A Bunch of Random Things

Today’s post will not be a theme, but just random things going on and what is going on in my noggin.

Lately too much time has been spent on financial things or those related to aging and fully retiring. My brain rejects all things like this. It has no natural inclination to delve into such matters. My brain screams, “Run!” These things don’t bring me anything but stress. I turn 65 this September and decided I should start thinking about signing up for Medicare and social security. I am sure some of you are thinking, she is just now doing this… Yep! I didn’t get as far as I would have liked with it last week, but maybe next week since I am in Auburn this week and I am relaxing my brain! 

Jeff and I have decided to do a few home improvement things and that has been the focus of things lately. One of which is a fence to enclose a portion of the back yard in Auburn. This way when it is 30 degrees outside in the middle of the night and Gus needs to potty, I can just let him out and wait in the warm house.  Also when we are all here as a family that means 4 dogs who are hanging out with us on the side yard won’t be constantly trying to escape the front.

We priced this a long time ago and I think the guy quoted us a wrought iron fence which does line part of the front and side yard. It was an astronomical price so we let it go. Then while we were up here at New Year’s our neighbor had switched her picket fence to this….

this…

So we added one to match. It is much cheaper, but will do the trick.

It it not my best photography but now a large portion of the side yard is fenced in.

Then we decided to have the windows washed at our main home which led to more as it always does. The windows look amazing even for 40 year old windows. The upside besides having washed windows was we are now able to see what was really grime or broken seals. I think we need to replace 3 window panes,  but they are not in real visible locations so we can take our time on that.

 

Here is the living room before the screens were put back on, but even with the screens they look amazing. An interesting thing is all of the windows in the home used to have these pop in things that looked like window panes. I popped them out right after we moved in to clean one day and we decided we liked the look without them.

The other thing we did was have the house washed and the gutters cleaned out since the pines would no longer be clogging them up with straw. There were 2 places I was constantly digging pine straw out and the gutters had gotten so dirty.

This corner was always clogged with straw. It is going to be super nice not to be digging that out.

We also got the decks and stone cleaned. The downstairs was bad and I think Jeff just felt overwhelmed by it all. This was surprisingly not nearly as expensive as I thought it would be, so I will be handing his off again when it becomes more than I can manage. They did a great job and had it all done in 2 days. 

Jeff has been working hard on decluttering the garage and it is looking great. That is a more manageable task that he can handle in small spurts.

On to other random topics… I love orange and this room is so pretty.

Jeff says it looks like the Tennessee Volunteers, but I don’t agree:)

If you are wondering where it is -it is at our church. We teach an 8 week class for those that are new to faith or returning. It is a place to ask questions …we do have an amazing curriculum and Jeff is a fantastic leader. I am the hostess figure. We once did it twice a year, but we finally got another couple to do it one of the times it is offered and now we lead once and they lead once.  Anyway, you can see mine and Jeff’s spots for leading this group. 

The group has been just about everything you can imagine or maybe you can’t imagine. Years ago, I felt it was people who just had bad church experiences in their younger days, but not nearly as much the case these days. Many have ended up here with someone that liked or admired or were at the end of their rope and know nothing about faith in Jesus. Nothing. It always makes me humble and Jeff loves doing it. I have learned so much from it and in my prayer journal I have a list that I still pray for. One guy never showed up, but I had corresponded with him about it. A whole year later I get a text from him. I remembered because of the odder name. He was living in Pensacola. We had about an hour long texting conversation. You just never know. I gave him some advice at the end to seek out. All I can do is pray he chose to seek out the answers he needed. So yea. That is a biggie 8 weeks out of the year. 

I am fully ready for spring, but it is back to cool this week. My pansies are showing off, but I am impatient  for more. The spring like beginning of February made it too hard to accept cold, but I must.

So my last piece of randomness is my biscuits that I learned to make with Einkorn flour. It took a while but I mastered them. I basically used the same ingredients as always with biscuits but the Einkorn flour is much softer and can make for a stickier dough. I used more baking powder than I  do with regular flour. The reason for learning is that I had heard this flour was good for gluten intolerant people. I have loved them and done well eating them. Here is a link for the flour I am talking about. https://jovialfoods.com/einkorn/flour/

You will have to forgive all the typing mistakes as I did this entire post pecking out on my iPad. I didn’t bring my computer for our few days away.

Stay warm and let’s pool out energy for spring shall we?

Home Improvements

I didn't plan to be away this long. My days are never the same and this routine loving girl doesn't always like the "never know what my day is going to be like." However, I am very blessed and so I keep moving forward.

I haven't had nearly as much time to stitch on Little Valerie's name, but I do have the V and am over halfway on A, so I will share V. The linen is one I have used for Christmas ornaments and has a little lustre to it. I tried to match the letters' color to the wall. I came up with Classic Color Works Tennessee Red Clay as the floss color.

I have my plans for the stitch -just need time and not to make mistakes. I seem to be having trouble there, and honestly I think my mind is just cluttered.

Moving on... the pine trees are gone. We as a family struggled to see them go...probably for different reasons. For me, I hated to remove such majestic pines and the perch for so many amazing birds. I have seen an osprey and a heron eat a fish sitting on its branches. There has been an owl who likes to get at the tip top and hoot in the early evenings. I also knew they had to be very old, but.....

The first picture was taken at the end of January. We said it would be the last picture taken of the sunrise with the pines filtering the sunlight coming up.

That has been such a view etched in my mind for a very long time. We wondered what it would look like when they were gone. Now we know. 

The weather has been so warm that it has been mostly foggy in the mornings, so I have not been able to capture a pretty colorful sunrise like the one above. Praise Him for the warm start to February. I am loving it.

I will capture the beauty of the new view one morning, but Jeff and I have both decided it is ...

Not Better or Worse; just different. It is definitely a more open view. The water seems bigger like we have rounded that point up there, and it is the bay and not just down the bayou.

I will share more later. Lately, it has been warm, but foggy or cloudy for the most part. 

The view from the inside changed too. I took this one day to share the old look.

And then--- they are gone. I will share this one again too when I get a sunnier day. Now, this may change how warm it is going to be on this side of the house...

Once we made the decision to have them cut which WAS Really NOT OUR DECISION- (they are on the edge of the neighbor's property), we had to just not fret anymore. 

They had to actually make the decision, but we paid half when they agreed. They just wanted more sunshine on their dock. Here I was fretting over the loss of habitat for the birds and the loss of something that old. The largest on of the three had a diameter of 39 inches. I estimated it was between 80 and 100 years old. There had been so much erosion that they were no longer on land but standing in the water for three fourths of the year. A hurricane like Michael and they would destroy our house. The birds are still coming well except for the owl. I haven't heard him, but he wasn't there all the time anyway. They have adapted to the other trees. 

It was sad and yet enticing to watch them cut them down. 

Valerie is growing and here are some of the pictures of her and her brother.

She is two weeks here.

Valerie is 3 weeks old today and is more alert and looking around each day and growing.

Seeing how busy I am I decided to hire someone to wash my windows on the outside. I have always been able to keep up, but I got behind when Mom fell that summer and then selling her house. He comes today to give me  a quote, but I am pretty sure unless it is just astronomical I am deeming it worth my money and time and well being.

Enjoying this spring like weather and have plenty of things to keep Miles and me busy.