Friday, June 30, 2017

Five-On-Friday: June Road Trip!



June is almost gone with July just a day away! I thought I'd do a Five-On-Friday of things I saw in June to close out this month. 

I'm joining Willy Nilly Friday at Around Roanoke and the F.A.S.T.  blog for Five-On-Friday.  I hope you'll stop by too.

1.  CarPie Diem - Seize The Pie!
In May, I flew to California to spend a couple of weeks with my mom to help pack up her house for her move to a house on my brother's property. It's something she decided to do, as she's getting older, and she'll have lots of people around in her new home.

Mom and I visited the Black Bear Cafe in town a couple of times when we needed a break from packing. The Black Bear had a great selection of pies, which are made in small individual sizes. 

I got a kick out of the sign near their cash register...Seize The Pie indeed!

2.  Snow In The Sierras - Heat In The Desert.

Wild Bill drove all the way out from Texas, all alone, to pick me up in my home town, Sonoma, a little north of San Francisco.  

We made our return ride into a road trip, driving over the Sierras, past Donner Lake, and into the Lake Tahoe area. 
This was mid-June and the snow was still deep on the mountain tops!
After we passed the Tahoe area, we turned south and headed down the east side of the Sierras. Oh My...this was some beautiful country scenery!


We ended up just outside of the east side of Yosemite National Park, in an area we both had never been. That's always our road trip goal...see something we haven't seen before!
Our GPS kept telling us the smaller roads heading east were closed! It seemed we would never find a way to get out of that back woods area. Finally, we found a road open and headed towards the desert and Las Vegas, leaving all the snow behind.

3.  A Faux Pas Along The Way.

After 2 days in the snow and desert, we stopped in Albuquerque for a quick family visit. The hotel parking lot was on quite a slope, and our suitcases were in the back of the truck. 

I was rolling my suitcase at the front of the truck when I heard Wild Bill yelling some unmentionable words...$@&*%! ...S.O.B!  &@*!  

I turned to see his wheeled suitcase (the 4 wheels it has stand straight up and stay that way) with his backpack full of electronics attached on top...rolling down the hill with Wild Bill in hot pursuit, chasing it toward the busy street! 

I almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard! Of course I had to take a picture. It didn't matter that he was so grumpy...I knew he'd get over it!

4. Family Time.

Here's youngest daughter, her daughter Lily, and me in the backseat of our pick-up. With his mood improved, Wild Bill (AKA Grampy when the grandkids are around) was chauffeuring us in the "Driving Miss Daisy" style as Lily had requested.
We were doing a "Lily's Day Out" while her dad was at work and little brother was at school. We three girls got our nails done while Wild Bill went to the (much needed) car wash.
Lily's nails might look mild here, but they were actually sparkly!
Here's little brother Henry at dinner, sitting by Grampy. Wild Bill is always the "fun one" when the grandkids are around and he doesn't have suitcases to chase!
I didn't get a picture of our daughter's family all together, but a few days later she text one of their trip to an Isotope's game.

5. Home Again, Home Again...At Last!

We arrived home to find our pots of flowers, and Wild Bill's beloved fig tree, had been well taken care of by our fabulous across-the-street-neighbor Melanie! 
There's nothing like having neighbors you can count on when something unexpected comes up. A special thanks to Melanie who is just one of those special people!


It's fun to go visit and help out when needed, but at the end of it all, it always feels good to be home.



Thanks for dropping by!





Thursday, June 29, 2017

Adorable Little Free Pantry



In my last post, I showed you the Little Free Library on a street in the small downtown area of McKinney Texas. 

Right down the street there's also a Little Free Pantry...

When I say small, I really mean small as you can see from these photos. It's just a large cabinet with simple directions...

Take What You Need - Leave What You Can


The glass doors of the pantry have further instructions. The left door says it in English: 


To best serve the need, please take only 5 items.

The right door repeats the instructions in Spanish:


The next trip we make to McKinney, I plan to take some of our extras, both books and food, to help stock the little pantry and the little library. 

It's such a worthy cause, especially because it's "People to People" without any supervision and lengthy rules!



I also plan to stop in the two shops that the Little Free Library and Little Free Pantry sit in front of, and I'll ask how the pantry and the library came to be. 

There's a story there, of that much I'm sure...a story of giving and community.



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Wednesday, June 28, 2017

The Little Free Book Library



Now I have one more reason to love the little Texas town of McKinney. This adorable little Free Book Library...
The colors are happy and the base container holding the little library is perfectly imperfect. Don't you agree?
This little library is in front of two buildings. One is brightly colored in mustard yellow, terra cotta, and black and white stripes. The other is a restaurant called Hugs. 


I plan to do some investigating to find out how this little library came about!

Right now though, let's take a look inside and see what's available. 

Books on the top row and mostly magazines on the bottom... 
I've read about these little personal libraries in the past few years, but this is the first one I've actually seen.

The little library is just so darn cute! I may have to make one of my own...how about you? 



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Sunday, June 25, 2017

More About Hydrangeas



These are the blooms from my hydrangea that lived through the summer of 2014. The blooms started out dark blue on that plant too, but then turned a shade of pink. 
I've recently gotten a lot of great advice about how to turn hydrangeas blue or pink using products from garden shops meant specifically for that purpose. 
The advice also included putting rusty nails in the dirt, and even coffee grounds were suggested as an additive...though I'm still not sure which color either of those will turn the plant!
These blooms in the photos below were cut from our hydrangea plant bush over a week ago. That's another thing I've learned, it seems everyone refers to the hydrangea as a bush, not a plant.

Anyway, I wasn't sure how to dry them out when I cut them. I did remember hearing if you want to dry them, you should remove the leaves and put them in water. Done! Not to confuse things, but someone mentioned that you can hang them in a dark closet if you prefer.
Originally the flowers were even a darker blue than the ones in this picture below from the blog, Redeem Your Ground (RYG). 
Once planted in a new pot, our hydrandea blooms got lighter and lighter until they were almost a pale green as you can see below... 
Strange thing though, the blooms seem to be gaining their blue coloring back while they've been sitting in water inside the house! See the blue in the photo here? Even Wild Bill mentioned it to me.
Oops, ignore the ladder in that photo! We've got more chores going on here due to the good ole "Fixin' To Do" list. 

And, while I'm confessing...Don't even bother asking why the salt and pepper holder is mixed in with the blooms because I've got no answer for that.
Yesterday, I found a post about drying hydrangeas on Redeem Your Ground and was happy to learn I was headed in the right direction. 

RYG suggested putting them way up, out of the way, and leaving them alone while the water evaporates... and, once the hydrangeas are dried out, spray them with hairspray! 

Crazy, right? You can read RYG's drying hydrangeas post HERE

Meanwhile, I'll be like a mad scientist trying to pound rusty nails in the coffee-saturated soil and mixing up a concoction of acids and/or alkaline to turn my hydrangea blooms pink or blue.


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Wednesday, June 21, 2017

A Visit To Cabin & Cottage's Shop




While in Albuquerque earlier this month visiting youngest daughter and family, I stopped at the vintage shop, Je L'Adore, where Jacqueline of Cabin & Cottage blog has a booth.
You could spend a fortune while there! So many nice things to see and buy. I made two purchases while at the shop: a small linen pillow and a vintage watering can. 
Jacqueline often shows linens on her blog and gives great advice on how to clean and restore vintage linens. 

Her shop did not disappoint! She carries a variety of vintage linens, all in perfect condition, and the displays are lovely.
I borrowed two photos of Jacqueline's booth (above and below) from her blog because, frankly, I was too busy looking around the shop to take many pictures!
Here's the little white pillow I bought all settled in to it's new home on our love seat. I like to add a lot of white around the house because it brightens up our neutral spaces.
The other purchase, the vintage watering can, is all banged and beaten up to perfection. I forgot to get a close-up before I started decorating the top of our TV cabinet with it. 
If you're interested in restoring vintage linens and want to learn how to clean them and remove stains, stop by Jacquelin's blog Cabin & Cottage and look around.

Even if you're like me and don't have vintage linens to restore, you can drop by and look at all the pretty things Jacqueline shares with her readers. She always has something going on!



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Tuesday, June 20, 2017

The Answer Is Yes!



If you were kind enough to read my last "Woe Is Me" post, and if you are wondering did the cabinet show up today...the answer is yes!
We would not have been upset had they cancelled today because it rained all night long and only ended about 6:30 a.m. 
The installers were scheduled to come at 8 a.m.  They showed up right on time to our surprise. 

It stayed overcast all day, which made picture taking hard, but kept it cool in the house. We had to keep the door wide open all day since lots of sawing and measuring went on outside, and the guys had to continually go in and out.

Is the cabinet what I was expecting after giving the cabinet shop lots and lots of magazine pictures and descriptive info? 

Well not exactly...you can see the pictures I gave the shop to work from in my original post HERE.

But, we can fix anything by adding lots and lots of trim on the china cabinet side here. 

And on the entryway side below, we need to add a shelf and a board running across for hooks to hang coats.  Somehow all that got overlooked by the shop despite photos and written plans...

Mainly I'm glad to finally have a wall between the glass windows on the front door and the rest of the living area. 
The months and months of waiting for the shop to get it done don't seem to matter to me anymore. I am a happy girl old lady!  


The cabinet is bare wood at this point, and very sturdy and well built. It's built with paint-grade poplar as I prefer painted cabinets and woodwork, and it's cheaper than stain-grade if you're painting it anyway.  
A creamy white paint would be my choice, but we're choosing to wait a while before prepping and painting it.  The walls in both rooms will be painted first, and then we'll chose a trim color based on what looks best with the new wall colors.

In the mean time, we'll be adding more trim that will make it more vintage looking and not so modern looking.  

The 12 foot ceilings make everything look short, but this bench is actually shorter than I like. At the top of our "Fixin' To Do" list is building a platform for the bench to sit on, which will create a shelf to hold our shoes and boots underneath.

I'm joining the party over at A Delightsome Life for Home And Garden Thursday and The Dedicated House for Make it Pretty Monday. Hope you'll stop by and join in.


Thanks for dropping by!