Love that song…..

   I am still having problems getting to some of your blogs but will be addressing that soon. We have been busy lately and I plan on catching you up with some of the crafts I have been working on….so darned cute…some of them. I am making mouse pincushions and crocheting some purses for friends and children for xmas. My niece sent me an email the other day from Ft. Lauderdale. She’s a great girl and I am always thrilled to hear from her by email or phone because we don’t get a chance to see each other that often. In the email was a version of that old song Sara Smile, originally done by Hall and Oats in a duo. I’ve always loved that song….haven’t you? In this version, it is sung by a guy named Jimmy Wayne and my GOD does he blow me away with his version!!! Sooooo bluesy and quite close to Hall and Oats in range as well. I tend to like the beginning better but he really rocks on his version of Sara Smile…..check it out…….

What do you think? This song was in my head all day after this…….

Be back soon with craft photos……………………………………..hopefully before Halloween!!

Taking Our Furry Friends Trick or Treating…

   Hello all….I just wanted to let some of you know I am having trouble getting to your blogs….Far Side and others. We have Mozilla Firefox and some of your blogs won’t let me in with that. I try internet explorer and that won’t load up!%$#@ Hubby has been real busy so I have not bothered him too much about it. I just wanted you to know I have tried!! Drives me crazy but I will get there. It’s been a little nuts over here anyway but wanted to pop in and say thanks for all your comments about my last post….so darned touching! Oh…did I mention I can’t leave comments on MINE either!?? I see some of you did a bit of research too….that’s so cool. I loved it!

  Hey….is it wrong to take our animals out trick or treating? Think about it……

 

And another……………

Hope your furry pals have a wonderful Halloween….

    OUR BABY GUARDING THE PUMPKINS AND TOMATOES.

The Missing Photo…..

   For any of you that follow my blog, you know that my dad was a musician. He died in 1993 of cancer. My mom died 5 years later in 1998. While cleaning out my parents home, each of us got a few things we wanted as keepsakes. This was before scrapbooking and digital photos entered my families lives. So…some photographs got taken here and there and basically scattered between the four of us, ending up in our prospective attics and shoeboxes…etc. Pictures that should have stayed together got separated.

   I have a nephew named Adam who looks an awful lot like my dad did when he was young. Adam plays guitar and does that very well. He married a Greek girl named Carey from North Carolina who also plays guitar and sings like a bird. The two of them moved to Nashville 12 years ago to try and make a name for themselves. They are both talented song writers as well. After a few years of being struggling musicians, they are finally getting a break it would seem. They have their own production studio and some of the songs they have written over the years are beginning to be picked up. MTV has started using some of them and the residuals of those songs are beginning to come in, albeit small. Every once in a while I go to their MySpace site to check on what’s happening in their lives musically. While there recently, I came across one of those missing photos I was talking about….of my dad. I wondered how Adam got that. I happened to be at my daughters a while back and on the desk top of her computer, was that photograph! How’d you get that?? She got it from Adam who got it from my brother and so on.

   It is a photo of my dad playing guitar during WWII at a music show put on for the boys over in Italy. I just love it and boy doesn’t my nephew Adam look like him! So…I just went to Adam’s site and copied it!!! Now I finally have it!! How simple was that….but do you think I could figure all that out back then??? Oh my God it takes me forever to get these things done. Here’s the photo…. That’s my dad playing his 1937 Epiphone. That guitar ended up with my nephew Adam and my brother had it refurbished. Here is a photo of Adam playing it today……

I saw this and it freaked me out!! What a strange feeling came over me! It was meant to be that he inherit this old guitar from my dad and keep the music alive through it. Gives me goose bumps. It makes me think of the Dan Fogelberg song, Leader Of The Band.

My brother Arthur used to play this song and one day he played it just for my dad. It was a moment I will never forget. When he sang about the music running through his veins I just lost it. I looked over at my dad and he had tears in his eyes. God I miss him and my mom every day. I feel grateful we have musicians in the family that keep that magic alive today. Music is such a universal thing isn’t it? It can transport us back to a different time in our lives….it can make us cry at the drop of a hat….or laugh and dance…it’s a wonderful thing that binds us all together.

  My nephew Adam and his wife Carey got mentioned recently on CNN by a man that reviews music. We were all very excited about this! Adam produces some up and coming musicians that folks are starting to take notice of. After reviewing two of them in this interview with CNN, he mentions A and C and showcases my absolute FAVORITE song they wrote called BACKSEAT!! Yay!! I am in LOVE with that song and can’t seem to get enough of it! I have been telling people that forever!! Here’s the link to the interview….the Backseat part is at the end…

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2009/10/06/dcl.grumbine.country.cnn   Hopefully this will come through……..

  

  Do any of you play music? Did your parents too? What a gift my folks gave my brothers and I that will always be with me…….

 

The Harvest Of 2009

Thought I would share some of the pictures of our garden harvest. One Sunday, a few weeks ago, we had my son and daughter and my friend and mother in law Alice and father in law Woody and brother and sister in law over for a dinner. We all contributed to the dinner and it was delicious. I tried to cook some recipes that included garden veggies. We had baked ham, roasted garden veggies, pasta salad, potato salad, cole slaw, and homemade carrot cake for dessert. My son made the cream cheese frosting. The kids cleaned out my garden for me. This is them above sitting at the picnic table after doing that. We all had fun and it was a gorgeous day!                Eating raw carrots above.

             Alice checking it all out!

            Some of the harvest.

    It always my favorite part…letting everyone take home a big bag of goodies!

 

        Carissa playing carrot head!

        Relaxing after eating too many raw carrots and it was HOT that day.

      Even Obie was pooped after a long day of fun in the sun!! I crocheted the blanket that is over him a long time ago and the one under him was made by my Aunt Olive years ago. I took them off his bed the other day to wash them and didn’t put them right back on for a few days. He missed them! I brought them in to make his bed and he dove right in on them….rolling and rolling and sniffing away. He hides his head in the folds….it’s so damned cute! Look at that short little spotted leg hanging out! How can you not love that? ………………………………………

   So it was a good harvest but without tomatoes this year. As most of you know, I was hit with the blight. I have many new ideas for next year for my garden because of the massive amounts of copper beetles that came in. I also want to grow more newer types of squash and will be looking for disease resistant seeds and plants. I won’t be planting next year until I absolutely know the frosts are no longer!! That was a pain in the next to have to plant twice this year!…It gets a teensy weensy bit expensive! So….how did the rest of you do? Did you hit pay dirt?

Part 4 of Redo…..

   Ok….ok….you are probably getting sick of this by now! I will wrap it up today without all the trivial details! My brother in law Joe and my husband put together the new stand and put it into place with the new 46” on top….a man’s dream! I could hear the ouuu’s and ah’s from the kitchen! You would have thought there was a playboy bunny walking in front of them! Honestly! Men and their electronics! Us women have our things too….I know! Into the room and ready to wire it up. And then the moment came…. Sorry for the dark photos and you really can’t see the stand that well.     This was put in place even before we got the furniture in there! Joe and hubby sat in kitchen chairs in the middle of the room watching the new Samsung! My hubby kept whooping….and yeehaing! He was happy! Eventually, we got a couch and a loveseat and a recliner delivered from Bob’s Discount Furniture in South Portland. The couch would not fit through the living room door and had to go back. The loveseat stayed for a week before we realized THAT was not going to work either. A really LONG story short, we ended up with two Olive colored recliners…..his and mine. We added a small chair, a beautiful end table, and matching étagère that we got a fabulous deal on at Mardin’s Furniture store in Lewiston. They were overstocks and no damage to any of the furniture! The savings was phenomenal! We got lucky. After three!….yes three!!…sets of curtains…brought home and hung up and taken back….we ended up with grommet top curtains with polished nickel rods and the curtains are off white. A new lamp was added and a new desk and a new bed for Obie under the end table….he loves it. Here are the photos….

I know…they are dark….bear with me…..

I really should have lightened these….. And the new desk …… better lighting at least! The final rods and curtains! Some day maybe blinds…. My chair and end table and new lamp AND a doily hand crocheted by Alice/GeeGee….my wonderful friend and mother in law!

New little tub chair with pillow. Étagère next to it and close ups of Étagère…

New area rug just a few days ago… Close up of rug…..I love it! New clock….cherry and black background but you can’t see that can you?! New overhead light which is much nicer in person with filigree around the edge.  Obie’s new sage and cream designer bed scrunched under the end table! And some small close ups… Different angle of desk and tv… That’s it!!!! It is now just our own little tv/media room that is just as comfy cozy as can be. We haven’t had a chance to decorate the walls yet…over the big tv and on the walls but that will come. Right now we are taking a break and saying “Ahhhhh”….Sorry the photos were so dark and some got blurry but you get the idea. Quite a change huh? We are thrilled with it and glad to be rid of the “old room”. My son came in and sat down and said…. “Mom…I feel like I am in a hotel lobby.” I am not sure if that is good or bad??? I am hoping good! Ok Sheila…..I didn’t make you wait too long for the finale did I??? No No Nanette!! You all are sweethearts….to write what you have written….warms my heart….thanks.

Redo Part III……

   I am not sure if I mentioned that this room had not been painted in years. Many nail pops and scrapes and minor scars were on the walls as you can imagine. Before painting, we had to cover up a lot with sheetrock compound. Taping and mudding and sanding left my house with a LOT of dust. That sheetrock dust gets into EVERYTHING!  One of those areas needing mudding was that nasty ceiling square my hubby put his foot through years ago. After taping and mudding and sanding it, David used a sponge to try and match up the rest of the ceiling. We have a textured ceiling. Not the popcorn type, but a lighter texture. He did a great job….well take a look… I know….in just the right light, you can still see the square but by God I am thrilled with it! Considering what we were looking at for years….come on! We were going to put up two shelves in the media cove, one deeper than the other. One for a router and other computer items and the other for framed photos and a plant or decor of some sort. We decided against that. We did put in track lighting which is connected to a dimmer switch. It is mood lighting for behind the big flat screen tv.  

Here is a picture of what it looks like during the day. It’s really pretty cool at night….soft and unobtrusive. It’s hard to believe this was once a small bedroom/living room closet at this point! Since you could not see the lights from outside the closet, hubby chose this basic set of track lights….one on the left and one on the right. It came with three but we took one off. No need to brighten up the tv! Hubby installed these and also did ALL of the painting in here except for the trim….I did that. He would NOT let me do anything! Three coats of primer and two coats of Harbour Town….that’s a lot of painting! I cleaned and cooked and did whatever else I could but the hubs worked really hard on this one. The room was pretty much done and now we needed to fill it up because there was a hell of an echo in there! My husband had been researching large flat screen tv’s for a long, long time! I saw shortcuts all over our computer and emails back and forth between he and his brother constantly….every single day. He decided on a Samsung 46” flat screen tv. We made a trip to Best Buy and stood there staring at all the tv’s for a long time. Now….is it just me or is this specifically a guy thing??? Most every woman I talk to says she does not care one way or the other how HUGE her tv is? I know I don’t. It went something like this….( “How do you like this one honey?”…hubby.) (“They are all nice.”…Me)    Him…..excited as a school kid. Me…mildly excited but mostly for him. We buy the 46” and an xbox 360 and he gets an incredible deal on that….but that’s another story! The tv was delivered a few days later. I  I know it looks small there on the floor but trust me it’s not! It took two big men to carry it into the room and there was room in between the two of them! With the plastic still on. Just a few days before this, we were frantically shopping for a tv stand for this monster….oh what a time we had and we went to a LOT of stores shopping. Some days it really got tiring. We ended up with one from Walmart, made by Better Homes and Gardens, with a cherry finish and beveled glass front doors….just beautiful. My brother in law Joe showed up one afternoon, saw that it was still in the box and said “Let’s put it together! It would be a pleasure!” What a nice guy huh? He was so excited for us to be doing this room…..I can’t even tell you. Here is a photo of the two of them starting the venture that took them about an hour and a half. Pieces everywhere but they had a plan!

Hey how did that ugly chair get out here?? And the new doors to the tv stand are sitting on it! Yah…we had to have something to sit in at night watching television in the dining room. Hubby was so comfy sitting here, he wanted to keep this chair for a while! NO!!!! It’s going to the dump!! I had planned this celebratory trip in my head for a long time and he was not going to disappoint me! As you can see, my little house got pretty crowded. While doing this room over, I became acutely aware of the amount of “junk” I have  accumulated over the years from yard sales and such! That’s another post! More on this adventure tomorrow……sorry Sheila!!:)

Living Room Redo Part II….

The color of the room seemed the least of our worries as we had so many other things to contend with as it turns out. Our builder, David, who is also a friend of ours, had some leftover bamboo flooring from another job. We did not know a thing about bamboo so we started researching it. Without going into all the minor details of our web hours spent and phone calls made regarding this floor, I will just cut to the chase. This is what we learned.

   If you buy Bamboo flooring from Lowe’s or Home Depot or other said places,  only a fraction of the wood is bamboo. The top layer is bamboo and the rest is something else. Why is that important to know? Because with that type of Bamboo, you can maybe only sand it once if need be! Our builder purchased his at Lumber Liquidators and it is solid Bamboo. This means it could be finished as many as three times….we were told. That was important to us and we liked the idea that it is a green product. No trees had to be chopped down to get this wood. The wood is usually 7 years old before it is processed. It came on the market in the early 90’s with limited options. Now there are many types and the flooring we ended up with is called Natural bamboo. It is supposed to be the hardest of the selections and as hard as oak. It is light in color so it took us by surprise at first but now we love it. Here are some photos…..

This was our first day of floor laying. It comes already pre-finished in the package and it’s really quite beautiful. Each box lot of wood has a slightly different tone to it. We asked David if he would stagger the boards to make it look more interesting. See the bamboo nodes in the wood? I love that! This is the finishing, of the closet floor and a box of Morningstar flooring from Lumber Liquidators. Not an inexpensive floor…about 70.00 a box and we used 7. Actually we were 5 boards short after using 6 boxes!! Here’s the photo…. Can you believe that? My hubby went to LL and asked if they ever get damaged boxes of flooring? The first guy says NO NEVER. The second guy that walked in says NO. The third guy that walked in says….Oh YES….and we have one right over here….cost to us….about 35.00 rather than the standard 70.00!! Hey….we needed 5 boards! This air compressor was soooo loud! The table saw was not quite so loud but Obie hated both of them with a passion! An underlayment of a special paper went down under the bamboo to prevent moisture. Here is one of my favorite photos during the construction. I haven’t seen a floor shine like this in my house since the 80’s!! This was so exciting. Next, we went baseboard shopping. We chose this taller one after much consideration at Lowe’s and Home Depot. It came pre-primed which was wonderful! We painted it Icicle to match the trim on the windows. 

This is the new media cove (old closet), primed, painted, floor installed, tech box recessed, ,most of the outlets are set and baseboards put in……more tomorrow…….I hope you all don’t think less of me for living with such a terrible looking living room for so long.:) We tried to remain grateful throughout this process as renovating can upset your whole household and cause a lot of stress. God is good. He provided for us in every way….every step of the way.