Month of Thankfulness - Day 7

A couple of weekends ago our son and his lovely wife came for a visit. I can tell you I was quite excited to have some company and loved planning the meals for the weekend. I tried three or four new recipes. (And they all turned out to be yummy!) One of my son Caleb's favorite meals is my homemade chicken noodle soup and home made biscuits. So, of course, that was our lunch on the Saturday when they were here.

When Caleb was a little boy he would watch me cut out the biscuits and ask me for a piece of the dough scraps.

He still likes the dough scraps:

See how excited he is?

 Here's a collage of him enjoying the meal:

Despite the look on his face in the bottom right photo, he really did like the meal. He's just a goof. A funny goof.

Since they were here on a Friday, Hubby took the whole day off. Well, most of the day. He did go in for one meeting. In the afternoon we went to a historical museum in town here. It was pretty interesting, especially when we stumbled upon this:

This is a photo of my Hubby. Can you see him on the bottom right? I've attempted to blur the rest of the photos to protect the innocent, or something like that. This is a photo of all the Plant Managers. Hubby is the current one. I call this The Plant Manager Hall of Fame. Oooo! (Caleb took the photo of his dad at our daughter's wedding.)

Throughout the weekend we did several things together. We shopped for a plaid flannel shirt for Caleb (what better place than rural Minnesota to find one?) and some cute boots for Amanda. I watched them all play some of our new Wii games. (I didn't play because of my burned fingers. I couldn't really bend them to hold the Wii-mote.) I made them watch a couple of episodes of The Middle I had on the DVR, because it is simply my favorite sit-com. They even laughed. We watched the movie Social Network with them. Quite interesting. I'm glad we recorded it on TV because some of the bad language was edited out.

I am thankful for...
...cool days that are made for homemade chicken noodle soup and biscuits
...my mother-in-law's recipe for biscuits
...the visit with Caleb and Amanda
...laughter with Caleb and Amanda
...my son's hugs

Month of Thankfulness - Day 6

Today was a bit of an Eclectic Election Day.

(See what I did there with that clever use of words?? I amuse myself.)

I did a load of laundry.

I remembered my long-time friend who died a year ago today. I prayed for her family. I cried. I missed her. I gasped when I saw her picture on her sister's Facebook wall. I cried.

I had mac and cheese with bits of lobster in it for lunch.

I voted.

I bought a potato that weighed 1.6 pounds. Yikes!

I knocked the mouth off of a giraffe.

I fixed potato bologna and mashed potatoes and peas for supper. Cherry pie is later.

Wait... what's that you ask? How did I knock the mouth off of a giraffe?

Poor Giraffe. I knocked it off the shelf it was sitting on and the mouth broke off. I just need to figure out what kind of glue to use to fix it. My parents bought it in Uganda for me.


I am thankful for...
...having the privilege to vote
...mashed potatoes
...prayer when I don't know how else I can help my friend's family in their grief
...glue

Month of Thankfulness - Day 5

Today was kind of a fun day for me even though it was Monday. I went out for a late breakfast with my book and enjoyed some reading time and some pumpkin pancakes. Mmmm. After breakfast, I picked up a few things from the grocery store and came home to work in the kitchen while I listened to blues music.

My culinary project was a cherry pie. Why? Because a few weeks ago Hubby and I went out for some pie and the restaurant didn't have any cherry pie. He was bummed. So this morning I decided to make him one.

Whenever I mix up pie crust I think of my mom because the recipe I use is her mother's recipe. So as I was rolling out the crust I stuck my Bluetooth (such an awesome invention) in my ear and gave my mom a call. Mom and I ended up chatting for and hour and a half or so. Fun to chat and get caught up. (Mom is 80 and had a major heart attack three years ago, had by-pass surgery and some other bad complications. I am glad I can still call her to chat.)

For supper I made some chicken nuggets that are a copy-cat Chick-fil-A recipe. (I found the recipe here.) I made them a couple of weekends ago when my son and daughter-in-law came to visit and ended up burning the bajeebers out of a couple of my fingers from jumping hot oil. (Oh. That reminds me. I haven't blogged about their visit yet. Hmmm. Some day this week I will do that.) Anyway.... I made those chicken nuggets tonight with nary a bit of jumping oil. It helped that I wasn't hurrying. Lesson learned: never hurry when hot oil is involved.

I am thankful for...
...cherry pie for dessert that was still warm. Mmmm...
...my grandmother's pie crust recipe
...phone conversations with my mom
...unburned fingers
...a dishwasher to clean all those dirty dishes

Month of Thankfulness - Day 4

I am thankful for...
...singing worship songs at church
...having a great conversation about life stuff with my hubby in the car driving back from church
...watching episode after episode of M*A*S*H and laughing despite the fact that I've seen every episode multitudes of time
...electricity
...a comfy bed to sleep in tonight
...listening to my hubby snore next to me (Seriously. This video has changed made me much less annoyed with the snoring.)

Month of Thankfulness - Day 3

I liked this Saturday.

I didn't sleep much last night, but somehow managed to not be a total grump all day.

Hubby and I started our day out running errands. We went to a sale that was going on where he works. They were selling things that his company makes in other facilities. We could cram all we wanted into 2 bags. Pretty sweet deal. (I don't really want to disclose the name of the company for privacy reasons. You understand, I'm sure.) We found a bunch of stuff that our son had asked for and even more stuff to give to Hubby's cousin who runs a Bible camp. After hauling our almost overstuffed bags to the car we stopped at a couple of other stores and then had a lunch date.

If you are a regular to this here blog, you have heard me complain write about living in a very small town. There are not very many good restaurants here. We have narrowed it down to two sit-down restaurants we both like and one fast-food we can tolerate. We hit one of those sit-down places for lunch today and the restaurant had a new menu and therefore we were able to choose some new-to-us items that turned out to be very yummy despite the piece of paper I found in my wrap. (Whew! That was a doozey of a run-on sentence!) Yes, there was a piece of paper in my wrap. You know the pieces of paper that separates slices of cheese? Yep. The cook forgot to take that out. Thankfully I didn't eat any of it. The wrap was made with Naan bread and was difficult to pick up to eat, so I tackled it with a fork and knife. That's how I discovered the paper. I found it kind of funny. The waiter apologized and offered to bring me a new wrap. I declined. I figured the paper was food-safe to begin with so no big deal.

We spent the afternoon watching football (not me) and looking through a bunch of catalogs (me) that had come in the mail throughout the week. I was trying to get inspiration for a new look for our Christmas tree. After our kids were married and took the ornaments that had been given to them over the years, I realized how bare our tree was left. But for the last two or three Christmases I haven't done anything about it. Maybe I should just look at ornaments in stores and in catalogs and buy what appeals to me. I kind of prefer an eclectic look, so that may just be the trick. I keep thinking I'll see a whole tree decorated somewhere and have a Eureka! moment. Hasn't happened, so maybe this other approach will work. (Maybe I should talk this over with Hubby.)

Late in the afternoon we drove to an even smaller town about 20 miles away that actually has a movie theater (this town doesn't have a movie theater) that only shows movies on the weekends but still it's a movie theater and they happened to be showing a movie we've been wanting to see. (Yay! Another run-on sentence!) (I'm sure my journalist son is cringing.) On our way to the theater I realized I made a grave mistake. See, across the street from the movie theater is a quilt shop. I should have allowed enough time to so some actual shopping there. Phooey.

Anyway... the movie...

We saw Trouble With The Curve with Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams and Justin Timberlake. We both really enjoyed the movie.


I am thankful for...
...a wonderful day of hanging out with my hubby
...a good haul at the work-sight bag sale
...catalogs
...an extra hour of sleep tonight

Month of Thankfulness - Day 2

Today was a pretty quiet day. I woke up later than I thought I would and that kind of threw off my morning plans. Nothing big, but I was kind of frustrated by lunch time. But it was all made better since I got to have lunch with my hubby!

This afternoon I ventured into my sewing room to try to get some inspiration for my next quilt project. Nothing came to me, so I worked on a project book. I  photograph the quilts I have made and I have been putting them into a little book so I can keep a record of what I have made. (That's about as close to scrapbooking as I get.) But, for some reason, when had I printed out the photos at a local store, some of them printed so some the edges of the quilts were cut off, like it cropped in the printing process. So tonight I got on to Shutterfly's website and figured out how to make sure the photo wasn't cropped and ordered some prints. Hopefully they will turn out better.


I am thankful for...
...lunch dates with my hubby
...a DVR that (so easily) records TV shows so I can watch them later
...having a whole room for my sewing habit hobby

Month of Thankfulness - Day 1

Last November I embarked on a challenge to myself to write about something I am thankful for every day of the month. Yesterday I thought about whether or not I wanted to tackle that again. If I'm honest, I would rather not have to write every day, and, honestly, some days it's tough to find something very positive to think about, but I think it's a good exercise for me to think about what I am thankful for. As I found last November, there is always something I can be thankful for.

So to start off my Month of Thankfulness:::

I am thankful for...

...having the format of this blog to write about my life

...going to the dentist and having no cavities (!)

..."normal" results from my yearly physical (!)

...reruns of The Brady Bunch