Linda's Sunflower

Our goal this weekend was to find some furniture for the basement. We let the kids have our couch, loveseat, coffee table and one end table when they left for Manhattan. Yesterday was city-wide garage sales, so we headed out about 8am on our search. I still laugh when I see what some people call a "sale". One or two small tables in your driveway with $10 worth of stuff on it does not constitute a sale. We drove past about 20 "sales" before finally seeing one with some furniture. We found a nice couch and love seat for a reasonable price. It's got a few spots on the cushions, but is very comfortable and much cheaper than buying new furniture. Of course, since Kaitlin and her truck are at college, we had to figure out how to get it home. Our friend and neighbor Paul has a truck, and he's such a good guy, we were sure he would help us. It took several phone calls and coordinating our schedules, but we finally were able to pick it up around 3:30pm. And Paul got ...

Abby is our adventurous cat...check out these photos of her playing in our reusable grocery shopping bags.     And yes, she got in the bags hanging on the chair all by herself!

We had a good week. Wednesday we went to Granite City for dinner. We'd only been there a couple of times. Had a coupon for buy one entree, get one free, so our total bill including tip was about $16.00 - about the same as we would have paid for a fast food restaurant nowadays! We enjoyed our meal and were given another BOGO (buy one get one free) coupon. I passed this on to a co-worker on Thursday because it had to be used within 2 weeks and we won't be going back that soon. In our visit to mom's yesterday, we hung a picture that we missed hanging last week. It was a picture my Uncle Louie had painted just for mom, so it has very special meaning to her. The maintenance staff hadn't put it with the rest of her pictures - that's how we missed it. We did find it in her closet, and hung it in a place of prominence. We also got our Dillon's and Leeker's grocery shopping done, picking up the bargains at each store. Had intended to go see "The Hangover"...

I copied this from my niece Lenore's blog...she is an awesome YA book reviewer. You can see her blog here   Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack? I must admit that I sometimes eat sunflower seeds while reading. It's a very old habit...and one I should probably break. Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? I never write in my books. Ever. How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open? Never dog ear, always bookmark. And it can be anything. An actual bookmark, a piece of paper, a receipt, etc. Fiction, Non-fiction, or both? Mostly fiction, but I do enjoy reading an occasional biography or crime book. Hard copy or audio books? Always hard copy. I tried an audio book once and couldn't concentrate enough to keep up with it. I want that cold, hard book in my hands, another reason I'm not interested in purchasing a Kindle. Are you a perso...

These are figures that the kids made us over the years... This is a baby picture of my dad An antique clown cookie jar that was moms... I enjoy my Sunday mornings - reading the paper, checking out the sales flyers, clipping coupons and working the crossword puzzle... For some reason, I cannot move the pictures after uploading them, so they are all at the top in this post...sorry... We had a good week. I enjoyed a couple days of vacation. We ate dinner at Logan's Steakhouse on Wednesday night. Yes, I had a coupon. We saved $5 off our meals. There was no wait, the service was good, and the food was good! It was back to work for me on Thursday. I had a really busy Friday because my assistant was sick. It's always really busy when you have to lay out three papers as well as paginate three classified sections by yourself. We finished the week off by having my best friend Melody over Friday evening. We spent quite a while catching up on our visiting, while drinking some margaritas an...

Not much else to say except - we love our cats none of these photos were staged. This is where I found them at various times over the last two days. We had TONS of rain today - 5-8 inches in the Wichita area. Not sure how much we had here in Park City, but our backyard flooded as usual. Our sump pump has been working furiously to keep up with the water! I enjoyed a nice, quiet vacation day. The dog was inside from just after midnight until just after the rain stopped around 3pm. I could not get her to go outside. All I can say is she must have a huge bladder!

We enjoyed our 24+ hours w/Kaleb. Had a good visit yesterday. Corby fixed ham & beans for dinner and then Kaleb went out with some friends later in the evening. I fixed Cinnamon Bits for breakfast (see below for recipe). We went to Sam's to pick up cat & dog food, and pick up a few things for Kaleb to take back. He got some homework done this afternoon, and then we watched "Thunderbolt & Lightfoot" with Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges. It's an old movie (from 1974) but Kaleb is on a Clint Eastwood kick ever since seeing Gran Torino. We enjoyed it. After eating some leftovers for dinner, Kaleb headed home. Again, I think it's harder to say goodbye from home. He made it home safely and that's the most important things... a few pics before he left... gonna miss you son...come back soon! CINNAMON BITS (serves 6) Take 3 cans regular sized biscuits (not grands) and cut each biscuit into four pieces. Melt 1 to 1 1/2 sticks butter in the microwave and pour...

I read 7 books in August - well, really 9, since 2 of them were "double" books: 1 & 2) The MacKade Brothers: Rafe and Jared - Nora Roberts 3 & 4) The MacKade Brothers: Devin and Shane - Nora Roberts (by the way, I love all those men's names! and they were good books! 5) Dear John - Nicholas Sparks - a fairly "new" author for me. I've enjoyed his books! 6) Undone - Karin Slaughter - a great "suspense" author - truly one of my faves! 7) Malice - Lisa Jackson - again - a great "suspense" author, one of my favorites 8) N is for Noose - Sue Grafton. I've read a couple of Sue's "Alphabet" mysteries, and they're okay. I really only read this one because I was at work one day with nothing to read at lunch, so I grabbed this from the work "library" 9) 92 Pacific Boulevard - Debbie Macomber. I love Debbie Macomber books. She has several different "series" and this is her Cedar Cove series. Loved it!...

Tuesday night we met my best friend Melody at TGI Friday's for dinner. I had a coupon for buy one entree, get one free; and we enjoyed our conversation and food. I had my camera with me, but forgot to take any pictures...my bad! Wednesday night we met up with my family at DeFazio's (still not a favorite of mine) to celebrate my nephew Nick's 33rd birthday (right Nick?) and my sister Marilyn's --th birthday. I'll be nice to her and not tell her age, though she is getting pretty darn old. Yes, she's younger than me, so that makes me pretty DAMN old! I was glad my older sister Rhonda was able to come. She's been bothered by a bad knee for several months now, so hasn't ventured out much. My niece, Lenore, has been visiting from Germany, so it was great to see her too! There were 13 of us altogether, and we had a great time. It's always fun to catch up with each other's lives! Corby had to work this morning, so after visiting mom, I met Lenore and Nic...

As you may have noticed, I have a new header for my blog. My niece's husband, Daniel, graciously offered to create it for me. Daniel is in the process of doing the drawings for two children's books, the first should be out sometime next year. Daniel also designed Lenore's blog header. You can see it by clicking here I am very honored that Daniel took time out of his busy schedule to do this for me. THANKS DANIEL!