Weekend Wrap-Up ~ January 22, 2024

 

Good morning!  I am happy to report it is suppose be above freezing today and by tomorrow night, the lows will be above freezing.  However, schools are still closed in the area due to the side streets still being so slick.  I hope to be back at work this morning, but I did have a low grade fever last night. I am guessing it will probably be a busy week, but I need some busyness though after being home all last week due to the beautiful snow.  These are views from Sunday:

The cove ice is beginning to melt, but our driveway still has lots of slippery places.  It is crazy it is a week later and this snow is still sticking around.  Look at this ice on our house!

My weekend was pretty non-eventful.  I worked Friday morning from home, stayed home Saturday again but was able to get out Sunday finally and went to church.  It was so good to see people.  I also put away the Chrsitmas decorations!!  

Before....and after.  I pulled out a few Valentine decorations on the bed, but will leave them there for another week.

Sunday afternoon, I alternated between snacking on Caramel M&M's (so good!), working a puzzle and reading a book, all while having a small space heater right by me.

Since not much else happened, I am giving a re-cap of the prior weekend.  

We went over to Bentonville, Arkansas to have a January get-away.  January is usually a blah month, so I like to have a weekend trip every year in January.  We left Friday midday and started the trip with lunch at Cracker Barrell. We had these hasbrown tater tots, a new menu item they have.

Friday night, we went to a Mexican restaurant that has great reviews and I actually went to this same place last fall.  Saturday morning, we went to the Marrs Mercantile.  Have you guys seen the HGTV show Fixer to Fabulous?  This is the Mercantile of Dave and Jenny Marrs, the hosts of the show & they remodel houses in Bentonville.  It was a cute little store and we rode around to look at some of their house show remodels.

We got some pizza and calzones for lunch then found a place to go outdoor ice skating.  I went last year in New York City, but it took me a while to get going again this time.  Ice skating is hard! However, it is fun at the same time.  I am just thankful I didn't fall and hurt myself!

I had packed food and we ate dinner in our hotel room. We stayed at a Candlewood Suites, so it had a full kitchen.  I also brought food for breakfast that we ate in the room both mornings.  We drove by the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville on our drive home Sunday.  It started snowing around Little Rock, but thankfully, we were able to make it home before the roads really got too bad.  

The skyline of Memphis as we were driving from Arkansas crossing into Tennessee

I am so glad we did this, especially not knowing I would be snowed in for the next week!

Enjoy your Monday friends!

Friday Favorites/Snow Week ~ January 19, 2024

Well, happy Friday folks!  I hope you have had a good week.  What have I learned this week?  I have learned that it takes approximately 4 days to be snowed in before I am motivated to do much at all.  Apparently, more time at home is not the answer to me getting things done.  Have I put away my Christmas stuff yet? No I have not.  That is where my January 2024 is. I took it all down weeks ago, but it is all sitting on the floor/bed of the guest room.  My goal tomorrow is to put it all away!  

So the snow here started Sunday afternoon.  As of this morning, I have left the neighborhood once this week.  Wednesday afternoon, my husband drove me to Kroger to get some groceries.  The roads got bad again yesterday after the snow is freezing each night.  On Sunday, it is finally suppose to be above freezing!  Here are pictures from the week........

Sunday evening at the beginning of the snow.   

At this point Monday morning, we had 4 1/2 inches.  It got up to 6 inches at our house.

I do love to watch the snow fall!

 

I took a seat at the dining room table and started a puzzle.  I haven't made a lot of progress on this puzzle because there are just 3 colors total in this puzzle. This was a gift and I jokingly wondered if they were mad at me when they picked out such a hard puzzle, ha!

Monday afternoon, we took a walk to the sledding hill by the lake in our neighborhood.  This sure made me miss having the girls home for this.

The snow by the lake is so pretty.

The customary house in the snow picture!

Tuesday, we took a walk through the wooded area of the neighborhood.

There is a pond in the neighborhood as well.  On the walk, our dog walked along the edge of it and quickly realized it was ice and he fell through.  He probably stayed in the same position just trying to move for about 60 seconds.  We were coaching him back to the edge, found a stick to throw to him, and he finally made it out of the water.

My husband had taken a backpack with him and quickly put his outdoor skills to work by building a fire.  Stache, our dog, tried to warm up quickly.

I did too!  It was cold.

Thankfully, the sun was shining. It is so pretty through the bare trees.

I sat in the hammock and enjoyed the views of the snow and fire.

This beautiful view is on our walk back.  I love the canopy of trees here.

On the way home, I fell on my back and hit my tailbone and head.  Thankfully, I basically just walked away with a bad headache.  I rested that night and took some medicine.

I have worked from home some this week, but it has certainly not been as much as a typical week.  I haven't put away Christmas stuff, but I have cooked!

I made 2 loaves of sourdough bread, brownies, soup, grilled cheese sandwiches and snacks.

This was lunch yesterday...pimento cheese, apples, crackers, turkey breast slices, and candied pecans.

Then later, I had popcorn mixed with caramel M&M's. This is so good.  I also ordered this book and it came in the mail this week.  I hope to start reading it this weekend. Have any of you read it yet?

We also had a frozen drain pipe in our washing machine, which has happened the last 2 years as well when we have a freeze.  Thankfully, we were able to de-thaw it and clean up the water with no damage to anything.

As much as I love the snowy views, I think we will all be ready to leave the house come next week.  It could be a crazy week with everyone getting out and about again, so I'm trying to soak in a few more days of low keyness.

I hope you all have a safe, warm weekend.  

Now I need to go put away Christmas decorations!!!

Friday Favorites ~ January 7, 2022

 Happy Friday! Today I am sharing a few favorites from the week.  Monday was back to a normal day.  The rest of the week was a little different, but all is well.

First, my great nephew was born, spent his first week of life in the NICU, but came home yesterday!

It was a cold week here.  My dear friend from NC came in town this week to see her daughter.  She spent a night with us.  We took her to one of our favorite local restaurants then had a fire at home that evening. It was so cozy.

Throwing it back to New Years Eve, we worked this puzzle of National Parks that my sister got for us at Christmas.  It was fun to do!

We have had two days with dustings of snow.  On our "snow day" yesterday, I pulled out this puzzle to work.  It is much harder and may take a while!  It was fun that my daughter had her first snow day her senior year of high school, even though there wasn't much snow :).

On our snow day, it seemed fitting, we went to Waffle House for breakfast.  I haven't been there in years!  It was pretty good and got me out of the house.

Have a great weekend!

Week/Weekend Wrap Up ~ Snow Edition/February 22, 2021

 Back to blogging this week after a snowy, cold week for our country. Like so many, we had record temperatures and snowfall.  It was a long, hard week at times.  But I'm going to tell you, I took 10,000 pictures because the snow was beautiful.  As of this morning, we have had temperatures above freezing for 24 hours now so the snow is beginning to melt.  I may be blogging snow pictures for the next week, just to have a record of this. I left the house yesterday for the first time in a week, other than walking in our neighborhood.

This was just the beginning a week ago Sunday morning on our way to church.

Seeing our front porch get snow was so exciting! Little did we know what else was to come.

Monday, our washing machine pump busted and water covered our laundry room floor.

The cedar mop bucket came in handy!  Update....I am washing clothes at a friend's house this week and a new machine will come the end of this week.

We had 4 inches by Monday afternoon.

We went to go sledding at our neighborhood hill.  After one time down and walking back up, I began to feel very faint.  I have a history of fainting and a blood clot disorder, so I think the combination of that and the extreme cold temperature in the teens contributed to this.  A neighbor had to carry me while my husband had gone ahead to try to get his truck. It was eventful and needless to say, I stayed inside the next 2 days.

While inside, I worked a puzzle.

Was amazed at the icicles...

And we saw deer tracks on our walkway!

Wednesday, it snowed for 6 hours straight and I just sat at the window watching.  I couldn't stop.  My daughter and I did a photo shoot in the snow, which I will share later.

It was amazing to see the difference of our walkway from Tuesday to Thursday.

We had at least 8 inches in our yard.

My husband and I

We went back to our sledding hill for another try since temperatures were in the 20's, which felt so much warmer than Monday! I sure missed my older daughter through all of this!

We took a walk and this is looking from the woods back up to the hill where everyone sleds in our neighborhood.  One guy was even on skies!

Here is a picture from the front side of the hill of Brook bringing our sled after a ride down.

We took a walk through the woods and the views were stunning!  I loved seeing the snow piled on the trees!

I stopped to make a snow angel.

It was a good day.

Friday, we built a snowman, which was so fun.  We listened to "Do you want to build a snowman" and Gwen Stefani's Christmas music :).  The snow was perfect for a snowman and we built him around a tree! 

My daughter only had Monday out of school for the holiday, so all of our other time outside was done after school.  Some days, I honestly felt like I had lived 3 days in one.  It was a long week.  We are boiling water here and hopefully soon, shelves will be replenished at the grocery stores.  We went to church yesterday, which was my first time in a week to ride somewhere.  It was so exciting!  Parts of this week felt like some time last March when the shut downs happened.  After a week of cooking at home, I will be glad to go out to eat and get a little bit of a normal routine this week.  It seems there have been very few weeks of 2021 that have been normal routine.  This year is keeping us on our toes again!  Even though we've had some hardships with my health, water and no washing machine, we are very thankful and have been so concerned for our friends in Texas.  So thankful the warmer weather is back for all of us.  Thanks for bearing through some snow pictures if you made it this far!

Linking up with Tanya today.