{ This weekend.... }

The sun is starting to set, which means the most gorgeous of golden glows is covering the trees and the lawn.  I've always thought this time of day is so magical.  The colors, the winding down, the way that everything seems to slow down in anticipation for night time.

I've spent this weekend doing....I don't even know.  I haven't done anything in specific and didn't have any places to be or things to do, but yet, the weekend is over and we are but a few hours away from Monday morning.

I did manage to snap a few moments of the past two days, just for prosperity.  

The more I get back into daily blogging, the more I am reminded of how much I want to write down and take note of my days and what I'm doing.  How important it is to ME, to keep going, to keep sharing, to keep this online record of my life.

I can't tell you just how much I am loving blogging again.  

With that said, I am going to end this very short post.  We have a new week ahead, more daily blogging, homemaking, and cooking.  I've been enjoying sharing recipes with you all again, and the one I'm posting tomorrow is a MUST try.  Here, I'll leave you with a sneak peek.  It was SO good!!!  

 

{ Spring peeking in }

There's a time of year that we start feeling that certain electricity in the air.  No I'm not talking about the Winter time static that snaps us every chance it gets.  Have I ever told you how annoyed I get when I go shopping, and reach out to open one of the fridge doors only to be snapped so hard, you can even hear the cracking sound?

Ooohhh I hate that.

But that is not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about this time of year, when Spring starts making it's entrance.  Little bits here and there, tiny specks among dead grass and tree branches bare of life.

It's almost like excitement brewing in the air.  I know for me, it starts making me feel alive, renewed, ready to plant and enjoy every moment outdoors.

Early mornings bring green growth, topped with tiny crystal clear droplets of dew and shone upon by the rising sun.  God continually showers us with beauty, all we need to do is, open our eyes and take it all in.

My mornings usually start with my morning devotional reading, a quick look through emails, my blog, school and so on.  I try to do it when the house is still asleep and quiet.  The only thing that is usually making any sort of noise, is Marley behind me or the birds chirping loudly outside.

Birds.  That is usually the biggest sign that Spring is about to come forth.  At least where we live, surrounded by nature, there is a huge outpouring of new babies flying all about. 

The light also changes.  Isn't it strange when you actually sit and think about it?  It's amazing to me how God made it all to the point where different seasons have different lighting, different scents in the air. 

Spring smells fresher to me, lighter and it's definitely brighter.  Not in the summer kind of brightness which at times is quite blinding, but in a soft and more subdued way. 

My seedlings are thriving and just begging to be planted into the earth.  However, we still have a few frost mornings and I don't want to put them in that environment quite yet.  I do think that it will be coming soon, maybe within the next week or two, I may finally be able to get my garden sorted out and growing, out by the greenhouse.

Speaking of greenhouse, no, it's not yet finished, it is a project that has taken longer than we wished for, but I'm also having to rely on my husband and he works a full time job, so weekends are pretty much the only time we have.  Some weekends we just want to be indoors, relaxing, doing nothing practically.

This weekend I am hoping to get my pallet garden going, I do have planters but I am thinking of going by the dollar store or even Lowe's and grabbing some cheap ones that I can screw onto the pallets.

I have laundry to do, typical daily housework chores needing my attention, and also need to take my son for a haircut.

But, I do want to get more yard work done, so that will come in somewhere in between all these other chores.

I'm also hoping to get a lot of reading time in, possibly out on the back patio, and maybe a movie or two in.  Who knows, it's a blank slate of a day with nothing really planned, well aside from that haircut.

I better get on out of here and get things going so that I take full advantage of every minute and every hour. 

{ Around here - a look at this past weekend }

There's nothing I enjoy more, than having my husband home with me all day, so when we are graced with a long weekend, we enjoy it to the fullest.  For some people that will mean going out to eat, finding something fun to do outside the house, and so on.   We have done that but mostly, for us, it means staying in, snacking all day long, watching movies, catching up on favorite shows, doing woodwork, pottering around the house, gardening or working on house projects.

I snapped a few photos as I went about my day, or rather days, and I'll share those below, so if you're interested in seeing what we got up to, grab a cup of coffee or tea and check out the photos below.



Waking up to foggy mornings, dark, dreary and cold weather. 





On days like these, I stay in comfy clothes and slippers, all day long.  Truth be told, if I am home I am in my slippers, just love them, maybe I have a slight obsession with slippers of all kind and colors.  I think at the moment I have 4 or 5 pairs, all gifted by my family for Christmas and birthdays etc.  They know I'm a pajamas and slippers kinda gal.  Can never have enough.



Stormy days are spent snuggled in bed, under the warmest and softest of blankets.  Marley has very easily fallen into that routine and we often go looking for him, only to find him on the bed, often times, he has burrowed himself under the blanket until it covers him and then just slips his head out the other side.  Hahaha 

He makes me laugh.



Most of the days, while hubby played computer games with Nicholas, or watched his tv shows or movies, and while the kids did their own thing, I surrounded myself with books of all kinds.  I would absolutely love to have a full library in my house, I think it would make me super happy.

Above you can see my favorite books, and I've mentioned them before.  I first read These is My Words, back in 2011.  I knew from that moment that this was it, this was my favorite book and as much as I may love some others, they would not come near this one for me.

AND I just found out that Nancy E. Turner's new novel is out, and it follows the story of Sarah Prine's niece.  It is called Light Change Everything, I've already added it to my cart and will grab it on Friday.  Can.not.wait.  I swear anytime Nancy E. Turner brings out a book, it's like Christmas to me.





Spent a good deal of time reorganizing my bookshelves.  I couldn't decided whether I wanted to do it by color {like I have before and thought looked really cute}, or alphabetically or by author etc.

I decided to go by alphabetical order and as I did so, I got rid of books I no longer wanted to keep.  I had quite a big pile going on.

Much as it seems that a job like this is quick, it turned out that it was actually quite time consuming, which meant a lot of breaks for normal household chores, meal cooking and dish washing.





I'm still washing dishes by hand, and funny enough I've gotten down to a rhythm, where I don't even take notice any longer.  I get in the kitchen, wash all the dishes, and move on to the next task at hand.





There were also breaks for hot cups of tea while the wind blew outside and screamed through the fireplace.  It's such a weird sound isn't it?  It's like waves of screams coming through the fireplace while the wind howls outdoors, but weird as it sounds there is something calming about it too.



Back to washing some dishes that were used for bread making, and then I step away and let nature help me out by drying them for me.



The pile of books that I no longer want and would like to pass on.   I wasn't quite sure what to do with them all, and then I remembered Paperbackswap.  If you've never heard of it, it is a website I first started using many and I mean many, years ago, like 2006.  You can read some of my posts talking about the website, here:

Grrrrrr
A day of books
Crocheting the Day away

I'm not going to link all the posts, or we will be here all day long, but if you just search paperbackswap here on my blog, you will no doubt find a lot of posts. 

If you're just curious, it is a website where you post the books you have available to give away.  If someone requests one of your books, you mail it off and once the person receives it, you get a credit.  Each credit is worth another book, so then you use those credits to get yourself a book you want, and trust me they have a huge selection of books available.

I think it's a great way to get rid of your books by essentially trading them for new ones you have been wanting.  You can also add certain conditions to the books you order from other people, such as no smoking house, or a house with no pets, or no marks or no this or that etc. 




These are all my books posted on Paperbackswap at the moment, well these WERE the books posted, because as I was in the middle of posting these, requests started coming in, and I've already mailed off 5 books that were requested.  That means, when the people that I've sent them to, receive them, they mark them as received on the website and I get 5 credits {which means 5 books}. 

I already have a wish list and a reminder list on the website that will make it easier for me to get my new books in.

How exciting is that?



As always, there is always and I mean, always, laundry to be done.  Many weekend and weekday afternoons, are spent with a pile of clean laundry on the bed, folding and putting away while I watch something on the tv.



The weather also permitted us to have our first barbecue of the year.  Nothing major, nothing big, not even a side dish to go with it, but we had some burgers from the butcher shop that we wanted to try, so popped those on the grill.  Oh my word, does anyone else get extremely happy with the smell of a barbecue grill on a Saturday afternoon?

I can hardly wait for Summer.



And from summer vibes and barbecue burgers, to a foggy, cold and 30 degree weather the next day.  Insane. 

I would say it's a Texas thing, but who am I kidding, most of my friends, family and readers are in other states and everyone is complaining of the same thing.  Actually, my family in South Africa have been complaining of the same uncertain crazy weather.  I shudder to think what this all means globally, but it's best not to even go there.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed a look into my weekend and what we got up to.  A whole bunch of nothing in particular, but a whole lot of plain ol' living, and that is fine with me, it is what I enjoy the most.

Lazy weekend in with my loved ones, no rush, no commitments, no needing to be up at a certain time or in bed by another.  Just going with the flow.

How did you spend your long weekend?

Oh and before I leave, I wanted to ask you all if you had anything you wanted me to do a post on, anything specific you would like to see around here.  Leave your suggestions down below.  I do have my usual posts and ideas but I also like hearing from you, after all, you're the ones reading the blog and if there's something you would like to know more about from me, feel free to ask.

On that note, I am signing off, going to toss some laundry around and then try and get some more reading done on my next review book.

{ A quick trip to Lawton and a cake for Sunday }

Hubby and I took a short trip to Lawton, to help my mother in law with moving some items from her home, into storage.  She is trying to sell the house they have up there.

I always enjoy driving across Oklahoma and seeing the beautiful land, the cows, the sky and the old buildings teetering on old beams, barely hanging on.

{ Sunday Vibes }

::::Early morning

{ Quiet Sunday }

Good afternoon friends, come on in and sit with me a bit.  I have coffee and a delicious Date and Nut Loaf we can share :)

It's been a very quiet Sunday, actually one of reminiscing and looking back through the years.

I have a few boxes that contain office stuff, paperwork, old picture, kid's school stuff etc.  They've been sitting in the office, unpacked, since we moved to Texas.  Normally I would never do that, but let's just chuck it all up to the past two years being a blur, shall we?

One of the thing on my to do list this week, is to get all my paperwork together, filed and in order, and yes I'll do a post on that so you can follow me along.

As I started pulling through the boxes, I was met with so many things that brought back amazing memories, things I didn't even know I still had but for which I'm so grateful to have held on to.

I vividly remember sitting at the kitchen table with my greatgrandma.  We chose the recipes, I cut them out, and she helped me tie a piece of kitchen twine around them.  It was one of my most treasured possessions.

I smile when I look at the handwriting, my 13 year old self all proud of it.  When we made this together, we were talking about homemaking and cooking and being a good wife.  She talked about what to do, what not to do, when to have dinner ready, how to clean this and that and what meals to cook, what to do when I had children and how to dress them, what to give them if they were sick and so on.

I listened intently, this was a woman who everyone looked up to, the family matriarch, what she said was golden and to be followed.

For a while I couldn't find these recipes and my heart was broken, I couldn't believe that I had been so careless as to lose something so important to me.  Little did I realize that I had them in a folder neatly packed away in a box.  If *only* I had opened those boxes earlier.

Along with those much looked for recipes, I also found pictures from my children's days in public school, I found pictures they drew, old school worksheets with their little handwriting all crooked and curved.  It made me want to cry.

I also came across the copy of my medical records when my husband retired.  I sifted through every page, a huge stack about 2 inches wide.  Every hospital visitation, my miscarriages including sonograms, my blood work, the notes from the doctor referring to my D&C, and my abnormal pap and the coloscopy etc.

There were notes from my deliveries, my weight, my babies weights, pediatrician appointments and so on.  Now those made me cry.  There is a lifetime recorded on those pages, the good, the bad, the heartbreaking and the moments that brought me the most joy in my life.

All right there, in black and white.  Some of those memories brought back hurt, but overall it made me so happy to have a record of all these things and it reminded me again that time is so precious, so fleeting, and that it's never guaranteed.

I'm sorry, I am feeling a little nostalgic today, partly due to those old mementos, and partly because I just had a conversation with my daughter about when she's moving out, UHAUL trucks, when she is going to college and what she is doing in the meantime. 

It's all coming at me so fast, and I almost find myself grasping around me, trying to just slow it all down, to make life give me more time with her.  This year is going to be so hard, but I plan on blogging all through it, every moment, so that one day I can go back and read it to my grandchildren. 

But right now I'm going to get cracking on my planner and the upcoming week, I need to make sure I don't forget anything.

 
And I'll drown my sorrows in some sour gummy worms.

Don't you just love the Happy Planners?  The little hearts on the binder are adorable :)

This little mister is 5 months old today.  He has brought us so much joy over the past few months and he's helped me deal with the loss of my Lola, though I miss her so much still, I can't look at a photo of her without crying.  I don't know if I'll ever get to that point where I can think of her and not get a lump in my throat, but for now, it's still very fresh for me. 

Marley though, he is the polar opposite of Lola, in every sense of the word, and he's kept us on our toes, amazed us with some of his quirky personality traits and filled our hearts with love.

A couple of you asked about Bella the other day, she is still around, though very old and spends most of her days in the Office, sleeping.  She is still walking, albeit slowly, still chugging along at 16 years old.  She amazes us constantly.

And that my friends, has been my Sunday.  I finally have more yarn in and can get back on track with my Mandala Madness, I'm itching to keep going, so that's what I have planned for this afternoon.....well....in between laundry, and cooking.

I'm making a right on Sunday Roast for dinner, including Yorkshire puddings and all that shebang.  Can't wait :)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and I'll see you bright and early tomorrow for a Happy Homemaker Monday :)