Remembering

Just thinking of those who gave all, and those who gave some so that we could live free today.
I hope we do them proud.

Hope all my friends have a blessed Monday and a great week!

We're happy to be home and I'm still working on catching up. Take care, everyone!

Blah times two. ;)

Hubby let me borrow his laptop to make this post. My phone quit linking to my laptop, so I basically have no internet.
Just wanted to let you all know I'll do my best to catch up after we get home next Sunday.
It's going to feel like forever! Eep.
Haha.
But I have my painting, and I have some magazines to read.
I'll think of you all when I'm eating crawfish next week. :)
Take care. Hope you all have a blessed, safe week!

Friday already?

Ugh. Time flies when you're having fun. ;)
Sorry I haven't read many blogs. Haven't even really been online much. We start doing stuff about 7 AM, and work till about 2 PM, depending on how much heat we can take.
Weather here is 70s at night 90s during the day. Sometimes we have a breeze, which is nice; and sometimes it is just so humid it feels wet when we walk out of the trailer.
We have a small travel trailer. 29 feet. Originally bought it because we thought we were going to do some RVing. Now it's our home away from home while we get the house fixed up. So to speak, haha.

I'm like a bull in a china shop when it comes to painting, too. haha. Oh well. Sometimes I wish we could hire some help, but I know the money will go farther if we don't, so I'll just have to be happy with my work, which is really hard. I'm one of those people that likes things to turn out perfect, but am not even close to having the talent to accomplish that. I'm the person who can't draw a straight line with a ruler. ;)

I will have pictures though. Oh. Found out how many pictures I can put on a 4 meg memory card, too. 989 or there 'bouts.

You all have a great weekend!

Monday certainly arrived with a bang!

What a storm we had last night. Wind actually shook the trailer. Lots of rain and I'm pretty sure we had some hail with it, but of course there's no evidence now, 3 or 4 hours later.
It blew through about 3 AM, I think. Haven't gone out yet, but the cats are looking out the window so I expect they will let me know if anything happened. ;)

What I can see from the trailer looks pretty normal though. Wet, but normal. :)

The cell phone service seems pretty spotty today though. A lot of drop outs. Hope it gets better.

You all have a great Monday!

Well, here we are.

Back in Louisiana again. I forgot the adapter for the little memory card the camera uses, so there won't be any pictures until I get home, but I am taking them.
Took pictures of the broken pipe in the pump house. The well service came out and fixed it Saturday afternoon. We drove from about 5 Am Friday morning and got here about 2 AM. We napped in the Wal Mart parking lot until it was light enough to see to get into the driveway and then came out to the farm. Even though we have a security light, it doesn't really light the ditch at the end of the driveway.
It's always sad to see all the weeds and grass grown up again, but at least this time only the thistles were as tall as me. ;) (I'm 5'2".)
There were lots of weird patterns in the grass (and I don't mean alien space ship types). ;)
And out by the old barn, there was a big, oblong brown area where it looked like a lot of the weeds and such were dead. Just strange.

It always depresses me when I see all the work left to do. I try not to let it, but mostly it seems overwhelming. The weather doesn't help, either. I swear, I don't see why people go to Arizona to retire. While I would never go to Alaska (love it, but I don't think we could take -60F any more) I sometimes have doubts about the 90 plus weather here. I feel bad because I can't do a lot when it's really hot, but if I keep pushing, I get headaches.Right alongside my temples. Even if I drink water I still get them. The only way to get rid of them is to get out of the heat and by the air conditioning.
I am hoping that once we are here for good, I will become acclimated to the heat.

Got more paint today. Have to think positive thoughts. Will get the kitchen painted so we can get new linoleum down.
It's still depressing to see what numerous renters did to the house since '94, but that's all water under the bridge now. Need to concentrate on moving forward.

Hope you all have a wonderful, blessed week!

About twelve hours

'til we head out. Hope you all have a wonderful, blessed weekend! I'll try to check in when I can. :)

Well

I'm watching the History Channel. Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier. The memories it brings back. Kind of sad to realize that so much of what they are showing here will never be available again. They're showing when Paramount sold off so much of the memorabilia from all the Star Trek series. Actual models of all the ships, from all the shows. Models aren't even made any more because of computerized graphics.

Interesting and sad, in a way. But then I imagine the animators of Disney's time may have felt the same way. Endless hours spent drawing minute changes. I wonder what Disney would do with the computer animation available now?
But that is what makes those earlier shows so memorable. How they did so much with what they had at the time.

Pretty darn neat. ;)

Off to do some appointments with the hubby. Will do more packing tonight and then leave for Louisiana first thing in the morning.

Butter

I don't know how many of the people whose blogs I read, read mine in return, but perhaps one of you with the same interests will have an idea what I'm looking for.
Last week I read a post about how to make butter using a jar. You take cream (unpasturized being best) and shake it in a jar until it starts to form butter. You pour out a liquid (buttermilk).
I think you use a fork or spoon to press out all the buttermilk.
And that's all I can remember, because I was a dolt and didn't make a record of all the steps.
I've looked on the internet, but they mention recipes where you wash the buttermilk down the drain while making the butter - which seems wasteful when you can use it to make bread and biscuits and such.

So, what I'd like to know, is if any of you have read this post, or know how to make butter without wasting the buttermilk. I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

Happy Mother's Day!

Not too late to say it.:)
Went fishing for mother's day, and forgot to take pictures, haha.
Was a very windy, chilly day. Hubby caught a nice 6 pound channel catfish, and four nice panfish.
Maybe that's why I forgot to take pictures. None of mine were keepers. ;)

Hope you're all having a wonderful, blessed, Sunday!

One week and counting!

One week until our trip to the property in Louisiana. Hubby is thinking he may take Friday off. Doesn't really surprise me. We often leave after he gets off work on Friday. Last year we drove straight through. Not something I want to do again. It's not good for him (he's diabetic), and we were both too tired to do much when we got there.

I'll get the bills paid Friday morning, and we'll get the trees loaded into the box he built - and tied down, of course. Then we'll finish packing/loading and probably leave. It's always hard because there is so much that has to wait until the last minute to be packed.

Hubby got hold of the man who installed our new well pump last year (you can see the picture in my web album here.) He had been sick in the hospital and hadn't had time to check it since I called him last month; but he said to call him when we get to the farm and he'd come right out and look at it. All we know is when Louisiana had their freeze a month ago, something broke. Tyler, the neighbor who has looked after the property all these years, got the pump shut off (the breakers are on a pole outside the 'pump house'), and was supposed to talk with us about it; but, well, you know about that.
So we are going to visit the Mrs. to see if there is anything we can do for her while we are there.

Hopefully the weed killer we put down will have made a difference in the level of poison ivy, if nothing else. And we're going to be pulling up a lot of wild growth. It's been growing on the fence line, as you can tell from the pictures, for many years; but we want to put fruit trees along the fence line, among other things, so down they will come.
Sorry for the long sentence, haha.

Have a great weekend! We'll be doing more fishing. ;) And Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's out there! :)

Fish for dinner tonight!

Yup. Hubby and I went fishing again.  When we got to the fishing spot I like best, there was already some people there. That's okay, it's big enough for a few people to fish at the same time if they're careful. We asked how they were doing and they said they'd caught a few bass. (Ew, haha.) They were using minnows. We moved about halfway down the small pier and started fishing. We were using red worms. I prefer them over night crawlers or minnows. Sometimes the fish will take crawlers, but those are better for catfish.
Minnows are best for crappie or perch, neither of which have we seen there for years, if ever.


And we soon began catching  some nice pan fish. Mostly bluegill and green sunfish, but I caught one hybrid that was the size of both my hands together, haha. Hubby had to unhook that one for me and he could barely get his hand around it. Nice fish. We released all the females we caught.
I felt bad the guy and his daughters weren't catching any. We caught bass too and so did they, but we all threw the bass back. We shared our worms with them when it was obvious the panfish wanted worms, but they didn't catch any. Don't know why.

Our catch

Another shot.

Nice fish!

One of the *smaller* ones.

All in all, a good morning fishing.
Hope you're all having a good Sunday, too.

Two weeks until Louisiana.

Two weeks

Two weeks to go until we head down to Louisiana to the 'family farm', to see what we can get done and to find out what happened to the pump. We have well water, but they had a late freeze a month or so ago, and apparently something happened to the pump or the pipes in the pump house  or something.
The neighbor was supposed to tell us what happened, but as his wife said when she called us, some things just aren't meant to be.
We're also going to visit her and see if she needs anything. Her husband has helped keep an eye on the property for the last 20 some years; it's the least we can do.

We're excited. Can't come soon enough. Will try to take pictures to share with you all. :)
Hope your weekend is going well. It definitely got as warm as they said it would this weekend.