Surprise Projects

Good afternoon!

Hope you enjoyed that completely unexpected Guest Post by Miss M. Poor Dear. She kept dropping hints all day. She baked me a quiche!  But I had decided to stay away from the World Wide Web and enjoy time with my family. Daughter C finally called to tell me to look at the blog. What a great surprise! Thanks, Miss M.

Anyhoo... we started some sewing projects yesterday. Stay tuned!

Books!

It's been a very book-oriented day. 

1.) I received a package in the mail today-- a Mothers Day gift from Kat!

A 5" x 30" matted photo Kat took of the interior a bookstore in Salem, Massachusetts. click to enlarge.

My photo of Kat's photo does not do her photo justice. Hers is stunning. There are so many bits of color! Miss M and I were chatting about the colors this evening as we were thinking about how to frame it and where to hang the finished product. We have a plan!

But. We will run our ideas past the professional in the house before we commit. 

Daughter C, 

We are thinking of hanging it above the buffet (where the mirror is). Double matting as we did with the boot and the pig. Off white for the larger mat, red for the secondary. Gold frame-- sort of ornate in keeping with the formality of the dining room. I like the juxtaposition of a semi-ornate frame (like the mirror has) with the clutter of the books in the photo, which mimics the clutter of the books in the other areas of the great room.

Note also that there are no books in the dining room. So this framed photo-- proportionately scaled to like 17" x 42" (minus frame width)-- puts books in the dining room without actually putting books in the dining room.

What do you think?

Love, 

Mom  

2.) While I was on the phone with Kat thanking her for the book photo, she clued me into some free software for book inventorying. I learned Evernote this afternoon and have cataloged more than 70 of my ~1200+ volumes!

Okay-- Evernote is not for book inventorying. But I can use it to do my book inventory.

3.) Late this afternoon I received a Pintrest notification: Miss M had posted something to out shared board, G.M.O.Y.A:

Books! They are everywhere.
 

When in Doubt, Check the Math

I knew something was wrong, and I was right.

According to all of our previous calculations, to finish the Imaginary Dinner Party Game we should need to add three chairs tomorrow. But when I counted the empty chairs at Table 2, and subtracted from eight players, the result was two. It didn't add up.

And then, while pouring over the Dinner Party Invitation Log, it hit me!

Daughter C's pick from Tuesday had not been seated!! (Although it was dutifully noted in The Log.)

Beginning Tuesday, seating mattered to many of us. I hear tell that Daughter C's invited guests are mostly interested in sitting in chairs that aren't going to break. (This is embarrassing when it happens in real life. I mean, we have nice chairs but they are sort of crappy old nice chairs, and more than one has broken during a time when a real guest was seated.)

Your call, Daughter C. Tonight, seating mattered to almost everyone. No one had a chance to sit next to Diane Keaton. What should we do? At one end, we can turn back the clock and do a total re-do. At the other, Diane can just pull up a chair. Your call.

Please note that you can respond by logging onto you gmail account and fishing around and finding this blog and ... .

Party On!

Mr. Big Food, Miss M., and I were chatting about a hypothetical dinner party this evening. We decided to turn our chit-chat into a little game.

The question is, "Who would you invite to an imaginary dinner party?" 

RULES

The invited guests must be Real People. Dr. Who, Sherlock, and Mr. Spock cannot be invited. (That's a game for another rainy week.) They can be from any where in the world but they must have lived within the last 150 or so years.* Neither Aristotle nor Jesus can be invited this time, maybe some other. 

Christmas Budget: $0.00

When The Girls plus the girls (The Girls' cousins) came of age, The Girls decided we-- that is, all T/the G/girls' families-- would do Secret Santa. I wasn't the biggest supporter of Secret Santa in the beginning but I sympathized with The Girls' reasoning. Better to give and receive one nice gift that you actually wanted than try and spread Christmas budgets so thin no one received anything more than a chap stick from Dollar General. And now having seen how it actually worked, I support the idea. Sorta kinda.

This morning my mom called. Please note that Mama's name is never included in the Secret Santa drawing. Mama is the keeper of the secret Secret Santa list, although Mama didn't realize this until Miss. M. told her where on her fridge the list was. Anyway, Mama told me that Mr. Big Food's name was in the left column (actually, she said Mr. Big Food's Christian name) and mine was across from his in the right column. I confirmed that the arrow was in fact a two-way arrow:

Mr. Big Food's Christian name <-----> Marica

You appreciate what this means, don't you? 

Mr. Big Food's and my Christmas shopping is done!

If I don't keep up, I'll be lost, part 2

We have arrived in The Nati.

On our way here, we stopped at the National Corvette Museum.

We had lunch at a Waffle House where there were some Sons of God Bikers.

One of the advantages of traveling with multiple things that can take pictures is that I can take pictures on multiple things. I've only downloaded the BIG camera. Sons of God are on other devises. I have a lot of photos of the Corvette Museum. Stay tuned.

We got to Cincinnati. And Max drove us past our old house. We got out just in time.

The view from Colerain.

The view from Colerain. You can see The Shack from Colerain.

Sad. But no matter. We live in Mississippi now!

We had a great first evening back.

Tomorrow will be a BIG day for all of us.

I'll ask Miss M. to communicate her thoughts to me throughout the day.

What I miss when they are gone is the almost constant contact and the quiet times in the truck when you check off conversation starting point and reject them all in turn. There are some false starts. But the point is, you're/I'm going away tomorrow. What do you want to talk about? 

We talked a lot about dogs and cats and cooking and baking and gardening and landscaping and vegetables and animals. And nutrition and kids. And family members. 

We did some planting. 

[LANGUAGE ALERT IF YOU CLICK TO CONTINUE]

Recovery Monday

What a weekend! After preparing for the get together, and then getting together with folks Saturday, we all-- Daughter C., Miss M., A. Leland, Mr. Big Food, and I-- enjoyed a "Lazy" Sunday.

Girls! Take the dogs on a pack walk to the pasture.

Miss M.! Make some delicious bruschetta for us.

Hey you! Have a BIG salad with Sunday Supper.

Truth be told (that's a joke) we did a lot of stuff yesterday. 

Today we recover. We'll begin by recovering the kitchen for the upteenth time.

BIG news!

It is  

BIG news that A. Leland is coming but it is even  

BIGGER news that Miss M. is coming!

  

Small World / Small Courtesies

Today was a pain in the neck day. We had to go to Memphis. I don't mind going to Memphis but I was glad to be home earlier than I expected to be home because we'd found two new shortcuts. It stormed in the morning and rained in the afternoon. It's April.

When I opened the door, I met Buffet Beef in Beer smack in the face.

RECIPE: 


1C beer
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
1 envelope brown gravy mix.


Combine all in slow cooker. 


2 lbs. of roast of streak cut into 1" cubes
1/3C flour


Pour flour into freezer bag. Add beef cubes, shake to coat well. Pour contents of freezer bag into slow cooker and stir to coat each cube well with liquid. Cover and cook over low heat for eight to nine (8-9) hours. Stir well before serving over good buns.

We had a fresh picked salad to go with.

The days when we go away for substantial amounts of time-- hours on end-- are hard for all of us. We have a different routine on those days, and they don't like it. Missy is acting out right now. 

Missy is learning physics / Overall, the dogs had a good day

At the end of the evening-- for you "city folk" that's somewhere between 8:30 and 9 o'clock post meridian-- the challenge is to get them all settled down. "Settled down" needs some unpacking. Missy on the bed counts as settled down. Missy repeatedly dropping the tennis ball off the bed, watching it bounce, hit the baseboard, ricochet back (that's redundant), and retrieve it-- REPEAT-- does not.

Rocky laying in Missy's box with the door open while Missy is learning about equal and opposite forces counts as settling down. That no one has bothered Suzy-- who is now up-- counts as settling down. That Missy cannot settle down does not. I would put her in her box, but Rocky's in there.

~~

As I said, they had a good day, overall.

Miss Manners

Missy had-- continues to be having-- a tough night, even though she had a good day.

I think she misses Rocky. It's amazing how quickly he picked up on my suggestion that he set a good example. But since it's the weekend, and Daughter C has been home for some portion of it, we haven't seen much of Rocky lately. And Missy really is forgetting her manners.

Rocky as a Work in Progress

I have written about Rocky's growth and development.

Rocky is becoming a very good dog. He is not an excellent dog, yet. He is training for excellence.

This is a non-trivial claim about this dog.

Mr. Big Food and I were talking about this dog this evening. Rocky is smart. He's still a bit needy-- he's at my feet right now when he could be in bed-- but he's developing nicely. He barks nonthreateningly to strangers.

He's made great advances. He travels.

And most importantly, he doesn't piss Mama off.

Button Box

Contents of Aunt Margaret's button box

ALTERNATE POST TITLE: How to Tempt Poor Little Rocky

I am beginning a project which I will post a bit about from time to time. I won't be able to be particularly specific-- Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat, and all-- but I will share parts of it with my reader(s). 

The project-- actually there are three projects, no, technically six, no, three sets of two-- requires buttons and ribbons and other fun things. So last evening I got out Aunt Margaret's button box. The button box is full of crappy old buttons and other stuff. The vast majority of the buttons are mother of pearl. They are quite lovely.

What's even lovelier to me is that I have Aunt Margaret's button box. How many of us even have crappy old button boxes these days? How many of us take the time to remove old buttons from a worn out garment before we toss it in the rag bag? (Who has a rag bag?) And how many of us have a big mother of pearl belt buckle in our button box?

I really like that mother of pearl belt buckle. It will be hard to let it go. But it's destined to be part of the project. I'm sure Miss M. will take good care of it. She doesn't mind crappy old stuff.

~~

My thoughts on mending, industry, economy, and Pride.

Introduction to crappy old stuff.

Inspiration

Kat plates some food for photographs of  Meals That Matter.

 Note Mr. Big Food's desk light, and the flour sack towel.

Miss M. prepares to survey th . It didn't go all that badly. 

 She ended up walking back to the house.

A tea for the Bride-to-Be

Thanks to Daughter C & Aliesha.

If anyone is listening,

I won't be talking much except when I give myself a timeout. 

As I write it's 9:19pm on Wednesday. (I scheduled this post.) We don't expect them until 2:30am, or later. I hope she doesn't speed. Not that it takes that long, but just I imagine a stop & rob stop with them in Southaven would be a delightful way to kill 30 minutes. 

There will be a lot of laughing. 

Lord, please remind C that the Waffle House in Batesville is nasty.

Meanwhile, I left a note saying the coffee would be ready at 6am and I'd see them in the morning.

Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake.
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take;
And this I ask for Jesus' sake. Amen.