Monday…Again!

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Mondays just keep rolling around!  And, I can’t believe that there is just one more Monday in September after this one!  Didn’t I just turn the page on the calendar?!?

I’ve just gotten home from prayer meeting so the day is drawing to a close.  It has preen another hot day…not quite as hot but our high was still in the 90s.  When we came out of prayer meeting we were greeted with damp sidewalks, parking lot, and streets.  When I got home there were actually small puddles on the driveway so I’m thinking that we may have gotten a little more rain here than we did at the church.  But still not enough to get through all the trees and get everything underfoot wet…my street still had dry places…in other words it didn’t rain very hard or very long. But right now we’ll take what we can get and be thankful for it! 

I’m coming right along with the Christmas ornaments that I am giving as gifts.  I’m on the last one from my original list, but I added one to the list, that is, if I got finished with the others in a timely manner.  Since it is still "just" September, I will have time to do that one, too. My goal has been to finish the ornament stitching by the end of September.  Then I can get busy making them into ornaments in October…stitching is only the first step towards finishing each one!  But a big step towards finishing. I want them completed and ready for gifting early in November.

This afternoon I spent some time in the kitchen.  I divided the pork loin roast into chops and cubes and got them into the freezer.  I did cook a couple of chops for a couple of my meals this week.  I was trying to figure out what to make to go with them and remembered that I had a partial bag of Pepperidge Farm stuffing in the pantry.  So I sautéed onions, celery, mushrooms, and apples and put together some dressing to eat with them…tasted very good…guess that is me starting to want Fall food items!  Still pretty hot for things that I like to eat in the Fall.  I keep thinking that the temps are going to go down and I keep putting off making my New England Clam Chowder…but going to end up making it soon whether it is hot or not outside.  

To be continued! Be safe! Be well! Be cautious!

Sunday Favorite Alaskan Photo

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Sizzling Saturday

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Today lived up to the heat advisory prediction.  According to Alexa, it got to 99° with a heat index of 104°.  I just stayed inside…never even poked my head outside.  

We had an enjoyable Bookclub Zoom meeting…always good to get together with Cottey alum.  It's not a large group, but we share plenty of different opinions about what we read.  And, it is fun for me as several of my classmates participate.  Friendships shared through the years! 

I have had an Amazon hassle going on for months.  Back in April I bought two replacement blades for a vegetable chopper.  They only sent me one blade.  I told them about the error and they sent me the set of two…told me that they couldn’t send me just the one blade they neglected to send at first.  I was also told that I didn’t have to send anything back.  Ever since then I have gotten messages periodically saying that I had neglected to make the return.  I would then get on the Amazon site and explain that what they had sent was a replacement…nothing to return…they would apologize and say they had taken care of it.  BUT I kept getting requests for the return…I would go through the same thing and they would apologize and say it was taken care of.  Then about a month ago I got a notice that if I didn’t send the return they would charge me for it.  Again, I went back to Amazon to explain my plight and they said no problem…all taken care of.  But then came the day that the amount was taken out of my account…so back to communicating with Amazon…again, apologies…money will be back in 3-5 business days.  I waited ten business days and when it wasn’t deposited, I contacted them again…and…finally yesterday it showed back in my account!  It was not a large amount…but it was the principle of the situation…and, I was determined Amazon wouldn't win the fight!  

To be continued! Be safe! Be well! Be cautious!

Sizzling Friday

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Today has been another hot day…once again we are under a heat advisory and have been for a couple of days and will be for a couple more.  I think we are all looking forward to some Fall temperatures and some rain…so hot and so dry!

I stuck to my Friday schedule and went to the grocery store.  I bought a couple of things for recipes and shopped some of the sales…such as they are these days! My main way of shopping is to shop sale items…especially in the meat department.  If I don't have immediate plans for the meat in a recipe, I freeze it for another day when I will plan a meal around what I have already purchased.  Today's sale wqs a pork loin…I plan to cube part of the roast for sweet and sour pork or a soup recipe that calls for cubed pork.  I think that this time I am going to cut the rest into pork chops…not going to use it as a roast at all this time.  Sometimes I use half for a recipe and the other half I roast. A week or so ago chicken thighs were on sale and I bought some…skinned and boned them and popped them in the freezer to use in a recipe that I like to use thigh meat. With the cost of everything these days, I’m trying to shop and cook smart!  I can't aways shop smart if I go in wanting to make a certain recipe and that week some of the ingredients are sky high in prices…just watching these days!  Doing it this way I find that I have a good varied diet of recipes that I enjoy cooking…when I let my freezer do the inspiring rather than the grocery store aisles!  

I bought a new pan to replace two of my cooking pans that had gotten old and probably shouldn't be used any more…those nonstick surfaces on pans just don’t hold up no matter how careful I have been with them…no dishwasher…no metal utensils, etc.  I am in the process of switching to stainless steel.  I have been very pleased with the ones I have gotten as replacements so far…hoping the new one I am pleased with…less in my cookware drawer by replacing two with one.  One of the ones I am replacing had a bit lower sides and the other a bit higher sides.  I hope that this one in the middle will do the job of both of them…time will tell! I am planning to make New England Clam Chowder sometime this weekend so will try this new pan out.  

After getting the groceries bought, brought in from the car, and put away.  I was pretty done in…this hot weather seems to wipe me out…or maybe it is my age…probably both!  But I was very ready to stitch and read this afternoon.  I finished the book and did a little more on the latest Christmas ornament. 

I’ve got my dishwasher running and that is it for this evening…more stitching and reading is in store for me this evening. I’m looking forward to tomorrow as once again it is time for my Cottey Bookclub tomorrow late morning. I’d probably better go find a summary of the book and read it prior to the meeting as I read tomorrow's selections some time back…probably need to refresh my memory!

To be continued! Be safe! Be well! Be cautious!

Thursday With Friends

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Today I met with some of the ladies in my Sunday School for lunch.  We had a nice time  visiting and eating.  It's always good to spend time with these friends!  

I swooped through the house today picking up and putting away things that I had put for my decorating efforts.  So the rooms look finished now.  That was one of the things that I wanted to get done today.  I have also read on the book that I am close to finished.  It is at that point in the story that I really want to find out what is going to happen.  I hope I will finish it before I sleep tonight.  I am also making good progress on the next Christmas ornament.

To be continued! Be safe! Be well! Be cautious!

Mid Week…Mid Month

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Tonight's photo shows the dining room table and I included a close-up of the cutwork, that my grandmother or her sister did (that I mentioned the other night in my blog). I thought that the cloth that had the fruit on the corners was a good one to use for Fall decorating.  I have a feeling that this may have been a dresser scarf rather than a table runner. It only has the design on two corners and the other side is just a finished edge.  But it works well for my purpose on the dining room table.

I have enjoyed looking around at my decorations today.  I am fairly pleased with the way they have turned out.  I never know how I will use the pumpkins, etc. that I have…I just start placing them and this time what is on the dining room table were the ones left…worked out well, I think!  

Today I did finish the Christmas ornament that I had hoped to finish last night before I went to sleep.  But I ended up being too tired to stitch so I got up this morning and finished it.  I have also read quite a bit today…sort of resting after my extra effort towards cleaning over the last days.  I did a little planning for a possible sewing project.  

I have just gotten home from Bible study and am ready to settle in for the evening.  I plan to start another Christmas ornament…this is one I have stitched before…perhaps memory of the pattern will come into play for this one.  I have plans to make this one a couple more times and would like to add another one on for my tree…but that will only happen after I get ones made for Christmas gifts first.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel for "to-be-stitched ornaments" for 2026!

To be continued! Be safe! Be well! Be cautious!

Busy Tuesday

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You are seeing the last of my decorating efforts.  I am finished…I think!  

Donna and I decided to play hooky from the library today.  We really are caught up for the moment in the library and since we both have a busy week ahead of us, we decided that we could skip the library.  I stayed home and worked on cleaning and decorating and stitching.  Besides finishing Fall decorating, I am hoping to finish another ornament today.  I am in a good place to say that I am pretty sure I can finish it before I sleep tonight.  I just have some outlining to do and quite a few little French knots.  On my breaks today I stitched for part of them and read for others.  Moving along in another book. I finished listening to a book over the weekend. That made my books-read list grow a bit, but I am definitely way behind on my yearly goal of reading a book a week.  But stitching takes away from reading time…reason that I listened to a book over the weekend.  My only problem with listening is dozing off and then having to go back and try to find the place I was just before dozing…I relistened to quite a bit of this last audio book! But in the end I did get the whole story and found out who did it!

To be continued! Be safe! Be well! Be cautious!