Simply Calling

This week’s simple pleasure can be summed up in two simple words,

“Hi, Mom!”

I think, of all the words that come in and out of my head during the course of a week (and you know there are many…) that phrase is my very favorite.

And it comes to me through the wonders of modern technology.

When I went to college decades ago, we had land lines in the rooms. Calls home were costly, especially since dormitories were not equipped with long distance service so calls were made collect.
 (Those under 30 might need to google that…)

The minutes were precious, and every word needed to be spoken within about three minutes… preferably after 9:00PM or before 7:00AM.

I couldn’t just pick up the phone because I wanted to hear my mother’s voice (and there were so many times that I wanted to... ) Now that I’m a mother myself, I know that she felt the same way.

Not so today.

Today, through the magic of a satellite, we can pay one single price, put our daughters in a calling circle, and have unlimited access to the sound of their voices.

Isn’t it grand?

They can call me when they need to.

Even better, they can call me when they want to.

And I have the same privilege.

My nieces have always called their mother at the same basic time of the day, around 5:00 in the afternoon. I wonder if they know that she gives a little jump when she hears her cell phone singing away in her purse at that time of day. I wonder if they know that she picks it up, looks at the number, and then says their name… with a little sigh… in a way that I know all mothers reading this will understand. No matter what she’s doing, no matter where she is, she will retreat with that phone to a quiet corner to hear what her child has to say.

My girls and I have a different model. I have told them to call me “whenever”, and that I will try to be available to take the call. My calls come spontaneously, and the voice that I hear on the other end of the line is often accompanied by a little huff and puff as they chat with me as they are going...

I wonder if they know that those huffs and puffs are my favorite part of the day. 

Yesterday’s huff and puff from Miss Whimsy

 was accompanied by a

hack

and a,

“Hi, Momb”. 

 That’s how I knew, without her saying, that my girl had caught her sister's cold. Thirty years ago, my mother wouldn’t have known about a cold unless it entered the need your mother stage.

I love both calling styles, and both styles remind me of a great truth about The Father that I wouldn’t have known without being a mother. Whether I set aside special time to connect with Him, or whether I call on him as I am going, he truly delights in the sound of my voice, huff, puff, hack, and all.

Because I am His child.

And the sound of my voice is

His favorite part of the day.

I think, maybe,

it might even be His simple pleasure.

*****

Sharing this today with Dayle at

A Collection of This and That

Please join me and others for more
Simple Pleasures.

Goldenrod and Muscadines?

If you have ever been in south Georgia in September, you’ll understand the challenge for this week’s tablescape.  We wanted to do a tablescape to celebrate the season. Unfortunately, it still feels like summer here. Our temperatures have yet to commit to anything below 92 degrees.

It’s hot

and dry

and colorless.

So the sister decided that since the only colorful thing growing around here was goldenrod, we should let it inspire a table. Yes, we realize that’s a weed, but desperate times call for desperate measures. A goldenrod table it is.

We started with a colorful tablecloth 

And we scoured our houses for dishes to match

We set it up on the gate leg table in the Duchess's living room.

Since the sister was the one who wanted to use that goldenrod, she was the one who had to traipse into the field to get it. We stuck it in some vintage Belgian pottery which belonged to my great- grandmother. This is the first thing that we've used from this side of the family.

Aside from the goldenrod, about the only other thing in season here would be muscadine grapes. The muscadines in our centerpiece were picked at the local vineyard.

We didn't do the picking, however. These were a gift from a local politician. We're not that fond of the taste of them so we voted to stick them in our south Georgia tablescape instead.

Now, I'm sort of a remedial clocher, but according to Marty at A Stroll Through Life, anything stuck under a dome is cloche enough. 

So we whipped the dome off of an anniversary clock

and cloched it up with some muscadines.

And just for good measure, we stuck some fruit under a cheese dome to go along with it.  In full disclosure, that's faux fruit under there.  I guess if the guests can be invisible,  the fruit can be faux.

The pears on the plates are the real deal, though.

My sister found those funky green chargers

at Hobby Lobby this year

and has been waiting for a chance to use them.

Everything else was scrounged up from our their houses. 

I was practically no help at all.

These napkins were my sole contribution.

I got them this season, at Walmart, to use for the family. 

I did dink around with the folding, though. 

And I named it.

The peekaboo pattern fold

I also suggested some dried orange tipped roses

 that I had hoarded.

They didn't make the cut.

Because weeds and faux fruit are art, but dried up flowers...

well, that's just tacky.

Random pictures for no reason...

With candlelight because I think it's kind of pretty that way.

So there you have it.

South Georgia in September.

Maybe next time,

along with our pretend people

 and pretend menu,

we'll pretend it's autumn, too.  

*****

Sharing this with Susan at Between Naps on the Porch

The Bobblehead Baptist

Have I mentioned how much I love a worship service? Well, I do. I don’t attend because I ought to go; I attend because I really want to.


And I sit on the back row…
which makes me a Back Row Baptist.

I’m not a back row Baptist because I want to stay disengaged from the service, though. I’m a back row Baptist so as not to disturb the other worshippers.

Because I’m also what my daughters call a

 a Bobblehead Baptist.

Our church is a First Baptist church in a small southern town, and First Baptists can be a very subdued bunch. Not I. I’m the toe tapping oddball of the congregation. I love the music, and even more, I love the words behind it.

Even so, I try to behave and respond in the most First Baptist way possible.

Feet planted on the floor…
Hands on the back of the pew…
Head… bobbing along as if it’s not acquainted with my shoulders at all.

If the song makes me weepy, I cry.

If the song makes me happy, I grin.

If the song is

Victory in Jesus

or

 Days of Elijah,

I might add a little bouncy hip action

 to the bobblehead dance.

And I belt out the song. In my head, I sound just like Mahalia Jackson (I think I must really sound like her, too, because nearby worshippers often turn their heads quizzically in my direction…)

This is the reason that I have been banished to the back row, the entire extended family along with me. There we sit all scrunched together in the family pew.

My family,
the sister’s family,
And the Duchess, of course.

The Duchess takes her matriarchal pew duties very seriously. She is the official look giver and peppermint passer. She likes those crackly peppermint wrappers to be opened during the loudest organ crescendo of the anthem. (If you forget to open your crackly peppermint paper during the crescendo, the crevice of the knee between two crossed legs is a pretty good muffle. A little cough while you're doing it helps too.)

In addition to the peppermints, she also passes the buck. If you sit on our pew and are under the age of 25, the Duchess will hand you a dollar to put in the collection plate. She has been passing the buck since the girls were little, and it appears that nothing short of matrimony will make her stop.

We knew that the newlywed nephew had passed Muster on his first official family visit because she came prepared with a crisp dollar bill just for him. I’ll never forget his face when he was passed the buck. The niece gave him the *just go along with it* look.

Which made me giggle.
Which got me The Look from the Duchess.

I put my offering inside of my little Baptist pink envelope. I could turn it in during Sunday School, but I refuse to do so in silent protest of the fact that they make two men miss Sunday School each week to count them. I’m sort of a rebel that way.

I did, however, buy little smiley face stickers to decorate my pink envelope..

 because the LORD loveth a cheerful giver.

He loves all cheerful givers, but he loveth the Southern Baptist ones. That’s because we’re prone to burst into Elizabethan English at random moments. We say “thee” and “thy” and “thou” and we add a little “eth” to the end of our verbs. We use ten dollar words like “unction” and “begotten”, and the curtain in the temple was not just torn in two from top to bottom, it was rent in twain…

Sometimes, Elizabethan Dixie triggers my giggle reflex…
Which triggers The Look from the Duchess.

Verily, Verily.

Aside from the bobbleheaded hip bounce and Elizabethan giggle reflex, I pretty much behave back there on my back row. I even take notes during the sermon. I do admit, though, that whenever a preacher wants every head bowed and every eye closed, I have an uncontrollable urge to peek.

Once, I caught the Duchess peeking too.
And I still got The Look.

If you were waiting for a point to this rambling mess, there is none. Let’s just call it an informational yakabout.  Not only did I just give you a piece of the puzzle from Thursday’s chicken note,
but now you know the reason why...

 the Presbyterian-born husband

readily volunteered

to go upstairs

to the balcony

and sit in the sound room

all by himself.

Can anybody relate, or am I the lone bobblehead in blogland?

Simply Scribbled

Would it surprise you to learn that I’m a
 hopeless romantic?

Well, I am, and I have a vivid imagination. I like to imagine that my life is like a page out of a Jane Austen novel.

And the husband is Lord Byron...

 Gushing out stacks

of flowery love letters...

which I would save

all tied in blue

and secreted away

in an antique trunk

in the corner of an attic…

Where they will be discovered in the next century by some other hopeless romantic in the family tree…

That’s just the way I think.
But that's not the way it is.

While the husband is pretty romantic, he’s just not a flowery sort of guy; he is a man of few words.   (Pretty convenient since I’m a woman of many) He’s even less expressive when it comes to the written word.

Oh, he’s written some cards and notes over the years, and I’ve saved them all.
They are just like the man:
Brief
Honest
Forthright

Even his penmanship misses the mark.  I always imagine letters tied in blue to be penned in beautiful script.  I’m not sure that my husband ever learned cursive at all. It must have been taught the same day that the lower case letters were introduced because he never uses them either. Everything he scrawls looks JUST LIKE THIS.  Sometimes worse.

You might be wondering where I’m going with this ramble. Well, it’s this.

The husband left to work out of town this week as he usually does, but before he left, he managed to hide a little note where I would be sure to find it.

When I opened the refrigerator on Tuesday evening to fix my lonely meal for one, I found this note propped around some left over grilled chicken.

Since his chicken scratch is difficult to read, I’ll translate. All  misspelled words and names are intentional and designed to make me read them exactly as if he were speaking it.

Uncle Ichabob's

World Famous

Twain- Rented

Rota sere Chicken?

Now, I realize that this means absolutely nothing to those reading this post, but it gave me the full out belly laugh.

Just as he knew it would.

As you might suspect, each line of his little note represents a funny moment… a private joke… just between the two of us. The husband loves to keep a mental collection of our silly moments and scribble them back to me when I least expect it. If he can string them together in a line of silly nothings, it’s all the better.

I suspect that he considered this quite the masterpiece.

After I laughed, I gave him a call.
Just as he knew I would.
Then, we laughed together.

When I got off the phone, I thought about my quiet husband and his silly little notes.

And it seems to me

that though the script is nearly illegible…

and the sentiments aren’t flowery…

and I certainly wouldn’t save them in the attic

all tied in blue…

They qualify as love notes nonetheless.

This week’s simple pleasure was remembering that sometimes, the best love letters are not mushy at all.

*****

I’m pleased to join Dayle

 at A Collection of This and That

 for her
Simple Pleasures Party.
Please join us.
 I promise that you will find it a pleasure.

A Barnyard Breakfast

We took The Traveling Tablescape Show on the road again this week and headed to the newlywed niece's farmhouse for a little barnyard breakfast. Yes, the sister lives on the farm too, but it's the niece who has the great old weathered barn boards.

So off we went to the country

with our dishes...

and our linens...

and our flowers...

and our props.

Even my grandmother's old kitchen table

made the thirty mile country commute.

This is some hard core tablescaping, folks.

Our inspiration came from my favorite old tablecloth. This one did not come from the vintage trunk but from the Duchess’s every day closet. It was a shower gift from the Great Wedding Adventure of 1957 and has the faded beauty of a well loved treasure.

I think those are supposed to be colorful turtle doves,

but for today, 

let's pretend they are
 barn swallows.

The sister made the tan and white napkins
 from remnants

 used in my niece’s decorating.

I made that 
. faded vintage fabric
for the matching napkins myself

by printing it on my computer. 

I yakked all about that yesterday.

We decorated the side of that barn

and brought along some

faded old accessories.

The yard chickens are as old as the tablecloth.

The Duchess bought them on her  honeymoon

as a gift for her grandmother.

They're MINE  now.

These cream and sugar pigs

belonged to that same (great) grandmother.

She purchased them from a peddler,

and she was fun enough to actually use them.

My own grandmother’s cookbooks

add a little more faded glory.

That egg crate isn’t a family piece.

The Duchess purchased it along the way.

The toile rimmed dinner plates were a gift from a British friend and made in her hometown. Other than that, the dinnerware is unremarkable and chosen for the colors.

You just don’t bring your bone china into the barnyard…

The requisite

decoupaged doodad

Coasters made from photo copies of the tablecloth.

So there you have it.

We so greatly appreciated the niece

 inviting  allowing us to invade her space 

that we invited her to pretend to join us at the table.

Making it a barnyard breakfast for four

One old hen

One cute chick

And a couple of

hams.

*****

I'm sharing this at
 Between Naps on the Porch 

for

My Faux Vintage Linens

Our first empty nest Labor Day was kept very simple.
The husband played golf.

I made something useful out of hoarded stuff.

It’s one of my favorite things to do, and only half the fun is the finished product. The other half is figuring out how to bring it to completion at no cost. Other tightwads will relate. 

The man of the house
does not understand

the pleasure in this

and said as much…

Then, he left  to spend four hours

 chasing a little white ball across the ground

 with a funny shaped stick.

While he was ball chasing, I made my very own vintage napkins. OK, they’re not technically vintage since I just made them yesterday, but they do have a faded vintage look to them. I got the inspiration from Carol at The Polka Dot Closet. 

I made them to match one of my favorite old tablecloths. It belongs to the Duchess.

It’s her cookie cloth

(I yakked about cookie cloths HERE) 

For my napkins, I used hoarded white fabric from The List. Because I want to actually use these napkins, the fabric had to be treated at least a day in advance in a solution of...

2 Tablespoons alum

2 ½ teaspoons washing soda

½ teaspoon fabric softener

1 cup of very hot water

It created more froth than my Milli Vanilli Ice Cream in a Can ever did so I let it settle for a few minutes.

Then I:
Cut the fabric into pieces the size of an 8 ½ by 11 sheet of paper.
Soaked those pieces in the mixture for about 15 minutes.
Rinsed and  hung to dry for about a day.

Then, I scanned the pattern from the tablecloth that I wanted to use on my napkin. I don’t have a picture of this because it’s hard enough to get a tablecloth to fit on a printer screen without the added feature of a shiny red Kodak.

Here’s the photo copy sitting on the table cloth.

Pretty good.

Then, I cut 8 ½ by 11 pieces of freezer paper

 and ironed the treated fabric

 to the waxy side of the freezer paper.

This makes waxy fabric paper.

which you feed through the printer

to copy your vintage pattern.

Peel it off.

And Ta Da!

Milli Vanilli vintage fabric?

Since it was only 8 ½ by 11 inches, my napkin was on the small side.
I’m calling it a tea towel instead.
I could have purchased some pretty fabric to jazz it up, but since this was supposed to be a cost free project, I just cut up more strips of that white cotton and coffee stained them to match that dark tan color in the tablecloth.

I had to stain and dry twice

 to get them the color that I wanted.

By the end, I had coffee stained counters,

a coffee stained floor,

and coffee stained hands.

 I also had coffee stained fabric so it was worth it.

I stitched the two homemade fabrics together and lined the whole thing with more hoarded remnant. And there you have it. They are not a perfect match, but they are pretty close and didn't cost a dime.

All in about the time it took the husband

to play a few rounds of golf.

Who’s smirking now?

All he has to show for it are some achy muscles.

I, on the other hand, have

 handmade coffee stained faux vintage tea towels.

Kicking Summer in the Can

Thanks from the bottom of my heart for the comments on my treasure box post. I truly loved them. Upon reading them, however, I learned something. Apparently, favorite friends come to my corner of blogland to either laugh – or cry.


Who knew? And here I thought it was for the recipes.

So which will it be today? You’ll have to be the judge, because today, we’re in the kitchen. Well, kind of...

You see, Gnee at Singing with the Birds is co- hosting a So Long Summer BBQ, and I wanted to join. Unfortunately, guests are expected to bring along a little something for the table. I checked the list, and "Pickles and Olives on a Pre-Divided Platter" was already taken. Oh well...

I decided to bring

Ice Cream in a Can

I saw this recipe years ago, and have always wanted to try it. I think if we had little boys around, I would have done so by now. I considered making some kind of adventurous flavor, but I chose instead to find the simplest vanilla recipe that I could find because, well, you know…

But I named it.

Milli Vanilli Ice Cream in a Can

Here's all you need:

* Wash two coffee cans, one large, and one small.
* Chill the cans in the freezer for at least an hour
* Mix the ingredients in the smaller can.

1 cup half and half

1 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla.

* Seal the lid with duct tape.
 (I forgot the Duct tape, but my coffee can had a really tight seal, so…)

*Place the smaller can inside the larger one and fill the sides with a combination of
ice and rock salt.

* Kick the can for 15 minutes.

As you know, we have a sad shortage of children around this place so we had to do the kicking ourselves. We chose appropriate shoes.

Here’s the sister in her flip flops…

And that’s the nephew-in-law in his cowboy boots…

And his lovely wife, the banker, straight from work
 in her peep toe pumps….

My shoes were sensible because I got the memo.

That’s my toe.

We kicked that can for 15 minutes in the Georgia heat while The Duchess stood in the air conditioning and timed us. Then, we checked the progress.

We found frothy white stuff.

So, next…

* Empty the now liquid slush of ice and salt and replace with fresh salt and ice.
* Kick the can some more. (I hadn’t mentioned this second act during kicker recruitment.)
* And Ta Da! You have ice cream!

Only we didn’t

We just had somewhat frothier white stuff.

Maybe it was the missing duct tape…

We decided to give ours the freeze

while we sat down to dinner,

and then we checked the can again.

Very cold white frothy stuff.

The others laughed and tossed up their hands, but they weren’t the ones going to party empty handed. So back outside I went, a 48 year old curbside curiosity kicking a coffee can up and down the front walk… by herself… for the next 20 minutes. 

And I checked again. 

Seriously?

So I loaded my can into Ebenezer and headed back home on the thirty mile country commute. And then, I started thinking. I’m always thinking…

And I made a little side trip to the grocery store.

And then to the napkin hoarder’s box…

And then to the craft closet…

Time for a little decoupage therapy...

Ta Da!

Milli Vanilli Ice Cream in a Can.

And now, at least those around the age of forty

  know why I named it 

Milli Vanilli

 Ice Cream in Can.

Because it’s nothing but a big fat faker.

And besides

Snickers was already taken.

*******

Hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day picnic.

Please visit Singing with the Birds
or
A Little Bit of Everything
 for more fun at their

I should be ashamed to take this to the party,

but oh no...
off to the party, I go.