It is Valentine's Day

 

This post card is another from my Granmother Lucy Platt's collection.

It gives a 1912 sent date and a Hudson, Iowa address.

It is signed M & G down in the far left hand corner and there is no message.

It was sent from Englewood Station, Chicigo, Illionis.

It is in lovely condition for a paper item just over 100 years of age.

The flowers and heart are raised and the colors are lovely. 

I sure wish I knew who M & G were.

Lucy was 15 years old when she got this card.

Another Postcard from the Past

This one was post marked Jan 24, 1911.  It is from Ruth B.  Ruth most likely lived in Waterloo from where this card was sent.  Lucy lived in Waterloo on 1129 Randolph Street.  Lucy had sent Ruth a little guest book.  Ruth was thanking her very, very much for the cute little guest book.

About yesterday's post card.  It is sent from San Diego, CA. It is rather hard to read and is from someone that only put their initials on it and I thought they are C.B. Later I found another post card from San Diego from an Archie Beekley.  The name was rather hard to read as the post office stamp is over that spot. At first I thought it was Archie Beekly.  I did some investigation on Ancestry.com. Now I would guess that it is a G.B. and that it is from an Archibald Gordon Beekley born in 1894 in Waterloo, Iowa. He must have been a friend of grandma’s.  He died after a flight training accident at the age of 26.  Archie is listed as born in Waterloo, Iowa so my guess I have located a friend who had moved away. 

 

HAPPY 2013

This is a postcard from my Grandmother Lucy's collection.  It was sent to her in 1911 from San Diego, CA.  It is signed with the initials C.B. - I think.  The writing goes all around the card on the left side.  It tells of visiting different folks so I would guess it was a friend on vacation.  Lucy was born in 1896 so she would have been 14 years of age when she got this card. 

Wishing everyone a happy 2013!!!!

It looks a lot like Christmas

Mom painted the bell ornament.  The blue and pink ones are from my Grandma H's tree.  Each grand kid had one.  Mine was the blue and my sister, Sarah's was the pink.  Or maybe it was the other way around.  Sarah died when she was 4 and after Grandma died I was given both ornaments.      

Slightly different arrangement on the Butler's tray table this year.  Most of my pictures were taken last year but I really have not changed things much.

 

New candy this year but same dish. 

 

I cover the coffee table arrangement so it does not get dusty and have reused it for the third time.

Warren gave me the snowman and snowlady a few years ago.  

Santas - all hand painted by Vaillancourt. 

My two Swedish items.  They were given to me by the relatives when they visited years ago.  I will never burn the candles as they are so close to the wood.  I break the candles from time to time so the box they also gave to me slowly empties.

How it looks today.  I still have a couple of gifts to wrap.  I wrap most of the gifts sitting on the floor while watching TV.  I am hoping the last two orders will be delivered today as the family get together is tomorrow. 

Last a view out of one of the eating area windows.  They are still mostly covered with snow.  I will knock the snow off when I go out to feed the birds.     

Busy or Lazy

It has been ages since I have written anything. No real reason but...............

I have accomplished a few tasks on the "to do list".  Every year or so the front door needs a repainting.  This year both the front and back doors are sporting a different color.  The paint went from a dark red to a orangeish brick color.  I like it even if it was not the exact color I was wanting.  We took out the overgrown evergreen bush by the front door and replaced it with a burning bush.  I love the color in the fall look.  As almost all our bushes seem to grow well we went with a smaller planting. 

We did something we should have done a long time ago and planted an apple tree.

We are looking forward to someday having some Honey Crisp apples to harvest.

 

One of our trees out front got sun scald and fell over this spring.  It was replaced with this lovely red Autumn Blaze Maple.  We planted a tree for each of our grand kids.  Kelsey's and Sage's trees have done well but this is the second we planted for Sam.  Hannah's tree has been replaced 6 times.  Her tree is now doing well.  This last time we planted a slender oak.  It is three years old so we are hopeful it grows and thrives for many years. 

 

I enjoyed watching Hannah run cross country this season.  She usually placed third on her team.  Running to keep in shape is her main goal.  Soccer is the sport she loves the most.

 

One weekend when Kelsey was home from college she harvested the honey from the hive.  This year it looks like she will have around 100 pounds.  Last year was about half that so we think the bee hive is a success.  She did get rid of her chickens before she went off to school.  No one wanted the responsibility and the egg production had dropped off to the point of needing new hens.  I miss the fresh eggs but not cleaning them. 

Mediterranean Chicken

http://www.marthastewart.com/355368/mediterranean-chicken

I tried this recipe tonight.  We have lots of small tomatoes in our garden so when I saw this on the blog classic casual home I figured it was worth a try.  We both liked it.  It is a bit different recipe for us and it will be one to add to our keeper list.

Saturday night we had friends over, and if I do say so myself, our meal turned out well.  My friend brought a wonderful dessert made with a blackberry wine.  Warren smoked a pork loin and I  made the rest of the meal except Matt had made some of his great focaccia bread that afternoon that he kindly shared with us. We dipped the bread in reconstituted sweet tomatoes and spices my sister and her hubby had brought back from Italy.

The potatoes I made are some we like but had not done in a while.  The grocery store had new red potatoes.

3/4 cup of fresh bread crumbs - some of my bread was the crust on Panera's three cheese bread
1/4 cup or one on finely grated Romano cheese - I used Parmesan
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano - I had some that was picked from my garden about a week ago
1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1 garlic clove minced
1 Tablespoon olive oil
24 small red potatoes - 3 pounds - washed and cut into chunks

Combine the first 8 ingredients in bowl and set aside.  Combine the oil and potatoes in a zip lock bag, seal, and shake.  Toss the bread crumbs mixture in the bag and mix some more.  Place on a sprayed jelly roll pan and bake at 400 degrees for 50 minutes.  The left overs warm up well.

A Bit of Summer

We had Samantha and Sage here for a couple of fun days.

Samantha and her Aunt Malissa made some decadent cupcakes. 

They rivaled any you can buy at a fancy cupcake shoppe.

There was a lot of cousin time and when we were outside

the dogs often got in on the activity.

When we returned the kids on Saturday evening I made

them pose by their front door.

One thing we do not have enough of is pictures of all four of us when

our kids were growing up.  I thought it was time to take another one of our son and

his lovely family.  Their new puppy, Pretzel, made it into the photo too.