Weekend Report

There's been a lot going on around my house.  Here's a few pictures of what we were up to in the last few days.

We have a large room in our basement that is used for storage.  It's been collecting all sorts of things, so Bob and I started cleaning it out.  All these shelves were filled when we started.  We were brutal with ourselves on what we really needed to keep.  Lots of stuff has been thrown, lots was donated to the charity store in town.  We're not done in that room, but have accomplished a lot!

You may remember us working on a spare room in our basement, that had an egress window installed late last summer.  Bob made a headboard for the bed, the room has been painted, new linens have arrived, and last week we finally got the new curtains and put them up.  It feels good to have that done.

On Friday, I had lunch with these ladies I used to work with at the skilled nursing facility.  3 of them are nurses that I worked with frequently and it was very good to see them again!

When I came home, I did some work in the house, taking down the winter decor and putting out some Spring things.  Tulips are always a spot of cheer!

Bob's been hard at work in his shop.  He's building new kitchen cabinets for Heather and Andrew.  They came over Friday night to check the progress.  These are for phase one, the upper cabinets over their sink.  Once they are installed, he'll start on the lower cabinets.

Here's Connor, looking cute even with a little scrape on his nose!

Last, but not least - it's starting to look like Spring!  The snow is nearly melted and the sky was blue! It was still only 31 degrees, but the sun was shining.  Beautiful!  And this week we are supposed to reach the upper 50's!  
God's given us lots of things to be thankful for.

Friday Funny

 

Cooking Thursday

Here's a recipe I made last week for homemade granola bars.  They are made with ingredients that aren't processed so are much healthier than the packaged granola bars.  And they are really good!  Bob tends to be a little fussy and is suspicious of "healthy" foods, but he pronounced these "very good"!  On top of that, they are so easy to throw together.  Give them a try, I'm sure you will like them too.

Granola Bars

1 cup natural peanut butter
2/3 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 1/2 cups whole rolled oats
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips, or chopped dark chocolate
3 tablespoons sunflower seed kernels

Line 8x8 pan with parchment paper.
In large bowl, stir together peanut butter, honey, vanilla and sea salt until smooth.
Stir in rolled oats, chocolate and sunflower kernels.
Stir until combined and press into pan. Use another piece of parchment paper to press mix and flatten into pan.
Chill for at least one hour, then cut into bars.
Store bars in frig. Bars also freeze well.

Wordless Wednesday

 

A day in my life - March

Happy March!  I'm happy to have it here and am ready to be closer to Spring.  :)
As usual, I'm sharing how I spent the first day of the month.

The morning started by going downstairs for a walk on the treadmill.

Then I had yogurt and fruit for breakfast and spent some time in my reading through the Bible in a year Bible, which I've been really enjoying.

Here's how things were looking outside my window.  It was a cold day, 22 degrees outside but the sun was shining!

I cooked some eggs for bun spread I was going to be making.  I've been doing this recently in the air fryer.  It's quick and easy and the eggs always peel so nicely.

After the eggs were done, I started chopping veggies to make white chicken chili. Once the veggies were chopped and sauteed, they went in the crock pot with the other ingredients. On Sunday, I started it before we went to church and when we came home, it was all ready for us.

Next up was making a deviled ham spread that used the eggs I cooked earlier.  It goes on buns and they are broiled open face for a quick meal.

After that I tried something new.  I had bought a bunch of parsley for chicken noodle soup I made earlier in the week.  I saw something that said you could use your air fryer to dry herbs, so I thought I'd try it instead of letting them spoil.  This is how they looked after putting them in the air fryer for about 3 minutes at 160 degrees.

Once they cooled, I removed the stems and was left with this nice dried parsley!  I'll do more of this in the summer when I grow herbs.

I have to show you this pretty towel I was enjoying as I worked in the kitchen.  It has the words of the old hymn - When Peace like a River, on it.  My friend Dianna from Joyful in His Presence sent it to me last week!  What a sweet surprise!

Once the cooking was done, I cleaned up the kitchen and we had a little lunch.

After lunch we drove to church and on the way, we saw these trees tapped for sap for making maple syrup.  However, with the temperatures we're having the sap was frozen.

The reason we were at church was to print off a newsletter/magazine I put out every 2 months.  It has information and pictures about things that have happened, a column by the pastor, news about people from our church, upcoming events and things like that.  Bob came along to help and was standing here waiting for them to print out so we could get them put into the members church mailboxes.

Here's a stack of some of them, ready to be put out.

When we got back home, we had a few quiet hours, then went back out and met some friends for supper at a Mexican restaurant.  We had a yummy supper and a good time!

The rest of the evening was quiet, lighting a candle and watching a British Crime show.  It was a good start to the month!

Braiding Jump Ropes

I want to show you something I helped with last week, that I thought was pretty cool.
Our church does a lot with the Christmas Boxes for Samaritans purse. These are shoe boxes packed as full as possible with little gifts for kids overseas.  We have people that work on little projects throughout the year so when it's time to pack the boxes, we have some fun things to put in them.
Last week we made jump ropes!

Here's some of the group in the workroom at our church.

A thrift store near us saves t-shirts that they can't sell because they are stained or torn.  These guys were cutting strips of fabric off them.

The fabric strips are gathered into like colors.  It takes 12 strips of fabric to make one jump rope.  One person was taking the strips and putting them into bags; 3 colors and each color had 4 strips to equal the 12 strips needed.

Here they are stretching the strips and then braiding them.

A finished jump rope!  They are longer than this one looks, I had some bunched up in my hand.

Last, they are folded tightly and tied with a cute little tag that shows this is a jump rope.

Isn't this a great way to use old t-shirts that otherwise would be thrown away?  On this day we worked for 2 hours and finished 47 jump ropes and have 60 all set to be braided.

Friday Funny

 

Cooking Thursday

The recipe I'm sharing with you today is one I got from a friend I worked with.  She took it to work, and after that one time, every time we had a potluck, she was asked to bring this.
It's a dip that's filled with good things like cream cheese, bacon, ranch seasoning...  How could you go wrong?

Million Dollar Crack Dip

8 ounces cream cheese
1 cup sour cream
1 ounce package ranch seasoning
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
3 green onions, diced
1/8th teaspoon seasoned salt
1/2 cup bacon bits

Cream together and chill.  Serve with crackers.

Wordless Wednesday

 A hydrangea left from the summer, covered in some winter attire.

Cassie and Connor come over

Friday was Heather and Andrew's 10th anniversary! We watched the kids while they went out for supper.

Connor has been scared lately, even of us, but he started out ok.

We had pizza for supper which made Cassie happy.

She was also excited about playing with the Lego's

But Connor decided he wasn't too happy with us.  Poor little guy!
And worse than that - Andew wasn't feeling the best so they weren't gone long.
Hopefully the next time they come over, everyone feels better!

Retirement Dinner

You probably remember I retired in November.  The kids wanted to do something like a dinner but we decided to wait until after the holidays because it's just so busy for everyone. We had a date set in January but then one of those winter storms hit and everything was closed, so it was postponed.
We had it this week and had such a nice time!

Our girls and their families were there and so were my sisters, their husbands and my brother.  We missed Andy and Nikki but it would be a long drive from KY!  We had our own room at the restaurant which was very nice.

There was a nice assortment of food, pizza, bread sticks, chicken, veggies...

Our granddaughters were all enjoying the food.

Cassie is always happy to see her cousins

Connor wasn't too sure about all the people as he's at that age where he's scared of people,  but he was happy with his Dad.

Laura and Aaron, Alaina and Ruby on the left, Heather and Andrew, Cassie and Connor on the right.
It may have taken a while to do this but we sure enjoyed it!

Friday Funny

 

Cooking Thursday

Here's a new recipe I tried recently.  We often have a light supper on Sunday night; buns or sandwiches.  This was an easy one to put together and was tasty!

Turkey Bacon Ranch Sliders

1 package potato rolls (12-16)
1/2 pound thinly sliced turkey
8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
12 slices colby jack cheese
1/3 cup ranch dressing
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon dried garlic
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
2 tablespoons grated parmesan

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Slice open the rolls.  Place the bottoms in a 9x13 pan, set tops aside.
Melt butter and stir in the garlic and onion powder. Brush the bottoms of the rolls with about 1/3 of the butter mixture.
Lay 6 slices of cheese over the rolls in pan, then arrange turkey and the bacon pieces over top.
Drizzle with ranch dressing, then place remaining cheese over top.
Brush another 1/3 of butter mix over the cheese.
Place tops of rolls over top and then cut through turkey and cheese to separate rolls.
Brush remaining butter mix over tops, then sprinkle parmesan cheese over all.
Cover loosely with foil, place in oven for 20 minutes, then remove foil and bake another 10 minutes until golden.

Wordless Wednesday

 I am ready for Spring!

Winter, snowmen, fun times!

It's been a long winter for us, seems like a week doesn't go by that we don't have winter storm warnings.  Some are blown out of proportion, but then sometimes they turn out worse than expected.
Here's a cute meme I've been seeing from friends.

There are things to enjoy about winter though.  It can be so beautiful!  And then there are fun things like sledding and snowmen.
When we dropped the girls off on Saturday, they wanted us to see their snowmen.

It's hard to really see them, because they were snowed on so their features aren't very visible.  However, they said this is Mr and Mrs Snowman, and Mrs Snowman is pregnant.  You can see she has a larger stomach!  They said they next time they make snowmen, or snow people, there will be a baby snowperson out there too.  :)

Near their house is this house which builds a huge snowman every winter. The sign next to him says "Receive Jesus and have eternal life".

Those things make me smile in the middle of winter!

On another note, I'll be missing from your blogs today, as I have to have a colonoscopy and an endoscopy Tuesday morning.  Nothing serious, just a check but it will probably have me away from my computer for most of the day.