I Love!

(Mary Englebreit)

I think Valentine's Day takes on a different tone as you get older and have been married happily to the same person for over 31 years.  We don't buy gifts for each other on this day.  We didn't even buy cards for each other this year.  It can just be a waste of money if you're just trying to come up with something at the last minute just because Hallmark says you need to.

We just love that we are home together. ( I got home last night from Spokane.  I'll have to write about the trip tomorrow.)   I  Love being home. We allowed each other to sleep in this morning since we didn't get to bed until late.  Then first thing today we promised  to be nice to each other all day!  How's that for a Valentine's gift!?  It doesn't sound so good writing it, but I have to say, it was a nice gift to each other.  We can have a tendancy to pick at each other and get on each other's nerves since we work out of our home and we're together all day.  Today was nice.  I Love my Hubby!

My little babies were very happy to see me when they came with "daddy" to pick me up at the airport. I  Love my babies.

I Love my morning coffee in my "Love you, kiss, kiss"  mug.

I Love to look outside and see the red cardinal that shows up every morning for breakfast.

I Love my family, friends and all my blog followers. 

I Love my life!!

A Good Night's Sleep is Priceless

I'm feeling much better!  What a difference a good day's rest and a good night's sleep makes.  I don't necessarily require a lot of hours of sleep, but the hours that I do sleep need to be worth it!  Uninterrupted and deep.  The bad news is that poor hubby is now sick.  His sick (and it better stay "his") was the stomach kind, not the head kind like mine was.  So I slept in the guest room last night since the kids are away for the week.  I think that's only the second time in six years that I've slept up there.  I have to say that I think that is why I slept so well.  I know he would feel terrible if I told him that, so I'll keep it a secret!

Today has been a very quiet day all to myself.  Hubby has been sleeping all day and wants absolutely nothing to eat.  He's still blaming his sickness on bad Chinese food from Friday night, but I feel sure it's a flu bug.  I bet we don't get Chinese again for quite a while, though.
So anyway, I've been putzin' around the house, cleaning and catching up on the computer. Uhhhh!! It feels so good!  I still had the lower level family room to clean up from Christmas.  That's the last room to get done.  Finally, all the Christmas decorations are down and all the boxes and bins are put away.  I just need to dust and run the vacuum down there now.  I thought I'd take a little lunch break first.  Don't want to overdue it!
I keep my girly, lacey Christmas tree up through St. Patrick's Day because I like to decorate it for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day.  I did the Valentine's decorating last weekend right before the kids got here.  As you can see, the tree isn't that much different, except I try to take off anything that looks real Christmasy and put on some red bulbs and hearts, with heart garland.  It's all pink, white, red and lacey.

My mantel is back to normal now with a few little wooden hearts added.

The entrance foyer table is ready to welcome now with a Valentine greeting.

I still might do more with this.  A trip to JoAnn's is needed.

And last night, since I had no interruptions from about 5:00 to 11:00, I was able to almost finish two knitting projects.  This one is a scarf that I made from very good yarn that Hubby got me for Christmas.  I would have never spent this much money on yarn myself!  It's silk and mohair with silver metallic threads in it.  Then I beaded the yarn to make silver beaded fringe.  This looks really pretty with a black turtleneck.

This little white baby hat is one of two.  The second one isn't finished yet.  One will have a pink flower and trim and the other will have a purple flower and trim.  The daughter of a very good friend of mine just adopted 

two twin girls from Africa.  She will be going back to Africa to pick them up next month.  This Saturday I am going to a baby shower for her.

Well, my lunch break is over, so I'll go clean downstairs for about an hour and then I'm done for today.  

Valentine's Weekend is Over!

Thank goodness it's Monday.  These weekends  lately have not been relaxing at all.  This was a good weekend, with the kids here and Valentine's Day, but I'm glad it's over.  I love having them all here, but they do wear me out.
Friday night we had a pizza and wing dinner.  Not very nutritious, but who cares, it was a Friday night.  Then we had our ice cream sundaes with hot fudge, whipped cream and valentine sprinkles.  May as well have all the junk in one sitting.
Saturday, Melissa and I spent the whole day at their old house and we got the main house all clean.  Now this week the carpenter man is supposed to come to make a few minor repairs.  Austin showed up after dropping the boys off at a friend's house to play and he got everything moved out of the guest house and into the garage.  I was so tired by the end of the day I told them they were on their own for Sunday's cleaning of the guest house.
Sunday I stayed home with the boys and made a roast and mashed potatoes dinner.  Austin and Melissa came back home with a pretty little flower arrangement for me for Valentine's Day and to thank me for everything. 

Isn't it sweet?  I really appreciated that.

 We had a very nice dinner with them before they went home.
Those boys are so busy and loud, but we can't help but laugh at them.  They just come up with the funniest things.   Logan spent the day watching Cartoon Network with a movie marathon going all day.  He watches a lot of TV and his mom and dad really limit his television time during the week.  Bob asked him why he was such a TV kid and his reply was, "Because when I was in my Mommie's bellie I watched TV in there".  Now where in the world did that come from?  We laughed so hard.  It makes you wonder what all goes on in those cute little heads of their's.  Then Austin came home with a whoopie cushion for Landen because he's going through a phase right now where he's just obsessed with poop and farts.  It seems like that's all he talks about.  And I guess we all don't do much to discourage it because he's so funny about it.  Austin put the whoopie cushion on Landen's chair as we were sitting for dinner and he got the biggest kick out of it.  So then he thought he was "surprising" the rest of us with it as he put it on each of our chairs.  Of course we acted like he was tricking us all. 
The boys got their bath and pajamas on for the ride home and then they just had fun blowing up the whoopie cushion and sitting on it themselves as I finished cleaning the dining room and kitchen.

Today I took all the Valentine decorations down, which also got rid of all remnants of Christmas that was still hanging around.  The Valentine tree was completely taken down and put away.

I was ready to see it gone.

All the other Valentine decorations are put away.

All gone. 

                                

The only thing left hanging is my Valentine quilt.  I don't have a St Patrick's quilt and my Easter one will go up shortly.  I may just leave this up for another month.  I'll have to think about it.  It'll probably bug me, though, so I'll have to find something else to go up for a while.

Mom and Dad also got back safe and sound from Florida.  Now everything seems all back to normal again.

I'm looking forward to a quiet evening of Olympics and knitting.  Uhhhhh! 

Kids are Coming Early!! Oh No!!

Oh My!  I just found out the kids are coming home today for the whole weekend.  I thought they were just coming up tomorrow.  I love them and love to see them, but the whole weekend? --- I have to gear up for that.  And by kids, I mean Austin, Melissa,

Logan age 5,  Landen age 4 in two weesks,

and two hyper dogs.  OK, I can do this, I can do this, yes I can!

I was planning fancy ice cream sundaes for tomorrow night for Valentine's Day, but I don't have all the stuff.  So I just got in touch with My Bob since he's not home yet from appointments and asked him to pick up all the sundae makings that I didn't have yet.  We'll have these for tonight.  Austin and Melissa asked if I minded that just the two of them go out to dinner tomorrow night for Valentine's Day.  Of course I don't mind.  I just wasn't quite prepared. 
I'm a planner.  I always like to know ahead of time what's going on and what I'm going to be doing, and everyone else's plans if they concern me at all.  So I'm cleaning bedrooms and bathrooms today.  This was on my list to do tomorrow morning.  I'm doing good now, though.   Got the cleaning done and dessert being picked up.

The reason they're coming home is to hopefully finish cleaning their house out that's going up for sale.  I don't know yet if I'll be helping to clean or staying home with the boys. 
Some real good news that we're very hopeful about is that we think the house may be sold already without it even being listed yet.  I was talking to a florist friend of mine and it just so happens that her current lease for her flower shop is ending in May and she wants to find a better but less expensive space.
 I told her about my son's house coming up for sale since they had to move an hour and a half away.  The house comes with a separate garage and office/guest house.  This is where our insurance agency used to be.  She and her husband asked if they could see it right away and they decided they want it and they would move her flower shop into the old office building.

This is what my florist friend and I imagine it could look like.  Very cute! 

Then they would rent out the main house.  We were all excited about the transaction until we double checked with the city zoning board and since it was never zoned commercial we now have to go through this riga-ma-roll of paper work, variances, exceptions, legal postings and a meeting to have it voted on.  Jeez!!
Since my grandfather built the building in 1958 and had his insurance agency in there at that time it was just "grandfathered" in as an insurance agency.  Actual zoning laws went into affect in 1964. 
So that's where we're at.  My Bob and I are doing the paper work and leg work on the matter and the meeting is now scheduled for a week from Tuesday.

As my Grandma always used to say, "Life gets tedious at times".

My World, My Style

Wow! It's cold outside.  I am staying inside all day.  I love when I can do that.  The sun is out, which is unusual around here, so it's really pretty.  We ended up getting a lot of snow yesterday.  This is what it looked like yesterday morning.

As of the day before yesterday, all the snow was almost gone due to all the rain we had.  Now this again.  I'm so lucky that I don't usually have to go out if I don't want to.  I can at least wait until the driveway gets shovelled. 

I was able to get my new white lights up on my mantel.  I'm so used to these lights that when they burn out it drives me crazy.  The room just feels so dark and cold without them.  Little lights just make a room feel so much cozier.  I have a small little passion for small little lamps.  My Bob calls it my light show when I start turning on all my little lamps at 5:00 in the evening. 

Here's my mantel with the lights out.

Just too dark, isn't it?

Now here it is with the lights on.

Isn't that better?  And this picture was taken during the day.  It's even prettier at night.   I also found these cute little wooden valentines at JoAnn's.  I like that they're subtle and muted and blend in better with my colors.  I'm not really a bright red person.

As you can see, I have an Old World theme to my home with wine, grapes, vines, etc.  At least this is what the HGTV web site told me.  That's a fun site if you're into decorating, crafts, gardening, etc.  You can take a little quiz on line that tells you your decorating style.  Mine is "Old World, New Way".  I was so excited to know my style had an actual name. 

 I may have shown this before, but this is my fireplace screen that we had a stained glass artist friend of ours make for us as per my design.

I didn't like the old ugly black cover that's on the fireplace so this is a pretty cover up.

So for today I told myself I was going to work on bookkeeping.  I'm still procrastinating on that job.  Maybe after lunch ---.