HANDYMAN BUILDS AGAIN!

Our oldest daughter and her husband will soon close on their new home. I am so excited for them. The house has so much room that they'll be able to use the formal living room as a library and still have plenty of living space. Since our son-in-law is a professor and our daughter home school's their oldest child and will eventually home school their other two children, they have a growing number of books at their house.

Here is a picture of what will be their library.

As soon as her daddy, my handyman, heard that they wanted bookcases to go in their library, he started working on the plans. After getting the go ahead from our daughter, he began building the bookcases this week.
The first day he had to go to Lowe's to purchase all of the materials, but when I came home, he had already started.

This is what he accomplished the first day.
The middle section.

The second day, he worked on the two side bases and the upper shelves on one side.
I made handyman stand beside it because it didn't look as big as it really is in the pictures.
He had his eyes shut, but he said that was okay because he was just being a measuring stick!

Today when I got home, he had put together the other end section.
Note - the sections are all separate so they will come apart and transport easier this time and any other move they may make in the years to come.

There will be doors on the bases of all three bookcase and the shelves are adjustable. He still has quite a bit of work to do with making the doors and painting, but it's amazing how quickly it's gone together already.

It's really great to have a handyman around !!

FARMER'S MARKET

On Saturday I visited our local farmer's market. There is one certain display where I purchase most of my veggies because they have just about anything you would want and usually the biggest and best looking tomatoes.
This trip I bought squash, big juicy tomatoes and small red onions(the red onions at Kroger are always huge). For dinner that night we had Bacon & Tomato Sandwiches, Fried Squash & home canned Green Beans. Delicious!!



After purchasing the produce that I had specifically gone for, I decided to walk thru the market to see what else was available.
I was surprised to see Wine for sale. They were set up so you could taste the various wines that were available and even though it was only 10:00 on a Saturday morning (their clock said 5:00) I got to taste several kinds of locally made wine. Some of them I liked and others not so much, but in the end I decided to purchase a bottle of the apple wine. I think what swayed my decision was the name - Alvaton Apple.

I'm planning on waiting until the kids are here to open the bottle. It was a little more expensive than what I prefer to buy, but I thought this would be nice for a special occasion.


On a similar note - a few weeks prior to this I asked handyman to pick some strawberries for us so I could make some jam. He picked enough for us to have a couple of shortcakes, make a batch of jam, and freeze enough crushed berries for two more batches of jam.


I love the bright red color you get from freshly made strawberry jam. It tastes delicious too!

RUM CAKE

I've planned on making a rum cake for years. Back in the 70's, Bacardi Rum put a recipe in the women's magazines and I always thought they looked yummy! We just never seemed to have any rum on hand because as you know, we're really heavy drinkers and must have drunk it all up. ;-)
For Thanksgiving last year (or was it the year before?) I made some hot buttered rum (which I didn't like at all). I had some leftover rum and thought I'd make the rum cake. Well, here it is June and I still hadn't made it. After getting my new Kitchen-Aid mixer I decided that I'd better be putting it to good use, so I finally made my rum cake. It turned out really well although I did modify the recipe a tad so it didn't have quite so much rum flavor in the glaze.



For the recipe go to The Pioneer Woman.com
She has step by step instructions for this delicious cake.

A PRESENT FOR ME (FROM ME)!!

A few weeks back I bought something for myself that I've been wanting for quite some time. It's one of those things that I didn't really need but just wanted. Hey, at my age, I think I'm entitled every now and then!! I had looked at several recipes that gave directions using one --but since I've had it, I haven't run across another one of those recipes.
After checking prices, I changed the color from Cobalt Blue to Willow Blue. As far as I could tell, this was the only difference other than the price which was about $40.00 less for the Willow Blue. They are rather expensive, but our bank has been giving us points for quite some time that I have just ignored. I cashed the points in for a $100.00 Amazon Gift Card to go towards it and also used the $80.00 Cash Back from my Discover Card. So I figure it cost me about $50.00, which isn't that bad. I look at rewards as free money!

Isn't it a beauty?

I really never thought I wanted or needed one of these until recently. Hopefully it doesn't come back to bite me --- I've been doing more baking since I got it. Bread...Cakes...pies.... It does a great job of kneading the bread and it really whips up the egg whites for meringue. Calories, calories, and more calories!

There was also a rebate that came with it -- either a glass mixing bowl or a food grinder. Since we like ham salad, turkey salad and such I opted for the free food grinder. It should be here within the next month.

I wonder what I'll find to use it for next?

RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY (come back this summer when we need you!)

We've had another rainy spring and everyone in these parts is just sick of it! It's really hard to believe how much it has rained again this spring. Toby, our yorkie, started out this afternoon to take care of his business and had to keep turning around because he was walking into water.
The lakes around here are getting pretty full. The boat ramps & campgrounds are closing due to all the water. Last I heard, they were still predicting 1-2 inches tomorrow. Then finally, we have a few days without rain in the forecast!! But I must say, that we have been blessed to have not had the terrible storms like those that made their way across Alabama last week!!

Our Front Yard

Our Back Yard

Care to go wading in the mud??

ENJOYING FAMILY

I'm a little behind in my posts. I can't claim to have been too busy. I just haven't done it.

Easter weekend we were blessed to have a bunch of family in. Nieces from Florida & Georgia, brother-in-law from Georgia, sister-in-law from Tennessee, along with their families, nephew from here in town and his family, great nieces, great nephews, mother-in-law, along with our own kids and grandkids. What a great day!!
Our niece, Debbie, wanted to make gumbo and crab bisque for the whole clan. We didn't think the kids would go for that so we grilled hot dogs for the kids and picky eaters. Her gumbo was delicious, by the way. Then everyone else brought in salads and desserts. It was a "not" so typical meal for us to have at a family gathering, but I think everyone managed to enjoy it.
After lunch we "hid" almost 400 eggs. Do you know how hard it is to hide that many eggs in a small yard? Most of them were in plain site. If you look closely at the pictures you will see several. Some eggs had candy, some had money and still others had little toys. I think all of the little ones had fun.

Justin (holding Nate) and the girls

Zoey isn't quite so hidden in this picture.

Gabby needs to turn around!!

Gabby & Zoey

Nate with his Easter bucket

Aunt Joan helping Kate

I found a recipe for a bunny cake a few weeks before Easter and this day was the perfect day to try it out. Each bunny is only half of a cake, so I ended up with 2 bunnies. Everyone thought the bunnies were too cute to cut, so Randy & I got to have cake after everyone left.

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!

PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE

Not much out of the ordinary has been happening around here lately. We've been enjoying a few long weekends at the cabin due to my furlough days from work. I figure if I've got to take a day without pay, I might as well enjoy myself! ;-)
Time is getting closer for me to retire from working full time -- well, not too close. As it stands right now, I'll have 25 years in the retirement system in a short 1 1/2 years. I'm really thinking that I'll work 2 years and 11 months from now, but I'll definitely look closer at it in about a year.
Handyman has taken to retirement like a fish to water. He's always busy but it's a nice variety of things he does. Some of it is pretty physical, but some is working on the computer.
I've been reading some articles lately about how the Baby Boomers are re-inventing retirement so it won't be like our parent's retirements. Our generation is not wanting to spend their retirement years just sitting on the porch watching time pass us by. Not many are wanting to continue working full time either. A nice mix of work (either volunteer or for pay) and play or relaxation is what we're looking for. I want to start looking to see what volunteer opportunities will be available for me when I retire. I don't think I want quite as much to do as my handyman husband has taken on. He has so many people that want to give him something to do. I know that I want to be able to do more for our kids and grandkids and just spend more time with them. The problem with a lot of volunteer work is that you have to work on their time schedule. I don't want to be over scheduled with volunteer work but I definitely want something to do with my time. There will be some opportunities through church and while I want to take advantage of those, I want to do more than just that. I know the schools have programs where you can volunteer and I'm sure there are a lot of places around town that have volunteer programs. I'm just going to have to spend some time looking into them. I still have plenty of time to find the right things for me to do.