It's JULY and More Rain

Yep, it's true, 7 months into 2024 and it is raining again today. Where is all this rain coming from???? I know the farmers need the rain, but now even they are complaining. They can't get into the fields to plant and do the haying. My, my, the weather sure is weird all over the world. 

Update: we had so much rain today my basement and backyard flooded badly (no pictures). We were warned via the cell phone to please stay home, if at all possible, the streets are flooded, and emergency boats were out to help people evacuate if necessary. One family who lived in their house 52 years had never seen the water this high before in all the years they lived there.

Just a few cards here, I might have used these already, but not sure. Made these a couple of months ago. This top card is a tri-fold, was fun to make, but not sure I would make it again. I think I already put it in the box to give to Hospice.

The giraffes are an old stamp from years ago, they were stamped and colored, but I never made cards out of them. So here they are, made into Father's Day cards. Gave them to Hospice already.

Cute little pandas from Stampin up, finally turned them into a card and gave to Hospice. Will probably make some more of these guys, I found the stamps at Thompson Center, so all I need is a good juicy ink pad and stamp off some more cute pandas.

Well, it finally stopped raining outside. The last couple of bad rains I found water on my kitchen counter....uge hope my roof is not leaking again.

Nothing much has been happening of late, just living life the best I can, pay the bills, shopping, car upkeep and Louise upkeep at the Doctor the last couple of weeks. They are keeping tabs on my blood pressure and now medication monitoring. Signs of old age when the Doctor wants to see you every week, I guess.

This month, July 25th, JP will have been gone 3 years already. Where did that time go, it feels like just yesterday. It's funny, I wake up every morning and have to remind myself, "oh that's right, I am alone in this house", there is always that feeling that JP is still here for some reason, creepy huh???? But when I remember all the pain he was in, I am glad he is not here and does not have to bear all that pain anymore.

I guess I will cut this blog short for now, have to go take my pills for the day, but first I have to put them in the pill boxes, I may have to call in some prescriptions today.

You all take care and keep looking up, better days are coming!!!

Cheers ~ Louise

Cabbage and Rain

Hi there everyone. How has your week gone....I am not sure where mine went...but it went fast!!! I still have not gotten any pictures of my house and all the improvements that were made...still working on that. BUT I am thoroughly enjoying everything Rebuilding Together did. Pat still has to come back and finish up a few things. He is waiting for a warmer days to paint the front door, put the fan up and finish some electric work.

In today's post is a cabbage dish I made....this maybe on the agenda to make more of this tasty yummy dish. My stepfather made this all the time. He called me last week to let me know he had been in the hospital for 3 weeks....he fell off his mobile chair and broke his neck.....gosh that is so hard to believe for me. The Doctor wants to put him in a nursing home....but he does not want to go.
Pops has always been stubborn that way. He lives in Las Vegas....so it is not like I can go see him and talk sense....he wouldn't listen to me anyways....I am just the step-daughter.

So in these two pictures are the cabbage dish he would make. Fried cabbage and onions in bacon grease. Added some frozen tomatoes and crumbled bacon a little salt and pepper and in the bottom picture I chopped up some spinach....something Pops would never add. All in all, it was really very delicious!!!

In the picture below.....there was so much rain on Sunday the street flooded in front of our house......sure hope the sewer is not plugged up.....As the cars passed....they all made sure they went through the water spraying it up on the sidewalk!!! Watch out, children at play.

Yep....lots of rain and lots of puddles and it looks like more rain is coming for the Memorial Day weekend. One good thing though, with all that rain that fell.....

I am so glad to say our ceiling DID NOT LEAK!!!!!  Yay!!!! I am still moving things back into the kitchen a little at a time.....but maybe less things will enter the kitchen to clutter it up. I bought some new curtains and want to get some tiles for behind the stove...to make it easier to wipe the walls which get so greasy.

Well time to close here...have to go do some dishes and get dinner ready for JP....pork spare ribs in the crock pot and potatoes, salad and fruit. Have a great day and keep looking up!!!
Cheers ~ Louise

O.C.T.O.B.E.R.

Well, here we are in October....what happened to the summer???? Did I miss it or something???

I have some really good news.....FINALLY we are going to get some results on our roof. We got a call today that next week will be when they start working on it. Do you want to hear something funny??? It was 3 years ago this month and next week to be exact that we had our roof worked on the last time. Maybe this time, the leak can be caught.....I sure do hope so, I am SO tired of catching water drips from a leaky ceiling.  Rain is predicted for the next couple of days....so hopefully it won't be downpours of rain.

Today I am making the BBQ chicken in the crock pot. I used the marinara sauce adding ketchup, brown sugar and Worchester sauce. Ummmm, it tasted really good. JP will have the chicken over toasted tortilla's, chicken soup, salad and fruit.

I guess in the next few days, I will start bringing in my plants and ceramic animals for the winter. Our first frost will be this weekend...hopefully I will get a few more tomatoes to ripen before that happens.

Well, this will be a short blog for today...you all have a great day tomorrow and keep looking up. Cheers ~ Louise

A Little Bit of Flooding....(sigh)

Hi everyone....Hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day!!! Nothing special here, but yes, I did enjoy the day. The rains came in the late afternoon and as you can see, our backyard flooded out. It must have rained A LOT during the night, and if it stormed and thundered, I did not hear it.

So in the above picture and the ones following is what we woke up to. Miracle upon miracles....the roof did not leak real bad. We seem to have different places on the roof that seem to leak at different times. There is a spot in the bedroom that gave a few drips today....JP put a bucket under that leak.

Well as you can see in the different pictures (taken from the kitchen window) most of the water is towards the back of the yard. I think we are in a valley and the lowest part of this block. Guess I never really noticed it before. As I walk Kylie up the street and across Drew street and look back, you can see how the block dips and we are at the lowest point. Maybe we are living in a great big "sink-hole" for all we know......yikes!!!!!

Oh my.....so much work to do, you can see the "snow on the mountain" is growing pretty good, it covers a multitude of problems. the darker green is weeds and violets growing. The darker patches are dirt and water. The red, of course is mulch.

Here's a close up of the our pond. Lot's of water.......the sun came out about two hours ago after this picture was taken....right now it looks as if it never rained at all. Sunny and blue skies.

This is the damage down in the basement. I usually have an old carpet laying down there, you can see it in the right hand corner. I rolled it up and it is sitting up, hopefully to dry, you can see the floor is very wet. I have the de-humidifier on, so hopefully I can get downstairs tonight and do some card making. Had an order the other day, so I need to get working on that.

This is on the other side of the basement where all my card making stuff is. Again I had carpet laying down and have picked it up to dry. The carpet laying down right now needs to be picked up and taken outside to dry........but I think there is more rain coming again, so I don't know how dry it will get.

I am glad that when we first moved into this house almost 23 years ago.....we put everything on skids to keep things dry...guess we were thinking ahead for times like this.

Well, time to close, hope you have a wonderful week and get all the planting done that needs to get done. I usually don't start planting till Memorial Day.....all chances of frost have passed. Sometimes I wish I lived in a longer growing season....but for now this is where God has planted me and I need to grow here.

Ceiling Problems

Hi everyone, how is your day going? Hope you're keeping warm if you live in a cold place. Hope you get the rain you need, if you are in a dry place. Hope you are keeping cool if you are in a hot place. Hope you're weather is good where ever you are. If you need a little snow we can send ya some, got lots today....(smile)

Thought you would like to see what I am dealing with and have been dealing with for the last 10+ years.....yep, it's a mess alright. I do not look forward to rain, especially heavy rains. The leaking ceiling is right in the middle of the kitchen, so needless to say, I have to dodge buckets, pots and towels when the drips start. At one point, during a real bad storm, we had to empty the bucket 4-5 times in one down-pour. It was like someone opened the faucet and the water poured down.

Right after that rain....we got the roof patched...at the cost of $1200......but it was to no avail, because after about a year, the leaks began again. Our roof never leaked for 10 years, not till after it was redone by the city. We were told to sue the guy that did the work (didn't have the $$$) and he is no longer in business. (I wonder why???) The city contracted him, after a couple of complaints he was let go, but that was after he messed up on our roof. Damage done.

In 2002 we got a loan from the city to get siding, windows, doors and the roof done plus new gutters. Repaying the loan would happen only if and when we decided to put the house up for sale. As we are not planning on moving any time soon...there is no reason to payback. Only problem is there would be a lien against the house....which I am not comfortable with. Makes it very hard to refinance, if we did that.

In this picture you can see how the ceiling is buckeling, as there are leaks in every corner of the tiles....no sense getting the ceiling fixed till we know for sure the roof is fixed and not leaking again. So there you have it, my tale of woe. You can see why I prefer snow at this time. Snow doesn't leak....for now.

Today I filled out papers for another loan from the city...won't hurt to try. See if they will help us a 2nd time....this time I want a roofer that knows what he is doing....do you blame me??? Also, we will ask for NEW gutters as we never got them the first time around. The roofer just had our old gutters re-galvinized and then they were put up backwards, which has cost alot of seepage in the basement.

Well, time to close, need to go ride my bike and make a card or two....have a good evening and keep looking up. Cheers ~ Louise

Singing in the Rain........

Hi everyone. This is going to be short and sweet today.....it's raining and guess what the kitchen ceiling is leaking...UGE!! Can't turn the kitchen light on as the water is leaking through the light fixture. Bread pans and bath towels are catching the rain water. Now there are drips of water coming down the cabinets onto the counter and into the silverware drawer. Had to take the silverware tray out because water got under the tray. Oh...I tell ya, it's a challenge. One good thing...eventually the rain will turn to snow..........sooooooooo

Hahahhahahahaha........so if I keep laughing and singing maybe the problem will go away???????

Have a great day and keep looking up for your redemption draws night. Cheers ~ Louise

A Busy Week-End 4 Us

Hi everyone........well today is Monday the 30th......where in the world did this month go????? Thought I would add a few pictures of our busy weekend....not too adventurous....but busy for a couple of 65 year olds.

KYLIE....KYLIE she is such a happy dog. Here she is asking me, "can we go for a walk?" I said, "maybe later, when it cools down". We got Kylie from the shelter in Oshkosh, I am not sure if Kylie picked us or we picked Kylie, either way it has worked out fine. Kylie is a mama's girl and sticks pretty close to me....but just like any little girl, does not always listen to mama. Kylie has alot of likes and dislikes. She mostly dislikes the mailman and any other man that comes to the front door until I tell her to "STOP" and then she backs off. Some man must have done her mean before she knew us cause it takes her awhile to like any man that come to the door.


 Following are a few pictures of the weekend. We did have a surprise on Sunday.....a big storm came through around about 6:10pm. The rain came down pretty heavy and around 6:30 the power went off.....I become so lost without the power, gosh we sure do take the "power" for granted don't we??? The "Power" of the Holy Spirit is taken for granted too, for that matter!!!!

Flower box petunia's and flowers in front of house. Did some weeding and got rid of some flowers that look like weeds when growing but when they bloom, they are the cutest little blue bells that last a few weeks. When they begin to dry up....down they come. I have no fear that they will return next year, even during a hard winter. My daisies keep popping up in different places, I like them where ever they decide to show their pretty faces. Someday the front of the house will be all perennial flowers, right now I have to plant to fill in empty places.

Here is JP fertilizing with his new fertilizer cart. 39 years we have been married and this is his first little fertilizer cart. You can see how dry the grass is and only the weeds seem to grow. This picture was taken Saturday......Sunday afternoon it rained..........oh well, JP can fertilize again. Hopefully the weeds were served notice that they are not welcomed here.



JP added a little color with some of the red chips we had left over after I redid the patio and flowers next to the patio. I should take a picture of the patio. Looks really nice, but the squirrel seems to think that is his domain and has been making holes in the chips trying to find a place for his nuts.....darned squirrel. Anyways, the yellow and orange marigolds are trying very hard to survive this drought.....been watering them, but not as much as I should. They should have been a little bit larger by now. Well, there still are a few more months of growing weather yet. I really need to paint my porch again.....it's due, can you see the paint chipping? And the steps and porch need to be stained again. I keep threatening every year to do that, but the summer comes and goes and there sits the stairs and porch, still needing to be stained and painted. I procrastinate very well don't I?


Going to close this blog for the day........this blog is #260......wow that is hard to believe. It's been good therapy for me. Not really sure where or who reads my blogs, if anybody does for that matter. But, it has been fun to do. I have a few blogs that I like to visit on a daily basis.....they may not realize it, but they become a friend that I enjoy visiting and seeing what they are up to and do miss them when they take a few days away from their blogs.


I am hoping that my next blog will be a few cards that I have been working on. I had a big sale last week and was busy working on that special order. Would be nice to have a few more orders like that...will have to just wait and see and promote more.


You all have a great day and keep looking up for your redemption drawth nigh.
Cheers ~ Louise

Rain, rain, GO AWAY!!!!

This is what our ceiling is looking like now, see the water dripping, just as if someone turned on the faucet, gosh I am disliking this very much. I want my kitchen back. Oh, see the buckets in the cabinet, they need to be emptied every couple of rains.
Dripping into the buckets below, towels all over to catch the splashes. The bucket needs to be emptied every couple of hours when it rains this much.

Lately it has been dripping down through the cabnets where my dishes are, catching lots of drips on the counter...........oh please God, I have had enough!!!
Well, I hope you all are having a great day.........fret not and trust in God!!!! Cheers ~ Louise

185 Days Till Christmas!!!!

Yep..........just found this good news on another blog today. It just so made my day :) Not that I was looking for it, but just the fact that it was there........plastered at the top of the blog I visited. Oh well, it only tells me that time is going FAST..........Never wish your life away, it goes fast enough!

Not much is going on here, it's been raining alot, rain, rain and more rain. Hard to get out and work in the gardens. Also, our roof leaks and we have to put buckets and towels on the kitchen floor to catch the rain drops..........gosh I hate when it rains. But I guess it could be worse, our house could be under water or floating down a river. When you look at your own circumstances, they might be rough and hard to deal with.......but someone around the corner always has it much worse.

I am still trying to get some plants planted and it is almost the end of June. Ordered some Deep Dark Cherokee Purple Tomato seeds June 4th............they are still not here yet. It's getting alittle late to plant, but these are heirloom seeds (should last for 100 years), I shall try "one" seed and see if it sprouts and plant it in the front of the house so it gets lots of sun.

JP and I went to a garden walk last week-end, was lots of fun and we got lots of ideas. We would like to impliment some of those ideas, hopefully the money will be there along with some good weather. This year I have the time, as my merchandising job got phased out.....I guess I am too old. Following you will see some of the gardens we visited.
The garden above is one we visited on Saturday, this is her front yard and she has either zuchinni or cucumbers planted in those old coffee cans. I have a zuchinni and heirloom tomato plant and some radishes planted in the front yard.
In this garden walk is a lovely "1895 Circa" house. I have always admired the house when I pass by on my way home, finally got to see it up close.....I love this blue bottle tree. The whole back yard is dabbed with blues.......like a lovely painting. In this lovely garden the woman has over 400 different hostas planted in her gardens. I liked the way she organized this little area.........she also had a door with little pots on it, it looked really cute, wish I had taken a picture, cause on the way home we found a door and took it home to decorate the back area of our backyard garden.

Well, I think I will close this blog for now. Have a great day in the Lord ~ cheers ~ Louise

♥My First "little" Harvest♥

Well, here you have it my first little harvest of the season.....oh my, how delicious the beans, tomatoes, pepper and celentro were steamed altogether!!!! The pepper plant and bean plant were from Walmart. Tomatoes came from the hardware store and the calentro was from seeds I planted in my upside down planter. Got a little cucumber the other day. Looking forward to some zucchinni in the next couple of weeks...oh my we will have alot of zucchinni if all the plants produce. I planted 12 seeds and there are 8 plants growing....may be sharing alot of zuc's this year. Last year I had maybe 3 plants and only got 5-6 zucchinnis.....was a bad year for vegies from the garden.

We had a big storm the other day.....3 storms passed by, the last storm brought flooding in the back yard and 1 inch of water in the basement....plus our roof leaks very bad....so we had a flood in the kitchen also cause the bucket wasen't place in the right spot to catch the drip, drip, drip of the drops leaking through the roof into the ceiling. May be a long time before we can get that fixed....we need a ship to come through for us.

Well time to close this blog for now. You have a great day and keep smiling!!!

Louise

Some Plantings Today

No pictures today, as I just got some new plants to plant today. A lovely purple impatient for the front porch. Two more tomatoe plants, a strawberry plant, shasta daisies, Zenias and a lemon Verdana herb that makes tea. Got them all planted just before it started to rain a gentle rain, so they won't get drowned. Only bad thing about the rain is that our roof leaks.

Can you believe we had the roof reroofed in 2002 which at that time, had never leaked. But now it does...........thanks to a man that called himself a "Christian" who was trying to cut corners.....no, he was not a Christian. Bible says "to trust NO MAN" and that is so true. Anyways now we deal with a leaky ceiling which gets worse with each rain. Why don't you fix it, you say? Costs money which we do not have at this time...............so the roof continues to leak into the kitchen...........sue him? He is no longer in business, sold all his stuff and who has the money to sue now adays? So we deal with it with pots and pans.......until our ship comes in.

Well, so much for my tales of woes............You have a good day...:)
Louise

PS.......if I can find the pictures of our roof, I will add them to this blog.