The Night Before

Well....we had a great time going out to eat tonight for my early birthday!

We ended up going to Shogun's in Gastonia. It is the best and they know me there by name. Whenever Big Daddy and I have a "date night," we always seem to end up here! The food is outstanding and the people there are so sweet!
I had Hibachi Steak with mushrooms! I could plumb waller in that shrimp sauce too! Sooo divine!
While I was gone out with the girls, Big Daddy and Robbie went to see Big Daddy's mama! (Did I lose ya?) They took her to dinner and had a great time visiting with her. She sent me a birthday card with $50.00 inside!!! WOOHOO! I'm going to Wal-Mart tomorrow and get me one of those under the cabinet CD players for my kitchen. I'm so mad at my cable company as they took THE BLUEGRASS MUSIC CHANNEL off the air! Oohhh...I am really really mad! I used to love to crank it up on the TV while I was cleaning or crafting! My favorite was last summer. I had it wide-butt-open while I was canning 97 quarts of green beans! Anyway--Imma get my bluegrass back! If I have to burn my own CD's and use my birthday money to make it happen, I WILL!
Here's a few pictures from tonight! Enjoy!

Thanks girls! I had a fabulous time with y'all!
Can't wait until next month for Anna's birthday gathering!
Be Blessed!

The Day Before

Hey Y'all!
It's the day before my 38th Birthday and I'm excited! I'm happy to be going out for supper tonight with my girlfriends! We've been together as a "group" since elementary school and we go out to dinner during the month of our birthdays. If you are the Birthday Girl for any particular month, you get to pick where we eat. I still have NO idea where to go. There's a great Japanese restaurant in Shelby, but I'm not sure I want to drive that far. Hmnn...guess we'll just have to wait and see! haha
Here's one of my favorite pictures of all of us! This was taken a few years ago at The Southern Women's Show in Charlotte. We had such a fun day!
Anytime we're all together, you can bet your bootie that we have a great time! This picture is of me and my friend Julie. She's my mammaw's babysitter too! Here's proof that we are crazy:
I will be sure to take pictures tonight so y'all can see updated pictures of us! Have a great afternoon! I'm headed to get Robbie down for his nap!
Be Blessed!

24 hr Vacation

Well.....Robbie and I made it to the beach Monday afternoon! We went to Holden Beach with my cousins and their kids. There were three mamas and five kids!
We had a safe trip down, amongst many stops to eat and pee-pee.
When we arrived around 2:00, we got all the kids in their swimwear and headed to the beach! Their place is about 2 miles from the big bridge, so we were there in no-time!
I slathered Robbie with sunscreen, but forgot all about myself! We had a BLAST and I got blistered!
After we came back, we noticed it was warm inside. Wouldn't you know, as our luck would have it, the A/C went out!
We ended up keeping the kids occupied until bedtime and had planned on toughing it out until morning. We couldn't bear it. It was 86 degrees inside with no breeze whatsoever. At 11:30, I finally couldn't take anymore so I got up, threw everything in the van, and headed home. We spent the night in a motel because I wasn't sure that I could make the long drive back home and headed home yesterday around 11:00 am.
Everyone was disappointed but we have promised each other that we'll go back as soon as possible!
Here's the whole two pictures I took of our trip! hee hee There you have it. Our 24 hr. vacation pictures! hee hee
Be blessed!

Quick! Let's Get Outta HERE!

Hey Y'all!

I'll be absent from the computer for the next few days. After church this morning, my cousin invited me and Robbie to go with her and her sister and their kids to Holden Beach!
We'll be leaving in the morning and should come home Thursday so that I can't miss my birthday! hee hee

Hope you all have a wonderful week and I hope you enjoy it tremendously! I know Robbie and I are gonna have an absolute blast!
Be Blessed!

Wow! What a SCORE!

Hey Y'all!
I sooooooooo scored today!
I was looking on Craigslist in the arts and crafts section and I came across a Bernina Deco 650 embroidery machine. The seller was only asking $125.00. I Googled it and found one for $788.00! So I immediately emailed her and since I was closest to her and could come pick it up immediately she "let" me buy it! WOOHOO!
I called my little sister and bullied her into going with me. You can never be too safe, even if we were meeting in a church parking lot! The lady that sold it to me was absolutely delightful and was super nice too! I told her that I was a Home Ec. teacher and that I would maybe be using it in my classroom at school in my free time too, and she was happy! She was even sweet enough to make a little sample telling me to enjoy it! Since my birthday is coming up next week, Big Daddy told me to go get the cash out of the teller machine and to consider myself gifted early! tee hee! Here's my new baby!

I'm so glad that I found this machine! Be looking for some embroidered goodies to come really really soon on my Etsy shop! Since Robbie is doing much better after his surgery, my Etsy business is going to be getting organized and running! I'll be sure to let you know when it's ready, but you can click here to go there if you'd like. Nothing's ready yet, but you can at least bookmark it for later, right?!
Enough of that! This post is about great deals that I've been blessed to get my hands on; SCORES! So...away we go!
This awesome vase was $1.50 at my hometown's thrift shop. It holds all kinds of little rhinestones and vintage clip earrings. Those were a score from two weeks ago at $2.00 per pair at a thrift shop in Charlotte!
Next SCORE was this awesome vintage tablecloth I found on Ebay for a mere $4.99. It looks great on my kitchen table (with six chairs on Craigslist for $35.00 about a year ago).
Then, my mammaw gave me an old pink depression glass creamer. She said she never had the sugar bowl, but wanted me to have it. So I Ebayed the piece and found it's long lost mate for a whopping 99 cents! SCORE!
On our weekly trip to The Dollar Tree yesterday, I found a bunch of kids t-shirts. I made one for Robbie for July 4th. Here it is:
I found these three curtain panels at Family Dollar week before last. They were on clearance for $5.00 each! I knew they'd match the new to us furniture, so again, I SCORED!

About a month or so ago, Big Daddy and I went to yard sales around here. I sooo scored on this milk glass vase for $1.00! I love it with the cute little American flags in it on top of my old cabinet in the kitchen. See it in the top right corner?
While you're here, might as well see The Doublewide's 4th of July Kitchen decor!
Well, guess that's about it for now. I'm aggravated at myself because I didn't go to any yard sales this morning. I just could not make myself get out of the bed! But that's ok. That Bernina was well worth missing yard sales, right! I'll leave you with a sweet picture of Robbie working a puzzle! I swanee, that youngin' can work one F-A-S-T!

Be Blessed!

Spooked Outta My Skin!

Hey Y'all!
I hope you're all doing fan-tabulous today! Robbie woke up during the night/morning at 3:15 AM begging for medicine again, but he's doing great now. He/we slept until 9:30 and he's just in the best mood since surgery! I'm so thankful. His Dr. said that Wednesday, Thursday and Friday would be the worst days, but I think we're almost out of the woods. I hate to jinx anything, so I'll say "almost!"
Now...the following is a TRUE story that happened to me about a month or so ago. Let me give you a little background information first so that you'll understand things a bit better.

My great-great grandfather lost his wife and his oldest son (age 16) in the early 1900s to typhoid fever. They say this fever swept through the south at an alarming rate. She (his wife) died about six months after giving birth to my great grandfater. As you can imagine, he was stricken with grief and still had four or five children to raise all alone.
He began "courting" a young lady. She had a sister named Rosie, but Rosie was the ugliest of the two. The pretty sister wanted absolutley nothing to do with my great-great grandfather, so in desperation for a little help around the farm and house, he "settled" for the ugly sister. I have a copy of the actual letter he wrote to Rosie telling her that he apologized for not trying to court her first. So, they married and she bore him like ten children and they ended up living in a small house, raising a family, living on love and faith, and doing the best they could. I have a distant cousin who is our family's historian, so thanks to him, I know all of this.
Their old homeplace is still standing, barely, right down the road from me. Our farm is between their place and the place of my great-great grandparents on the other side. I sometimes like to think I'm living on a place maybe where my great grandparents shared a Sunday walk, a little quiet time alone, or something very romantic like it.
So.....
That old homeplace is covered in vines and it's hard to get inside of the house. I love going down there---well I used to. We had our family reunions there as a child. My grandpaw owned the land until his death and we all enjoyed getting together for reunions there. There is an old spring that's down in the woods. As kids we would go every year, about this time, and clear the spring out. We made sure to take our little cups with us so that after all the leaves and limbs were gone, we could get us a good drink of cold spring water! It was the best!
Anyway---got side-tracked again...sorry! There's just so many memories...
So about a month or two ago, one afternoon after school and picking up Robbie from daycare, I thought I'd drive down the dirt road to the old homeplace and see if there were any daffodils. To my amazement, the house was covered in mounds and mounds of beautiful wysteria!
Here's some pictures of how gorgeous it was:

Breathtaking, wouldn't you say?
So, I decided to pull up in the yard and get a few pictures closer:

The smell was absolutely amazing! This scent is probably my most favorite of spring! It always brings back many memories of riding the four wheelers all through the woods as this wysteria grows wild all over the homeplace and in the woods around it.
So...
Awhile back, while it was winter, me and my sister thought we'd walk through the old house. We climbed through a window on the back, because the vines are so thick and tough that's the only way in. We spotted two old mantles. I have dibbs on one and she has dibbs on the other. We both have thought we'd put these in our homes when we build.
Now, I'm not so sure!
As I leaned in the window of the "front room" I snapped a picture of the old mantle that I've laid claim to. Just then the door to that room flew open and slammed shut. I was like..."What in the world?!!" Now..there was NO BREEZE, the air was still. I got chills all over me and was freaked with a capital F! I was a little stunned, because nothing like this has ever happened. There was an old vine climbing it's way over the mantle and I thought I'd get a picture of it. Here it is:
Just as I snapped the second picture, that door did the same thing! That was it! I said out loud, "Ok now...I'm gone!"
I couldn't get to the minivan fast enough. I was scared plum outta my skin!
A few days later as my family was here eating supper, I told the story. My daddy, who has witnesed several things that would scare you to death said, "Well. You should have told him that you were just there to take some pictures; that you weren't going to hurt anything. If you do some work around there, he'll leave you alone."
Whatchew talkin' bout Willis?! "Him? Who's HIM?" He told me that he thinks it was my great-great grandfather. Yowsa!
As for me, I won't be going around there for awhile. It still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up! I was not at peace there. I didn't have a sweet, "this is my family's history and I love and embrace it" kind of feeling---at ALL! It was more like I was scared to death and couldn't get home quick enough.
Have y'all ever had anything happen like that? If so, please comment and tell me.
Have a great, spook-free day!
Be Blessed!

Quick Update

Robbie's doing as well as to be expected after having the surgery on Monday to remove tonsils and adenoids. We woke up at 4:15 AM screaming at the top of his lungs and he was begging for his medicine. That's the hard thing about being a mama because it seemed like forever before I could get him calmed down. I had to turn on the TV and even though he was lying between me and Big Daddy, I'm not sure if he ever went back to sleep. Me and him got baths this morning and I've just filled him up with Campbell's Alphabet Soup so I'm praying that he'll be ready for his nap pretty soon.
His potty issues are pretty much gone. Even with being sick, he's doing wonderfully!
My daddy showed up yesterday afternoon with a big load of sand for the backyard for Robbie. He's not supposed to do anything much for two weeks, but he was wide open so we took him out and let him play for a little bit.
I also have been getting some squash, zuchinni, cucumbers, and a big mess of green beans out of the garden this week. Man...there's NOTHING like peeling a fresh cucumber and salting it to death before eating the whole thing!
Y'all have a great day!
Hopefully me and Robbie can get out of the house tomorrow....might ride to a few "junk" stores to browse. I'm getting cabin fever!

Be Blessed!