Home Makes Me Happy

 And Friday Fave Fives Make Me Happy, Too.  I'm back after another busy week.  I've been home since Saturday evening, readjusting my schedule to 'home'.  Now I need to take a few minutes to write down my five blessings from this crazy week.

1. The health conference we attended last weekend was great.  So full of good and helpful information.  

2.  We've gone from blustery rain and thunderstorms to sunny spring weather.  I am thankful for the gentler days because we have been able to do some garden work in the afternoons.  Areas are being weeded, some seeds have been sown, one of three rhododendrons has been planted (the other two should be in the ground by this evening), the raised bed has additional soil added.  I love being in the garden.  A bonus here is that the two teenage grandsons came to help.

3.  One early afternoon the weather was perfect.  Younger Daughter, the Nurse, and I took a long walk/hike with the two dogs. The dogs hadn't seen me for almost three weeks and stayed as close as they could during the whole hike.  (my daughter's photo)

4.  Our wonderful next door neighbor is a musician.  He sings as a community member of the local university gospel choir.  Their concert was last weekend.  Wow!  It was beautiful!

5.  My last fave involves another neighbor on our street.  Sunday morning, just as we were turning off our dead end street/cul de sac, The Professor's phone rang.  He answered it.  "You have a ball of yarn hanging out the door of your car!"  We pulled over and checked.  Yep.  My cream yarn from the afghan I'm knitting right now was trailing us all the way from our driveway.  Oops.  We jumped out and gathered it all up while we laughed.  Of course, that neighbor was laughing with us.  And another neighbor family on their way to a soccer game saw us and giggled.  So now evidently we're 'famous' on our street for having yarn balls following us through the neighborhood.  Anyway, it made a funny story.  (But I was able to untangle and rewind the yarn, and didn't lose much at all of it.)

I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day weekend!  Watch for all the blessings every day.

April Showers, Birds and Hikes

It's been a busy time here at Willow's Cottage and this is the first post I've written all week.  Time to catch up and think about the good parts of the week.  Friday Fave Fives really helps me do that.  Susanne at Living to Tell the Story leads us in choosing five things from our week that have helped us to be thankful and notice gratitude.  Here are mine:

1.  Encouraging words from friends concerning a difficult situation.  I meet weekly via zoom with friends.  We call ourselves the Art Girls (you can guess why).  Because I was stressed about something, they encouraged me and really helped me focus on the right way to handle things.

2.  The birds are back in force at my bird feeder.  I love watching them snack on the seeds I provide for them.  Birds make life happier and make me smile.

3.  More hikes.  It really is spring!  On Tuesday evening, the Trail Life troop hiked in a local preserve again.  Although it had been raining quite a bit this past week and the creek was up, we ventured through the mud and water, up and down the banks of the stream and had a great time.  (I'm the honorary grandma who hikes with them)  The best part?  Tall Boy was very solicitous for my safety as we crossed creek beds on rocks and climbed up slick and muddy edges, even holding my arm and escorting me along in front of his buddies.  Then we also had a fun hike at the local arboretum again.  Almost three miles.

4.  I guess I should be thankful for all the rain we are having.  April showers bring May flowers.  I need to just focus on being thankful that we aren't in drought.

5.  The spinning wheel is out and I've been working on some merino and silk fiber.  No photos yet.  But hopefully, in the next day or two I will have finished a skein of it.

Now I am off to watch my older daughter (she who is a rocket scientist) dance in the local production of Swan Lake.  Happy Happy Friday to you all.

Friday Fave Fives, November, Week Three

Happy Friday.  That means Friday Fave Fives.  Being grateful is a discipline.  I think that is a great way to look at gratitude.  We discipline ourselves and practice seeing the good and being thankful for even the hard things.  That's gratitude.  (credit to Becoming Minimalist blog for reminding me of that this week)  This weekly exercise helps me to discipline my mind and heart to be thankful.  Thankful for even the rainy days we had this week.  Here are five things that stood out to me in my week.

1.  On Saturday, we realized that there was nothing! nothing! on our calendar.  So we jumped in our car and drove to a State Park about an hour's drive away.  The weather was perfect for a hike in the woods.  After stopping to pick up coffee and a snack at the cutest little coffee shop, we hiked a couple of miles tromping through the fallen leaves and sometimes walking the trail paralleling a lake.  It was a great way to spend our free day.

2.  Veteran's Day.  Or Remembrance Day.  Our friends T and S met us at Denny's for breakfast.  Because our guys are both veterans, their breakfast meal was free.  We had the best time celebrating our veterans.  While we were sitting in the booth drinking our coffee, a young girl and her mother walked up to us and asked if they were veterans, thanked them for their service and gave them each a paper that the girl had colored with crayons saying "Thank you!"  It was so sweet and made their day so much brighter.

3.  Happy Anniversary to our son and daughter-in-law!  Eighteen years!  (old photo, but one of my favorites)  Yes, they were married on Veteran's Day :)

4.  Another hike.  This time with Younger Daughter (the nurse) and the dogs.  We were walking one of the local paved paths and noticed a side trail off to the left.  Of course we had to take the detour.  It was so much fun to explore somewhere new!  And beautiful.

5.  We have a good friend from our Los Angeles days who lives and ministers in Southeast Asia.  Her mother and brothers live not that far from us.  She is in the US visiting her mom right now and we arranged to have lunch with her and her mom.  What a privilege for us to spend that precious time with her.  Of course, we were so busy talking that we didn't remember to take any pictures.

Bonus:  I took photos of the two items I have knitted for the baby shower later this month.  Because the new little girl will be born near Christmas time, I am hoping to finish a red newborn size sweater for her, too.  It's so much fun knitting for babies!

Mid March Faves

Beware the Ides of March!  I love March 14th, 15th, and 17th.  Pi Day, Ides of March, St. Patrick's Day which is also my birthday.  I also love every Friday because that is the day I choose five things from my week to be thankful for and write about them here on the blog.  As usual, you can follow THIS LINK to Susanne's blog and join in.

1.  I am thankful that the young woman who cleans my floors and bathrooms monthly does such a good job.  I truly appreciate her dedication to making my home extra clean.

2.  We had a great hike on Tuesday evening with all the Trail Life boys.  Both grandsons are part of our local Trail Life troop.  The Professor is one of the leaders.  So I get to sneak in and go on the hikes, too.  Two miles plus in the woods (and mud) on a trail I had never hiked before.

It is hard to tell from the photo, but, we were hiking on the high cliff side of the river; I took these photos from the top looking down on the river.  This area is called Black Hand Gorge.  We have walked on the paved paths on the other side of the river many times.

3.  I love finding great deals at resale shops.  Goodwill had a beautiful green merino wool sweater from J. Jill for less than ten dollars.  In my size.  Yes, I bought it.  Then on Thursday, my friend and I popped in to a cute little resale shop and I found a fair isle wool jacket for ten dollars!  Yep, I bought it, too.

4.  Younger daughter treated me to a pedicure earlier this afternoon for my birthday.  Guess what color I chose.

5.  All the yellow flowers are in bloom!  I love this time of year because I love forsythia and daffodils.  These flowers, all from my garden, bring me so much joy.

Bonus:  you may have heard on the news about the tornados in Indiana and Ohio.  We were under tornado warnings for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours last night.  Thankfully, we are safe and so is all our family.  Please pray for the people who lost family members and those who lived in homes which were struck and demolished.

Bonus2:  more daffodils, from places in England where we traveled in March and April 2019 (prime daffodil time)

Tis true.  Daffodils are my favorite flower.

February is for Fave Fives

Happy Friday!  This week has been busier than I expected (that's ok, though) and so it is late afternoon here at Willow's Cottage.  But I still have time to get my Friday Fave Fives written and shared.  Susanne is always so faithful to have our link set up to share our five things we chose from our week.  Here's THE LINK. 

1.  I am so thankful for the sunny warm weather we have had this week.  I'm talking no jackets, no caps, no gloves kind of weather. Sunshine all week and today's temperature in the 60s!  Yes, I know that the cold weather will return, but the respite has been very appreciated by all who live around here.  

2.  The warm weather has allowed me to be outside in the garden doing a few mid winter chores.  I was able to prune the raspberry bushed and check on a couple of other perennial plants.

3.  Saturday was a moderate day, a coat and gloves kind of day.  But it was just right for taking a good hike.  The Professor and I drove Warrior Boy (Younger Daughter Mia's son) to Hocking Hills State Park, and we hiked two different trails and shared lunch around an outdoor fireplace with a group of boys and dads from our local Trail Life troop.  Twelve guys and me.  It was great fun, especially as we had not visited Hocking Hills before.

Eleanor always loves hiking, too, especially since she gets to stay in my pocket!

Our Warrior Boy had so much fun.

Note the small size of the people compared to the waterfall.  Yes, it really was that high.  Ash Cave.

4.  Tall Boy's birthday was this week!  Sixteen!  Six feet three inches tall!  Where did that little boy go??  I am thankful for him!

5.  Recently, we joined the Y gym.  This week, we worked out twice there.  I am thankful for the opportunity and that it is very near our home.  Now we can use the treadmill or recumbent bikes when the weather is just too miserable for  us to be outside.

I hope your week has been filled with blessings, too.  Sometimes we have to look deeper than other weeks, but there are always things we can find to be thankful.

Bastille Day Means...

 Good morning!  It's Friday, July 14th! Bastille Day! (an important date in France, commemorating the storming of the Bastille in 1789)  Fridays always mean Friday Fave Fives here at Willow's Cottage.  Join me in celebrating five blessings that have filled my week.  (link takes you to Susanne's blog, where she hosts us every week)

Here is what has happened this week at my little cottage.

1.  A hike is always a good thing.  On Saturday, all the family hiked at Black Hand Gorge with all the dogs, too.

Can you find Tall Boy?

ZG and her bio brother whom she had not seen for fourteen years.  He and his adopted mom visited us for the weekend.  What a celebration!  (These were the 'friends' we were with on our trip to Amish country.  I just didn't feel comfortable sharing that detail until my daughter and granddaughter made it public.)

2.  We have a new car!  I am so very thankful for reliable transportation after our old car decided to not start anymore.

3.  Trail Life is an important part of our two grandsons' lives, and The Professor's, too.  Trail Life is a faith based 'Boy Scouts'.  This week's meeting involved what is called 'cross-over', the advancement of troop members to the next level.  Both grandsons moved up to next levels.  At the ceremony, they literally cross over a bridge (at one of our local parks).

4.  After so many days of heat and humidity, this morning we had fog!  That cooled our morning down enough that we could actually sit on our back patio and sip our morning coffee.  The Professor and I reminisced about those Southern California June Gloom days and were thankful that Ohio's July Fry days had taken a short break.

5.  Today is Bastille Day.  It is also our wedding anniversary.  Fifty Years!  (yeah, we really are that old...)  It is also my brother and sister-in-law's anniversary!  Happy Anniversary to them, too!

My Love Language

"Take me on long walks

and to warm coffee shops."

Or coffee any time.