Friday, May 15, 2009

7 Quick Takes Friday

I've been reading Jennifer over at Conversion Diary for almost a year now, and find her conversion from atheist to devout Catholic fascinating--and I'm a Baptist! She almost convinces me to change that, though.

Anyway, she hosts "7 Quick Takes Friday", little blurbs in your life that come and go through the week, and after over 6 months, I have decided to join in.

So here goes:

1. We have a wonderful neighbor, Ron, who cuts the grass with his riding mower and used to do some edging for us, too, but, as he had polio many years ago, his legs have been particularly unsteady this year, so all he's done is mow. The last two days I've managed to lop off some of the bottom branches of our Bradford pear trees, collect and dump them all, cut down some underbrush on our side of the vacant lot next door, and edge about half the yard. We have a corner lot, so there is lots more to go, but that'll have to wait for another offday. I must say, I'm appreciating Ron even more right now.

2. Got the physician's bill for the stress echo this week:GULP. My part of the actual test (our insurance is a joke), was a little over $400.00. However, the physician, who was in the room for all of maybe 10 minutes, charges $1700+ for his part. And my share, after the discount, is over $1500.00. Sheesh. There goes what was left of my tax refund after paying The People. I'm really glad nothing was wrong with my heart, but dang!

3. Last Saturday after getting off work, a co-worker and I headed over to an annual church yard sale. It was HUGE! And everything was priced really cheaply. But for all that, I only came home with a handful of books, some plant hangers that hang on the deck, and this little 8ft stretch of wire edging. (Sorry it's so hard to see).

As Tandi doesn't see why she can't just mosey through the flowerbed, I'm hoping this will discourage that behavior. I'm going to keep my eyes open for some more, or maybe I'll just stop at the dollar store to see if there's another 8ft length for the remainder of the sidewalk there.

4. The weekend before, however, I hit several smaller yard sales and came home with a bookoodle of things:

This heavy pitcher and 5 glasses with fruits on them,


Some Halloween items,


A bedside lamp (I'm going to change the shade) to replace the top-heavy one in the guest room and a cute oil lamp,


4 yards of fabric I'm going to combine with some denim to make grocery totes,


And a table and two chairs for my kitchen. I had an unsteady little round table I picked up for $15.00 at a motel sale about 5 years ago, but I like this one better, as the sides both fold down. The chairs are so obviously 70s, but they are comfortable, so who cares? We never eat at that table; it's there to put the computer on for recipes or for someone to sit and talk while I'm cooking.
The other table is out on the back porch right now, between 2 rocking chairs, so there is a place to lay a book or a glass when someone needs to rock their troubles away.

Now if I could just find a composter!

5. I'm having trouble uploading photos from my camera to the computer. The Windows program tells me there are 509 new photos, even though they are already in my folders, and attempts to upload them all each time I plug in the camera. The HP program has to upload every single postage-stamp photo on the memory card for me to select the newest ones to post, since the others were uploaded using the Windows program. I think I'm just going to break down and buy another memory card and start over.

6. I have ten 9-patches done in Amandajean's challenge, and though I'm a little behind, I'm grateful that it has made me go into the sewing room, even for only 15 minutes a day, and sew. Before, I would put off sewing anything unless I had a huge block of time, which is self-defeating, because who has huge blocks of time to sew? Not me. Now I can whip up one of these in just a few minutes and know that in a couple more months, I'll have enough for a quilt top.

7. I don't remember how I found this site, but this strawberry sauce is something I'm going to try this week. It's strawberry season here, and though I have lots sliced and in the freezer from last year, I think I'm going to buy some more, just so I can make this easy sauce, and leave the other for cakes, etc.

Okay, that's my Quick Takes entry for this week. To read others, head on over to Jennifer's place.

3 comments:

MightyMom said...

hey cutie, where you been??

thinking about converting huh??? need a nudge? hahaha.

take ron some of that sauce!


ICK!! but don't you know that universal health care will solve all our problems! (sarcasm)

that little wire fence reminds me of houses from my childhood--giggle.

can't pass up ANYTHING Halloween can ya? and I like the lampshade as is!

that little table is adorable! can I come and rock my troubles away??

I take all my pics off the memory card and save them to disks. without using any software. Just format the disk to "save files to disk" don't tell it it's pics or anything...then plug the card in...close all programs that come up, then go to my computer and click on the drive that is your memory card. once that opens "select" the pics and then copy them....paste into the drive that is the CD. If you need to know which ones to copy then at the top of the window there should be an icon for "views" pull that down and you'll see "tiles" this will pull up thumbnails of each pic so you can see what you're working with. :-) let me know how it goes or if you hit a snag.

baby steps get you there every time! keep going girl!

Lori in South Dakota said...

LOL--don't listen to MightMom, she's one of THOSE you know! Glad to hear you've gotten lots of things at yard sales, and that your heart is fine! The 9 patch sew a long is great fun, and you're right, those little blocks just encourage you to sew as they don't take a lot of time or hard thinking! Thought you have fallen off the edge of the earth you had been gone so long!

Arlette said...

Fun post and I learned a new word, bookoodle! You really did come away with a bookoodle of fabulous yard sale finds.
I'm happy to hear that your tests turned out normal. But wowza! What a doozie of a bill! I guess we can look at it this way...if it weren't for tax refunds where would most of us be. Something always comes along each year to snatch that bit of extra money away from us. Like clockwork.
Aloha!