10 things

HAPPY

I am always looking for things to blog about and I came across this list and thought it might make for some good material to write about.

• 10 things that make me happy are...
• 10 things that I value about life are...
• 10 things that I would love to have for my birthday are...
• 10 things that I believe in are...
• 10 lessons that I have learned so far in my life are...
• 10 things that make me laugh...
• 10 things that make me cry are...
• 10 ways that I can help someone else are...
• 10 accomplishments that I have done are...
• 10 places that I would like to visit are...
• 10 memories from the past 12 months are...
• 10 people that I would love to meet are...
• 10 things that I would like to carry with me at all times are...
• 10 expectations that I have of myself are...
• 10 things that I do well are...
• 10 things that I can improve on are...
• 10 things that I love about my family are...
• 10 beautiful things outside are...
• 10 things that I hope happen within the next year are...
• 10 good books that I have read are...
• 10 popular movie stars are...
• 10 popular music groups/artists are...
• 10 fun things to do are...
• 10 great daydreams are...
• 10 special people in my life are...
• 10 responsibilities that I have are...
• 10 things that I would like to do this summer are...
• 10 great movies are...
• 10 skills that I have are...

I am going to start out with number 1, because isn't being happy our ultimate goal in life? Upon reflection I guess that not everyone strives to be happy. Some people strive for money, status, fame, objects and other material things. I guess maybe I think happiness is about little things and I also think that if you seek happiness first, you can attain the other things in your life that you want easier and with much less stress.

10 things that make me happy:
1.) smiles from my grandchildren
2.) a walk in the snow in the evening
3.) my family
4.) sunshine on a spring day
5.) creating things, crafts, sewing
6.) reading
7.) chocolate
8.) trees - I love trees
9.) shopping
10.) a day off work

So my challenge to anyone who reads this is to consider what makes you happy, and then pick out one of the other choices and try it for yourself. I think I will try '10 things that make me laugh' next.

A fulfilling day

I had a very fulfilling and interesting experience this past Saturday. Leon and I have, through our church, volunteered to help staff the food pantry in our area. Leon has already been there a couple of Saturdays ago, but alas, I was too busy with shower business and working a ton.

But I had my first shift this past Saturday and enjoyed it very much. For obvious reasons, I don't have any pictures. I don't want to show any disrespect to anyone, whether they need the help of a food pantry or not. Leon had told me about the procedure and what to do, so I pretty much knew what to do when I arrived. It was a slow day, so I only had the opportunity to work with three clients. My job was to help them through the "store" and help them to select the amount of food for which they were qualified.

I would like to anonymously describe the clients. My first client was a single lady. For some reason, I did not expect singles. I truly thought that it would be all families. I guess that lesson learned is that hunger and tough times does not discriminate. Everyone is vulnerable.

My next client was a single mom. She had a 5 year old daughter, but the daughter was not with her. As we shopped our aisles, I noticed that she was bending very tentatively as though she was hurting. She was a young gal, surely not over the age of 30. As I helped her out to her car with her groceries, I mentioned that she looked as though she was hurting and she said that she had hurt her tailbone. I didn't question her anymore, but wonder if that is why she is struggling. As we approached her car (it was actually an SUV or van), she said that I could just put the groceries in the front seat. Her car looked very "lived in" and I couldn't help but wonder if the cliche was true. I was unable to see behind the front seat, but I actually had the impression that she didn't want me to. Oh an interesting little side note about this sweet girl, she actually brought back the grocery bag that was given to her the time before.

My last client was a Hispanic family of 4. Again the parents came without the children. I honestly don't know that they spoke English, because they communicated only with each other or with very simple nods or yes/no answers with me. Now that I think of it however, when I offered them another loaf of bread, she smiled, chose the cinnamon swirl bread and said "They like it". So I now smile when I think of two little boys eating cinnamon swirl bread.

I enjoyed my experience and yet I feel badly for those folks that just don't have the means to feed their families like they want to. All of these people were very grateful for what they received and I was happy to help them out. If you have the opportunity to support a food pantry, I hope that you will take advantage of the opportunity.

Our Littlest Guests

Well, this is the last post on the shower, but it has the cutest guests of all. We had our little great nephew from Florida and our two granddaughters from Indianapolis that helped us celebrate. It comes to light that Miss Abby wasn't sure that she wanted to attend the shower. She declared to Carrie and Matt that she thinks showers are boring, and thought that she might like to go with the guys to 'Dave and Busters'. Although I am sure the guys had fun as well, Abby finally decided to tough it out with the ladies.

Anyhow, I don't think they had such a tough time. I managed to snap a few pictures as they played and helped Lissy unwrap presents. And in the true childhood tradition, had a great deal of fun playing with the boxes.

The event - guests coming together

Introducing the GUEST OF HONOR and the hostess!!


On to the shower itself. Of course, I realize the pictures that I am missing, like the beautiful gifts, but I got the most important pictures--the guests themselves. Melissa got so many nice things from so many nice people. We are truly blessed with wonderful family and friends. I will just share with you. By the way - the next post will be "Little Guests" - so stay tuned.



I am missing pictures of a couple of people, my apologies for that!!

Shower preparations

Lissy's baby shower gave us an opportunity to be creative. It is always fun to plan something that requires some fun ways to decorate. As many of you know, Melissa is doing the nursery in cute owls. So Carrie and I decided to plan the shower in the same theme. We chose colors of brown and blue. I am now thinking of the things that I didn't take a picture of, but that is just par for the course, I guess. The main thing is the cute paper lanterns that we hung up.

But some cute things that Carrie did was to wrap water bottles in baby/owl paper. She also wrapped cans in the paper to use for flowers and the plastic silverware. The plates and cups were super cute - just classic baby boy blue and brown. Abby did the very special job of alternating blue and brown cups so that they were quite the striking decoration in themselves, which of course matched the punch of baby boy blue.

Of course the food is decorative in itself, with lots of yummy treats. I made special triple salted caramel cupcakes. They were really good, but I am not sure that I will do that again. They were filled with caramel filling and then frosted with caramel frosting. I am not even going to tell you how rich that frosting was, but the adventure was very time consuming. I was originally planning to make a spun sugar embellishment, but it turns out that was not meant to be; so a sprinkle of sparkly gold sugar completed the cupcakes. Oh yeah, and I actually purchased a cupcake stand to display them. Hopefully there will be an opportunity to use it again. I made Russian teacakes and lemon bars as well, but I didn't get a picture of them.

We served meatballs, deviled eggs and fruit in addition to the cookies and cupcakes.

Friday night at Schmidts

We have had a very busy weekend, all revolving around the baby shower that Carrie gave for Lissy. We had such a good time and the activities extended way beyond the shower itself. One big joy is that our niece flew in from Jacksonville, Florida with our little great nephew for the weekend. Carrie and her family were here all weekend and many family members drove in for the day on Saturday. I have so many pictures to share that I am going to take several days and share them a bit at a time, one activity at a time.

On Friday night, we all went to Schmidts for dinner. Miranda did a year of study in Germany and so we thought this an apropos welcome for her. If you live in Columbus, you probably already know about Schmidts, but if not, it is a wildly popular family friendly German restaurant located in our German Village section of town. Anyhow, we all managed to get parking (which is a feat in itself) and on to the Schmidts buffet we went.

The buffet is full of German specialties, like sausages, sauerkraut and many other yummy things. Their famed speciality, Bahama Mama sausage is to die for. Another famed specialty is the Schmidts creme puff, which I was totally going to get, but just plain got too full.

Anyhow here are a few pictures to give you a feel for the fun that we had. I should have gotten a picture of the buffet, but I am only so brave, when it comes to taking pictures in public. Weird, I know, and I have no problem taking pictures of the family in public, but taking a picture of the buffet seemed crazy. I guess that is something that I need to work on.

February - Oh my gosh!!

Oh my goodness!! It is February - Presidents Day - Valentines Day. I have been very busy and haven't had a chance to post lately. I have had material, just haven't had the time. Work has been busy. I changed jobs in December and am now underwriting mortgages exclusively. I like it a lot and things are finally slowing down a little bit now, so I am trying to get back into my home routine again.

We were working 50 hour weeks for a while and it is just not as easy to do as when I was 30.

Anyhow, I am going to update my month of pleasures and then I will try and get my pictures uploaded and start posting again regularly.

In the meantime, a cute picture from Flickr of a heart of buttons.

Have a great Valentines Day!!! Is there absolutely nothing cuter than a heart!!