I Survived 2020!

 

I'm happy to report that I'm still here!

What a year it was and one that I'm sure no one on the planet will ever forget, as much as they probably wish they could. I'm fortunate in that I made it through 2020 without too much of a struggle, but my heart aches for those who were less fortunate and lost jobs or loved ones because of Covid.

 When I think back on 2020, two things jump out at me. The first one is March 13th, which happened to be a Friday, (go figure). It was the day school closed for the rest of the 2019-2020 school year because of the Covid-19 crisis. Back then, nobody we knew had the the virus and we took such major precautions, but as we now know, it had no effect on the spread and our country is in dire straits today.

Covid cases in Alabama March 2020

Covid case in Alabama as of Dec 30, 2020 

Our daughter came to visit us in early March, which was good because it was before things escalated. I'm so thankful she was able to get here and back safely without contracting anything, but now it's just too dangerous for her to fly, so we will have to wait until we all get vaccinated before she can even think of coming to visit. We miss her terribly, but luckily hubby was able to take a road trip to see her in October. He helped her get a lot of things done in her apartment. 

She is still working from home and the studio has put the word out that all the employees will continue working from home until at least July. We are thankful she is safe and healthy and still able to make a living. 

The second thing I recall vividly was Hurricane Sally. That was an experience I will not soon forget. Losing power for a week and internet for 2 weeks was a trial, but the unbelievable damage it caused to homes and properties in our area is still seen today as cleanups and repairs continue. I will never forget the relentless winds for hours and hours. We were lucky that our home did not get any damage.

I painted these rocks to commemorate the disastrous event.

Our way of coping with all the terrible things that were happening was to keep busy. Hubby and I worked on our house doing home improvements as I suspect a lot of people did who were home due to lockdowns and quarantines. Two of our major projects were installing a patio and a back door.

Our most recent project was installing a vinyl plank floor in hubby's man room. It came out great. He ordered a small futon and the space really came together.

That long wall hanging over the futon is hubby's latest creation made from another louvered door.

Yes, he keeps busy!

I also started painting rocks again during lockdown. I posted them here on the blog as I went along.

I've stopped for a while, but here is one I made recently as a gift to the owner a new and used book store that opened nearby. I stopped in to meet him and surprised him with this big rock book. 

And of course, who can forget my year living with the daredevil and destroyer of all nice things, Manny.

He is very cute, but oh so naughty!

In August, in person school started and I went back to work, masked up.

And that's been pretty much it.

I return to work on Jan 4th. Students will return to school virtually from Jan 5-8 and then return to in person classes on the 11th, that is if all goes well, but who knows? 

Today is New Year's Eve. We don't have anything planned. We will be home, staying safe and tomorrow we will eat some foods for good luck and good fortune for 2021, but mostly I want good health for everyone and for the pandemic to end soon!

Happy New Year! 

 

Another Home Improvement Project!

We just had to. It was time. The carpet that was down in hubby's room when we bought the house was hideous, but it was fairly new so we lived with it all this time. It's been 6 years. The final straw that got us moving to replace it was because our older cat, Mister, started marking in the house again, most likely due to stray cats outside. His new spot seemed was on the carpet in that room near the door leading to the garage. No matter what I tackled the spot with, I could still smell it, so we made the decision to buy some vinyl plank flooring.

We went to HD and found a flooring that met our needs, both in style, color, waterproofness and price. We got enough to do the room and it came to under $400. Great! Hubby had Friday off and started ripping up the carpet. Unfortunately it was glued down. Usually when carpet is glued, it's secured around the perimeter only, but this carpet was glued down completely, all over! Hubby needed a hammer and chisel to pull it up. What a job! He said as he pulled up the carpet, he could see dirt coming out of it. It is a low pile carpet that I vacuum daily and have steam cleaned at least twice a year. Gross! 

So after he removed all that yucky carpet, he scraped as much adhesive off the floor as he could. Then he putdown a barrier, which is basically a sheet of black plastic, and started laying some planks.
He sent me this photo. I could tell something wasn't right.

By the time I got home, I found hubby walking Zoey. He needed to get some air because he was frustrated. The planks were not going together right and they kept popping apart. I was tired and told him we would start together the next morning, which we did. I immediately could see there were issues with the product. Not every piece lined up properly. Even the slightest fraction in the difference of width from one piece to the next will throw off an entire row and leave gaps. I insisted right away that we return it. It was crap, (and made in China). Hubby was relieved that it wasn't something he was doing wrong. Fortunately HD gave us a full refund. We had only opened 3 boxes out of 9 which wasn't too bad.

So, now we needed a new floor. What to do? We went to Lowe's and found another flooring, but it was a dollar more a square foot. It was the same color, but the pieces were longer and wider which was actually better. It's made by Mohawk, (in the USA), and completely solid vinyl, so if it gets wet, it won't do anything weird. This room is how we go in and out of the house, so we couldn't go with anything with a fiberboard base. If that got wet, it would just expand and flake apart. 

                                                     Here is the new stuff going down.

We got 95 percent of it done in one day and left all the final odd pieces for the second day.

Here is what it looked like BEFORE...

..and here is the AFTER...

Those white lines are from sun coming in through the blinds.

Hubby's room now looks like a modern studio. He is loving it. 
It's much lighter than it looks in the photo and really brightens the

room. It's hard to tell with the back lighting from the windows, but it
really looks terrific. I just hope it holds up for at least 5 years or longer. 

We shall see. 

And that's what we did this weekend. 

Another Mesh Wreath.

 

For my birthday, which was back in September, I was given an Amazon gift card by a close friend of mine. I had no idea what to buy myself, so I decided to indulge in craft project and attempt another mesh wreath. I watched more videos on YouTube and one lady made a wreath using the starburst method. I liked it, so I tried it. I was shooting for a coastal vibe, so I got everything blue and silver themed, plus I added some starfish.

The first thing you have to do is cut your mesh "bundles." Each bundle consists of four 10" squares of mesh in different colors, plus two ribbons, cut about 12-14" in length. This goes way faster if you have one of those fabric cutting boards and one of those round pizza cutter looking things. I have neither, so I cut mine with a scissor using various things as weights to keep everything from curling up on me.

I ended up with 34 bundles.

And here is how I cut all the ribbon.

I didn't realize when I ordered the ribbon that most of them were sheer.
I think this caused a lack of contrast in the piece.

Basically, you take each mesh square, pull it by two opposing corners and roll it in the middle. You hold each one tightly as you roll and grab another one, then add your ribbons and tie a chenille stem around the bundle as tight as you can. Each bundle gets secured to a wire frame and tied in the back.

I started tying my bundles onto the frame. I added an ornament to every other one.

This is not conventional which may also have been why my wreath didn't turn out as expected,

but it was experimental on my part. 

As I moved along, I realized this thing was going to be huge!

You can see the starburst happening here.

I hot glued a chenille stem onto the back of some resin starfish and attached 

them separately.

Here is the final product.

It's gigantic and it's hard to tell from the photo, but it bursts forth in the center 

quite strangely. That's probably because I added the ornaments to the bundles instead

of clustering them onto the wreath in groups after the fact. I think that was my error.

And that's what I did yesterday, all while binge watching The Crown on Netflix.

Poor Diana is all I have to say.

Are you crafting at all for the holidays?

Thanksgiving 2020.

 

Apple Pie.

I hope everyone in blogland had a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday. Hubby and I were home alone which was just fine. It was nice and quiet which is what we enjoy at this time in our lives. We did not cook the traditional Thanksgiving meal, not even close. I did made an apple pie and got that done first thing in the morning. It looked perfect but it somehow was a bit dry and the apples were more tart and firmer than I like, but it was still tasty. Hey, it's apple pie! What could be bad? 

For dinner, I decided to make something I have never made before, eggplant rollatini. I watched a few videos on YouTube and found two cooks that I adore. Both are Italian and they make you feel like you are watching your grandparents teach you their cooking secrets in their own kitchen. One is a darling little grandma named Gina. Her channel is Buon-A-Petitti. The other is an 80 year old man named Pasquale and his channel is Orsara Recipes. The latter is where I got the eggplant rollatini recipe, only instead of baking the eggplant pieces on cookie sheets, I grilled them, which I saw on another video. Some recipes call for breading and frying the pieces, but I wanted to make it lower in calorie and not as heavy.

I brushed both sides with olive oil and grilled them on my Pampered Chef grill pan.

Then I put a ricotta mixture, (same as you would use for lasagna or stuffed shells), in each one and rolled it, placing it seam down in a pan with some sauce on the bottom.

I love those grill marks!

The I covered the rolls with more sauce and some shredded parmesan cheese. 

And here it is out of the oven alongside some stuffed mushrooms.

I was going to serve it with salad, but hubby said what I made was plenty.

And that was our meal. We cut the pie about an hour later while "visiting" with our daughter and her roommate on a video chat. They made lasagna and they also made an apple pie. We ate our desserts together. Not your typical Thanksgiving in any way, but what is typical nowadays, right? I say do and eat what makes you happy because we have no clue what is in store for us tomorrow. A friend of mine lost her mom the day before the holiday and it made me really sad. She was one of the sweetest ladies I have ever met and she will be missed. Her name was Kay, but everyone called her Mama Kay. She loved art and photography and had a terrific sense of humor. 

I have the whole week off and it's been nice being home with my fur kids. This is what each day looks like at our home.

Manny has mellowed out, FINALLY! He sleeps more, enjoys affection more and doesn't get in trouble nearly as much as he had been. He is a year and a half now, so I guess that was the breaking point, lol. I'm thankful for that. His favorite toy is a black elastic hair tie. He can play with one for hours.

In other news, work has been busy. We had one worker out on leave for almost a month and subs have been unavailable, so we've been working short which has left us exhausted to say the least. Last week we had to prepare Thanksgiving dinner in between our regular lunch preparation. Monday the turkeys were cooked and the cornbread was baked for the stuffing. I was on veggies, so on Tuesday I washed and baked two cases of sweet potatoes. Wednesday, the dressing, mashed sweet potatoes and green beans were prepared. On Thursday, the day of the big meal, I made mashed taters in the stand mixer, the turkey was sliced and put in serving pans, covered in gravy, and all the other items were heated up in the ovens. It smelled great! Serving the meal was a challenge. We had some volunteers come in to help. It was stressful, hot and tiring, but we got it done and all the food tasted great. Sorry, I didn't get any photos this year. On Friday we learned that the person out on leave is not coming back, so that job was posted. Hopefully we will have a new person hired soon. 

I will leave you with this great photo I took of Manny last week. He sure is a handsome boy.

Today is Black Friday. We don't plan on going anywhere.

I will be making a mesh wreath today in very untraditional colors. Stay tuned!

Catching Up!

 Greetings all! I am back! 

I hope everyone is doing well. 

Here are some painted rocks I did for fall.

The fall leaves and these mini "books" below were added
to a rock garden during our local annual Jubilee Festival for folks to take.

Hoards of people were out during the festival. 

Arts and crafts vendors probably made tons of money that weekend.

 I attended wearing my mask, but many did not. I zipped through pretty quick and visited two artists that I knew I wanted to purchase from. I bought this folk art piece from Alabama's own Scott McQueen. After being friends on Facebook for over a year through a mutual acquaintance, we finally got to meet in person and he and his wife were so nice! I gave them the heart rock in the first photo above.

This is the piece I purchased from him...

I had to get it because it clearly was made for Manny.

Here here is posing with it, obviously not impressed at all, lol.

The other piece I bought for my hubby as an addition to his wooden fish art collection. It's a bonefish, made by a lady that used to be the librarian at the school where I work. She retired a couple of years ago and now she and her hubby make lots of beautiful things out of wood. I gave her the patchwork pumpkin rock (first photo) and she put it on one of her handmade wooden trays in the booth. She texted me later that day to tell me that someone actually asked if they could buy it. 

So that was a fun day. I went by myself because hubby was away. He went on a road trip to Texas to visit our daughter. The last time we saw her in person was in early March, just as the pandemic was starting.  He thought about renting a vehicle to go out there, but decided instead to take his van. He got it all checked out and even got new tires because the last time he drove out, he had a blowout. Well, he almost made it all the way out this time, but about an hour outside Austin, he broke down. Something to do with the thermostat and radiator cap melting from overheating. He had to get towed and our daughter set out to rescue him. The tow and repairs ended up costing what a rental would have cost. Lesson learned. 

He spent about 4 days out there helping get some things done around her apartment and also outside around the patio/backyard little area. They went to Lowe's and got some landscaping stone, some solar lights, a garden hose and a few other things. He helped get her car washed for the first time in a year. There aren't many car washes around where she lives apparently. Austin is on very strict Covid restrictions so all the parks have been closed since March, but they found a place where they could walk on a trail and get some fresh air. It was a good visit and a lot was accomplished, but we are all hoping this pandemic is over soon so that she can fly over to visit us in Alabama. 

When she does come here, I'm planning for us to both go and get our hair cut as neither of us has had ours done since before the pandemic started. I've made friends on Facebook with a hairstylist who is a Progressive and I have yet to meet him, so I think it will be fun for the two of us to meet him together. Something to look forward to.

What are you looking forward to doing when the pandemic is over?