Let's have coffee

Hey, c'mon in! How nice to see you! I'm so glad you're here. Of course, I always love it when a friend stops by my house for coffee in the morning! I just made a fresh pot, so let's go in the kitchen... Sit down, sit down... Hope you don't mind strong coffee because that's the way I make it! What do you take in yours? Milk? Hmmm.. I have Half & Half or Cream, but the only milk I have is no-fat made from powdered milk -- is that OK? Jeff and I use so little milk that I don't like to buy it anymore because I just end up throwing it away. So every few days I just make 2 cups of milk from powdered milk, in case he wants a late night bowl of cereal. Milk is just too expensive to throw it away! Look at this -- I got a hand-written letter from my sister Sarah yesterday. I just love the fact that she still hand writes letters and isn't dependent on email! She's fine. She wrote the letter during her lunch hour at work... I do feel a little bad for her. She and her husband work SO hard and they are loving, giving parents who would do anything for their kids. Unfortunately, those kids are adults now and take advantage of Sarah's big heart. They all still live at home, move their friends in and out of the house like it's a hotel, bring pets in like it's an animal shelter, and expect Sarah and her husband to foot the bill. But Sarah's a smart girl. She'll get tired of being taken advantage of eventually and set some boundaries and give 'em all the boot. The one thing about adult kids is that if you make their home life too easy, they'll never stand on their own or take care of themselves. I've been there! It's a tough thing to do, but I have faith Sarah will see the light and give 'em all a deadline to move out. I can hear her frustration in her letters already. Isn't this weather gorgeous? Don't you just love the Fall? I should spend at least part of the day outside moving around some perennials, especially down in that front garden where the little wishing well is. Want to hear something funny? Yesterday Brayden and I went outside to see Jeff off to work, and my next-door-neighbor and his family were all standing in front of my little garden taking pictures! LOL! They are from Marakesh and it was a big holiday for them, so they were taking photos of everyone all dressed up. I said, "You're taking photos of my weeds??" LOL But his wife said, "Your garden is so beautiful." Since their house looks over that little garden, I was happy they thought so! I'm sure my other neighbor, the gardener, thinks I'm just plain lazy when she sees all the weeds out there! Brayden? He's doing great. I babysat for him yesterday. I love watching his personality develop. He's SO funny. That child has an amazing sense of humor AND amazing perseverance and he's really observant of things going on around him. Yesterday he and I were sitting down on "the dock" (that's the little deck with the two bench seats down by the creek. We call it "the dock" because a friend of ours in Maine has a 40+ foot sailboat and we told him we built a dock so he could sail over for a visit!) and Brayden collected rocks to throw in the water -- a favorite pasttime. He picked up some very small pebbles, and held them in his hand and said, "Umma, here's some Motrin. I'm going to take my medicine and then sit down for just a few minutes and my back will feel all better." (cough) OK, guess I need to stop complaining about my back problems around him! LOL Later we were in the house and I was cleaning up the kitchen. Brayden had opened up the toy box (that's the coffee table that has storage in it) and gotten out a gyroscope I had in there. Not a little kid gyroscope, but a vintage metal gyroscope that you have to thread a string through a very narrow hole, hold onto the string and wind the string around the post of the gyroscope very carefully. It's tricky to do at best. It got very quiet in the family room, so I looked in to check on him, and he was sitting on the floor, very focused on that gyroscope. I didn't bother him. I looked in again a few minutes later -- same scenario. A few minutes later, I walked in and he proudly held up the gyroscope and there it was -- perfectly wound up! I can't tell you how impressed I was! He wasn't coordinated enough to hold the gyroscope and pull the string, so I did it for him. And he rewound that string two more times! Two years old with that kind of perserverance? I was really proud of him and told him so. I have often told him, when he's trying something new and having difficulty, to "try, try again.." and maybe, just maybe, he was listening :) Jeff's doing good, thanks for asking. This is his "Hell Week" at work, so he's working from 7am to at least midnight, grabbing a few hours sleep and going right back for more. Thankfully, he only works these kind of hours 4 times a year and it's all part of being in a major corporation's top accounting department. I consider it a bit of a mini-vacation for me, since I don't have to cook dinner AND I get to watch whatever I want on TV at night! LOL Last night I sat and worked on some hand embroidery and watched America's Top Model. The embroidery is for a "Twelve Days of Christmas" quilt I have in my head. I like having some kind of hand work to do while watching TV. Doesn't feel like such a waste of time that way! I know! Do you just love the footstool?! That's an old stool from a shoe store -- the kind you used to put your feet on so the sales person could measure your foot! I know, I know - those days are sure gone, aren't they? I see you looking at Granny. Jeff gave her to me for Christmas a few years ago and I just love her. She's called a "smoker". If you put a little cone of incense under her chair, smoke comes out of her mouth! I just love her. I'd really like to collect them. Guess I should check Ebay more. Oh? You have to get going so soon? Well, I've just talked your ear off, haven't I?! I'm really glad you stopped by -- and hope you'll do it again soon! Let me walk you out to your car -- and I'll get the trashcans at the end of the driveway and put them in the garage while I'm out there. Maybe getting outside will encourage me to get out and do some of that weeding I was talking about! Bye bye now! You take care! C'mon back anytime! I just love having company for coffee!

Cozy up your house for Fall and Winter

Cooler temps have arrived in the greater Cincinnati area, with low 70's and mid to high 60's forecast for the week. While drinking my coffee this morning, I was catching up on magazine reading, and saw all the wonderful, colorful Fall decoration ideas, and realized it's time to prepare our home for Fall, Winter and, amazingly enough, Christmas. I'd love to tell you all my insightful decorator-esque ideas about changing my house from Summer to Fall, but I'm neither that talented nor that rich. I do, however, have a few things I do each year to "cozy up" the house a bit. We have cream-colored leather furniture in our family room. (We have no kids or dogs!) These get rich dark red fitted slipcovers for the colder months. Is there anything more unfriendly in the winter than sitting on cold leather?! Light colored pillow covers are switched over to pillow covers in reds and golds. I have a piece of artwork over my mantel that is of a meadow, in Spring/Summer colors of orange, yellow, light greens. This gets moved to the basement, and eventually replaced with a quilt with a wreath motif. Until then I'll just fill in the mantel with a collection of candle holders and cream-colored candles. Though we don't use it often, I will clean our fireplace and put in some (real) logs and pine cones. The pine cones add a nice subtle scent to the room, and prepare your senses for the scents of the holidays! In our bedroom, I've dug out the cotton duvet cover to wash today and hang outside to dry. We have a gorgeous wool blanket that I put in the duvet cover, which will keep us snug throughout the winter, despite the fact that no matter how cold it is outside, we sleep with a fan in our window! I have a black wrought-iron candle-lier over the dining room table, and I have some pretty silk Fall leaves to entwine in the arms of the light. I'll add a Fall colored table cloth on top of the current cream-colored lace cloth. In the kitchen I simply add some Fall (pumpkin, leaves) motif dishtowels to hang on the handle of the stove, and some stoneware pumpkins to the shelves high over the kitchen windows in the Breakfast Nook. We have trees in our backyard that will soon develop some lovely red berries, and this year I plan on cutting some to place in a big stoneware pitcher on my kitchen table. Lastly, I will go to the local garden store this week and pick up two or three pots of mums for the front porch, and in mid-October add a few pumpkins as well. (These pumpkins will NOT be cut, as I will later use them to make pumpkin puree for the freezer!) I'm not a hot weather person, having been born and brought up in New England, so I always look forward to this time of year and the cooler (and colder) weather. I have visions of soups and stews and homemade pumpkin breads dancing in my head, Christmas gift lists starting to take form, and I'm ready to snuggle up with Jeff to get through the upcoming cold winter nights!