Just my grandmother's quilt

My grandmother (Grammy Cann), my dad's mom, was a neat lady. Her full name was Gladys Augusta (Durkee) Cann and she married a very taciturn man, somewhere around 1920 or so. When I was about 14 she told me that when she was young, her friends called her Happy Bottom. It took me a minute to figure that out!! LOL

When I met her (considerably later) she was a tiny little lady. She lived to be 78 or so, and she and her husband of 50+ years lived in a house with no hot water, no bathroom and no furnace.

After she died, I discovered from her obituary that she had been the organist in the little church that she went to for 68 years (or something like that). I had no idea - although I did know that she was very musical - many of the Durkees were.

She had beautiful gardens, her houseworking skills were fair to middlin' and she NEVER ever had a cross word for anyone. I never saw her wear slacks - when we went to the beach she was always in a skirt. She had two children, my dad who probably weighed in the neighbourhood of 10 pounds and his sister, my aunt Evelyn. Aunt Evelyn was born 16 years after my dad. Grammy Cann MIGHT have been 5 feet tall and she might have weighed 100 pounds - maybe 105 - and having a HUGE baby as her first must have been a tad (slight understatement) difficult. I can understand the delay before Aunt Evelyn came along!

Grandma taught me to knit (more than once) and refined my crochetting skills. She let my sister and I put her hair in curlers. At the time, that seemed entirely reasonable to Mary Ellen and I, however, when I got older and realized that washing her hair with no running water and only a well pump in the kitchen, must have been much more difficult than we would would have thought at the time. When we went to visit them (for two weeks every summer), I often got to stay at Grammy Cann's overnight for a night or two by myself.

She was interested in genealogy, as was I and she had endless patience for my questions.

She quilted as well - and I have one of her last few quilts. It is coming apart now and I'm trying to decide what to do with it. I believe I saw her working on this in the mid 70s, so it isn't very old, but it is in quite poor shape. It is also a rather ugly colour - I suspect that she used fabric she had on hand and bought muslin and some mustard yellow fabric to tie it all together and finish it off. (Yellow is not my favourite colour, probably because I can't wear it at all!)

Here is the whole quilt. I'm not sure what this pattern is called - and I have to say that it looks rather better through the camera than it does when you are standing and looking at it!

 This is one of my favourite blocks. I sort of think that she turned two of the half square triangles on their sides, now that I'm looking at this in the photo! I don't think that you can tell from the photo - but the stitching on one of the seams has come apart (I can fix that in this block).

 I'm pretty sure that there are open seams in these blocks too.

 See the frayed bit of fabric? I suppose that it wasn't cotton and so it isn't hanging together too well.

It is impossible to put a quilt on the floor here without having at least one of the three cats come to inspect it. This is Sarah. She, Molly and Ellie were all out on the deck in the sun - but she had to come in to walk around the quilt and smell the blue ink splotch that is in the centre of the block right in front of her. Funny about cats and quilts, isn't it!?

 More disintegration.

I think this is my favourite block - I love the paisleys and the blues and pinks - and it is on the edge so it isn't complete. Sigh.

Anyway. My next part of this project is to decide what I will do with it. The batting appears to be cotton batting - not put together in a sheet, but clumped together into hunks. The backing is plain muslin too.

Any ideas?

Just coffee mugs, again...

Coffee mugs, one of my favourite things in life, come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colours and designs.

They are tall and short. Narrow and wide. They have big handles that you can get many fingers in, or small handles that you can't.

They are made of a variety of materials and they keep your coffee (or other hot beverage) hot for varying amounts of time.

They are thick walled or thin walled. They are dainty or not. They are pretty or they aren't.

I have discovered that I have an ideal coffee mug.

Firstly, I don't care whether I drink COLD coffee or not. I know this is a turn off for lots of people... but I would rather drink a cold coffee than not have one. I'm willing to admit that other people have other opinions on this, and I'm cool with that. (Only a slight pun is intended!) However, the shape of a coffee mug has some bearing on how long your beverage stays hot - that's why I mention this.

I HATE coffee mugs that I can't hold onto 'properly'. I need to be able to get my index, middle AND ring finder INTO the handle of the mug. If I can't, I feel like the whole thing is going to dump into my lap (and I don't need any help to be klutzy - I'm perfectly capable on my own, thankyouverymuch!)

So. Big Handle.

I want a BIG mug. I don't want to have to go back to the coffee maker (more on that appliance in another post!) and refill and refill and REFILL! I want a MUGFUL! So a good size is important.

I like the mug to have a 'nice' shape. I haven't exactly figured out what that is yet... but I can tell you, I have two Tim Horton coffee mugs that I bought at Christmas time. And I have two or three old white Tim Horton mugs. The old white mugs are shorter and wider at the top. The two new ones are taller and narrower at the top. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that they hold the same amount of coffee. (Although I haven't tested that!) I don't like the two new red ones - the top is too narrow.

When my real estate agent gave me coffee mugs as a gift, they were shaped like a straight up and down cylinder that had been squeezed in the middle (clear glass with a flower shape impressed in them.) And I loved them. (I think I must have sold them all in a yard sale - it must have been snowing at the time. What was I thinking!?)

Those mugs that Shell gave away with gas in the 80s? Exactly up and down cylinders - don't like them at all.

 I have a short, BIG, straight up and down cylinder, made of clear glass, with a Guiding logo on it (White Oaks Area, I think). I LOVE it! I usually like clear glass mugs. I have two mugs with white holly leaves on them (also clear glass). I got them at Sobeys at Christmas and talked myself out of buying 6 of them (I didn't really NEED 6 more coffee mugs) but they are PERFECT. I bought two. When I went back to get two more, they were all gone. :-P

I have four mugs - BIG, nice wide open mouths, perfect handles, made out of some sort of pottery - they are white and have a little pale blue coffee pot on them. I bought them at Loblaws, and they are nice BUT one of them chipped, and now I don't 'trust' them. :-(

In short; I have definite tastes in coffee mugs. I'm not entirely certain what they are, but I can tell you that I like a clear glass mug, with a wide mouth, a big handle, and I want it to hold LOTS of coffee!

Enjoy!

Just Coffee Mugs

I have always LOVED coffee mugs!

I do have two coffee mug anecdotes that I'm going to relate, but I liked coffee mugs BEFORE the earlier one of these took place.

My husband used to be in Canada's Armed Forces. (Before I met him he was in the Navy.) He joined the Army when we finished high school (yes, we were high school sweethearts!) and we moved around a bit.

When we lived on Prince Edward Island, I joined a Newcomers Club (which is a great organization, I might add, and I belong to the Truro and Area one here!) The Newcomers Club in Summerside had quite a nice mix of ladies. We got together for all kinds of things; crafts, Moms and Tots, cards or board games, and we did alot of social things in the evenings and on weekends with our husbands AND we had a coffee group.

Shortly before Barry and I were posted to Germany, I went to morning coffee. All the other ladies had the MOST beautiful coffee mugs. I was so impressed and Elaine gave me a nice mug from her cupboard to drink my coffee out of. I was admiring all her nice mugs, when the coffee group was finished. All the ladies turned their mugs upside down, wrote their names on the bottoms and presented them to me! They were my going away gift! I was SO impressed!!

Two postings later, Barry and I were posted back to Canada and, while he was in the former Yugoslavia, the two kids and I moved to Calgary. Assuming my furniture would arrive from Summerside, where it had been in storage, within 5 days, I invited my mom and dad to come out to Calgary and visit with us for a couple of weeks - to keep us company until Barry got there. WELL. The furniture from Summerside did NOT arrive within 5 days and Mom and Dad, Nathan, Kimberly and I spent a week and a half in a VERY empty house. (How does this relate to coffee mugs? I'm getting there!) Our furniture came from Summerside and within a day we had everything organized, all the dishes washed and everything looked good. EXCEPT we had no dining room furniture... 4 days after that all our furniture came from Germany where we had been living for 5 years. We now had two of everything except for the piano, the masterbedroom set, and the dining room furniture. The house was suddenly VERY full. One might even say TOO FULL.

Mom and Dad thought I should have a yard sale. This was early September, by the way. We advertised, we marked prices on things and we filled the two car garage with stuff. The day came. It SNOWED! The yard sale happened. I SOLD 87 coffee mugs. I still had more than 30 in the house. Did I mention that I like coffee mugs?

When I bought the house in Calgary, the Real Estate agent gave me a house warming gift. She gave me 4 coffee mugs!

:-)
P.S. I had had a yard sale in Summerside when I moved there and it snowed. I had a yard sale in May in Calgary when we were getting ready to move away and it snowed AGAIN. I now longer have yard sales. At all. I just take the stuff to the Salvation Army or Rotary House. Bad weather can be their fault - but not mine any more!
J

Just Coffee

I like my coffee first thing in the morning. In fact, I HAVE to have it. Yes, I'm addicted to it. There, now that we have gotten that out of the way, please let me continue.

I have strong feelings about my coffee. I have discovered that I don't like DARK roasts - they make me shake. My girl friend tells me (and I have no reason to doubt her!) that dark roasts don't actually have more caffeine than medium roasts. But I do doubt a bit. (Why would my heart beat so fast after one if they aren't extra loaded with caffeine?) (Perhaps it's all in me head!)

I know that lots of people have done the rant about the stores that sell coffee in sizes that aren't in English. Well, if I wanted windy coffee I'd ask for it. All those barristoes (or whatever they are called) speak English - they know what I mean when I say a large coffee, medium roast. And because I don't take sugar or anything sweetened with sugar, I have to take EVEN more time. I might like to have an iced cappachino mocha - but I have to know what's in them - and that takes even longer than them explaining the sizes to me.

Okay, I got off track. Back to my own little slice of heaven in the morning! I get up, and I usually feed the cats before I make the coffee. However, if they are too lazy to come over and stand by their dishes and look up at me... if they just sit on the back of my couch, or worse, if they just lie there all curled up... Well, heck, if they aren't in any hurry, than the coffee comes first.

I hate to talk about the water here in any disparaging way. It is clean and safe and they have spent a lot of money here in this town on deepening the reservoir, and on a water treatment plant. (And our property taxes reflect that!) However, it has the faintest smell of chlorine - and I find that a filter takes that away ipsquitch (I think that is a BFG word - use the context!) The only issue that I have with the filter is that you have to remember to fill the darned thing when you use the water in it all up! And if it is half full, you are supposed to wait until it is empty before you fill it again... So, some mornings, the coffee is delayed by the water being filtered.

I used to make 8 cups on my coffee maker. Which makes four mugfuls (Are the coffee maker people drinking their coffee from ventis??) But I have discovered that I drink the coffees closer together now that I am retired. When I was working, I'd fill my thermos and I'd finish the last coffee early in the afternoon - but four mugs of coffee before 10 is too much now!

So I fill the thing to the 6 cup line. And I have a moment of heaven! :-) Enjoy yours!

Next topic - mugs!

Just where did this come from? LOL

I have a blog called Low Carb Cooking and I post recipes in there frequently. The other day I posted a recipe for a BBQ sauce that I made from a recipe that I have in a book. I modified the recipe quite fiercely - and I felt comfortable posting it, as my own.

When I went to have a look at it though, there it was, poof! Gone.

I was puzzled, but I posted it again and all was well.

Today, I came here to post my coffee blog - and there was the recipe.

Hopefully it is still on the other blog (where I intended to put it) and I'll be more careful figuring out where I am in cyberspace before I hit publish.

I'm glad this mystery is solved - Anyway - if you are looking for the Calling All Captains BBQ Sauce recipe let me know and I'll direct you to the Low Carb recipes blog!

:-) Jane

Just trivia stuff

I don't know about you, but I remember odd things - and they kinda litter my head, fill up my brain and are not very useful in normal conversation (where, I might add, I feel compelled sometimes to strew them!)

So here goes. Random facts.

Magpies make nests with roofs. Their tails are so long that they make a front and back door to their nests so that they don't have to turn around in the nest to leave.

Everything in the universe within a very short time after the big bang was Hydrogen. Everything else (including us and our planet) was created inside stars. So that song that says, we are star dust, is absolutely correct.

Deer like clematis plants. (I only discovered this one yesterday.)

The Bay of Fundy has some of the highest tides in the world.

There are many right ways to do things. (And many wrong ways too.) Just because something is not done MY way, does not make it wrong automatically.

Just because an idea is not MY idea, does not make it a bad idea.

My computer is set for the Dvorak keyboard. This is a setting in the control panel. My keyboard LOOKS the same as yours (QWERTY) but when you press the key with an S on it on my keyboard, the screen types an O. Supposed to be faster and better for your hands - I can type about 85 words a minute when I have been typing a lot, on the Dvorak keyboard. There is a good article on Wikipedia on the Dvorak keyboard. It took me about 6 weeks to train myself to type on it. I went from 75 words a minute to 7, the first day. Oh, and now I can't touch type on the QWERTY keyboard - I have to look at my hands - and I can only type about 40 wpm - I find it very frustrating, and will, if possible change the settings to allow myself to use the Dvorak keyboard. I can ONLY touch type. Looking at my hands is no use at all! :-)

When I changed from QWERTY to Dvorak I discovered that I didn't actually type letter by letter. I actually had the patterns of the words in my head somewhere. I had to relearn those patterns when I switched. THE thing that was hardest to unlearn and relearn? Keyboard shortcuts. And URLs - I still, occasionally try to type www using the key that has a w on it - which is actually punctuation in Dvorak - a comma.

Lowe's Building Supplies (the American website) have some of the best How-To videos I have ever seen! We learned how to build a deck on their site.

Deer love tulips. They will even dig up the bulbs and eat them. Daffodils, on the other hand, grow wild in Nova Scotia. If a plant grows in the wild, there is a good chance that the deer can't or won't eat them. They either taste bad or are poisonous.

Well, this isn't all. But I can't empty my head all in one fell swoop, apparently. There may or may not be more random facts at some point in the future!

Just the Rock Garden...

We have a little bank on our property - behind the flat part of the yard behind the house.

I need to go back in time to the summer before last (2009). We bought a lot in 2008 that was entirely covered with scrubby trees and brush, and I had NO idea about the shape of the lot. I'm pretty sure that Barry had sort of a topographic 'picture' of the lot in his head, but not me!

The builder (because we were in a different province whilst this portion of the project was going along) cleared the lot for us. And he discovered that we were going to be able to have a walkout from the basement (if we wished) and we decided that we did wish...

However, he also discovered that we had quite a hill on the back part of our property.

More info that you need to have to make sense of this: this house is a Kent Home - which means that it is a modular home or a manufactured home. In other words, it was delivered by two huge trucks, each with wide load signs and little trucks with whirly orange lights on top. AND one part of my house (I think the back part) took the stop sign on Cottage Street out when it turned the corner, as Brunswick Street was closed because new sidewalks were being put in. (As a side note to this, they are STILL replacing sidewalks on Brunswick Street!)

In order to put the house on the lot, they needed to make a 'temporary road' behind the foundation and bring in a huge crane and then lift the two halves onto the foundation.

And when they made that temporary road they made that little hill steeper - and they killed several small trees and one larger one.

We have been pondering what the heck we were going to do with that hill. We thought about it in the fall of 2009 while we had 4 truckloads of top soil put on the lot around the house and I went out and spread grass seed by hand (very patchy first effort, I might add.) And while we created and planted a small semi-circular garden with all the plants that we moved from Ottawa to here, we thought about it.

And we thought about it throughout the fall and winter while we finished the basement of our new house and while I painted the interior. (These new houses are painted completely white inside - very boring!) And we thought about it in the Spring of 2010 while we built a stone deck in the backyard, and in the summer of the same year while we built a wooden patio in the front, where we covered the pit of doom and reduced our front outside stairs from 8 to 4...

We thought about it while we planted trees,  and expanded the garden, planting many plants that Helen gave me from her beautiful gardens!

We discussed it when we went for walks and looked at our neighbour's efforts with retaining walls, ditches and gardens.

And this spring we received in the mail, a list of things we could buy from a local supplier, that included river stones in a couple of sizes, and shale in several sizes (as well as mulch, triple mix topsoil and several sizes of gravel.)

So one rare sunny afternoon, we headed over to see what they had and how much it would cost. And we bought a pallet of shale in various sizes that we thought we would be able to lift by hand. And we got them to deliver it to us.

And we thought about how we were going to put these things on the hill and what they were going to look like and I finally got tired of thinking of it. I decided that we might just as well put the stones out there like flagstones and plant some sedum and other things that will drape over the rocks and get it over with. They would either hold the rocks there or they wouldn't. We'd be no further behind than we were now. We have been watching the bank and neither one of us thinks that the silly thing is moving - and if it is, the long roots of the perennials SHOULD hold it still.

We headed out to Great Village where there is a Garden Centre called Lowlands - and they must have had 5 different kinds of sedum (which I have been spelling wrong for 8 years!) and I bought several of them. I also went to a plant sale a week ago and bought three different kinds of sedum at it - wee, not-so-wee and f---ing huge!

And we brought them home, I took them into the back yard and set them on the Stairway to Nowhere (just like the Stairway to Heaven, only different!) and poured myself a drink and sat on the sun porch with my book.

This morning, I thought I ought to plant the sedum and geraniums, but Barry suggested that we go for a walk. I made soup for Edna and I and then made dessert (see the last blog!), which was ready to go in the oven just as Edna got here to play cards.

Mom, Dad, Edna and I sat on the sun porch and played cards all afternoon with me looking at my rocks, which Barry had laid out for me on the hill on Monday... and Dad complimented me on how they looked. Sigh!

Supper was easy. Leftover soup from lunch (a new broccoli soup, mmm!), leftover oven fritatta from yesterday and leftover dessert from lunch. After I was finished dinner I asked after tomorrow's weather. Now it seems that we are going to have typical weather - that is, it is supposed to rain. And rain, and rain and rain. And I looked at my two shopping boxes of plants out there and FINALLY managed to get myself motivated to go out there and do something!

I planted geraniums in an old enameled canning pot.

I planted a sunflower in a smaller one.

I added potting soil to the Hoy Plant, and hung it up on the deck.

I added soil to the Norfolk Pine and found a spot for it on the deck for the summer.

 

And I planted ALL the darned sedum in the rock garden. Now it can rain ALL weekend long and I don't care. I do have two Eunonymus to pop in somewhere, but I'm going to get Barry to dig the holes for me - I wasn't really able to trowel deeply enough - and the deer, sadly, like them, and have already been sampling them... so they are looking a bit sad anyway....

So, there you have it. Just the rock garden.

Just Cooking stuff

It was Father's Day on Sunday and I called my Dad. I usually go over there for coffee on Wednesday's, but this Wednesday I'm going on a FART (Fabric Acquisition Road Trip) to Avonport. So I made arrangements to visit Mom and Dad today. And I decided that I ought to make a nice dessert or something, and take that with me.

I knew I had a recipe in one of my cookbooks for a Cinnamon Coffee Cake, but when I found it, I didn't have all the ingredients that it called for. So I tried an internet search. And I found a recipe that would do.

When I write out a recipe, I write the ingredients down in the order that they appear in the recipe - evidently the writer of the original recipe wrote the ingredient list in random order! AND they assume that the cook is going to actually READ the recipe.

Well. Not me. I saw the first few dry ingredients and put them in the bowl. When I got down to the wet ingredients, I figured I'd better get the oven turned on... and see what size cooking pan I needed to get out.

In one bowl, read the recipe, to my horrified eyes, mix part of the first two ingredients, the 5th ingredient, 7th ingredient and last ingredient.... Ooops.

So I hastily scooped out part of the dry ingredients, mixed in the 5th and 7th ingredient, and put that in the bottom of the pan.

The rest of the dry ingredients were still in a bowl, to which I confidently added an egg. No wait, there was a layer before that. I cut the cream cheese up and layered it very carefully on the crumbs from the first bowl. Then I added the blueberries. THEN I read the recipe again.

The cream cheese is supposed to be mixed WITH stuff and then the blueberries go on top of that. Oops!

I abandoned all hope at this point - this recipe was going to be a big flop. It was now time for me to have left - and things were still RAW - so I mixed the last few ingredients in with the rest of the stuff, and carefully dumped it in on top of the berries.

Reading the recipe again, it told me to carefully sprinkle the crumbs on TOP - WHAT?! The thing they had me make first was the topping???? My cake was sort of upside down and ALL wrong. I stuck plastic wrap over the whole thing and headed off to Mom and Dad's. I emptied Mom's oven of the cookie sheet she stores in there, turned it on to preheat and enjoyed a visit, culminated with a piece of Jane's Blueberry Coffee Cake...

So all this is to say... I made up a new recipe today! It was really good! And here it is.

Jane's Blueberry Coffee Cake


Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×9 inch pan.
Mix:
1/2 c. Splenda
1 c. ground Almonds
4 T butter
1 t cinnamon
1 pinch of salt

This will be crumbly. Spread this in the bottom of the pan.

Thinly slice (just less than 1/4 of an inch) 1 block (8 oz) of Philadelphia cream cheese and lay a single layer of cheese on top of the bottom layer.

Sprinkle 2 c frozen blueberries evenly on top. Set aside.

Mix well:

2 c. ground Almonds

1/2 c. Splenda

2 eggs
1/2 c. sour cream

2 T oil (I used peanut oil, but canola oil would do just as well)

2 t vanilla

1/2 t baking soda

1 t baking powder

Pour this mixture on top of the blueberries, trying not to disarray them too much.

Bake 35 minutes at 350. Use the toothpick test for doneness. Enjoy!

Just the Garage...

 About three weeks ago, I started a Spring To Do List

.

 The top item on the list is to put the lattice on the side entry - but there has to be a let up in the rain before we get out there doing that! The second item on the list is Build Shelves in the Garage.

Before we could head out to buy the materials I had to have a little panic search, during which I couldn't find my plans for the shelving (and my list of what we needed to buy in order to build the shelves). However, when I calmed down, I remembered where it was. (Isn't that always the way?)

After I found it, Barry and I went to Kent Building Supplies and bought the wood, which we strapped it onto the roof of the Jeep. Our stock joke (only I'm pretty sure Barry is NOT joking) is that the Jeep is NOT a truck... That was pointed out, yesterday, as we drove home with 14 one by four spruce boards that were 12 feet long.  We did manage to get them all here without blowing over (the wind was wicked yesterday) AND without getting rained on. Which is why we went out in the morning! We moved all the 'stuff' away from the wall, and into the middle of the garage floor.

We had bought some beautiful industrial brackets at The Home Depot in Dartmouth. They didn't have enough for us that were all the same size - but there were enough (we thought) for three shelves.  The bottom one would be deeper than the top two. (It turned out, we have enough for another shelf - that'll be on the other side of the garage, but I haven't broken the news to Barry yet!)

Barry desperately wanted to use his laser level, so after some 'discussion' in which I pooh-poohed that, we gave it a try. And what do you know - it worked slick! We used the chalk line (which was my idea) to connect the dots - and had a lovely line on the wall to get the brackets lined up. I forgot to bring the camera out at the beginning of the process, so I don't have a picture of the lower shelf's line before we put the brackets up (and I wasn't convinced that the laser level was going to be a useful tool at that point anyway!)

 

We had to move Barry's work bench out of the way (heavy!!!) and we moved it over far enough that he could put his white tool box into the corner. The bottom shelf is shorter than the top two. We wanted, specifically to put the two or three tools we have on tables (the table saw and the belt sander) UNDER the shelves. At the time that these were being built, those tools were under the canoe, which is hung on the back wall.

Barry has a chop saw, which is the handiest tool going!! He did all the cutting, I did the design, measuring and marking. At one point he took the pencil from me. I gave him the 'look' and he handed the pencil back immediately. 

When we do these projects we ALWAYS, INVARIABLY forget something when we buy the parts. It doesn't seem to matter how careful I am when I make the list, I just don't seem to be able to list everything - and this was no exception. I forgot to buy screws that would join the shelves to the cross pieces to make the shelves into one piece. However, Barry found some exterior quality screws of the right length that would do the job. It took us about half an hour to figure out what we had bought them for initially (the lattice, as it happens.)

Here I am figuring out how the small shelf goes together. We put the small braces across, and Barry screwed them together.

This is one of the long shelves. We also screwed the shelves INTO the brackets, using a proper length wood screw AND a little washer. We had JUST enough washers in the package. There should have been 36 in the pack and we used 33 and there were none left.... Hmmm.

Barry told me that there was no reason why he shouldn't sit down while he did the work! :-)

So we got all the shelves made. The two long ones are resting (in fact, attached to) a two by four that is attached to the wall studs on the back wall.

Barry made sure they were attached really firmly!

And when we got them all done, we put the 'stuff' on them. I have a pile of stuff to get rid of, and I might have a couple of other things to go on the top shelf. But once you put the ladder away, getting the top shelf's stuff down or up, is a bit of a pain.

We swept the garage and there is so much dust in the air that it looks like sparkles in this picture! The stack of give aways have the yellow life jacket leaned up against them. When they are gone, the garage will have so much space!! Barry is going to take the chop saw downstairs - he is concerned that it will get rusty in the garage (and I think he is right!)

Barry spent part of the evening (while I went in and made dinner) disassembling some old shelves, and went back out this morning and did some more. When we get the stuff that is to give away, taken away, I'll take another picture. It looks SO good!!!