The guest bedroom

A look at the guest bedroom, finished, dressed up and ready for a guest.


The quilt was made by my late Great Aunt.  The solid yellow pillow and yellow roll pillow are made from tea towels.  The painting was given to me by a teacher friend, David Mask.  He painted it on recycled materials from a build at his home.

I replaced the 1970 ugly tile with a plank vinyl product from Home Depot.  It matches the hardwood  laminate in the rest of the house so well you can hardly tell it's different.  And it was really easy to apply.

This is my grandmother's Singer sewing machine.  It still has her things in the drawers.

Did I not say "Ugly 70's floors?"

The rocking chair hubs gave me when we brought home
our eldest child in 1973.  The basket has vintage
toys saved for the grands and that is the fabulous
new vinyl flooring.

The mirror and comb set belonged to my mother in law. The doily
was her mother's and a piece of vintage jewelry from my collection.

Some added crystal closet door knobs
hold on to my monogram.

Hubs put up new crown moulding too.

 Now, bring on the guests.  If you'd like to see more of the whole house do over, click the tab on the menu bar up top or go here.

Check out the parties I like to attend here.

New blooms

It's wonderful to be able to reap the rewards of working in the garden.  This morning I opened the back windows to see these beauties blooming.  Happy Wordless Wednesday!

Rose of Sharon Hibiscus

Moon Flower

2 Ingredient Sherbet

2 Ingredient Sherbet
1 bottle of orange flavored soda (Sunkist is my personal fave)
1 can Eagle brand milk.

Stir the two ingredients together and pour into a freezer.  It's that easy.  Really.  I adapted the recipe for hubs little home made freezer, just enough for the two of us by cutting the recipe 75%.  I eyeballed about 1/4 bottle of the soda and 1/4 of the Eagle brand milk.

Hub used an old rotisserie motor, peanut butter jar, some nuts and bolts and a home made metal stand to make a little ice cream freezer.  Quite ingenious, don't you think?  The rotisserie runs on a D battery, so it works while inside the deep freezer eliminating the need for ice.  Of course, you can make this recipe in a purchased ice cream freezer too.

Thanks for stopping by.

Check out  my favorite places to link up here.

Grill the Vegies!

I spent most of the weekend working the garden and hub cooked on the grill.  He's a big fan of dutch oven cooking so he put a chicken in to roast that was out of this world good.  He simply rubbed the chicken with vegetable oil and sprinkled on lemon pepper then placed it on a lettuce bed inside a dutch oven and dropped some chopped celery around it.  Once the coals were white hot, he put some on the lid and set the pot over the rest.  Rotate the lid about every 30 minutes for 1 1/2 hours.  This same recipe works in a crock pot.  (P.S. the lettuce in the bottom is to keep the chicken from sticking to the pot.)  BTW, resist the temptation to open the lid and look.  You lose the heat and increase the cooking time.

Hub then marinated a variety of chopped vegetables in a Zesty Italian dressing.   Yellow squash, zuccini, onion, carrot, potatoes, and bell peppers.  He put them in a large zip lock bag and poured the dressing in.  For about an hour they marinated being turned over each time he walked by.  Oil the vegetable grill bed. He cooked them over hot coals for about 20-30 minutes before the chicken was ready.  I feel like we feasted!  For dessert we ate a sherbet we made in his home made freezer contraption.  Check my next post for that.  It's amazing.

Rain.

Oxalis, Purple Shamrock

The TV is on, but low in volume when I looked up.
It's raining.
I love rain.

I switch off the tv,
I open the back door to listen.
I sit on the stoop to watch.

The sounds are soft and pleasing to my ears.

There's a low rumbling in the distance
and splats of water hitting the stone path.
A tinkling of bells disturbed by a gentle breeze.

The steady falling rain mesmerizes me.

There are little pools that display never ending circles on the cement.
The Redbud leaves catch little drops
And hold them long enough for me to see.

Birds have left the sky to take cover somewhere.
The grass seems to stand up at attention,
Delicate white flowers bow their heads in thanks.

And so do I.

Oklahoma tornado help lists

Where do you start in the midst of chaos and tragedy?

• Make a contact list for yourself and your family members.  
• Have several emergency meeting places on the list.    
• WFAA TV has a great resource for a survivor guide  for pre-tragedy planning.    

In the case of the 2013 Oklahoma tornado's; here is an ongoing list of places offering help

• The U-Haul Company of Oklahoma City is offering 30 days of free self-storage to all residents who were affected by devastating tornadoes and severe storms that recently swept through many Oklahoma towns. U-Haul centers also have available tarp, tapes and propane tanks. They are also offering the take a box leave a box program The program enables customers to return their reusable boxes and allows others to take them as needed – FREE. For more information contact the main U-Haul center.

U-Haul Company of- Oklahoma City

7525 SE 29th Street
Midwest city, OK 73110
(800) 522-4236

Texas Bloggers Helping Oklahoma

Temporary OK shelter list

Central Oklahoma United Way

ADRN (Austin Disaster Relief Network)  Donations are being received through ADRN's MOORE TORNADO RELIEF FUND on their website. Donations will help provide for the immediate needs of families while providing assistance to aid in their trauma and displacement. 

 church on the Oklahoma Christian Univ. campus

Memorial Road Church of Christ

Starting at 9:00 AM this morning, we will have a non-emergent medical station set up at the Capitol Hill Church of Christ at 2801 S. Robinson in OKC. For those who need medications replaced, have minor injuries, or need triage for more major injuries.

If you know of other helping groups, leave the information in comments.

A Downtown Loft.

My daughter and her hub moved into a downtown Dallas loft apartment this weekend.  They kept their country house, but took the apartment close to work for convenience.  She took us on tour today of the historic old building they moved into.  Amazing.  Almost all the old architecture was left in tact, including doors that are sealed off (so they go nowhere) and multi floor textures in one space.  Here is a tiny virtual tour I took on my phone before the battery ran out.

Birdseye view from across the street.

Reflected in the office where hub works. 

Love the exposed brick.

Wonderful door knobs!

A sealed off door in the apartment hallway that goes no where.

Checking out some gardens and fountains below.

Just thought this was funny.

Lovely pool with color waterfall.

The Mobil Building where the Pegasus sits.

A glimpse of the sun setting down Elm Street before we headed home.

Party links in menu bar up top.
This post specifically linked at:
Wordless Wednesday

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter cookies

 I've been away from home for months helping my mom recover from two hip replacement surgeries.  It feels really good to be home, though I still worry about my mom.  On my first day home I surveyed my backyard garden.  There is a LOT of work to be done.  The weeds and overgrowth have just about taken over.  The pathways are barely walkable in my bare feet.  Yep, I like to walk it in my bare feet.  The good news is there will be plenty of blooms for inside.  I didn't allow myself to stay out there today though.  Hubs needs some cookies to really feel like I'm home :)  I pulled out the favorite peanut butter recipe, but felt a little extra touch of mini chocolate chips would make them extra special.  I was right, we both loved them.  If you don't have a blue ribbon, first prize winning peanut butter recipe, you can use mine.  It's pretty much about creaming, mixing and quality ingredients to get a perfect cookie.

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The one ingredient that is added to the prize winning recipe is mini semi sweet chocolate chips.  If you click back on the recipe you'll see some DIY pictures.

Recipe:
1/2 cup real butter, softened at room temperature
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon really good quality vanilla
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to (350 F)
2. Beat the butters, sugars, baking powder & soda together. 
3. Add the egg & vanilla. 
4. Add the flour. The dough will be soft and fluffy.
5. Fold in the mini semi sweet chocolate chips.
6. Shape the dough into 1" balls.  Place them about 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Dip fork tines in sugar and gently apply pressure to the dough ball to flatten out to about 1/2 thick.  I like one set of tine marks, but you can make a crosshatch pattern too.  Put a pinch of sugar on top of each cookie.
7. Bake  at 350 F. 9-12  minutes.  The tops will be very light in color-not brown.
8. Cool on a wire rack.

Now, I must focus on getting the garden back into shape.

Bar ditch beauties

 on Wordless Wedsnesday.

It's barely spring and the heat is on. It went from 40 degrees last week
to 91 this week and with 2.8" of much needed rain, we got flowers!

Click here to see some of my favorite link hang outs.
Made in a Day
Wildly Original

Tell me, do you like bar ditch flowers?  Can you identify these?

Plant a Fairy Garden

This has been a different kind of spring this year.  Right when we should be watering and nurturing a vegetable garden, we are getting very late freezes and trimming damaged rose and geranium leaves.  It has not stopped the random 80 degree days from fooling us into the need to be in the garden.  One day we don warm jackets and brave the bitter cold winds and the next we are in short sleeves wondering if today is a gardening day. I fear our forced late spring gardens will not be able to produce before the Texas summer heat hits.  It gets pretty hot and dry here.  I gravitated to the flower beds and created a weed barrier between the rose bushes and mums using newspaper and pine needles.  First I removed the weeds that had come up.  I placed sheets of newspaper around and between the larger plants, making to sure to over lap  in a shingling manner.  

       

After covering all the dirt areas with two-three layers of newspaper (no color printed pages) I raked up pine needles from the tree in the yard and put a thick layer of 3-5” on top of the paper. 

The faux stone face came from a garden center. I posed it against a large river rock.

A few fusty yard & garden utensils.

                 
I re situated the decorative stones and rustic relics and watered the bed thoroughly.  The newspaper allows the water to soak through but prevents most weeds from germinating and coming up. The roses have leaves all over and some buds ready to burst open.  Because of the unusual late freezes, I had to trim back some damaged leaves and buds.

Frost bitten in May!

             
While the little grands were here yesterday we decided to cheat the unpredictable cold by putting together a fairy garden pot.   I located a beautiful robin’s egg blue pot in the the garage and filled it with potting soil.  We cut some sheet moss from the craft store to fit the top and took a cutting from a hardy succulent to plant there.  The grands gathered little pebbles from the drive to make a fairy path.  A larger stone looked like a perfect place for a little gnome salvaged from the bottom of a garden pot of “things” to rest and look things over.  The whole project took less than an hour, which is good for the younger grands short attention spans.  It sits in a raised bed between some rose bushes right along the sidewalk to the front door.  I’m hoping to rip open some of the flower seed packets I purchased several weeks ago and spread the seedlings soon.  Surely, the cold will stop invading our normal balmy spring since I prefer to skip indoor seeding and go straight to scattering them on warm moist soil. 

P.S.  That weird little metal rod next to the fairy pot…Little Girl grand thought the fairies might need it to swing up to the pot!
You can see our first fairy garden that has a Toad House here.
Here is the leprechaun garden.

I love your comments.  It’s nice to know I’m not totally talking to myself in black and white with pictures!
I link up at these parties…
Made in a Day
Wildly Original
Fairy Garden Contest @ The Magic Onion