Saturday At Home

Parade, roasted corn, marching bands, arts and crafts, friends: just another day in a small town. Our little town celebrated it's annual festival today, Friendshipfest. This marks our first year here and we are loving life in this small town. I plan to write an article on today's activities on hubpages so stay tuned!

We are almost through pulling down wallpaper upstairs and then we'll start scraping the popcorn ceiling and repairing the cracks in the plaster before we paint. Actually, Rick is doing all of this but I am definately supervising. The way it works around our house is I start a project and then he finishes it. I have a bad case of procrastination for everything except writing and shopping.

We are also making some headway on the cottage and plan to have the first phase finished by Christmas. We have had great weather here this past week and today was no exception.

In other news, I have just become the Paper Crafts Editor for Bellaonline!

Perfect Rainy Day

A rainy Saturday here in Central Texas. I love it! I have spent the entire day in my writing spot and have written two articles for hubpages.com. The rest of the family and guests are watching football in the front of the house so once again I am able to retreat to my quiet spot in my comfy chair and write while listening to the gentle sound of rain falling. I am so thankful for the rain; there are many farmers in our area that have been devastated by the drought conditions. Every Sunday in our small church someone prays for rain and God has heard and answered those pleas.

It has been really hard for me to get in the mood for fall with our record heat temperatures of over 100 degrees. This is one time of year that I am jealous of those who live in cooler climates and can enjoy the turning leaves, acorns, and pleasant temperatures but with the rain and temperatures in the 70's today, I got the itch to get down my fall decorations. Unfortunately, I think my fall boxes are in storage so I will have to have Rick's assistance to get those, hopefully tomorrow. I have a few little things I bought at the dollar store - what a bargain place for seasonal goodies - I also had Rick get in the attack of the cottage and pull down some china that was left from previous owners. This china will work great for my Fall table with it's wheat stalk design.

I had also planned to have Tea Time today but with the company over for the game I have decided to have it tomorrow afternoon. I will take pictures of my tea table and post tomorrow. I will serve scones with lemon curd and fake Devonshire Cream, Chamomile Lavender Tea, and finger or tea sandwiches made with egg salad or cream cheese and cucumber.

Rick has almost finished pulling the wall paper down from upstairs and will work on the cracks next. The cottage is finally seeing some results as all of the drywall has been pulled down. The next step is to hire someone to haul off the drywall and next some work will be done on the foundation. This, of course, will have to be done by a professional but once it is done we will be able to work on the insulation, the walls, and the floor. Rick is hoping to have phase one of the project, which is the bathroom and bedroom, done by Christmas for my parents.

I love this old house so much - I have really turned into a home body!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Meschill

Charming Long Weekend

It's almost time to turn in after the long Labor Day weekend. The Bartlett-Stokes House saw a charming three days and I am refreshed and almost ready to go back to work. Saturday was spent writing and passing out flyers for a youth party but the best part of the day was when we got some much needed rain. The University of Texas played football and as much as I wanted to watch I wanted to go to bed early more so I left everyone downstairs and retired to my comfy bed and watched the movie Never Been Kissed which I have seen several times but always enjoy. Sunday morning was the first Sunday for the new 7th graders to be in our class so we had breakfast for them. We had 9 in attendance counting Rick, Mattie and me. Following church Mattie came to the house for dinner and we had a nice visit with her then back to doing some writing and even some time playing around with different stamping techniques. Sunday night we had a party for the youth - I am really trying to get used to Jr. High kids! Today we had coffee on the front porch for quite a while and then went to Salado and my sweet husband let me do a little treasure hunting in a couple of antique shops. One was a new one which turned out to be overpriced which is common in Salado but the other one had some bargains as usual. It is off the main street in Salado on the frontage road of the highway and has to be my favorite. It is set up like an antique mall in that individual dealers can rent a space for their items. I think it is even called the Salado Antique Mall. I found a little china creamer that matches some other pieces I have, 2 darling children's aprons which I plan to use in my redecorating of Mattie's room, a tall china vase, a pretty hankie and a little picture in a white frame of a french woman which I also plan to use in Mattie's room. The rest of today was spent going through some of my old Christmas magazines looking for ideas for homemade cards, gifts and decorations. So as I said it was quite a charming weekend. I hope yours was nice as well!

Meschill