May 15 - yard sale finds

The neighborhood sale we went to was kind of a bust- just a few sales in a big neighborhood- but I found a few things 

Potato Heads for $1

2 small Pampered Chef stone baking dishes .50 each 

And the dirt on them is from carrying these succulents in them 

The succulents were $1 a pot and this pot has  4 plants in it

Not sure of the name of these trailing ones but they seem to have little red flowers 

The Star Wars game was the big ticket item,  $4 but look at all the figures it came with.

The larger ones with red buttons shoot their weapons. 

I expect the grandsons will have tons of fun with this set.  

I saw lots of home stuff and clothes and furniture- but I’m not in the market for any of that.  

Did you yard sale today and did you find anything you were looking for?  I hope so! 

❤️ Rhonda 

May 14- 4th post of the month

Hello everyone 

I’m still here- just been busy with family things and Spring things.   

First I want to brag on this peony bush- it had 31 buds and some the flowers are huge! 

Sadly, peonies only bloom once a year but they really show off when they are blooming.  

2 of the grandsons are already out of school for the summer.  we visited the Botanic Gardens in our town and thought this driverless lawnmower was amusing.  

I think it works like a Roomba vacuum cleaner 

  

It was working and moving and apparently  it’s smart enough to just mow grass and not cut down plants.  

We also tried Geocache hunting for the first time.  

They’re are many hidden in our town but you do need an app to help find them.  

This tiny one was the first of 5 we found. 

See it? It was  a pill bottle hanging on a wire in a very full tree.  It just had a note and sheet of paper to sign when you find it, 

The last of 5 geocaches we found was the biggest and most interesting. 

It was filled with stickers and doo-dads.  It was on the edge of a pasture and had letters explaining the landowners animals.  

We didn’t take or put anything in the 5 geocaches we found but we did sign the logs in all of them.  

Anyone have any tips to find them?

I think this will be something I do with the grandchildren this summer.  

I’ve been reading and enjoyed this Kindle book 

The Teacup Conspiracy

And I’m in the middle of this series and really like it too 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08K94RWZ2?searchxofy=true&binding=kindle_edition&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin&qid=1621028722&sr=8-2

I’m planning to go to a neighborhood yard sale tomorrow

Maybe I’ll get some treasures I can share here- but who knows? 

Bye for now 

❤️Rhonda 

May#3

Good evening 

I worked in our front flower beds this morning- it’s been on my to do list for weeks and today was perfect, the outside temperature was perfect. 

My tools 

The garden kneeler is so handy- you can kneel on it and then use the side supports to help stand back up or it can be flipped over and sat on.  

I pulled weeds and moved a few plants and dug up some plants that weren’t doing good.  

The front of our home on one side 

And the flower bed on the other side 

My husband is responsible for planting most everything.  His method is he buys things at Lowe’s or Atwoods that catch his eye, 

and then he plants a little here and a little there.  

Right now, the dianthus, rhododendrons, pansies, 1 iris and mock orange bushes are blooming.  

Soon the red lilies will be blooming and so will these peonies and rose bush- both are loaded with buds. 

  

While I was weeding,  I uncovered some of last year’s Purple Heart coming back to life.  

Supper was  boneless pork chops baked with ShakeNBake for pork and they were delicious, green beans and little potatoes, that baked along side the pork chops.  

And this little guy had a snow cone at his brother’s t-ball game.  

It apparently had plenty of blue food coloring in it 

❤️ Rhonda 

May #2

Hello everyone 

Below is this week’s to do list.  It has weekly tasks and some things I hope to get done this month. 

I’m hoping to do several yard and garden and patio things this week.  There will also be a few family things happening.  

So I decided to get a jumpstart on meals for the week.  

After I made a weekly menu (on the list above)  I gathered up the needed canned goods and the frozen meats.  

They will just sit on the counter and be ready for quick meal cooking, 

The 2 bottom packs of meat are thawing in the fridge until needed.  

I used the chicken sausages and vegetables in the sheet pan meal we ate tonight.  

This meal was really good too!   And the asparagus was from our garden.  

In case your wondering about our lunches and breakfasts, 

lunches will be leftovers or sandwiches and 

breakfasts tend to be eggs with toast or hash browns.  

Hope you all had a nice weekend and are ready for this new week starting tomorrow 

❤️ Rhonda 

May 1st and May #1

Hello everyone 

Have any of you wondered how my to do lists look at the end of the week? 

 It’s rare that everything on the lists get done but I’m OK with the progress I made last week. 

Those tiny volunteer lettuce plants  I found at the beginning of garden season have done so good! 

I’ll be picking the biggest of them this week and we may just have salad every day 

The taller plants are broccoli grown from seed 

We did some cleaning up and changing around in the backyard and didn’t need this assortment of chicken wire stuff.

So I put it on a local Buy Nothing group on Facebook (where people give away or ask for free things, nothing is sold)

Anyway,  it was picked up 15 minutes after I listed it.  

That was a very easy way to clean up a situation and I’m guessing whoever picked it up had a use for it.  

I apologize for not doing VEDA all 30 days.  Some family things (not bad things) went on this week that had my attention and they just aren’t things I will blog about.

Happy May 1st everyone 🌺 🌸 🌹 

❤️Rhonda 

BEDA #28

Sorry about the gap in posts- we’ve had some busy days and this week looks to have a few busy days too. Anyway today,  I show some of the things we’ve been up to 

It’s baseball season here and 4 of the grandsons are playing on different age kid teams. 

It was so much fun seeing 2 of the grandsons play each other this week.  

 

And “Just yesterday” they looked like the photo on the right.  

Last week I did a grocery pickup - here is the pantry and fridge stuff,  the frozen things were already put  away 

The watermelon was a dud and the 3 boxes of honey buns are for my 89 year old dad.

This weekend,  we had a 5 cousin sleepover.  

For us,  having the Covid vaccines and having very low Covid rates in our state has meant we can go back to more normal lives and it’s wonderful! 

Then on Sunday morning, my parents and brother joined us for breakfast 

I didn’t get a photo of everyone at the same time but there were 11 here and we all ate at this big table.  

I served  a big breakfast and everyone enjoyed it.  The only leftover leftovers were a couple of biscuits and sausage patties. 

When I cook for a group with 5 grands buzzing around the kitchen - I take advantage of easy to prepare things, 

They are not the thriftiest options but they all cook up quickly and taste very good. 

I did a little sewing last week- 4 quirky potholders and I have more cut out to sew. 

Our son has been cooking competitively and cooked this weekend in a steak cook off up north.

He won 1st in Steak and 1st and 2nd in Boozy drinks 😳

Aren’t those crazy and way over the top? 

Well- I need to be working on my to-do list right now. 

Hope you’re all having a wondertful Monday 

Bye from Windy Oklahoma  💨 

❤️Rhonda 

BEDA #21

Hello everyone 

The cold weather did no damage to our plants, as far as I can tell 

Lots of promising buds on the strawberry plants 

And on the blackberry bushes 

And on the peonies 

The worst part was folding up all the assorted sheets and dropcloths that we use to cover plants from cold weather 

 (because my husband seems to plant too early every year) 

No, we didn’t steal these milk crates.   Way back when I cooked at a fraternity house, the milk was delivered and left in these crates.  

The 100 or so frat boys went through a lot of milk and the milkman delivered the milk but he refused to pick up the empty crates.  

The milk crates stacked up so I eventually told the boys to take crates as they wanted and I brought some crates  home.  

Crazy I know but it’s a true story.  

I baked the cookie dough from yesterday and bagged them up for Physical Therapists.

  Because of Covid,  I bagged them all individually and then into another bag.  

With the rest of the dough,  I made cookie balls and froze them on a tray so they won’t stick together when I put them in a storage bag.

Now I can easily bake some cookies - my grandchildren love fresh cookies 🍪❤️

I’m reading a funny book - 

The Mystery Sisters Volume 1

It’s a cozy mystery about 4 senior citizen sisters.   It’s not deep or fine literature but it is entertaining.  


Good evening everyone 

❤️Rhonda 

BEDA #20 Freeze warning, Nashville Hot chicken and etc

Hello everyone

Crazy weather has us expecting a freeze tonight but thankfully it won’t be a long hard freeze. 

We have garden plants in the grown,  flowers about to bloom and our strawberry plants and berry bushes are loaded with blooms 

So,  we’ve covered everything with old sheets and such- and are hoping for the

I tried the Nashville Hot chicken bites from the Emily Bites blog 

I made a few changes 

I decreased the red pepper to 1/2 t and it was plenty hot. 

I omitted the salt and subbed onion powder for the garlic.  

This is a recipe I will keep.  They tasted great and cooked up fast.  

We had oven roasted veggies with the chicken - and I guess I was really hungry for veggies 😳

My husband goes to physical therapy and has 3 therapists. 2 are expecting and he says they talks about cookies all the time.  

He asked me to make them some so I mixed up a batch of chocolate chip oatmeal cookie dough.  I will bake them just before he goes to therapy next. 

I used mini chocolate chips is why the dough looks so loaded.  

More Parsimony asked which salad shooter I recommend.  

Well. It just depends. 

The smaller one takes up almost no room so if you’re short on storage space,  it is ideal. 

However the smaller salad shooter has a smaller feed tube than the bigger one.  So if your doing potatoes or cabbage,  they have to be cut small to get them to fit in the tube. 

If you know how  big a 8 ounce  stick of Cracker Barrel cheese - then that will tell you how big the feed tube is on the small one.  

Potatos and wedges of cabbage would be much easier in the bigger one but they will still work in the small one, as long as they are cut to fit.  

Both Salad Shooters slice and shred food quickly and easily. 

I think I said yesterday that I wish I had a bigger one and will be looking for a bigger one at a good price.   I do cook a lot and people who cook less may prefer the smaller one.  

My daughter has a small salad shooter and I think she uses it only to grate carrots for carrot cake.  

Hope all info helps! 

About celebrity cookbooks,  my son has a Chrissy Tiegan book and he said her biscuit recipe was really good.  

I’ve made 3 recipes from the Joanna Gaines book and they’ve all been good.  I do think she knows how to cook.  Her recipes are just not the type of recipes I prefer to cook.  

❤️ Rhonda