Monthly Archives: October 2015

Galveston, Oh Galveston

It’s been a busy, fun few days.  We left San Antonio just before the big rains from Hurricane Patricia hit.  We drove through rain all day to Galveston.  Sometimes it was heavy and at other times just sprinkles.  The news kept saying the worst was yet to come.

I always wondered who were those nuts who drove or even got outside during a hurricane?  Well, we were some of the nuts out driving in it trying to get to our motel we had booked for three nights.  Said prayers all the way to Galveston.

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A little rain didn’t keep us from stopping at antique stores and a quilt shop.  We found this cute little shop in El Campo, Texas.

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Cedar Chest Quilt Shoppe. It was such a cute store and the ladies that worked there were so nice. We told them we waited until we knew a hurricane was coming before we came to Texas!  This shop had so many fabrics I liked.   I think I have bought enough fabric to keep me busy right through Christmas.   See the quilt blocks on the outside of the shop?

It was raining so hard when we got to Galveston with the waves crashing on the beach.  There were actually people surfing.  Crazy.   Hurricane Patricia is making a swath through southern Texas, Louisiana all the way up to Kentucky.   We found a restaurant for dinner and while we were there, the lights went out.  They didn’t know how to do the bill without the computers.  There were very few in the restaurant, but we felt safe and the lights did finally come back on.

The next morning we found a place called The Sunflower Café.

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If you are ever in Galveston, run, don’t walk to this café.  The best Belgian waffles with berries I have ever tasted.  With whipped topping and syrup, yum.   We actually were looking for another restaurant I had read about in the paper, but it was closed.  Serendipity.  We were meant to eat here.

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Who wants to ride a ferris wheel in a hurricane?  Me!

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We braved the wind and water to be by the beach.  Don’t I look like I’m having fun?!?

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Driving down palm tree lined streets to see the sights.

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Just like houses in Charleston, Savannah and Wilmington, I am in love with these houses. Look, this person is someone after my own heart.  Flamingos on the front porch.  A big oak tree spreads its limbs over the house.

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Lace at the windows.  Colorful houses.  No taupe houses allowed here.

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I could have spent the whole day just driving by these houses and taking pictures.  I like to think about the people who live in them. I hope they love them and are happy living in them.

 

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Ghosts would be happy to live in this house.  Such potential.  A real fixer upper.  It could be so beautiful.

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Driving toward the pier, it looked like a giant ship was sitting in the street.

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Several people in our motel were going on this ship.  We talked to a couple who had just gotten off it and they said it was quite a ride through hurricane winds.    Glad it made it safely to port.

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I have to tell you about a restaurant we ate in in San Antonio.  Once again, we got off the beaten path and drove out of the downtown to see what we could find to eat.  We weren’t even sure what we were hungry for.  Suddenly we saw lots and lots of cars parked all around this little restaurant.  Let’s go try it, we said to each other.  So, in we went and there was a fun atmosphere with people carrying large bags of food for take out, families sitting and eating and laughing.  A little older lady came up to us with a pad and pencil and asked what we wanted.  I ordered the fish, shrimp and oyster platter.  Huge orders of fish with bread and French fries.  Paper towels at the tables for napkins.  All very informal and the food was very good.  While sitting there, two policemen came in and seemed to know everyone and one of them started stacking the children’s booster chairs like he worked there. We were the only non-Latinos there and we loved it. This is what I love to do when on vacation.  Eat with the locals, not with the tourists and this was definitely a restaurant popular with the locals.

We went on a ferry ride today.  More about that later.  Adios, Amigos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember the Alamo

We spent a morning at the Alamo.  A shrine to the men who fought here for the state of Texas.  I didn’t know that this part of the country once belonged to Mexico and that Americans were the immigrants back then.  They were allowed to settle there by permission of the Mexican government.

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We started out by watching a fifteen minute movie about the  Alamo.  See that lady in the sweater in front of us?  She and I were talking about the Pioneer Woman and she said she had her first cookbook.

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They are doing some work on the Alamo as you can see in the background.

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This is a huge old oak tree outside the Alamo.

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A lot of artifacts inside.  I was snapping pictures until I saw a sign that said No Pictures. Oops.

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A cannon like this one shot cannon balls right into the Alamo where David Crockett, Jim Bowie and the others were fighting to their deaths.

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Cactus like this grows all around.

I loved being at the Alamo.  So much history.  Funny that American immigrants were fighting the Mexicans for the land back then.  Now it seems to be the other way around except there are no battles involved.

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This was our room for the night.  Let me tell you it was a lot nicer than the previous two nights in an Econolodge in Fredricksburg.  While that room was semi-clean and the beds were comfortable, it wasn’t one of the nicer places we have stayed.  On our many travels we have stayed in luxury places and downright creepy places.  Once, in Cincinnati, after seeing the room, I refused to stay in a particular motel.  I think there were hookers outside.  The bed sheets had food on them!  Ugh. Didn’t stay there either.  Another time I let David make reservations in Florida and it was a scary night, but there were absolutely no other motels available, so we locked the door and went to sleep and were out of there in the morning.  We have found that Comfort Inns can be depended on to be clean and comfortable and close to things we want to see.  Sometimes you just don’t know what you have as a place to sleep until you get there.  I have read ratings on some motels that were bad, but the motel was great and other times the ratings are great and the motel is awful.   We stayed in one motel that smelled of bleach, but we had to stay there because it was the only motel within miles of the ferry we were taking the following morning.  At least it was disinfected!

Our time in San Antonio was short, but it was a blessing in disguise because just after we left, the hurricane rains came.  It rained all the way to Galveston and it is still rainy and windy today.

More later.  Bye.

 

 

 

An Alamo, quilt shops and Ducks

It seems like the days are passing so quickly.   We loved Fredricksburg, Texas.  It’s a great shopping experience, but there is much more to it than that.  David and I like to get off the beaten track and see things most of the tourists never go see.

One of those sights was Cross Mountain. Years ago a huge metal cross was erected on top of a mountain outside of Fredricksburg.  You can walk up to it and that is what David and I decided to do.  Now I had been having leg pains, but nothing was stopping me from going up this mountain. The path was relatively easy and was not straight up, but meandered around the mountain.  It was a misty day, but we said we would never get this chance again, so up we went.

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Even though it was cloudy and misting, the views were beautiful.

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Yes, my hair was wet, but there was only me and David there, so, who cares?

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Even though it looks like my head has been impaled, it isn’t too bad of a picture.

We like to drive around towns we are in and find things that are different from the general touristy things.  We drove out to Lady Byrd Johnson’s  Park south of town.  For those of you who may not know, Lady Byrd Johnson was the wife of one of our presidents, Lyndon Johnson.  Lady Byrd started the wild flower project where wild flowers were planted along Texas highways.  Anyway, it is a nice park.  We saw a river and stopped by it and before we knew it, we had company.

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Oh, did I have any food for them?  I keep crackers that I get at restaurants in the glove compartment of our car.  I tell David it’s so if we are ever in the middle of nowhere and are starving, we’ll have crackers.  Well, these quackers wanted crackers!  I dug out several packages and fed them.  Reminded me of when I raised ducks when I was a girl and how they would follow me everywhere because I was the first thing they saw when they hatched.

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They were so cute. I want to raise ducks now.  I could, you know.  Look how snowy white they are and so mannerly waiting for some crackers.

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Then I ran out of crackers and they started getting demanding.   They followed me to the car and I had to jump in and we sped off before they got inside!

Next we went to the Lady Byrd Johnson pollinator garden.  It was so pretty.  I want my gardens to look like this.

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Perovskia.  I do raise this and plan to plant a lot more next Spring. One of my favorite flowers.  I spread this in the chicken house to make it smell good.

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My sweetie in the garden.

And we found a rare specimen in this garden.  One we have never seen before.

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The Red Capped Americus Siticus Snoreius.  Uncommonly found in gardens of the pollinating kind.  He never moved the entire time we were in the garden.  We tried not to disturb as we didn’t know what he would do. 

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If you are ever in Fredricksburg, Texas, take a little trip to this park.  It’s a nice little place away from all the tourists.

We drove around town some more and I saw the library.  I love libraries though I must admit I have not been in one for years since I found Amazon.com and can order Kindle books so easily.  This library made me wish I was a little girl being taken on her first library visit.  I could imagine curling up with a good book here and spending the day.

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Little lights all around the roof.

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Chandeliers in the windows.  It was wonderful.  I wanted to go in and spend a few hours, but it was closed for the day.  So we went to eat at a German restaurant we had seen downtown.  We were walking along just fine and all of a sudden, I felt something snap behind my knee and I had to immediately sit down.  I could barely walk.  We managed to get to the restaurant and had a delicious meal.  I had three kinds of sausages, a salad and German potato salad .  It was all so good, but way too much to be able to eat it all.  Really enjoyed that meal, but then I had to try to walk out of the restaurant.  David went to get the car and he drove up right in front of a big puddle and I had to leap across it to get to the car which really hurt, but I made it.  I hobbled around the rest of the day holding on to things as I walked.  It’s strange, because this was my left leg and the same thing happened to my right leg about a year ago and it took a few days to get better.   I knew I probably shouldn’t have climbed that mountain, but, hey, I like a challenge.

This morning I was still hobbling, worried that I wouldn’t be able to walk around the Alamo, but I did.  I will write about that in my next post.

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Here’s to ducks, German food and out of the way parks.  Bye.

 

 

 

 

Fredricksburg, Texas

I have read for years in magazines about the town of Fredricksburg, Texas and have wanted to visit it.  We finally got to make the trip to Texas.  It’s been a long car drive to get here, but it has been fun and interesting.

The town of Fredricksburg sits in the hill country of Texas.  Surrounded by hills, rocky land full of sage brush, cactus and mesquite.  A truly Texas town.  It was settled by German immigrants and they have built so many little houses called Sunday houses.  Houses where the ranchers and families from far out places came to town and stayed on Sunday to attend church and visit with other people.  Now many of these little houses are B&Bs.  Each one is different in its own way.  Pretty little houses decorated outside so creatively.

Now it is a tourist town with shops full of everything.  A general store.  A five, dime and quarter store.  An ice cream, bakery and deli store with the best sandwiches and delicious ice cream scooped in cups or different types of waffle cones.   Clothes stores where I could have dropped hundreds of dollars(if I had hundreds of dollars) clothes right up my alley.  Antique stores with western memorabilia.  I always find a book or two in most antique stores.  I have built up quite a library in this way.  I bought a Laura Hillenbrand book that looks very interesting.

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These are just a sample of the Sunday houses.

Another place I have wanted to go to was Wildseed Farms. I order all my flower seeds from them.  So off we went.

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The store was surrounded on an acre or two of beautiful flowers.  Most will not grow in Indiana.  I checked.

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David is always patiently waiting on me.

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This little bird was singing its heart our when we arrived.  I don’t know what it was, but it didn’t seem afraid of people because David had to get really close to get this picture.

Since I wrote about the worst place we have eaten, I will write about a great place we ate.  Wednesday is hamburger day for David and me.  We try not to eat hamburgers any other day.  I could eat a hamburger every single day, but that would be wrong, wouldn’t it??

Anyway we drove into this town looking for dinner. David thought the Country Kitchen looked good.  We parked, walked up to the restaurant, looked in the window and saw it was a buffet and I immediately did an about face and went to the car.  We drove around town and saw this place.

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Almost like a little shack with lots of trucks in the drive.  You know it’s a good place to eat if there are a lot of trucks parked there.  But, still, we kept driving around because we really wanted to sit down and order something.  When we could not find anything that looked good, we returned to Brad’s burgers, and we were so glad we did.  We parked in the lot and walked up to the order speaker box.  A waitress came out and explained everything to us, so we ordered two burgers and fries.  When it was brought out, it was in a greasy bag packed full.  The large fries would have fed a family of four.  David and I ordered two! Needless to say we could not eat them all.  We had a five pound bag of potatoes left over when we were finished.  We sat at a picnic table outside and enjoyed the meal tremendously.  One of the best burgers I have ever eaten.  We brought the bag of fries back to our room and they stunk up the room all night and we threw them away the next day.

We spent the morning antiquing and we found one quilt shop which was wonderful.  Did I buy fabric?  Yes, I did.  I have shot my budget clear out of sight.  I told David we cannot stop at another quilt shop.  Think we will manage it?

Here’s to greasy burgers and little western towns.  Bye.

Big D A Double L A S

We are on the fourth day of our journey to Texas.  I took lots of pictures yesterday, but sadly, last night while we were driving and I was tired, I accidentally erased all my new pictures off my camera.  So this is a no picture blog today.  I will write  what I wrote in my journal yesterday.

We stopped at the first quilt shop yesterday in Bovinia, MS. It had 9000 bolts of fabric.  We almost missed it as it was on a dead end road and we thought Miss Garmin had led us astray, but we kept going and there it was almost at the end of the road.  It had just about every quilt magazine you could think of, tons of patterns, quilt aides, sewing machines, long arm machines and much more.  The fabrics were beautiful and there was a large variety.  Of course I had to buy some.  When this trip is all over, I will show you my treasures.  This is part of the fun of traveling and seeing new businesses and quilt shops.

We passed through Vicksburg.   Many years ago we went to Vicksburg with my brother and his family and went through the Coca Cola museum.  We drove through the battlefield.  It was sad to see how many had died in the American Civil War.  And this was just one cemetery.

We went through Louisiana yesterday.  A little town called Tallulah.   The town had Christmas trees set up in a river all ready for the next Christmas season.  Metal trees with big colorful globes on them.

It was a sad looking  town.  Like many little towns we have gone through.   Storefronts boarded up.  A dusty little town, but they still wanted to decorate for Christmas.  The people who live there probably love their town, though, and stay there in hopes of something better.

Many towns centered around huge grain elevators and surrounded by fields already harvested.   I blinked and we drove through the town of Holly Ridge.  Remember Jan Karon’s book Holly Springs?  I saw a road sign pointing the way to it.  Father Tim was from there.

David and  I drove along sharing a banana and a small piece of peanut butter fudge.  Pure bliss.

Went through the town of Start, LA  I always wonder how towns got their names.  Perhaps someone was making a fresh start at this place.

Monroe, LA. An antique store mecca.  Everyone so nice.  Yes, I bought somethings.  I am trying to pace myself and not spend too much as we will be in Fredericksburg tomorrow and there are lots of stores there.  Also Wildseed Farms where I order my flower seeds from.  Can’t wait.

Hello, Shreveport.  Good-bye, Shreveport.  Just passing through

Finally, TEXAS!!!!  We have been in Texas a couple of times, but this is the first time we will spend several days in it.

Okay, I have to tell you about one of the worst places we have ever eaten.  We have eaten at some pretty bad places and some simply wonderful places in our travels.  I am not a buffet or cafeteria type person.  Unless we are eating at a fast food place where I know the food, I like to eat at a nice sit down restaurant and be served with delicious food.  This place was not it.  David likes buffets, so I reluctantly agreed to eat at McCay’s  Ranch House.  I knew it was bad when we went in and there was only one table with people sitting at it.  We should have turned around then, but we sat down.  I wanted to order the shrimp that they had on the menu, but the waitress just ran up to us and said, “Grab a plate and get your food.”  Just like that.  Well, I got a salad of huge lettuce leaves hardly cut up at all, black olives and a little dressing, a spoonful of pea salad and a spoonful of macaroni salad, which I usually love.  Yuck, yuck and yuck.  The entrees were no better.  The best part of the meal were the crackers that came with the salad. And how can you ruin a banana pudding?  I’m just telling you. Plus the waitress kept sticking her arm across our table to grab our plates before we were even done.  It wasn’t like she had a whole lot of other customers to wait on.   Don’t eat there.  I repeat.  Don’t eat there.  I told David this has turned me off of buffets for the rest of my life.

We started to see ranches and ranch gates with names of the ranches on them.  Passed antique shop after antique shop, but they were all closed as it was later in the day.  Boo.

Heading to Waco today to see the silos Joanna and Chip Gaines from the show Fixer Upper, have made into a store and offices.  Magnolia store.  Fredricksburg, here we come!!! Bye.

Traveling Far Away

  David and I have traveled to almost all the states except Hawaii.  I don’t think I have been in Rhode Island either, but David thinks we passed through it some time in our travels.  I don’t remember.  Sorry, Rhode Islanders.  I really want to remember your state.

   We started out this foggy morning to travel to the state of Texas.  We have been through Texas on the way to California and stayed in Houston one time for the International Quilt Show.  We also spent a couple of days in Galveston.  We want to go back there.

Today we drove mostly back roads to Nashville Tennessee.   There is so much to see on back roads.  Small towns, country homes and farms, fields of cattle, horses or goats.  We past through one town that was so cute, I wanted to take pictures of every building in it, but the people in the cars behind us didn’t think that was such a good idea.   I have a picture I have to show you of turkey vultures that had taken over a little abandoned house.  I did a double take as we passed by it and told David to turn around because there were vultures all over the roof of this house. 

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  There were  vultures everywhere.  Many flew off when we stopped to take pictures.  A true Halloween sight if I ever saw one.   

  That was probably the weirdest sight we have seen so far. 

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With David at the wheel and me having a few books to read, we were off.

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I am going to read this while we are on vacation.

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I’m reading this right now and it’s so good.  I love Susan Branch.  This is sort of a diary of her life.  She grew up in the same time period as I did.  She loved the Beatles and even got to meet them which makes me so jealous. Ha.  She danced to the same music I danced to, sang the same songs I sang and lived a life almost parallel to mine.   She had some heartbreak in her life I haven’t had, but she still is one of the most optimistic people whose blog I love to read.  I am really enjoying this book.

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Our intention on this trip was to drive as much of the Natchez Trace trail as we could. Years ago we drove it from Natchez, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississipppi.  Yesterday and today we drove it from Nashville to Jackson,MS.  It’s a very nice drive with little traffic and lots of historic things along the way.  We saw Merriweather Lewis’ burial site.  He died mysteriously one night while taking documents back to Washington, D. C. 

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We have driven through some adorable towns.

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Towns with adorable shops and houses.  I took so many pictures. 

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Black fences like this seem to be a requirement in some parts of Tennessee.

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David let me drive some.  Whoopie!   I had him shaking in his shoes!

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We came up to the Tennessee River.   It always amazes me how big our country is where most people get along with each other.  You only hear about the ones who don’t.  Everyone we have met has been so very nice. 

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Across this amazing bridge we went.  You have to have faith that the men who built these bridges knew what they were doing and did it well.

  Speaking of bridges…

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Over this bridge was a walking path.  I have decided to resume my walking across America.  I have kind of gotten lax on that the past several months and I can feel it.  So, I walked almost two miles and it felt good.

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David doesn’t walk with me. He takes pictures. 

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We will be doing this for the next several days.  Glad they have carts to carry everything.

In closing I will show you some of the barn quilts we have seen .

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  We have seen more barn quilts this time than the time we took a trip to see barn quilts a few years ago!

Here’s to trips to fun places and  the one with whom to share the ride.  Bye.

These travel blogs are not posted on the day I wrote them.

 

Nesting

 

Nesting: to settle or place(something) in or as if in a nest. Webster’s college dictionary. 

At certain times during the year I get into a nesting attitude.  Even though our chicks have flown and it’s just David and me here in this house, I still feel the need at times to plump, poof, move, rustle, add to, remove from, clean, clear, change, or make cozy certain rooms.  It usually happens in Autumn right before the holidays begin when I have the least amount of time, but the most energy, it seems.

Nesting has begun at the Craig house.  I have been rearranging furniture, bringing out Autumnal decorations and quilts, burning new candles and just fluffing my nest in general. Let me show you.

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Change up the pillows.

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Quilts thrown on the backs of all the chairs.

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Bring out the wool blankets for the cool nights that are coming.

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Place a seasonal tablecloth on the dining room table.

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Place a bowl of Autumn color pin cushions on a table.

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Place pumpkins everywhere, even on the antique egg scales.

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Decorate the mantle with a Halloween motif.

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Old Black Witch.    I saw this same book in an antique store the other day.

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Jack Pumpkinhead. He was a character in Frank Baum’s Oz books.

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Speaking of pumpkins, I cut some of my pumpkins on a stick and brought them in and put them in a jar.  I think they are really artichokes.

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Little pumpkins in a tray with orange fairy lights.

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A big jar of candy corn which will not last long as David loves these. I think they taste like paraffin, so I don’t eat them.   I got this pumpkin jar at an antique store the other day and it was filled with little flocked pumpkins that I am using to decorate.

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See,  I am using them on the mantle in my shop with my little houses my daddy made and fairy lights.

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Autumn flowers in the old chicken feeder.

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Candles are always needed for coziness.

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I got this candle in an antique store last week.  You should smell this.  It is delicious.  The lady had one of these burning in her shop and the whole store smelled heavenly.   She told us she cannot keep these candles in stock.  Of course I had to buy one.  I am a nut for candles.

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This is not an advertisement for Yankee candles.  I just love them.  Every time I am sent one of their catalogues, it’s like a little present because they have scratch and sniff candle pictures and it is so tempting to want to buy every one of them.  That is their evil plan. Ha.  That Salted Caramel one smells so good even before you light it.  Someone was in our house the other day and asked us what was that good smell.  He was sitting right by the unlit candle!

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Even my little toad loves them.

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Soft light from a lamp I bought at the same antique store.

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The lampstand is so pretty.

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And look!  Butterflies on the shade.  How wonderful is that?????

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I am even crazy about fake candles that use batteries.

Just a couple of other things before I end this post.

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I got this wonderful book the other day.  Although it’s a children’s book, it might answer some questions adults have about heaven.  I always knew animals would be in heaven. God created them so why would he leave them out?  God has made a place for everyone in heaven if they only accept Jesus Christ as His son and your personal savior.  It’s so easy.  No work involved.

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Remember this young lady in my last post?

Her mother brought one of her diapers she wore when she was first born at two pounds.  It was so tiny.  And her mother said when she would diaper her, the diaper went clear to her chest it was so big on her.

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It is so tiny.  This picture makes it look bigger than it is.  You could hold it in the palm of your hand and it would still look tiny.  Shows  that miracles do happen and babies can survive being born way too early. I’m glad she did.

Here’s to Nesting and tiny diapers and tiny babies.  Bye.

 

 

 

 

 

Wonderful Week in Weview Part 2

Finishing up the news for the week.  We are getting nearly done making quilts for Riley’s Children’s hospital.  Let me tell you a little about the senior girl who is doing this project.  Mackenzie was born months too early and weighed just over two pounds.  She spent a lot of time at the children’s hospital in Indianapolis in an incubator with tubes attached to her.  I remember the first time I saw her when she was finally brought home and she was still so tiny. 

Here we are years later and she has grown up into a beautiful, healthy girl.  One of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met, I might add.  She decided for her senior project to make quilts for the hospital to give back.  When she had spent time there, she received two quilts which she still has.

 Here are a few of her quilts.

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This is a cute one with hedgehogs on it.

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This is Mack.  I think she has accomplished a lot in a few short weeks.  From not knowing how to sew to making so many quilts, I would say she deserves an A for her project. 

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  This is her mom, Laura.  She doesn’t sew either, but she helped cut out and pin and iron the quilts. 

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I hope this has been a good experience for her.  I know I enjoyed it.

On to other news.  We went to Grandparents’ Day at our grandchildren’s school this week.  We always enjoy this time.  We get to see what the children are doing in school and get to spend some time with them. 

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Our younger grandson, Adler, was so excited about singing in the choir.  It was hard to get a good picture because he was moving around so much.

 

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I was hoping he would look at us so I could get his picture, but he was paying attention to his teacher.  The girls, not so much. Ha.    I got their picture. 

We got to go into his classroom where the teacher asked several questions about the grandparents, like who had been a cheer leader,( I was, but my cheer leading career was very short) whether we had played a sport in college, those kinds of questions just to let the children know more about their grandparents.  

After staying the night at a very comfortable motel, we spent the next morning with our older grandson who is an eighth grader. 

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A few days ago he hardly reached my waist.  Now he has to bend over to get in the picture.  And he is still growing.

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The mural behind us was made by some high school girls, one of whom is our granddaughter who is a sophomore.   I think it is pretty special. They signed their names in the corner.

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  Abby Craig.  Soon we will be returning to the school to see Abby in this….

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I can’t wait.  I’ve been singing the songs from it around the house.

 

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He is taller than Grandpa now.

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This is his Spanish classroom.

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Aidan’s history class. Guess who they are learning about?  While there I saw this….

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An original newspaper from when President Kennedy was assassinated. I remember it like it was yesterday.  Part of a dark time in the history of our country.  I was still too young to vote when he ran for president, but I think I would have voted for him. 

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We enjoyed both days with our red headed grandsons.  Speaking of red hair.  I have always been partial to red hair.  Don’t know why.  One of my best friends in grade schools was a beautiful red head.

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I told Aidan I could write a whole blog about his hair.

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I love running my hand through it.  I am sure he likes having his grandma do that. Ha. 

  It was a fun two days, but we had to get back to the dogs and the chickens so off we went for home.  We did take the long way, however.  On the way we came across this yard decorated for Halloween.

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I think these people really, really like Halloween!

We even managed to get some antiquing in.  Oh, yes.  I got a few things. 

Here’s to Grandparents’ Day and Grandchildren that make us so proud.  Bye.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wonderful Week in Weview Part one

  We have had a pretty busy week this week.   It started out with a birthday party for a special lady.  A lady who lived with her husband and five children next door to David’s family when he was growing up.  I met her for the first time when David took me to her house after we started going together.  She was so sweet to me and it was fun going to her house with all the children around.  She always fed us and talked to us like we were the most interesting people in the world even though she was a very busy woman.  We were just two teen-agers in love then.

This week her grown children, who we had not seen in decades, threw her a surprise birthday party for her eighty-fifth birthday.  We were the only nonfamily members there and felt very blessed to be invited.

We drove over to Middletown and with the help of Miss Garmin found the house of one of her daughters where the party was to be held.  The house was packed and no one knew who we were when we came into the door because it was all family and they all knew each other.  I think they thought we were crashing the party until one of the daughters came up and we knew her immediately and then another daughter came up and we knew her too.  Then the boys came up and I was so amazed because the last time we saw them they were young and now they are grandpas.  One of the daughters is a great-grandma.  Wow.

We visited and waited for the guest of honor to arrive.   Then she came in the door.

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Surprised could not begin to describe her face.

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She looked around at all her family, some of whom had traveled from other states to be there.

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She held her twelveth(I think)  great granddaughter for the first time.  How precious is that picture?

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She had pictures taken with all her family members.  These are her five children.  Let me see if I can get their names right,  From the left, Carrie, Tim, Robin, Rodney and Cheryl.  I hope I got that right.

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This was most of her family.  Children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and brothers and sisters.  She has certainly been blest with family.

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She had a beautiful birthday cake.  The food was delicious, the company was nice and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

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Virginia is one the sweetest, nicest people you would ever want to meet.  I hope she enjoyed her party.

This week I have been finishing up some baby quilts for Riley Children’s hospital in Indianapolis.  I have been helping a senior girl with her senior project which was to make as many quilts as possible for the hospital.  We started in September and have made twenty so far.  She will have to do a presentation of them in November.  I will show you some I made and I will write a special blog about this young lady  who had undertaken a big job and done it well. She made ten quilts.  Before she started, she didn’t even know how to sew.  Quite an achievement.

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In the past, I made doll quilts for Samaritan’s purse.  Because I took on this project this year, I sewed four of the quilts together to make this larger one.

 

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This quilt had a train motif.

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A couple of others.  I will show more quilts in the next post.

We have had grandparents’ day at school and I will tell you about that too.  Bye.