are out in the fields not this close to the house.

I thought I would share a few morning pictures with you all.  I am the first one up here every morning.  Imagine that!  Anyway, every morning I go turn all the animals out. The girls put them up at night so I let them loose in the mornings.  Good system.

The sun hits our yard very early.  I love that.

A few garden pictures

As I was making this post, I looked out the window and this is what I saw.

A beautiful cloud.  How blessed am I to live here!!  God is SO good.