The Road to Nowhere

Living in suburbia has become a little more crowded and uncomfortable than I ever expected it to be. I have always lived in a suburban neighborhood, always on a lot of 1/2 acre or less. I never minded living so close to the neighbors until I moved into this house almost 13 years ago. My next door neighbor is a plumber and his wife is a hermit (except for her forays to Wal-Mart). They have a huge assortment of lighthouses in the front flowerbed. The back yard is full to overflowing with pipe, boats, sheds and whatever else Mr. Plumber can't bear to part with. He began to renovate the outside of his house about 5 years ago. The siding is not finished...still. Even after calls to the city codes compliance office, there has been little progress.
On the other side there used to be a nice older woman who kept her home in good repair and the yard tidy. She moved a few years ago and sold the house to a couple with 3 HUGE unruly dogs. They leave the dogs in a pen outside so they can bark all night. The once lovely pool is now a green pit that breeds mosquitoes. The fence is falling down and they accumulate huge heaps of garbage at the side of the house. Most of the other neighbors keep their houses fairly well. This is one of the NICER parts of our city.
So.......I have begun the search for a little piece of property on which my sweetie and I can build a new home. With space for a nice garden, chickens and (his dream, not mine) alpacas. Mostly I want to get away from the neighbors.
Yesterday after searching the local listings, I set off to find Eden. Oops, I forgot the directions. How hard could it be to find this place? After about an hour on the road, mostly backtracking, I gave up. Who knew that those back roads would look so much alike? On Sunday, armed with the GPS, my sweetie and I WILL find this little piece of heaven. The price is reasonable. Cross your fingers that it isn't under water or the Beverly Hillbillies don't live next door!
Maybe I will even have pictures next time!

A finished product

I have been so busy lately that sometimes I feel like there should be two of me, though one of me is probably enough! I have been working more in the neurofeedback office and trying to get more done at home. The crochet lessons are coming along pretty well. I hope to have something to show soon.
After two feeble attempts, I finally settled on the right fabric for a quilt to send to my niece for her baby shower this weekend. Ta-Dah!

The world's best cooks

Forget Emeril and the rest of the TV chefs. The best cooks in the universe are grandmas. At least my grandma was. She could make a meal out of the simplest ingredients fit for a king. Grandma has been gone for over 40 years now and my own mother isn't able to communicate well enough to tell me what cooking was like in the Great Depression. I can only assume that most of the ingredients were inexpensive, easily found and required minimal refrigeration. Hum, sounds like fresh, seasonal and local weren't new ideas to that crowd.

Since my step-buddy came to live here, "we" have consumed more groceries than I ever imagined possible. I raised two slim petite girls. They would eat just about anything, but not much of it.

Enter an eighteen year old, six-foot-plus muscular male and my views on food and cooking were turned upside down. No longer will a chicken make two dinners for three. And leftovers? Consumed before midnight unless the hands off message is strongly made.

Our food budget was suffering and frankly, I am tired of cooking. There had to be an easier, cheaper way to fill the void that is living in the back bedroom.

Since Mom and Grandma can't help, I pulled out my copy of the Magic Chef Cookbook from 1934. What a treasure. I bought it because it was old and nostalgic. I never really intended to COOK anything.

Anyway, after giving it a quick look, I realized that there isn't an ingredient in this book that I can't get at the corner market. And the recipes look just like what Grandma made.

I will warn you right now that Julie and Julia are in no danger of losing their place in blogdom or the movies.

I started out with Scalloped Potatoes. Simple. Easy. Available. And best of all, really delicious.

P.S. The rest of the potatoes were GONE before the dishes were done.

What is your favorite granny recipe??

What is the point, anyway?

I cruise around the internet every day to read what others are thinking, making and changing. The blogs that interest me the most are the ones where the writer is trying to make sense of her life by finding what is important and making that the focus of her life changes.
There are blogs about personal finances, homemaking, crafts and so on. I love them all and am inspired by all the insight and accomplishments for the writers. There is so much wisdom to be gained from all these writings. I know there are many others who share my fascination with these blogs from the comments that they leave the other bloggers. But lately, there have been some changes in some of the blogs I have been reading for months, even years. Seems that there is some kind of competition as to who is the hippest, most creative or worst of all, the most enlightened. The mood has changed from friendly sharing and open communication to shameless self promotion and even ridicule of other bloggers who aren't so very self-actualized as the ones writing.
I didn't start this blog to compete with anyone. I am not the most productive, artsy or accomplished gal in blogdom. I just wanted to record pictures and thoughts and share them with whomever comes this way. Focusing on the path ahead makes more sense to me than judging the path of someone else.
Maybe it is time to clean up my list of favorites and look for some new, fresh and upbeat writers.
Wishing you a beautiful day and a sunny tomorrow.

Good Night Miss Daisy

Tonight about dinnertime, my dog-buddy Daisy died. She had been suffering from dementia for about 16 months, becomming progressively worse in tiny,tiny steps. She became lost in the house where we have lived for the last 12 years, fell down the steps, lost interest in toys and being petted. She never seemed to be in pain, but her tail stopped wagging and she slept a lot.

I knew she wouldn't be with us much longer, so I made her a red and white quilt for the cold winter nights. Here she is resting under the quilt.

On Monday it appeared that she had a stroke. She couldn't stand up without being held and gave up eating and drinking.

We all checked on her just before sitting down for dinner tonight and made sure she was warm and as comfortable as we could make her. Terry and I were going to make a quick run to the store after dinner, but as we got in the truck, David flagged us down to get us to come back in the house. Daisy had died during dinner.

Daisy will be buried in her special quilt tomorrow.

We sure will miss her.

A New Year

Those New Years just keep coming around faster every time. I guess that is just the way it is as we get older. I have drifted with the current the last few years and let things take their own course. Not so this New Year. I wrestled Terry down on Saturday to take a look at our futures together. Health, money, careers and a lot more. We weren't as far apart on our goals as I had feared. He would like to see me more organized and I would like him to take his health more seriously. We have pledged to help each other and make a difference in 2010.
I would like to move further down that road to making life simpler, more home centered and he just doesn't get it, but we will figure it all out.
It will be interesting to take stock again next year and see just what progress we have made.
I wish you a peaceful, simple and healthy New Year.

A-Thrifting We Will Go

I have been pretty successful in the last few months in curbing my comsumerism, but I know that I will never be able to just cut it off. I will continue to buy new running shoes and underwear, period. Some things are just too icky to imagine.

While crawling through one of the local thrift sotres, I found something that was meant just for me. I always look at the fabric orphans and often find some great vintage items, but boy did I hit the motherlode this time.

The bag looked like a hodge podge of homely old fabrics, some sewn together. I figured it was part of a quilt top, but since you can't open the bags to get a better look, I went on instinct and just bought the bag for $5.98.

Here is what I found:

2 vintage quilt tops

pieced backings for same

material for the binding

some creepy yellow spandex junk

a sizeable piece of green velvet

Since I have a longarm quilting machine, I will easily turn those tops into real quilts. The velvet will go to someone who likes to do crazy quilts (not me). And that spandex stuff will go back in my next donation bag to the thrift store! No waste and a couple of happy quilters.

I still have not figured out the picture situation. Will have to consult my resident computer guru and husband later.