OMG!! It's December!!

 

Holiday decorations at the Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi, MS.

Thank you everyone for your comments on my last post. I haven't made a decision yet regarding closing up my blog. I don't think it's feasible to have it printed since there is so much content over the past 13 years, but I may eventually put it on a private setting. Still pondering that one.

Meanwhile, it's been 2 months since I've posted anything, but a lot has happened, so I'll just update in quick blurbs to try and cover it all.

I've been subbing. A lot!!! I mostly work at 2 schools, but lately just one in particular, and it's very busy. I think I may have posted in the past on how they make smoothies every morning for the kids at breakfast. Now they also make parfaits! Aren't they pretty? They're served with a packet of granola and the kids just love them. 

I discovered that if subs work 45 days in a semester, they get a $500 bonus. Well, I passed 45 days already and the semester ends Dec 14th, so I'm sure to get that extra green. Cool! 

I know what you're thinking. "But I thought you were retired?" Well, as long as I can work and I'm needed/wanted, I will work. It keeps me from shopping or eating too much when I'm home with nothing to do. Hubby and I try and stay busy as much as we can, but getting out among other people and feeling useful has its benefits. The money helps also. 

We made a big decision recently and got rid of one of our vehicles. Hubby's brother needed a car, so we gave him our old Dodge Caravan. That left us with my little Fiat and hubby's little Mini Cooper. Hubby decided it was time to trade in the Mini and get something more practical and comfortable for us seniors. He bought a preowned Chrysler Pacifica. 

It's really nice, has a smooth ride and lots of safety features including a back up camera and a beep that sounds if there's a vehicle in the lane you're planning to change over to. Now we can still buy home improvement stuff like mulch or plywood and not have to worry about how to get it home. And we save about $100 a month on not having a third vehicle to insure. 

We surprised out daughter when we picked her up in the new van at the airport in early November. She came for a short visit. Sadly, it rained the whole time she was here, after not having rained for weeks and weeks. Go figure. We still managed to do some things, including going to Biloxi to a big Christmas City Gift show. We didn't buy anything, but it was fun to look. We stopped at the Beau Rivage Casino to see the decorations and they never disappoint. 

We ate out a lot and I paid cash for everything with my lunch lady earnings. We had some really good food at various restaurants around where we live.

The weekend after she left, we went to a Renaissance Faire and the weather was perfect. 
I dressed up for the day.

We really enjoyed the jousting show. I got some great photos of the knights on their horses.

For Thanksgiving, we decided to do something completely different. Every year the Poarch Creek Indians have a Thanksgiving Pow Wow on their reservation in Atmore, Alabama. We decided to go. It was really interesting, but so crowded. It was also cold and sitting on metal bleachers was not so pleasant. We bought a nice blanket to sit on from one of the many vendors that were at the event. I took pictures, but most didn't come out because my phone just couldn't handle the distance, lack of light and movement, but here is one, so you can get an idea of what it was like.

Back at home, things are quiet and calm. I enrolled Manny in Pet Pals, a pen pal kind of program what a teacher friend of mine started at one of the local elementary schools. The kids write to Manny and he writes back.

So Manny wrote back and I made little bookmarks for the kiddos.

It's been fun. One teacher said she has a student that has the bookmark on his nightstand and says a prayer for Manny every night. How sweet is that? Manny is so bad sometimes, he needs someone to pray for him, lol. 

We haven't done anything huge in the way of home renovations, but we did complete a couple projects before our daughter came to visit. We decided to change out the old brown, four light ceiling fans in the bedrooms. We replaced them with a smaller version that has a single center shade and LED lights inside. There is a remote control to choose the type of light, intensity and fan speed. Here is the one in the guest room.

Hubby also put a new exhaust fan in the guest bathroom and it was a good thing he did too, because he saw evidence where it was likely to cause a fire eventually. 

Back in September we did kind of a makeover on the front porch. I had all these ferns growing in the built-in brick planter.

I ripped them all out, We filled the planter with sand. Next we put down weed block and then a layer of decorative gravel. Finally, we put in a row of solar lights. It's much cleaner, makes the porch feel more spacious and it looks pretty at night. 

Here's how it looks now at night with our icicle lights. I also put some ornaments at the base of each solar light.

One of my favorite things to do lately is meet with my friend every other weekend for coffee. We have tried all the coffee joints around and there are a lot of them. Some have great atmosphere, some have great food and some have both. One place that has a beautiful interior is a new place in town called Press & Co. It's lovely inside. Everything they serve is organic, so it's pricey as you can imagine.

I had the avocado toast. It looks like a garden on a piece of toasted sourdough bread.

Very delicious. We sat in that cozy corner under those beautiful baskets hanging on the wall.

It's very bougie, as they say, lol. Wherever we go, we end up sitting and chatting for about 2 hours. We've come to both really look forward to our coffee "therapy." 

My big boy Mister.

And finally, Mister's Gotcha Day anniversary is coming up this month. It's been 7 years since we took him in. He's a huge boy and wants to eat virtually every minute of the day. We have him on a strict food regimen, but he finds a way to get at the dog's leftover kibble and snack on that. 

I probably won't be posting again until sometime in the new year, so until then, I wish all my readers a very happy, safe, peaceful and joy filled holiday season.

Thank you for stopping by and Happy New Year to you all!

Has Anyone Printed Their Blog?

Greetings readers and fellow bloggers. I've been contemplating leaving the blogging world, but I don't want to delete my content as I often refer to it for dates and times when certain things I wrote about happened in my life. I'm considering printing my blog so I have a permanent record of it, but I have over 1100 posts and that would be quite a lot of money. I was just wondering if a fellow blogger has used any of the online blog printing services. If so, please share your experience. The other option is to put the blog on private so I can still see it, but others cannot. My concern lately is AI, cloning, copying and all that nefarious stuff that seems to be going on lately. I post mostly on FB and there is a lot of slimy activity happening there in the way of people creating duplicate profiles of my friends and then trying to friend me. My husband fell for such as scam and it was troubling because he responded to private message thinking it was actually his friend. I also get a lot of random spam comments on this blog from other countries. In addition to all that, I'm just not feeling the desire to post anymore. It seems many bloggers I followed in the past have left, as have my readers. Anyway, as I said, I'm just contemplating this right now, but may make a final decision soon. I welcome any comments or suggestions. Thanks. 

Hitting The Big Six Five!

I made it to 65! Whoopee!! It was a great birthday week. The sweet ladies I've been working with surprised me with "traditional" birthday punch and pumpkin cream cheese sandwiches. Both were delicious. The punch is a tradition in my cafeteria manager's family, that was started long ago by her mom. It's made with orange juice, pineapple juice and lemon-lime Kool-aid. Well, it was delicious! I felt so special! I love subbing at this school. Very soon the vacancy will be filled and they will need me less often, but in the meantime, I actually look forward to going there, imagine that!

I didn't work on my actual birthday. Instead, hubby and I pre-planned a lunch out at a restaurant that recently opened. It used to be the yacht club associated with our housing complex, but it always lost money, so the property owners association board decided it was best to lease it to a restauranteur who actually knows what he's doing. 

It was remodeled and renamed The Waterfront and we finally went and checked it out. We arrived when they opened and got a table on the back deck overlooking Mobile Bay. It was cloudy, but still a nice view. Lots of seagulls and pelicans on those poles out there.

We got an appetizer of Street Cauliflower which was grilled with an oil and balsamic vinegar dressing topped with cheese. Oh, my, it was delicious!

For lunch, we both ordered tacos. I got mine made with fire roasted chicken thighs and hubby got his with shrimp. They were topped with a spicy mayo and mango bits. We ate every morsel!

The inside of the restaurant was also remodeled and a local artist painted murals on most of the walls. I had to get a photo in front of the main one. That's me, the birthday girl! 

Here is what the outside looks like.

We did a little shopping at Target and relaxed the rest of the day. We had a video call with our daughter in the evening and I blew out a candle on a single slice of carrot cake that we bought at Fresh Market.

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In other news....

Remember the Starry Night rock I painted for charity? Well, it didn't end up fetching as much money as I had hoped and I was feeling sad about it. I wished I could have bid on it and bought it back for myself! Then I realized I had a nice photo of it and that it would make a great Christmas card if I had it printed. So I went to Vistaprint and ordered some cards. While I was there, I decided to order a canvas print as well. It showed up yesterday and I was thrilled!!! 

So now I will have it forever! 

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And finally, if you have Hulu, there is a new show called "Love in Fairhope," which was supposed to be a romance reality show, if you're into that sort of thing. Well, preceding a show is a statement that says it's a mix of fantasy and reality and when I tell you the locals are going insane over it, I'm not lying, and it's because the whole thing is so contrived. The opening sequence describes Fairhope as a small town with only 1000 residents, one bar and two traffic lights. Then it talks about a 50 year traditional Magnolia Ball, which doesn't and has never existed! It's crazy! They also show a beach which is actually in Gulf Shores as well as other oddities that are making Fairhopers nuts. The local Facebook pages are posting lots of funny memes about it. I could only watch the first 5 minutes and had to turn it off. I thought it would be fun to see the local area featured in a TV show, but it's way too gag provoking for me to sit through. Here's a link to a funny article about the show. Love in Fairhope


I took the week off before my birthday week and did a lot of work in the yard. I will do a separate post on that later. As always, thanks for checking in and reading my blog!