Yeah for 3 day Weekends

My weekend started with staying home from work Friday so the items in my home that needed repair or touch up could be done. 

I awoke at 5:30 AM to make some preserves - peach and cherry.  It was perfect timing.  As I was taking the jars out of the canner,  a wonderful crew of 2 men came from the home manufacturer to work on the inside.  There were tools all over three rooms of the house, but they did a fantastic job.  Everything looks great now.

Friday evening, Cobii came to spend the night with me.  We had to have a "hair do" time Saturday morning.  She always insist on putting ALL her pretties in her hair.  Glad we do not have too many!  We had fun playing, reading, and making good things to eat.  We always take a nice walk also.

Nap time is nice and quiet!

Sunday I started working in the yard to get it in somewhat decent looking state.  First I traded in my boots for a cooler pair of shoes that were hand me downs I wore to cleanup at the very beginning of cleanup after

the fire.

Have also decided it must be time for a new pair of gloves!

I started with a spot just off to the right of the porch, and it looked like this.

After some weed pulling, I found some things that would never never grow in my yard or fell out of some of my houseplants that did not survive the fire.

I have never had petunias in my garden, only store bought ones in flower pots, and not this color either.

portulaccas or flowering moss, has never been able to grow in my yard.  There were some in a hanging basket that burned.  The basket was in this area, and now they are ALL over.

Inch plant which is an indoor plant, had grown out of a pot in the yard, and just took over.  Hard to see them, but they will fill a flower pot almost overnight and make a hanging basket look great - like a waterfall.

This sassafrass tree just popped up out of nowhere.  That is OK, it will replace one of the trees I lost, AND ants do not like them!!

This will soon become........

This!

It had begun to get too hot for me, and I had probably done more than I am suppose to do, so this is where I left off.  Did end up with a pile of cuttings.  What green is left is what I found growing that is a keeper.  Little by little it will get done.

That was my weekend!  I also got all my laundry, vacuuming and mopping done.  Stayed home for 3 days.  Looking forward to the next 3 day weekend!

Whoo Hoo! I am back!

After being so very busy these last few months, I figured it was about time to do some blog catching up. Have read a bunch, no am going to post, but not a bunch. Some events (not in order by date by no means) that have taken place over these past few months are:

There was a graduation..... Carrie earned 3 Associates, 2 Diplomas, and 1 Certificate in Business Management and Entrepeneurship.

Clean up continued on the homefront with much help from everyone - age made no difference.

There was a miracle of a handful of Cobii's cousins from NY that visited the Rimmer household for about 5 weeks. Such a wonderful handful! They are now back in NY and nearly 7 months old.

Somehow I managed to sneak in a quick trip to Tenessee along with Cobii.

Back to reality. The moving in the new home took place, and I had a chauffer to help!

Until power was restored on the homefront, the hard work of carrying water to save my plants paid off.

Now that life has somewhat gotten back to a normal routine, I may be able to keep up with the blog a little more often. Just cannot wait until I get a new camera. Have used my cell phone and borrowed one from work, but it is NOT my SONY!

Finally, everything has been moved, and the place is very comfy as you can see.

Construction

The roof is complete! Picture does not really show much, but all sides look like this, just the other side is higher. I have to half way to Ma's to get a picture of the roof itself, one day maybe.

This Saturrday was quite productive for me. Besides doing all my laundry, house cleaning, etc., I replaced two screens, and made a shelf in one of my kitchen cupboards. Here is the before picture.Near the end of the project, the electric drill just DIED! It has been around this house since day one, so guess we had gotten our money's worth out of it. Anyway, this is what I ended up finishing the project with. Da Da Dahhhh!

It worked just perfectly also!! New shelf loaded up with the pots and pans! Now to make a door.

Now I am going outside to pick up some sticks, etc. since all I picked up before has been burned. Next time!

Day in my yard

This is before I started to rake all the leaves that have fallen through the winter. The area where the gazing ball is where Cobii will have her play area.

Got my "outdoor kitchen" cleaned up and lunch is nearly ready on the cooker. Did not take photos of food as I forgot!

One of various positions to get into during some frisbee throwing.

This little critter had crawled in the cover while it was off the grill. He seemed content.

The beginning of cleaning up. The fire was kept burning from 10 AM to 8 PM, and I got ALOT of yard waste burned.

Some of the Spring that has appeared. More and more colors are appearing each day. It is beginning to look and feel like Spring.

Indoor day

Today was definitely an inside day. The weather has been quite chilly, so Cobii, Uncle LeRoy, Aunt Kitty Kat and myself stayed inside. Polly pockets was the main objective for the day. Of course, that was Cobii's choice. Aunt Kitty Kat brought Cobii two new dresses, one of which she is wearing in these pictures. Before Cobii's rest time, I read her a bunch of books. That is her favorite thing to do when she is running out of steam.

I have accomplished some housework, laundry, and got some stuff put into the storage area. This evening my bedroom will get some more weeding out done. I got three new pairs of slacks for work, so that means some slacks need to come out of the closet. I have been doing a bunch of spring cleaning in the winter. Then when spring finally gets here, I can work outside.

This will be a short update since that is about all there is to tell. Everything else is just the same old stuff.

Wintery Weather

Time has gotten away from me again, but I am here to catch up. I got a new cook stove, and I really do not like it as much as my old one. The flame does not adjust like I am use to, the top of the stove just has no room for my size cookware, but could not get one that did without spending half a life savings.


Below is the small cooktop!


But I can stack up my dinner! This is the most wonderful steamer pot I have ever used. There was potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage, broccoli, and corn on the cob all cooked on one burner. It was delicious.

Then Cobii and I had to bake a cake to see how the over worked. Can you guess what her job was? It was to clean the dishes!


As the nation knows, every state in the union except Hawaii had snow! It was very pretty, but nearly gone now. Still have lots of spots on the ground, but trees and overhead lines are clear now. This picture is Craig Road taken from in front of my Mother-in-laws house.

Of course, there had to be a snow ball fight! I wanted to make a snowman, but she did not. Since it was such a wet snow and did not need for Cobii to soak through for the length of time

it would take to make one, we did not. Had lots of fun still.

Must have played a little too hard. This was taken less than 15 minutes from getting back in the house from the wintery white.

Below is my new roof in progress. It looks like it is suspended in the air, but really is not. When the weather is either not raining or snowing, the sides will get closed in and I can have my tarps back.

Cannot see much of the roof, but my front yard looked nice all white. Because of the slant of the roof, it doesn't show much from the front, and is serving its purpose just fine.

Happy Valentines Day to All!

Oliver has moved to the back of my couch since I moved it by the window. A good place to sun himself and "keep watch" over the yard.

Happy Valentines Day to All! Now let me see how dial up will post this! Should be interesting.

Where did January go?

Time is just flying by so fast! This past few (oh oh 6 weeks) has been busier than usual, but I still believe that Cobii is what is taking a lot of my time I use to have for cleaning, sewing, scrapbooking, etc., but what a nicer joy and we have lots of fun. We have spent a few hours each weekend for the past 3 weeks making valentines for her to take to all her friends and family. We used a template that we copied on the printer, and one of her jobs was to push the "print" button. I cut them out, folded, and taped them together. She put stickers on them, of course they are every which way, but that what makes it her thing. We will fill them with candy, a kind Cobii can have, she will punch a hole with a paper punch, she will cut ribbon pieces, and I will tie them shut. We will have pictures. Augusta now has a Hobby Lobby!!!!! Of course, that is where Cobii and I went to get our valentine supplies.

All the family is doing quite well. All three of my children have above 3.5 GPA at school. They are enjoying school. Also, Cobii is now in school and really enjoying it. Tuesday the school took them to the futurity at the arena a couple blocks from where I work. The futurity is like the world series of barrell racing and cattle cutting. They do not butcher them, they separate one from a herd of about 24 and keep it away for 3 minutes. Of course, all the vendors are there with nothing but horse everything. The $6,000.00 saddle was very pretty.

I have worked some in my yard since we had so many wind storms. Branches all over the place, now for a nice evening for a campfire to get rid of it all.

My biggest thing is that Melissa has moved to Atlanta to be closer to her doctors. She is living with her brother and his girlfriend. She really likes her room there and is more at ease with life there. Of course, everyone here misses the fact that she can just "pop in" now and then.

Construction at my house is coming along quite nicely. The roof has all the tin on the top and now the sides will start getting closed in Monday. Is great, but now cannot hear the rain as much, but I can live with that. It is nice to hear rain on the roof though. I also got a new gas cook stove. The old one was bought used 21 years ago, and it had seen better days, although it was a much nicer stove. A gas burner is a gas burner, but it is hard to find burners far enough apart to put large pots and pans on, without spending thousands of dollars. Since my family is not as large as in the years past, I guess I can deal with it.

Again, I will try and get some pictures posted next time. I update at work as it goes faster, but left the camera stick home AGAIN. Until next time, Bless everyone.

This past weekend was a fantastic time in Gatlinburg, TN with my sister Lynda and her husband Bill. It was about the best trip I have taken yet. We arrived on Friday morning, did a bunch of shopping in Sevierville and walking around, and truly enjoyed the Dixie Stampede Christmas show in the evening. The enormous amount of food was delicious, and since they do not supply eating utensils, it was definitely finger lickin good! The show was a beautiful show with lots of snow, fun, and an emotional moving live nativity scene with music and live animals.

This picture was taken from our balcony of one of the buildings where we stayed. Like all resorts, the buildings are all identical. Very nice accomodations. Wal-Mart about 1/2 mile away!


Saturday we rode three trollies to get ourselves to Gatlinburg. We spent the day there mostly walking around all the quaint shopps. Did not buy anything except a few sourveniers. In the evening we took a trolley tour of lights through Gatlinburg. That was very pretty and we got a nice brief history of the area. The weather Friday and Saturday was quite chilly but no rain. There were plenty of places to duck in for some warmth.

Some of the attractions along the trolley rides were quite interesting!

Gatlinburg had some unusual decorations that filled the air with the Christmas Spirit.

So pretty, but looked so cold!

Everything is decorated in Gatlinburg for Christmas.

It is always fun to try silly hats on!

Not sure what these lizards had to do with Christmas!

There were also some serious moments!

Sunday was the end of the vacation and time to come home. We drove home in a light rain all the way, which was only 2 hours from my sister's house. Did not do much for the afternoon except unpack my car, went to see my niece's silent auction items at her church. She is trying to raise money for a new curriculum for the day care.

All good times in this season always end with Santa Clause!

My message to all - HAVE A HOLLY JOLLY CHRISTMAS!