Friday

Hello everyone! I hope you all are having a wonderful Friday. Things are good here. School is finished for the week. The girls and I are getting ready to clean out the chicken house. Definitely not a fun job but necessary. It is a nice day here in Floyd so that will make it a fairly pleasant job to do. We have been really cold here in the mornings though. Temperatures all this week have been mid to upper teens when we get up. CHILLY! However it warms up nicely during the day.

Chuck is coming tomorrow to help Hubby do some maintenance repairs on my car. I don’t think I have mentioned it before but please be in prayer for him as he is laid off from his work. We are praying he will get called back soon.

Well, I have lots to get done. Enjoy your day and God bless.

November 16, 2012 6

A Ride Down The Parkway

Hello everyone! I thought I would share a few pictures from along our beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway. It is lovely this time of year.

I have always loved this church sitting upon the hill. Saturday was a wood cutting day here. Chuck and his family came over to help. We brought down 2 huge trees. We got them all cut and brought home. We still have to split them though. It was a really fun day. Chuck’s girlfriend had never been part of wood cutting. (She’s a town girl). I think she had a good time though. The kids had lots of fun.

Today the girls and I went to Roanoke to pick up a few things. We went walking through the mall, which is something we don’t do very often. I stepped into Macy’s-my first time. You all remember that I have been looking for a hard anodized pot to use for cooking down my sauces. One like Mrs. Sally let me borrow this summer. Well, they had one on sale for 1/2 price!! Yeah, me!!! I was very happy. I very seldom come across deals like that. I certainly am glad I walked into that store.

Well, that’s about all that’s been happening here. I hope you all have a great day and God bless.

October 15, 2012 3

New Package

Hello everyone! I thought I would show you all my new idea for selling the homemade laundry soap. This is what the package looked like before

I think I like the new ones better. I am hoping they will catch customers attention more. We’ll see.

Well, that’s my day. It took a little longer to sew these little packets than I first expected, plus we had to make up the laundry soap. All our soap had sold at the Bread Basket. Tomorrow is a big day for shoppers here in Floyd-the annual craft festival. We wanted to make sure we had plenty of aprons and laundry soap on hand for selling.

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

September 28, 2012 5

Our Trip

Hello everyone! I thought I would tell you all a little about our trip yesterday. I did not get any pictures-sorry. We didn’t actually go down into the town of Mt. Airy so we didn’t see any Andy Griffith stuff. We did have a great time though. We left here about 8:30 yesterday morning and got home about 6:00. A full day. We stopped at lots of produce stands. They were all stocked with beautiful fall mums, pumpkins and such. We ate lunch at Libby Hill. We enjoyed it a lot. We then walked around inside the Mayberry Mall for a while and had ice cream as a treat while in the mall. On the way home, we stopped at a few more produce/farmer market type places. Hubby bought 2 knives that he thinks will be good knives for working up deer and other meats. I bought 10 lbs of pintos, 5 lb. kidney beans, 4 lb. black beans, 3 lb. yellow eyed beans, some white sweet potatoes and a cushaw. I am hoping to can most of the beans to have on hand when I need them quickly.

We are working on our last sack of apples today. I am ready to start canning something else (beans, soups, and chili). Temperatures here are beautiful. Much cooler with lots of sunshine (after our downpour the other day). Dave, Jess and kids are coming up tomorrow. The pastor has a clay shoot at his house every year. Dave and Hubby are going to it while the rest of us go check out some yard sales and maybe a trip to Michaels. Jess has requested an oatmeal pie for tomorrow. I plan on making that this evening. It is a very good pie that tastes like pecan pie, just less expensive to make.

Well, I guess that is about all that’s happening here. I hope you all have a great day and God bless.

September 21, 2012 5

Rainy Tuesday

Hello everyone! We are really getting rain today. I think it is predicted to get about 5″ but I think we have already gotten that much. Well, we really need rain so I’m thankful besides I love the sound of rain on our tin roof. Makes me want to curl up with a good book and a cup of coffee or tea. However, that is not possible as we are still working on apples. I love the fact that we have all these apples but I am getting a little tired of working on them. So Thursday or Friday, Mrs. Faye and her hubby and us are going to Mt. Airy to purchase new crop pinto beans. We will be spending the day looking at little shops along the way and fun things like that. Then she and I are going to get together next week and can them or at least that’s the plan as of now. I went to her house yesterday to help her with her apples. We did apple juice, applesauce and canned apples. We had a lot of fun together.

Well, that’s about it. Sorry I haven’t posted much but there’s not much going on here. I don’t think I mentioned it but Mt. Airy is the home of the Andy Griffith show. Have any of you ever watched it? I’ll try to take some pictures to show you all. Enjoy your day and God bless.

September 18, 2012 3

Raines Elementary

Hello everyone! I thought I would share this picture with you all. I found this on facebook the other day. This is where I went to school from 1st to 6th grade. In my 7th grade, they decided to tear down the school and build a new one. They then moved all us students to another building. I have many fond memories (and some not so fond) of this place. You see, I went to school during the time when teachers could still paddle. Not only that, but if I got in trouble at school, I knew I was in trouble at home. How did we ever get to where we are now. If a kid gets in trouble at school now, it is always the teachers fault never the kids. Oh well, sorry, I think I got on a rabbit trail there. Any way back to the picture. The small building you see in the right hand corner is the girls toilet. That’s right, toilet-not bathroom. You can not see it but there is one just like it on the left for the boys. No swings or any type of play equipment. Sometimes, someone would bring a board bat and a ball and we would play ball. Most times, we just played tag and hide and go seek, jump rope, hop scotch, things like that. In the upper left is the coal house and the pump house. Starting at the right of the building, the first room was the 3rd and 4th grade, next was 1st and 2nd, then 5th and 6th and the last room was for the 7th grade. I guess they thought if you made it to 7th grade, you deserved a room all to yourselves. As you probably guessed, we were a small school and everyone knew everyone, no matter what grade you were in. The older grades watched out for the younger grades. Everyone’s parents knew everyone’s parents. Of course, this meant you couldn’t get into too much meanness because someone was bound to tell on you. But I liked that, we knew where our boundaries were.

Well, that’s my walk down memory lane. I hope I didn’t bore you all too much. We are working with grapes today. So I better get off here and get started. Enjoy your day and God bless.

August 31, 2012 8

Sunday

Hello everyone!! Yesterday was our annual horseshoe picnic, however, being how I am I forgot the camera. I did take pictures last year so if any of you haven’t saw where we do our horseshoe picnic, you can check out last year’s pictures here: https://merryheartcrafts.com/2011/06/26/horseshoe-picnic/

We had a great time yesterday, with lots of good food(of course). After eating we played horseshoes, had some pickin’ and grinnin’ (I did the grinnin’) and all around good fellowship. I think we are very blessed at our church. We have lots of fun together. Next Sunday, will be our annual picnic and baptizing at Gallimore Pond. We do not have a baptismal at our church. We baptize at a beautiful pond that is close to our church. And, of course, while we are there, we might as well eat. The next Sunday will be our annual Sunday School breakfast at Smart View Park, just about a mile from our house. We eat a wonderful breakfast and then have Sunday School. There’s just something about eating outdoors that I love. Every time we are having a church service out in the open like that, I feel so blessed to live in this country and so thankful to everyone who has sacrificed in one way or another so that we can freely worship where ever we choose. There is just something special about the sound of hymns as they float through the trees. We take so much for granted here in this country.

Okay, sorry about going on like that but it is how I feel. Tonight is our last study lesson on Titus. I think we are going to do Exodus next. Not sure though, we will decide tonight. I hope you all have a great evening and God bless.

July 22, 2012 3

Friday

Hello everyone! Well, as we knew would happen, our wonderful, cooler weather is gone. Today, as I type this, we are at 94 degrees. HOT! Oh well, this makes us appreciate cooler weather more. Days like today I really wish we had air conditioning!

My car has been giving me trouble lately. Hubby is not exactly sure what is going on with it. Chuck is coming Sunday to help Hubby (hopefully) fix it. They are trying several things to see if that works but Hubby says it could be the fuel pump. We hope not but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Our VBS is over. This is kinda good and kinda sad. It is a lot of fun but also a lot of work. We leave home around 6:00 P.M. and don’t get back until around 10:00. It takes us 30 min to drive to church and 30 min. back home so a lot of our time is spent on the road.

Well, I think my crew is getting hungry so I guess I best get started cooking. Supper tonight is fried chicken, corn, gravy, homemade biscuits and some homemade blackberry jam to go with the biscuits. I hope you all have a great evening and God bless.

June 29, 2012 4

Wednesday

Hello everyone! Yesterday the girls and I made another trip down the Parkway to get cherries. This time we were getting the culls. They sell them for $10.00 for a 5 gal. bucket. We brought them home and used the steam juicer to make juice. We got enough to make 2 gal of juice. We had some this morning and it was VERY good. We had not had any homemade juice in about 3 months. I’m hoping this year to can more juice than we did last year. After having the real thing, store bought tastes very bland.

This is one of the most popular spots along our section of the Parkway. It is called Mabry Mill. Lots and lots of people visit this spot. They have demonstrations of how things were made during the time this mill was in operation. Yesterday, we noticed as we drove by they were demonstrating basket weaving.

On our way home yesterday, we decided to take a different route than the Parkway. This house was David’s Grandmother’s home. We thought Dave might enjoy seeing a picture of it.

And this is our home. The rock lillies are blooming so pretty this year. I almost forgot to tell you all, we made some homemade cherry ice cream yesterday that was so good. I got the recipe from here: http://homejoys.blogspot.com/2012/06/homemade-strawberry-ice-cream.html I just used cherries instead of strawberries. I want to try it with honey sometime but did not have enough honey yesterday so I used sugar instead. It was very good. I think the best fresh fruit ice cream I have ever made. It is definitely a keeper.

Today we will be doing school and working on the garden. I hope you all have a great day and God bless.

June 13, 2012 4

Rainbow

Hello everyone! Sorry that I haven’t posted as much as usual. Things just seem busy here right now. Anyway, yesterday evening the Lord gave us this beautiful rainbow. If you look close you can see it was a double rainbow but the one on the left is fading. This picture was taken at the top of our driveway.

Yesterday, we went to help Hubby on the job site. It is coming along nicely. After school, the girls were entertained by this guy. He and a few of his buddies were very busy in the walnut tree.

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We did get some much needed rain yesterday evening. The garden is all in, however, the birds have already discovered it and destroyed about 1/3 of the tomato plants. They love the tender young leaves so all that is left is the stem. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Any solutions?

Hubby has been working all week on my car. He has replaced the rotors on the front and today we picked up rotors for the back. I am so thankful he knows how to do all this. His knowledge saves us lots of money. Well, I will leave you ladies with a picture of the purple flowers that are blooming everywhere here. I don’t know the name of them but we think they are beautiful.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

May 22, 2012 8