Iron Man Stopped By With a Message

Happy Halloween!

Adorning Door Darn Adorable

If you don't trick or treat, toilet paper yards, or throw eggs and water balloons, I encourage you to take a hay ride or rent a good family Halloween movie and enjoy the holiday.
( remember Hocus Pocus or Pooh's Heffalump Halloween and of course any Scooby Doo movie is great)Have your own private family Halloween party with orange punch and float a few plastic spiders in it! Oh and don't forget popcorn balls, it isn't Halloween unless you have popcorn balls! Wishing you a great family time this Halloween. It doesn't have to be full of mischief it can be full of fun! Until next time...Kristi.

I've been participating in October Homey Goodness hosted over at Clean Mama Blog.
Thought I'd repost her list here before the month is up and you can jump in too. There's still time to pick a few and make your house feel real homey as this season charges full steam ahead into winter.

• Make something with apples ( I made an applesauce cobbler)
  
• Find a better way to do laundry ( I perfected this years ago and can't make any other way work for me)
  
• Start a cleaning schedule ( again I figured out mine years ago and it works for me, I have tried others and always go back to mine)
  
• Do something creative, such as a craft or sewing project ( I made a Halloween banner for our front door)
  
• Make a soup or stew ( We aren't really soup people but we love homemade chili, so I made a big pot of it)
  
• Wash floors ( do this weekly but really deep cleaned them this time!)
  
• Paint something ( I did this one over and over as you'll soon see in upcoming post. So far the count is one bedroom and three exterior doors, with possibly a fourth door and trim on the shop and interior of cabinets)
  
• Decorate for the season ( posted pics of this earlier, but I don't think mother nature can be out done)
  
• Make a simmering air freshener ( I have done these in the past with cinnamon and cloves and orange peels but you have to make sure your pot doesn't boil dry on the stove or if you have a simmering pot you have to wash it later. and that's just too much work for me. I have candle warmers in my house, so I purchased two mulled cider candles for a dollar each and have them warming at both ends of my house. The house smells like autumn so I'd say the task was accomplished.
  
• Make a pumpkin bread or muffin ( I made pumpkin pie, a fluffy pumpkin cheesecake and then pumpkin bread with leftover pumpkin. We like pumpkin. Can you tell?)
  
• Deep clean something ( floors)
  
• Turn on lamps instead of overhead ( I do this anyway. Love lamp light and in the dead of winter love to bring out the oil lamps and feel their warmth and watch the flicker of the light during supper)
  
  That's the list. Again I did not create this list.
  All rights belong to Clean Mama. I just participated. Had lots of fun and will post pics of projects soon. Until next time.... Kristi.

Picture Thought

Everyone is busy decorating their homes for fall with pumpkins, mums, hay bales, and cornstalks. Gazing out the window at the leaves adorning the back yard, I see that mother nature is decorating her place too. I have to say I like her version best. Until next time....Kristi.

100!!!

I made it! This is my 100th post! I would be lying if I said I didn't feel some satisfaction in that fact. It hasn't always been easy to come up with something to write. Then other times it was simply being up on my soapbox and the hard part was getting off of it. I hope to continue to blog until I run out of things to say, so with that being the case, looks like me and the blog will be around for awhile yet! Thanks for your support and your suggestions and most of all your patience. Until next time....Kristi.

Part 6

No matter how comforting the smells of the kitchen were, we always ended up outside under the big tree regardless the time of year. Almost as if it drew us. This massive creation of mothernature is the largest tree I believe I have ever seen even to this day. It always seemed to be a place to play for the kids and a meeting place for the grownups. Underneath it on the back side was a rough makedo table that was used for skinning any meat that was caught or a good spot to clean fish.
The table was also in demand during hog killings. It held utensils and bowls of meat. I was always a tenderheart child and hated to see the hog hanging from that tree but as soon as I'd go inside and smell meat on the stove cooking or the spices from making sausage, hunger would win out and I'd forget my sadness.
There was one other thing under the big tree, and that was a wrought iron swing. No matter how hot the day was, it was always cooler sitting in that swing. Facing the swing, Granny sat on the left side with a flyswatter in her hand and granddaddy sat on the right with his pocket knife and a stick, shavings littered the ground at his feet as he whittled away.

Amazing that sometimes I can't remember how I felt at great moments in my life but I can still remember the smells surrounding me while sitting around that tree. Smells of the pecan trees and persimmon trees and the wood pile nearby and the smell of grandaddy's tobacco. Those are all part of my childhood. Smells of food, dirt, trees, of wood burning or waiting to be burned. The smell in the sheds where hams were curing, the flowers in the beds outside the kitchen or even the smell of a chicken coop. Those are just odors to some but to me they are talismen that trigger memories of my childhood. Carefree happy days ,that at the time, I was living in them I had no idea the impact they were making on me. Writing this makes me miss those days and the people, but as long as I can hold on to the memories and the ability to conjure them, through one of my five senses, I know that they are close by and will live on.

Granny and Zach in May of 2001

"Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise, We love the play-place of our early days; The scene is touching, and the heart is stone, That feels not at that sight, and feels at none."
Author: William Cowper

Part 5

In the kitchen on the same wall as the stove was an old white with red trim baking cabinet. it had cabinets overhead and underneath. this is where she kept her flour and rolled out her dough on the metal table top. beyond that was one of two refrigerators, the other refrigerator was directly across the room beside the back door that led to the porch. also by this door was an old rotary dial wall phone and a pencil tied on a piece of string dangling by the phone to jot down numbers on a notepad.
By the sink was the door that led to the enclosed back porch. just as you walked through the door there was a table on the left that held the ever famous scrap bucket, which was simply an ice cream bucket with a lid that all the dinner scraps went into. just past the table directly in front of you was another door leading outside. Just outside of it was the cool storage building that held the worms that Granny and Grandaddy would dig up and place in containers to sell to fishermen. the long worm beds were on the ground, beyond the chicken coop, behind the house under a covered structure. Anywhere you turned the dirt over, there would be what seemed like hundreds of bright red worms wiggling struggling to get back to their cool place of rest.
Behind the chicken coop was the garden spot. This always seemed like such a large space when first tilled before the plants thrived and crowded the area. then came the harvest and Granny's kitchen stayed humming most of the time until it was all laid by to be used during the winter months ahead.
Granddaddy's large wood pile was stacked up near the backdoor off the kitchen on the left side of the chicken coop. Just as Granny prepared for the winter by storing up food, Grandaddy prepared the wood to heat the house to keep them warm even through the coldest of winters.

Granny Alexander in October 2000

Part 4

Granny's sink was a one bowl cast iron sink. To wash dishes you pulled out the old wash tub, filled it with water and set it up on the counter. There you washed the dishes and rinsed them in the sink. This had to be done everytime. Three times a day she did this. She kept a dish drainer on the left side of the sink but dishes only took a short break there for she dried each dish and put it away immediatley. This meant a trek across the kitchen with each dish to the free standing cabinet in the corner that housed the plates and glasses.
Over the sink in a very distinct place, between the two windows, was the water dipper. An aluminum long handled water dipper. when Granddaddy came in hot and thirsty from working outside he went to the sink and used that dipper to get a drink of tap water from the sink, then hung it back up on its nail. It was such a guilty pleasure when we children would come in and all get a drink from that dipper, there was a pitcher of cold water in the refrigerator, but nothing could compare to being allowed to drink after or before someone else and not have to wash the object when we were through. The only rule was to make sure and hang it back up right after use. How I miss seeing that dipper. I often wonder what happened to it and hope it has a safe home and place of honor as it once did long ago.