I Wonder If They've Told Her?

Dee was a rescue dog who was wandering the roads when she was found. My middle daughter and son-in-law adopted her when she chose them, literally, while they were looking at the pound.

We've been fast friends since first we met...

In February 2010, I spent a month with Dee waiting for the first baby to arrive. Dee and I were quite a team.

We had quite a time making sure her mom exercised.

And, tho Dee didn't get to go to the hospital with her Mom and Dad...

She was quite eager to see them and stood by me while waiting for them to come home!

She didn't know that while we were at the hospital, we were partying with this little guy...

But as soon as Dad set the baby carrier down, Dee was overjoyed. No one got to hold or care for the baby without Dee over-looking the job.

Three years have gone by so fast! I wonder if anyone has told her we're going to do it all over again early next year?

I'm sure she'll do another stand up job.  She's had lots of practice.

And this time, we'll all be wearing pink!

A New Idea And Old School Storage

Our youngest daughter cleans and chops all her vegetables and fruit when she gets home from the store. Then she uses plastic containers that stack to store them in the fridge. 

Wild Bill and I were impressed with her system because, due to being hidden away, we sometimes don't use our veggies before they spoil.

We vowed to adopt Jaimee's method of cleaning and chopping before storing. But, while Jaimee uses plastic containers, we stayed with our old-school canning jars.

I don't use the metal caps that come with the canning jars when you buy them at the store. The metal caps rust easily when you wash them. Instead I use white plastic caps and use the metal ones only when I'm giving away a jar of something like homemade soup, in case the lid doesn't come back. Yeah, I'm that cheap!

You can buy the white canning jar caps at any store. I buy mine at Walmart in the canning jar section. They come a dozen to a box for around $3.00, and I buy caps for both the wide-mouth and small-mouth jars.

If you need canning jars, remember to look for them at thrift shops and garage sales. You can usually find them for about 10 to 20 cents a piece. Be sure to check the jars for any chips or cracks before you buy.

I use an erasable marker (the kind for white boards) to show what the veggies are going to be used for. That way the tops of the celery, and "less desirable" parts of the onions and such, can be stored in a jar for the "soup pot" while the better part of the celery and onion can be stored separately for tuna sandwiches or to make a salad...

The canning jars and white caps can be put in the dishwasher to clean and will withstand the hottest of water temperatures.

If you make a mistake when you label the jar cap, just use a paper towel to wipe the erasable marker off.

To store the vegetable-filled jars in the fridge, I put them in the veggie/fruit drawers.

I've used jars for a long time, I just never thought of prepping all my vegetables when I got home before I stored them. Duh!

Since the mid-90's, I've stored leftovers in the fridge in the jars with caps. I've also used them to store crackers, cereal and other dry stuff in the cupboards.

By using the large jars (instead of covered bowls) to store leftover porkchops or such in the fridge, I'm able to easily see what's available. I try to put all the left-overs in one spot in the fridge, so they don't get over looked.

We also use the pint jars for drinking sweet tea and other drinks. I learned that ages ago from my dear friend Sally, who was from Oklahoma. Sally always kept a canning jar ready for me in case I dropped by after work for what she called her "Okie Tea".  Sally taught me that only a canning jar should be used for Okie Tea!

Hope you found this useful. We're ready for the week.

Interior Design Shop

Here's the little shop that did our wood floors recently. They just upgraded this old building on the square in downtown Sherman TX.

The shop owner is Darisa Sofey. She's the wife of the builder who built our house.  

As usually happens with spec houses like ours, the builder sticks to basics with few upgrades. That's why we're doing the upgrades now, after only 2 years.

I could live in Darisa's shop. Since that's not possible, I visit as often as possible. As money permits we plan to have her put lights in the breakfast room and kitchen. Here's a sample of the selection of lights in her shop.

The lights in the picture below are my two favorites. Love that drum-shade chandelier! And I like how the other is a match, but not too matchy-matchy.

The chandelier below is a larger version of the one on the left above. 

Here's a close up of the light in the middle of the picture above. It's pretty too...how to decide? Maybe it's a little too fancy for our home? hmmmm...

At the back of the shop, Darisa put in a model kitchen. Love the blue color of the paint.



Do you like that blue paint as much as I do?

I appreciate your stopping by and would love to hear your comments about which light you would pick for yourself.

I'm linking up to the following party:

http://youaretalkingtoomuch.com

Finally Wood Floors!

Well, the oak floors are finished, but we still have a few things to complete. Let me show you around:

I'm in love with the floors. I can't get myself to bring the old furniture in from the garage. Cover that lovely oak floor with rugs and furniture? Nope.

So far, we only returned two chairs to the great room temporarily. Here's my lazy boy in his Lazy Boy. 

I'm sure you can tell we ate Thanksgiving dinner with other family members. Hosting was out this year!

Remember how Wild Bill wanted to leave the floors bare, without stain?

That "before" and "after" should convince you that stain, like paint, is better.

One unexpected problem was the wood flooring added so much height to the floor that we had to special order shorter sweeps for the doors. In the meantime, we've classed it up with white towels to keep the cold, and bugs, out.

Here's a "new to me" vintage cabinet. I'm finally able to start decorating for the holidays.

YAY!!! It's been really bare around here lately.

Thanks for stopping by. I'm joining the following parties:

http://frenchcountrycottage.blogspot.com

http://www.commonground-do.com

Scraped Hardwood Floors 2

This is a picture of the floors before the guys attacked them again this morning. 

When you see how much work goes into hand-scraped hardwood floors, you realize the company  doing the floors deserves every penny they charge.

Last post I ended with the sanded bare floors:

Next came hand scraping one way, and then more scraping the other way. The guys really did do it by hand, on their knees, with tools.

We ended up with four large green trash bags of wood curl shavings for the yard, but that's a future post.

Here's a picture of the floors this morning, before they started on them again today. I actually thought they were finished when they left Saturday night, that's how innocent I was!

To get to this point by Saturday evening, after the hand scraping there was a sanding, then a coat of stain. Next two coats of sealer or something.

So you can see why I kinda thought they were through except for the trim...wrong!

Here's one of the "Mister Evils" back Monday morning to torture what looks to me like lovely floors.

I'm trusting the process because I'm sure they wouldn't be doing all this work if it wasn't necessary.

But it's so hard to see them start sanding again on what looks like perfectly lovely floors!

I hate to ask you to come back again, but I'll have to wait a few days to post the finished version of the floors.

Thanks for stopping by to share the story of our life so far.

Wood Floors

We've finally found floors we both love and can agree on.

Here's what they look like so far on day 3 of  a 5-day process:

We chose to go with hardwood (oak) with heavy hand scraping and a medium dark stain. Last Monday the wood guys brought all the wood and left it in the house so it could get acclimated to the house.

This is the before picture of the ugly stained concrete floors that came with the house:

 

We are so happy with how much bigger the rooms look with the bare wood so far.

Wild Bill would love to just clear coat and seal them and leave the wood showing.

hmmm...You know that isn't what we're doing, right?

Here's a sample of the scraping the wood guys are doing to distress the floors. The stain is the same on both samples, chestnut I think they said:

The left side is lightly hand scraped, the right side is heavier. I'm sure the guys were  disappointed when we chose the heavy scraping on the right! It's twice as much work and they (4 of them) have been down on their knees all afternoon.

This is the stain on the heavy scraping after it had a chance to dry. I can't wait till it's all scraped, stained and sealed.

I hope you'll come back and take a look at the finished floor on Monday when it's done.

I'm joining the party over at the following:

http://frenchcountrycottage.blogspot.com