Galentine's Day

I hope everyone had a special Valentine's Day!  I am blessed to be married to my wonderful husband. He is a great guy who would do anything for anyone, an outstanding father and even more outstanding grandfather. But romantic, he is not. 

He is great at filling my gas tank, checking on my tires, household repairs, setting up electronics and general maintenance around here. And always supportive of any ridiculous projects I come up with. So I just buy my own chocolate and flowers (Aldi's had tulips this year!)

Instead of Valentine's Day, I celebrate Galentine's Day. I started this with door drops to neighbors during Covid and still have special people in my life that needed to be appreciated. Sadly Miss Peggy who lived next door to me for the past 44 years passed away before Christmas. And one of my neighbors moved south. This year I honored my longtime neighbor/friend, my caregiving neighbor/church friend whose husband has been struggling with strokes, one daughter and two daughter-in-laws and a co-gramma who lost her husband a few short weeks ago. 

Dollar Tree, here I came. 

I bought the large Valentine "Buckets" and some small cups and pails for the candy! My theme is pink with a little red.  Unfortunately the buckets were only large enough for desserts. 

In addition to the pail and cup, I made heart shaped brownies and banana bread. That pretty much filled the bucket. 

I decided to put items that needed refrigerated in containers. So here is a container in a container. 

The inside container. 

Strawberry, blueberries, and petit fours! 

The sandwich container. 

Clockwise, chicken breast on Italian bread with garlic aioli, raisin bread with cream cheese and powdered sugar, ham, swiss and mustard on a Hawaiian roll, and egg salad on a croissant. 

I used the plates as lids and put the containers in a Valentine bag. 

Myself, I celebrated Galentine's Day in person with two other friends. We went out for coffee and talked for over four hours! 

And here is one of my favorite wedding pictures. It is my grandfather and his two wives. What? Well, the bride in the picture is my paternal grandmother, Mary and the attendants are her brother and sister-in-law.  My great uncle died the year before I was born and my grandmother died the year after I was born. My grandfather then married his sister-in-law. Got all that? 

Guest Room Christmas Project Part 1

 

I was never one to decorate early for Christmas. I didn't wait until after Thanksgiving, I waited until December 1. And when my kids were young and we had a live tree, we would cut one at the tree farm on Christmas Eve morning to make sure it was healthy through Epiphany, my youngest son's birthday. 

But as I get older, I get slower. And it just seems like it is suddenly a few days until Christmas and most of the decorations are still in boxes and I still need to bake . . .  So I have joined the early birds. 

Last year I started "Project Hallmark Christmas Inn" and decorated our master bedroom for the season. That is the third room on my list this year. First is my freshly painted and carpeted guest room. 

The theme came early in February when Christmas bedding was marked down for final sale - it's a Fa La La Llama Christmas! I have been picking up items all year and am pulling them from the hiding places. The photos are helping me make changes - add an extra gray throw pillow- lose the red one.

The quilts, ordered online, turned out to be super thin. Which worked out great because I was able to put them over the existing bedding and won't have to figure out where to store what was there. I have a 17" llama pillow coming for this bed. 

I ordered two of these 4' white trees, with multi colored lights on clearance for $10 a a piece, free shipping. I picked up the red tree collars at 5 Below, a store I had never visited before. The dresser topper will be changing to something else. Here is a look at the new drapes for this room, too. 

The wreaths were $5 at 5 Below (this is a dangerous store, lol) and the picture shows me that I need to fix the top of this tree. 

The new closet doors! Yes, I will change the wreath hangers to match each other. And I found the pom pom garland that will go over the doors. I have the fabric to make the rag garlands for window valances, but I think I will work on that project at the end of the month when I go out of town to stay with my oldest daughter's tweenagers. I also have some nifty large llamas for the walls.  There will be update posts. 

I recently saw a "Mr. Kringle Suite" advertised at a fancy hotel in Cleveland for $600 a night. I told my grandchildren I will be accepting reservations for this room and charging a special family rate.  

Actually, the first guest is here tonight before the room is even finished. A co-grandparent became very ill and there was a meeting in a McDonalds parking lot with a weeks worth of clothing exchanged for our four year old birthday boy.  He and two brothers were here the day before with fevers as we are still passing the fall 2022 respiratory infection around. I was on antibiotics for 10 days, found my voice but still have a sore throat and cough. The kids are playing tag and merry-go-round with it, as they trade spiking fevers. And two even came down with hand, hoof and mouth - which is a virus I have learned. It's going to be a long winter. 

Not Covid

 

 

All the littles have been bringing home viruses from school. The elementary kids shared a disgusting stomach virus with me in September.  They have coughing and sneezing and dripping noses for October. Instead of driving nursery school car poll on Monday, I spent my day on the phone trying to wrangle an appointment for a three year old with a severe sinus infection. A smarter gramma might have started some over the counter stuff then. 

I have been using some of my stash of covid tests (all negative), but when I tried to book an on-line appointment, I couldn't schedule until November 4. So today, a lovely Sunday with temperatures in the 70's, I sat in the waiting room at "convenient care" for two hours and eventually left with two prescriptions. 

Did I mention I completely lost my voice? It has been three days of croaking barely above a whisper and I am now under orders for no whispering either. Since my Super Power is talking nonstop, this has been difficult! 

Oh, and guess what else they are sharing at nursery school? Pink Eye. . . . 

Project Update

I want to thank everyone for their patience with my comment function. I am sure the glitch had to be something I did, but I think I have it corrected. Thank you for all your visits and comments. 

Look at the improvement with just the trim painted! 

Next came the walls. I was wrong. The carpet did look gray next to the walls. 

My six year old granddaughter looked at this and very nicely explained to me that I should go back to the carpet store and ask for a bigger piece of carpet to cover the whole floor, even under the beds! So I did. 

It's gray! 

And still gray in different lighting! 

I decided we had to have the very expensive doors. It turned out the doors are actually in stock at a warehouse (not really "special order") and we could save over 1/3 of the cost by buying them with primer instead of fully painted. We place the order and they were ready for pick up in six days. 

Door number one! 

Three doors!  Actually this was to make sure he had all the hardware prep correct. He took them back to the workshop to paint them. 

We still need to assemble two inexpensive end tables and I am looking at new bedding. I found curtains I like so I will try to get a good picture of them. 

I am SO happy the carpet really is gray! 

More updates:

I am going to call it another success. My two youngest grandchildren are potty trained! 

I spent 2 1/2 hours at training and am officially a poll worker! 

Thanks for visiting!