After months of planning, buying fabric, cutting, sewing and coordinating the work of others, the 2012 Mendota Cemetery Quilt “Common Ground” came to life. More months followed of selling tickets, and then it came to a climatic end at the Mendota Homecoming today when the winner was drawn.
Chris was the ring leader of the Mendota Cemetery quilt. Without her, there would be no quilt. She’s been out of town all summer helping a family member. She’s back–and just in time to draw the ticket.
Over 1600 tickets were sold.
I had about 1/16 chance in winning. It didn’t matter. Today was not my day. It was Libby’s day!
Libby bought a $1 chance from my neighbor Margie. Next week, she’ll be enjoying the Mendota Cemetery Quilt called “Common Ground.” I would like to be a fly on the wall when Margie calls her and tells her!!
This was not my original post for today but I was so excited I had to share it. Living in a rural community means many things…and today, these things are all good.
We’re already whispering about next year’s Mendota Cemetery Quilt. I’ll take you along when we get the fabric. We’ll be working hard to top this one.
I returned home from Georgia yesterday. I was so glad to get home. It was my last trip for work as next week is my last week at work. I was anxious to get home but I ran into Bristol race traffic. Yuck. I think I ran a redlight on Volunteer Parkway in Bristol, Tennessee. I also saw a police officer turn around…like he or she saw me. Yikes. Maybe the police car was just turning around, but I’ll never know, because I zipped off and hid at Tennessee High School! Yeah..that’s me…just sitting at THS…like I was really going there.
I have sat in the “lane of shame” with the flashing blue lights earlier this year and it cost me over $500. I did not realize that going 86 in a 65 would be such a bad mistake. I don’t normally speed..I was going downhill…in a rental car that was much more powerful than my Prius. Think what I could have bought with that $500!! I hated myself.
It’s fun to blog and work on projects, but today, I got up and worked on a spreadsheet for work for a few hours–I am not a numbers person so…well, I don’t want to say. Following that, I didn’t do anything. Nothing. Mike and I meant to go see the local high school football team open their season, but we didn’t do that either. It was a pajama day.
It’s the simple things that make my life wonderful, and here in Mendota, we are surrounded by simple things.
Lots of wonderful. When I’m in a larger town, I get easily distracted by the volume of stuff and people and traffic. It’s like a bad circus.
My brother-in law brought my niece’s daughter (my grandniece) by this afternoon. She’s a little bit of wonderful.
They drove up on the golf cart (now that is my kind of traffic). Look at it rain!! Uncle Gerald said “Arianna…tell Eva about the mama deer and her baby.” I asked “how big was the baby?” Arianna held up her fingers and said “this big.”
I asked Arianna…”do you like the rain.” She replied “yes,” but this picture shows a little girl who doesn’t like being wet–at least not out of the pool. It was sunny but still raining. You know the kind of feeling…the asphalt has puddles of warm water…maybe bubbles of tar…feels good on your feet.
I said…”turn around and shake it off.” She did.
Had to spin around and wind up a little bit…
Full spins….
Turning and turning…
Ahhh….and having fun…
And to just top off a great moment…He sent a rainbow. So pretty.
See that ugly little brown thing? That is our woodboiler. It heats our water and the two houses in the winter. The heat is so warm we usually don’t use it until December. Behind the woodboiler is a grapevine…I got it from the Washington County 4H Club two years ago. Hope I have grapes next year.
It’s good to be home. Tomorrow is a Stay.At.Home.Day. I’m making my curtain for the kitchen foyer. I’ve said this about a million times, but it will happen tomorrow.
Time for bed…please leave me a comment and say hello! It’s more fun when I hear from you!
Hi…I’m in Alpharetta, Georgia and I do not have my camera with me!! I take it everywhere, but I didn’t bring it as I was afraid I’d leave it somewhere or even worse. Now…I’m missing it.
So..I started looking at pictures on my computer, and I realized, it’s my work laptop and there are only a few pictures on it (ok…more like a few hundred but I’ve already shown you all of them.)
I wanted to show you a picture of the fainting goats, Mason and Dixon, that live on Swinging Bridge Road. Mason is a gentleman, but Dixon should be called Humpy. He is not neutered and is in love with just about everything that he comes across. There are big plans for Dixon as he will be fathering baby fainting goats when his Momma finds just the right little lady for him. However, I’m going to have to wait until this weekend to let you see these two cuties.
I did find one picture I know I haven’t shared. Booby Hill…look in the horizon…when I was a teenager, those two hills were grazed completely smooth…they looked like…well..boobies! We actually called them something similar but not quite the same.
Boobies are now leading my conversation thread. Since I’ve been in Georgia, I’ve seen a cement mixer and a trash truck that were totally pink with the breast cancer awareness logo.
But speaking of trucks, I haven’t seen many pickup trucks and the cars are not dirty. How do these people stay so skinny?
Hi…did you have a good weekend? Mine went by way too fast. I was at work Monday thru Thursday and I remembered how much I like everyone I work with and how much I dislike driving to Kingsport and how much I love being home a bit more during the week. Just a few more days and I’m officially through with this part of my work life.
Soon I may start another part-time work adventure which, if it all works out, I’m very excited about. I can’t wait to share it with you. However, I’m no longer on my leave of absence and am currently working at my old job for a few more days. Now..about this weekend.
Do you remember this? It was at the end of one of my posts and was on my “to do” list?
The pantry is in the den. The room is cool and a great place for canned goods…and cleaning supplies…and just junk. Do you see any place for 72 pints of my prized pasta sauce and about 8 quarts of tomatoes? Right. I don’t either.
I’d thought I’d wait for Mike to do a few things toward completing this project, but he has been mowing like crazy because of all of the rain in southwest Virginia. It’s mow and then mow and then weed eat.
Here’s my reveal…I haven’t got it finished 100% but it’s close. Mike has to put the light changing thingies and the Shark floor cleaning thingy, etc. in place and I’ve got additional labeling to do top the plastic bins, but in the interim…here’s what I’ve done…
This was so simple. I took box tops from Sam’s Club and sprayed chalk paint on the boxes. I then used chalk markers to label the boxes of canned goods. Easy Brilliant and cheap inexpensive. And sooo….effective.
If you home can, you know there is a problem with finding green beans in your basement, closet, pantry etc. that date way back to the Mayflower and wondering what on earth you should do with them. Our nature in southwest Virginia is to NOT TO LET ANYTHING GO TO WASTE!!!I wrote the names of what was in the box tops and then noted in small letters the year they were preserved. While working on the pantry, contrary to the philosophy of not wasting anything, I discarded some peach preserves that I made five or six years ago, some pickled beets no one was eating, and some green beans and tomatoes that had a lot of rust on their lids. Seriously, I needed the space, and canning jars are too expensive to let set on the shelves and not be eaten.
Also, take a look at that glass cleaner box on the first shelf. Perhaps if I’d done this sooner, I would have realized that I did not need 12 containers of products for cleaning glass.
Meanwhile, I received compensation for this. I FOUND two jars of our PRIZED wild raspberry jam from 2011. They are the two little jars in between the BBQ sauce (it’s from Trader Joe’s and Mike loves it so I buy it whenever I’m near a Trader Joe’s store) and the green bean box (which I didn’t change the writing because it was almost sort of appropriate). I didn’t make any raspberry jam this year as it was 100 degrees when they were ripe and the turkeys were aggressively planning on what they were going to do with the raspberries…and they didn’t care to walk on the hill behind the house in 100 degree temperatures. The turkeys won.
I feel a sense of security in looking at this pantry. Home canning is part of our rural life. It’s not a dying art but a growing art in southwest Virginia. I hope you find this idea on how to organize home canned goods helpful.
I cleaned the living room Saturday. I actually did it late Friday night because I’ve read from other bloggers that morning light is the best for taking pictures. So much learning!! So…I got up Saturday morning and took pictures.
Come in!! You’ll never visit where my living room will be this clean again. I’m not a dirty person but I’m happiest in a small mess.
But to refresh you..it’s been evolving…in this picture, which was taken with my old photo editing software before I changed to the very cool one I’m using now…I knew I wanted a “B” on the wall and I’d asked Mike to help me move the old entertainment center back in from hiding. I knew I had to make this work, at least for a while, else there would be a minor revolt on my getting any more furniture moving help. And there’s my trusted friend, the vacuum hose.
Now, here we are today. Furniture is in place. Not everything is perfect, but at least the cleaning supplies are put away and I didn’t get them in the picture.
Living Room
There has been almost no new purchases for this room in 12 years. Primarily, I moved the furniture around. I don’t have a before picture but the couch was in the center of the room. Ho hum. I was tired of it.
Here’s a picture of the current resting place for my “B”. That gourd doesn’t really go there, but I haven’t figured out what to do with her. She’s a pal of mine. I grew her a long time ago and when I shake her, she rattes. She’s like me…when I get shaken up, I get all rattled!
Here’s another angle…
The curio in the corner was a present from my husband about a gazillion years ago. We were pretty lean at that time, so he bought it unfinished.
And here’s the mantle which I’m looking forward to decorating for fall….
I always keep a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the mantle. They remind me of my father, W. T. Barker. The P. Buckley Moss print is part one of the Rhythm & Roots series she’s doing. I haven’t bought the second one which depicts the Burger Bar in Bristol, Virginia.
The bowl with the gourds in it was a gift from a local Mendota woodturner/craftsman, Curtis. I can’t remember his last name!! If someone local is reading this, please leave a comment with Curtis’ name and I’ll correct!! The book is an old Bible that has my Uncle Johnny’s handwriting and notes in. He was actually John Pershing Parker. He’s long gone, and the Bible is almost falling apart. The cover is like soft denim. The Bible was found in an old garage Uncle Charlie (Charlie Litton) built that was being torn down by a contractor for VDOT during a road improvement project. It was worthless to him but means everything to me.
I’m feeling a bit smug about this photography software. I used a “vignette” feature on that picture which blurs the background so that the subject matter will capture the viewer’s full attention.
Here’s the coffee table with a bowl of gourds and some zinnias I picked. Like my vase?
Here’s a view so you can see why the foyer and the living room paint colors have to “talk”. It’s a little bit elongated. Sorry.
And my last picture..
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Thank you for visiting me in my living room. I like this room. It’s best feature is the paint which makes a nice backdrop for everything else. It is especially pretty when it’s snowing outside and the fireplace is burning. I am looking forward to one of those days this winter.
Yikes…today is almost over and I have not been very productive.
I went to get my hair cut and highlighted this morning. I was so happy when Louetta called and asked me to come in at 8:45 am instead of 11:00 am which was my original schedule. I thought…”wow…I’ll come home and get a lot done.” There are so many things that can go wrong with that kind of statement!
So…. I didn’t do any of the things I intended, and here is is 9:40 pm and I just put the jars of spaghetti sauce into the pressure canner. No worries..it’s only one batch of nine pints. It will put my spaghetti sauce stash right at 71 if they all seal.
I’m waiting for the comforting sound of the pressure canner jiggling. I’ll listen to that for 40 minutes, turn the stove off and go to bed. Tomorrow, I’ll get the jars out and they will still be quite warm. Sigh.
Back to my hair appointment…Louetta has been doing my hair since 1998 when we bought the land that this house sets on. She had her shop on the corner of Benhams and Reedy Creek Road in the Benhams community. This was the closest hair salon to my house. Later, she moved the shop into a house she owned on Reedy Creek Road. Shortly thereafter, she moved the shop into the basement of the house that she lived in on Reedy Creek Road. (These were two different houses.) The interesting fact about this is that she sold that house while having a garage sale. I am not kidding. Following that, she moved back to to the corner of Benhams and Reedy Creek Road and changed her salon’s name to Louetta’s Carribean Splash. Following that, she moved her shop to Lee Highway beside Domino’s Pizza and called her salon “Louetta’s Hair Pottery and Color Works.” Now, she is near Exit 10 on Lee Highway, and I think she kept the same name.
Louetta is not afraid of change.
She is Louetta Canter but she was a Millard before she got married. This is important because my parents always said “the Millard girls are very handy and creative.” It’s true. For all of Lou’s customers to follow her around (and these are just a few of the moves…there were others before I ever showed up), she has to be pretty good. .
While I was there, I pulled out my camera. I wanted to show you Louetta’s Great Grandmother Jackson’s quilt.
It’s a beautiful quilt that has been used and loved. It’s hanging on a walking stick…there’s a story about that, too, but I’ll have to get Louetta to tell us about that.
Here’s Louetta. She has so much more nerve and God-given talent than most…especially me…I love her moxy.
Hello everyone! “Mavis” found my blog and commented on it. Hi Mavis! It’s fun when someone I don’t know finds me and LIKES me! Just so you’ll know, I can’t see who is following the blog unless a comment is left. I can see the number of views, and I can actually block IP addresses for spammers or trolls, but I don’t really know who reads until a comment is left. I know I like Mavis because she is a canner. Yeah Mavis!
So…I worked today. I’m working until the end of August! Anyway, I got home from work and as my diet has blown up this past two weeks, I decided to go for a walk. Mike was going to take the “dear girls” (our dogs Gracie and Luckie) for a “loop” on the “outer belt” of Mendota (large Swinging Bridge Road loop) so he dropped me off. I decided to take you along on my walk.
This is the first little face I saw on Swinging Bridge. Let me introduce you to Patty.
Patty is a rescue dog. She has quite a big of Great Pyranese in her, but today that is not what she is talking about. She is talking about the very bad haircut her Mommy gave her.
Patty: “Look…she cut my fur!!
Punkin: “You don’t expect me to look at you, do you?”
Patty: “I don’t care how I look..I love my Mommy.”
And just like that, it was time to visit the chickens. As we enter the wire enclosure, we’re greeting by a Welcome Feather. These are no ordinary chickens.
These chickens live at the Dean’s Hen Hilton. How many hens do you know that live like this?
The sunflower shelter is made completely out of recycled materials. I had to insert a large picture. (I’m using a new photo editing software…free of course…hope it’s not all elongated!) Very cool.
Speaking of needing a haircut…see the feet on this chick…
I think Margie said that the chicken pictured above is a Brahma. We weren’t quite sure if this is a rooster or a hen. No one is crowing but no one is laying yet! It will happen soon!
Here’s another sweet girl…actually two sweet girls. Margie and one of her Aracaunas. This chicken is special as her eggs will be a blue green color. Very pretty. It’s a color Benjamin Moore would like to copy I’m sure! Once she is a bit older, she’ll start laying and I’ll show you a picture of one of her eggs.
Check this out…what do you think this shelter for three of the girls is made out of?
Did you say it used to be a table?
It’s time to leave. In just a short while, I’ll be visiting Margie and the girls weekly as they begin laying eggs. I have committed to one dozen beautiful, healthy free-range eggs each week. If we don’t eat the eggs, I’ll whip some scrambled eggs up for the dear girls.
I head out Swinging Bridge. Not much going on this evening. Here’s a truck. We have way more trucks than cars in Mendota, and if someone doesn’t have a truck, they probably wish they did! I feel like I’m walking through a salad bowl at I approach this shady area. Have I said that before?
Almost home. I walk by the unfinished barn which is being built of recycled materials. The work is going slowly but at least there is shelter for some hay. The goats will need that this winter. You’ll never hear me complain about someone who works a little slower. My projects take three times as long as everyone else!
I’m home from my walk. I have a large project ahead of me this weekend. I’m going to reorganize my pantry closet where I store cleaning supplies, filters, vet supplies and quite a bit of my canned goods. I wanted to share the BEFORE picture to keep me motiviated to tackle this project this weekend.
Two window treatments and the pantry. I will be a happy camper if I get this done by Sunday.
Thanks for reading my blog. It means a lot to me. Talk later!
I get Pottery Barn’s catalog. I order one thing per year so I’ll stay on the mailing list. Confession…I order more than one thing but not too much more. So many good ideas!!
I’m trying not to be such a CONSUMER… shopping just for the hunt. However, I do like swapping stuff around and interchanging things, and sometimes I end up buying something. But I’ve been really careful spending money. Since I haven’t been working, I haven’t been getting paid. You get the picture! Recently I moved things around in my living room, and I realized I needed something in a blank spot on the wall. The CONSUMER started coming out, and oh well.
I tried to do an arrangement with this giant B pictured below that is actually cardboard. I’d hauled it from Georgia several months ago and hid it. Mike doesn’t care when I buy things but it was a cardboard B. I had a vision for it (Anthropologie) and I didn’t want to try to communicate what I saw in my head into what I wanted him to see in his head. It doesn’t work. We are wired differently.
I spray painted the B a metallic color thinking that you might not realize I got it for $9 at Joanne’s Fabrics. Did I fool you?
Looked pretty bad. The B went into the closet for a few days. I then came up with a brillient idea to put it on top of the entertainment center with a plant. This left a big blank wall spot, and while I wanted the entertainment center in the room, (Just a little over a week ago, I had made a big deal of it and made Mike help me carry the thing from the garage to the house) it looked like a big tall chimney. It’s really a dilemna in this room. It’s a cathedral ceiling so anything short looks squatty but the entertainment center is tall and skinny by itself. Like a lonely soldier.
I could not figure out what to do, and that’s where the Pottery Barn catalog arrived and gave me the idea to use a floating wall shelf. I could place pictures on the shelf and use it to “step down” to the couch so the entertainment center doesn’t stand out like an ugly tree. I didn’t want to pay Pottery Barn prices compounded by the fact that we have no Pottery Barn around here, so I went to Hobby Lobby and found one for $44. Of course, I had the 40% coupon, so it wasn’t too bad..less than $30.
Here’s what it looks like…I just ran and put these pictures on it. Not sure if they are staying.
I like it!
Here’s what it looks like from a few steps back…the couch looks awkward in this picture…I’ll clean the room and get better pictures this weekend. And draft…another tall skinny picture.
Don’t look at the coffee table which is stacked full of magazines and stuff. It’s just in your head. It doesn’t really look that way…I have a vision…
When I lived elsewhere, I bought flowers each week at the grocery store. It wasn’t terribly expensive…maybe $8-$10, but it did add up.
I seldom buy flowers since returning to Mendota. Each year I put out several rows of zinnias. They are at our entry gate, the garden and in the meadow.
I have pretty, fresh flowers all summer long. Free. I don’t even buy the seeds since I save them each year. At the end of the season, the flowers dry up and look like this…
The one pictured is not quite ready to be picked. However, in a few weeks, I’ll go out with a bag and pull these dead flower heads off and drop them in a brown paper bag. I’ll store the bag throughout the winter and then in the spring, I sprinkle them wherever I want to see zinnias. They never fail me.
I have some very nice vases, and I use them, but my favorite vase is the canning jar. The one in this picture is a two-quart jar which I purchased new in a pack of six at Food Country in Abingdon. The zinnias and the canning jar are useful, good looking, and they are common to my house. Works for me!
That’s my thrifty tip. Move to the country and plant zinnias and save $8-$10 per week. Are you sold?
I went back to work today. Fun seeing everyone but even though it’s just for three weeks, I missed having the time to be creative and work on my projects at home. So…I came home…and…I got out the CHALKPAINT!! Because I canned so much yesterday, I made a little picture to put above my cooktop.
I’m feeling better already!
Now if I could find one pair of my many pairs of scissors, I’d work on my wreath or curtain project.
I wasn’t in love with home canning at first. It was the winter following the summer I learned to can that I fell in love with canning. This hasn’t been all that long ago–less than ten years. It was snowing and we didn’t go to the grocery store as we’d planned. I made spaghetti and instead of a salad to accompany the spaghetti, we had green beans. The spaghetti was topped with my sauce and the green beans were from the jars on top of the cabinets — all from the summer before.
Those green beans not only looked good on top of my cabinets — they were good. I thought…I did this!
I then read a great book by Barbara Kingsolver called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and I realized how beneficial it is to eat local food. I love that book…if you haven’t read it, you should! The library has the book and the CD.
On Saturday, I started this post describing my excitment over canning tomatoes. I realize it appears I have a small life to be excited about canning tomatoes, but if you haven’t tried canning, it’s difficult to understand the satisfaction achieved from preserving your own food. I think that many of us are still “wired” to want to gather and prepare for winter — even though Food City and Kroger are doing a pretty good job of taking over this responsibility!
Anyway, I canned 65 pints of homemade spaghetti sauce and 12 quarts of tomatoes — right at 100 pounds of tomatoes. The spaghetti sauce grew challenging as I grew more tired. I started yesterday and did not finish completely until 5 pm today. I had to scald the tomatoes to get the skins off. Then I had to skin and core them and put them in my handy KitchenAid food processor which I’d researched last winter in preparation for its use in dicing tomatoes Great job! Once I got about 20 cups of the diced tomatoes, I added seasonings and placed the mixture on the stove to simmer for 25 minutes. AFTER that, it was into the jars and then into the pressure canner for 40 minutes. The worst part about this whole process besides a sea of red sticky mess was waiting for the pressure canner to cool off enough to open and remove the jars.
I’m not complaining. I have a pantry full of wonderful, yummy stuff that I’ll be quite smug about this winter. I’m droning. Here’s a few pictures.
Aren’t these girls pretty? They are in the “hot tub” getting scalded. Ouch.
Sue Cressel a nurse practitioner and friend taught me to can. She went strictly by the Ball Canning Book. This was 8 or 9 summers ago, and she and I canned 168 quarts of green beans along with many pints of tomatoes, pasta sauce and salsa. My right elbow hurt from breaking beans. I am not sure why I did not learn from my mother…I think she saw me more as a bean breaker than a bean canner.
So…much of the weekend, I was looking down into a simmering pot of this…
Even though I was busy in the kitchen, I tried to do other things during the “down” time when things were on the stove. In the country, there is always something to do. If we’re bored, we can go out and mow grass.
However, I did laundry as we’d had company all week. I hang my sheets out to dry. I have two washing machines, so I can zip through the laundry by using both machines and the clothesline and the dryer. The sheets smell really good, but this has its hazards. From above, the birds can poop on them, and if I hang them too low, the cat runs up and pees on them. That red sheet is definitely in the danger zone.
It’s always something. And how has your weekend been?
