The old and the new

We are still clearing out closets and furniture around here so the new flooring can be put down.  We finished cleaning my in-laws big house and I'm finished with the little one.  If he wants to do more he is welcome to it.  I'm tired of cleaning houses and clearing brush.  The upside is the realtor thinks there is a chance of getting some offers soon.   They have had two open houses and private showings, too.  Maybe, I'll go back over.  Nah...this house must be clear for new flooring by next Wednesday when the carpet and wood arrive.  We will be busy as beavers until next Saturday sometime...or later.

Some of my friends on facebook have been really sad the past few months.  They have good reason, but it is time to pull up.  I love them and want to have them in my life for the rest of it.  This little pinterest is so true.

Source: google.com via Linda on Pinterest

Making Progress

These past few weeks have been full of work and fun.  We went to the Hill Country and had returned the last time I posted.  Promised pics, but haven't had time.  There has been so much to do.

During one of our spring deluges water came into the house and the carpet in our bedroom had to be replaced.  It has now been a couple of weeks and we finally made a decision just last Saturday.  It will still be a couple of weeks before it is installed.  We have a lot of large furniture, and thank goodness they will move it for us...and move it back, too.  Another +

Also, we have moved forward and got my husband's folks home on the market as of yesterday.  The real estate agent had an open house and there were a number of inquiries.  We worked really hard getting it ready to show.  Thankfully the estate sale got all the furniture and stuff out.  We had the carpet taken up.  It was ages old and worn out...it wasn't pretty either.  However, when the carpet came up there were some weird brown spots on the floor.  From the pictures it looked like the carpet pad had come to pieces and stuck to the wood floor.  When we got over there it turned out to be spots of dried mud.  I spent the most of a day on the floor with a damp cloth getting it off.  The only thing I can figure is my father in law "cleaned" the carpet in the traffic areas, and got it plenty wet.  The wood wasn't warped, though.  After a final cleaning with Bruce floor cleaner it looked pretty good.

Texas Bluebonnets

We've been working on the small house they owned next door, too.  I'd hoped to get it on the market at the same time as the big house, but it didn't work out.  I'll get the things still in it out tomorrow.  There is a storage building out back of that house that has an interesting story.  A long time ago the fellow who owned the house decided it would be his road to fame/fortune to raise chincillas.  He built a cinder block house with windows and air conditioning.  It didn't work out and he didn't make a fortune but to this day it is still called the chincilla house in our family.  Anyway, the chincilla house has collected a great number of random items, and the air conditioner is long gone.  I sure wish it was cooler, but it isn't. 

Happy Easter with its promise of new beginnings

 

We Are Back Home And We Are Fine

We were so lucky today I can't believe it.  There were terrible tornadoes this afternoon in Texas that destroyed so many homes.  However, the good part is no deaths have been reported as of the 10pm news just now . 

We have been in the Hill Country around Austin for a few days to look at the spectacular display of wildflowers this year.  The flowers lived up to all the talk and were unbelievably beautiful. There were some that looked like white poppies. I don't know what they are called. The bluebonnets were gorgeous drifts of blue with white flowers mingled in with them. But, we have been glued to the TV all afternoon so no pictures downloaded yet.  There was film of trailers that attach to semi tractors and weigh 16,000 pounds were picked up by the tornado and thrown through the air!  It was amazing.  A grandmother saved her grandson by holding onto his feet as they sheltered in the bathtub with two other children.  The tornado was pulling at the boy but the grandmother hung on to him.  That was a story with a happy ending.  I'll bet he has a bit of a problem with going to the bathroom alone for oh probably the rest of his life.

We don't have basements like other parts of the United States.  We have heavy clay soil and they make the foundations very weak.  That is what I've been told.  I'd love to have a shelter dug in our backyard, but really I'd love one in the garage so we could get to it from the house.

While we were driving we'd had XM radio on and hadn't heard a thing about the weather. The news this morning in Marble Falls didn't say a word about this kind of severe weather up in the DFW area.  Close to home we stopped in a small town to buy gasoline. There was a radio on in the gas station and I thought I heard a weather alert. I asked where they were talking about and she said Ft. Worth, Arlington and Cleburne, where she lives.  After we got back on the road I texted my sister and cousin to see how bad it was up in Ft. Worth.  They told me to be very careful and to wait about 30 minutes so the weather would have moved out of the area.  I got a local station on the radio and, oh my there were tornadoes everywhere.  There were about 4 on the ground at once.  We had been blissfully ignorant on our way home.  I don't remember ever having a tornado in Ft. Worth before the year 2000 when there was one downtown.  There was something about the twin forks of the Trinity River and an Indian saying that because of the convergence of the forks that would save us from destruction.  It made sense to me all my life and for sure we hadn't had a tornado.  Not so much anymore, and our city fathers are going to chang the course of the Trinity so it will be all "so nice" and sort of like San Antonio's riverwalk.  Don't get me started on that nonsense.  San Antonio has underground springs and we live in a drought area.  Politics!

Anyway, just wanted to let you know we are OK and our home is all in one piece, thank heavens.  I'm going to get a good night's sleep and see about the pictures tomorrow.  Also, the disposable camera will have to be taken down to get the pictures.  When we went out searching for wildflowers a week or so ago we forgot to get the digital so bought a disposable one at the drugstore.

The Hill Country is such a beautiful part of Texas, and y'all know how much I love my state.  I just don't seem to know how to keep it to myself.

Hope all of you are well and safely in your homes with loved ones and all that.

Wildflowers and Stinkers

We are going out this afternoon to look for wildflowers.  This is supposed to be a banner year for them.  It was such a hot dry year last year the wildlower experts weren't sure what was going to happen.  It was an exceptionally hot and dry summer and fall last year.

Hope to be  back later with pretty flower pictures.  I'd told my husband about this pretty one I'd seen in a construction area where I figured there would not be any wildflowers.  The news just said it is called "bastard cabbage" and is taking over in Texas.  It has dense low growing foliage that shades out other wildflowers.  It is a real problem and from that article sounds like it is as much fun as kudzu is in other parts of the country.

On another note I thought I'd found an answer to the broken back and my love for ironed sheets. While stopping for a Subway sandwich one afternoon I saw the cleaners down a couple of doors away. When I asked if they did sheets and they said yes. The cost was about $11, she thought and that was what it was with the first set of queen size sheets I took in. I'd gotten behind on ironing the durn things because it is such a hassle to iron a king size sheet (sort of like ironing a circus tent), and the kids had been here recently so there were more than just ours to get caught up. When I went to pick up some queen size yesterday they told me it would be $39!?! They had no idea why, but only charged the $11 it had been before. I don't know what to do, but to try to get an firm estimate from them and other cleaners before taking them in. None of the websites have a listing for prices for dry cleaning or laundry. It is a market they could probably optimize if they were smart.  Maybe it is a continuation of the discrimination against women.  It costs much more for a woman to get a shirt laundered than a man and I have no idea why.  That stinks!



Happy St. Patrick's Day

The other day I noticed everyone else was making a page on their blog about St. Patrick's day.  I'm not much Irish at all.  There is a Bridget O'Brien in my ancestor list.  She was long ago and far away, but it is good to know there is something to cheer about on St. Pat's day.  These apples had been calling to me to be made into something sweet, and so I did.  There was some crust issues that ended with some filling outside of the top crust, but it tasted just fine.  It tasted really good and with a slice of cheddar, Lora.  It tasted really good with some vanilla ice cream, too.

As you can see I used the other pie bird this time.  It hadn't had a chance to be baked in a pie yet.  It did its job well.  It was the maker of the pie that didn't get the edges crimped properly.  However, in all justice these are my first pies.  Next week there will be a quiche, because we have all the leftovers to make one and I can't let them go to waste.

Here are our "shamrocks".  They came up in a pot...I don't remember buying any and if I did I need to have my head examined for if it gets into the grass there is no getting rid of it at all.  Our yard man came yesterday, but there was so much to do this time with all the leaves from the live oak falling we didn't have the heart to ask him to make a bigger effort in the rock garden.  I suppose I could have gone out and cleared some of the sweet gum spikey balls out of the picture, but there was other stuff to deal with.  One included some ordering some new bedding for the front bedroom and I can tell you right now I can hardly wait for it to get here.  I'll post some pictures when it is all done. 

Today we went to the store and as we were getting ready to check out these cookies called out to go home with me.  Isn't that always the way...the little things taste really great and the little fox has something new to guard now the apples are gone.

Here's wishing you a happy Erin Go Bragh and I'm off to cook some cabbage with some ham and some pretty new potatoes for our dinner.  Have a safe and happy weekend.

What the heck happened to Blogger?  I've been playing around with facebook and holy cow when I came today there was lots of stuff everything had changed!   Just noticed the "Try the updated blogger interface" link at the top of this page. Wonder what that ... OOPS..!

Sorry I haven't been around much lately.  I had a cold for a while and finally I'd had enough and went for a home remedy.

This worked pretty well and after a couple of nights of these I just didn't care if I had a cold or not, but wound up having to going in to visit my doc anyway.  She prescribed an antibiotic for the lingering yuckiness.  Finally getting better.

I've been going through my mother in law's jewelry and lots of other stuff.  She died last February and my father in law followed on March 30th of the same year.  Anyway, as I've been going through their stuff, while my husband repaired some lawmowers and other garden equipment for the estate sale, it occured to me that I'm pushing 70 and there is no reason for me to keep the "important stuff".  The kids have all gotten the things they wanted and they are happy.  In fact I could hear the wheels turning as our oldest daughter was mentally trying to figure where on earth she would put a quilt in her contemporary home.  I'm going to send them back over to be sold this weekend.  That pushing 70 is just me trying to get ready for it in a few years.

Oh yes, I had spent an entire day going through my mil's jewelry and putting earrings together and in general sorting it all out.  Miz Dorothy loved her some cute earrings and matching necklaces.  I'm not that into jewelry so much, but did keep a few pieces.  Anyway, I was exhausted that night and went to bed early.  The next morning I went to the garage for something and noticed all the windows on the car were rolled down.  That set me back on my heels and I called hubby to see if he had rolled them down.  He hadn't and thought I had.  Well, this puzzled us to no end.  I finally decided my mil was upset I'd gone through her things and had "spoken" from beyond.  It certainly creeped us out.  The other day hubby had to get the owner's manual to see how to turn off the automatic windshield wiper function on the car and found the answer to our puzzle.  If you hold a button on the key fob down for a certain time and hold something else down too it will roll all the windows down and unlock all the doors.  That satisfied him, but I still don't know.

February isn't a great month, in my humble opinion, but it is fun sometimes.  The Sunday of the Superbowl we were at the grocery store to pick up some snacks and found these sweet cupcakes!  They were delicious and were all yummy strawberryness.  Mona over at Wsprsweetly collects lovely items from garage sales and has lace, silver, quilts and all manner of very cool cottage items.  She has influenced me into getting out doilies and starching and ironing them, but the doily under the cupcakes is just paper.  However, even that made these little things very special.

Also, while convalesing I made a cherry pie.  I'm not a pie maker and certainly am not a pie crust maker, but I'd bought this too cute little pie bird and just had to try it.  Pie birds allow you to make a meat or fruit pie without the filling bubbling up and making the top crust all not pretty.  The pie bird I used is a red one. The blackish yuck around the edge of the pie pan is where I forgot to clean the edge before baking.  I was so excited by the finished project I forgot again to clean the edge off before taking the picture.  It doesn't take too much to dazzle and amuse me.

The crust wasn't burnt and all in all it was one of the best pies and best pie crusts I've ever eaten.  There hasn't been much baking/pie making lately because there are calories in those cute little things.  I do have some Granny Smith apples calling from the kitchen though.

Our youngest is coming from Austin tonight to stay while she is working up here for a few days.  That will be a very welcome visit.  Her dad, my husband, had a skin cancer removed from his chest day before yesterday, and she is worried about him.  Gotta tell you we will all be wearing hats and sun block more...all the time...maybe at night, too.