Pioneer Woman at Heart

  The rain has brought on the garden.  More rain is coming, and the bell peppers look great. My husband and I took a short weekend getaway to a nearby Amish country.  We checked out their new flea market, but wasn't impressed.  We did however, bring home some items for the newly repaired/remodeling bathroom.  It's now all put together and looking nice. We stayed one night in a historic hotel we stayed at years ago.  I was so disappointed with the new owners.  They completely took the "nostalgic" away from the hotel.  The parlor was completely remodeled into a quilt room.  It was one of the reasons I loved that hotel.  No more.  Our room we stayed at years ago, now has no refrigerator nor microwave. We brought food with us, and could not keep it cold, nor heat it up, and the other rooms also had no refrigerator.  I was blown away at this.... Literally in front of the toilet. See the toilet paper?  We checked out and got cof...

My husband got the ceiling piece back up over the kitchen sink.  He had to use screws (old house, old house rolling eye moments), so I'll be painting over that, taking down the curtains, and finally putting in the last window blind.  We are gaining slowly, but love what we've accomplished.  It rained all morning, so instead of taking the donations, I spent several hours upstairs.  I made several trips to the burn pile, trash, and put stuff in a box for our friend to scrap.  I also added to the donation pile. I finally got a few minutes to prepare onion dip to try.  I decided to make it earlier in the day, and put it in the fridge until we wanted to bake it.  I'm just a stickler on getting dishes done and put away, and don't like to do them later after dinner. Anyway....it was delicious.  It's from AllRecipes.  It's made from sweet Vidalia onions (these come from GA), organic mayo, organic swiss cheese, and organic parmesan cheese.  It's...

  We had a heat advisory yesterday, and they were not kidding.  It was over 100 degrees and humid as heck.   I finally got bread and butter pickles canned.  Daughter E stayed until about noon and left to go enjoy the county fair with her boyfriend.  She saw I was crocheting a new item for the holiday craft shows, and took two.  I'll get photos soon.   We had a late evening storm that brought us a good downpour for a few minutes.  It was enough to give the garden a drink. There is a chance of rain today and tonight.  My kitchen floor is filled with items to donate again.  I'll be loading that all up soon.

  Other than preparing a breakfast for a few days, which now will last a day, I cleaned out much of the upstairs.  I have filled the kitchen with items to donate. The plan is to load up the truck this weekend and donate.  I offered it to a family member, who is seeking funding for an adoption.  I suggested a garage sale, and we'd donate it all, but they say there may not be a date set.   I just don't have anywhere to store the items, and I need to get it out of the kitchen before anyone trips on it. Daughter E came out and had dinner with us, and stayed the night.  She is loving our newly repaired/remodeled bathroom.  Now we just need to get the upstairs worked on more to make a spare room. Today there is a heat advisory.  I watered everything yesterday. There is a possibility for rain later this week.  I guess we'll find out.  The rain keeps leaving the radar, which is not good. If I have enough, canning resumes today....

Although we got zero rain, we had a beautiful sunset for a short time.  We can't really see all of it, due to the woods behind our home, but the sky was a pretty pink. I spent about 2 hours cleaning stuff from the upstairs.  Mostly, I spent time bringing down any larger items to donate.  I may have found a home for a pole lamp she left up there, and I have a kitchen floor full of boxed up stuff to donate somewhere.  I filled the trash, and put a few things in the burn pile.  Today, I need to spray Lysol up there, as I realized she had 4 animals up there, and I am not sure how well she cleaned, as in sanitized.  There is still much to clean out. I cannot tell you all how happy I am to have an entire summer of wicked, miserable work hours end for my husband.  He was home, and out mowing after work!  The handyman finished the bathroom, but left without putting the bathroom door back on.  My husband and I put that back up, installed a new toilet ...

  Saturday I woke up feeling very depressed.  I will not lie, I pouted for a while. My husband's work hours have been extremely miserable this year.  While our friends were all out on an all day charity bike ride and rib fest, my husband worked a double shift ( 16 hours), which left me home alone.  I don't think we've been on a motorcycle ride since March, and Saturday was the perfect weather for one. My saying this year is, "well, I won't run out of things to do" and I got back to the long to-do list. It was a freeze and stock up kind of day.  I froze asparagus , watercress, zucchini, and more green/wax beans.  My husband worked a double shift, so there was no "fun" weekend time for the both of us. I had one bag of shredded zucchini from last year that had to be used up.  I baked us a double chocolate loaf of zucchini bread (King Flour recipe).

I took a day off of weeding flower beds in order to run to town.  I have been cleaning up our mess of a house though. We put stuff everywhere to clear out the kitchen and bathroom, and so in order to move stuff upstairs it's a juggle of room to room purging and putting stuff where it belongs. I'm finding out in order to move this to there, I have to put there to here and back to the beginning.   I finally moved Aunt J's plates out of our bedroom and back up on the wall.  Corner trim still needs installed.  Anyway, I have to find where I put my aprons next.  I think those ended up in my utility room (ha ha!).  Oh boy.  So much to purge and get back in place and organized again.   The bathroom shower is finally in, but not complete.  I was truly hoping it was done, but that may happen next week. I took advantage of the weather and put a lot of laundry out on the clothesline.  I have more to do today.  I'm washing up the old ...