Pretty House Plans....dream a little dream with me......

Good morning, sweet friends!

     I got up this morning and got my son off to his class at Vocational school, had some coffee and toast and started reading my email~yes, I still do email in the mornings~lol! I get a lot of your blog posts by email link and I love to read through them each morning. I also get some from various web sites I have subscribed to through the years and I do admit that there are WAY too many of those. Sometimes I read them and sometimes they get deleted. Whether or not I read those depends on a few factors; how long it has been since I last visited the site, how interested I am in the content of their email and (most importantly) my mood that particular morning. This morning I got an email from e-plans and decided to see what was new over there. I do enjoy looking at their beautiful house plans and dreaming a bit. This one really caught my eye:

Queen Anne , 5 Bedroom , 2 Story

     Isn't it GORGEOUS! I love the turret, the wrap-around porch and all that beautiful trim work! It is a total of 4,988 square feet of living space which is WAY more than we need, but it is nice to dream about all of the family gathering here for holidays and birthday dinners!!! If you want to know more about it just click on this link: 

http://www.eplans.com/house-plans/epl/hwepl03280.html?utm_campaign=POTW081516&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

     I hope that you are all having a beautiful day and are enjoying this last full month of summer time. We have 38 days until it is officially Autumn again! I am really looking forward to those cooler days here! Until next time....

Stay Cozy, 

Charlotte

Feelin' Pretty...

Picture from August 2015
of my new shorter haircut

Good morning dear friends,

     I just got back from getting my monthly hair cut and boy, does that feel GREAT!!! I went back to really short hair one year ago and have never regretted it a bit. When my hair was at its longest it came down below my shoulders and I had enjoyed it, at first. Over time and through a LOT of family illnesses and issues with us and our aging parents I had gotten into the habit of just pulling it up into a high ponytail every time I had to hurry out the door. It was always in my face when it was down and I was tired of it being hot on my neck all the time, too. Anyway, after momma passed away I was ready for a change and had it cut to a pretty chin-length style that I liked fairly well, but it did require more time for styling and more "product" than I had used for a while~lol! One day I was looking at pictures of my pretty cousins from North Carolina on Facebook and thought, "you know, I think I would like to go short like them...it was really easy to care for when I wore it that way"...and so here I am, back to being "short-n-sassy" again! I love my sweet beautician, she can cut hair in her sleep! That girl is not only really great with the cut but she is quick with the scissors, too and has a heart of gold. It is always such a pleasure to step into her pretty shop. Makes me a happy, happy girl! :-)
     So, last night I was inspired in the kitchen and made a homemade chicken pot pie for our supper. I took one large chicken breast and cut it up into cubes, browned it in my large frying pan with one half  chopped onion and seasoned it with seasoned salt, chicken seasoning and a little pepper. While that was going on lower heat I mixed up a can of cream of chicken soup with water (you could use milk) and a package of chicken gravy mix and set it to the side. I took out a bag of frozen Normandy Blend vegetables from out at SAM'S Club (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and yellow squash) and put that in the pan with the chicken and the onions and then poured the soup mixture over it all and put the lid on it and lowered the heat to medium low~I have a gas range so I kind of eyeball the flame height to know what that is. While that was warming through I made the easiest, most all-purpose dough on the planet~biscuit dough~for the crust. I like this easy recipe: 2 cups self-rising flour, 1/3 cup oil and 3/4 cup milk. Mix your wet ingredients in a measuring cup and place your flour in a medium sized mixing bowl. Put a well in the middle of your flour and pour the wet ingredients into the well. Mix gently with a spoon until all the flour is moistened. Then I turned it out onto a well floured board, put a little flour on top of it and rolled it into an approximate 9"x 13" shape. This recipe is so versatile that I now use it for everything: pizza crust, dumplings, pie crust and more. Now, after I made the crust, I put the chicken and veggies into a 9"x 13" pan and rolled the crust over the top of it. I cut little slits into the crust and baked it in the oven at 400 degrees for 15 minutes~you could go a little longer if you like a browner crust. It was REALLY good and easier than it sounds. I put it together in about 20 minutes so that it was a total of 35 minutes from start to finish.
     It looks like it is getting ready to rain here. We had one quick hard rain fall right before I left for the beauty shop this morning. It did feel like it cooled things off a little but it was still a bit humid out there. We really had some HOT days here last week but this week is looking better with temps in the 80s. I can handle that pretty well, I just don't like it when we head into the 90s and above~too hot for me! I am looking forward to the cooler days of autumn and hope that we have pretty colors on our mountains this year. But we will have to get through August first and I am not rushing things. Life is too short as it is.
     Well, I think I will close for today but am sending you all bunches of love and wishes for a beautiful day. Feel free to leave me comments below as I really enjoy hearing from you all. For now...

Stay Cozy,
Charlotte

This is Our Life

Good morning, sweet blog friends, 

     Here in WV the sun is shining, the cat has been fed, I have my coffee and have been visiting friends on Facebook; life is good! Not a lot that is new around here; we did go out to eat at our favorite Chinese restaurant yesterday evening and took a little drive. That is one of our very favorite things to do. We usually keep the eating out to once a month and then I cook the rest of the month.  I am hoping to start taking my little camera out with me whenever we go for drives to capture some photos for my blog like I used to. I do like to include pictures with my posts. My husband made our monthly shopping trip to SAM'S Club earlier in the day yesterday and bought our meat and supplies for the month. He has been separating and re-packing the meat into smaller portions this morning using the vacuum sealer. That thing is a real food saver! 

     Our son will be starting to classes at a local Vocational Tech school on Monday! He is a senior this year and still a home school student. I am so glad that he has done so well with his schooling and is now looking to the future and making plans about what he wants to do for a carreer. He has LOTS of dreams and hopes for the future and would love to someday edit video games, movies, videos and more. He has even said that it would be fun to do some voice-over work, too. But for now he will be studying computer programming and repair in one class and taking the CISCO course offered there, also. This is very exciting news for him and also a bit unnerving as he is a bit anxious about doing well and taking the tests. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers that he will do well. 

     I am thinking that we will probably have some kind of casserole for our supper tonight. Either that or spaghetti. I like to start planning our evening meal early in the day so that I don't feel rushed at the last minute to come up with something to fix. I used to do that a lot when I was younger~LOL! I have tried to do menu plans in the past, but found that they were not my style. I do, however, have some family favorite menus that I use from time to time. I often pair up the same meat, veggie and side dish combos like my mom used to do for us growing up. I still find myself doing mashed potatoes and green beans with my meatloaf and also with my fried chicken just like she did. I still tell her, daddy and my mom-in-law that I love them and miss them almost every day. I guess I always will. I like to think that Jesus passes that message along to them for me. 

     That is all for now but I hope to be back tomorrow with another little post. This is wonderful for keeping my mind in writing mode and it does challenge me to take more notice of all those dear little things around me that make life so precious. I hope you all have a bright and blessed day! 

Stay Cozy, 

Charlotte 

     

Testing....

This is a little test post: I am trying to get things straightened out on my blog so that I can again share my posts including the pictures that go along with them. I am not one for changes in my social media options...you all know that, right? LOL! Anyway, here goes....testing 1, 2, 3....

What in the World????? Who Messed Up BLOGGER?????

What the.....hello fellow bloggers....I posted earlier this morning and got ready to share the post on my Facebook page. When I pasted the link onto my page a photo of people who I don't even know showed up! WOW, what is going on with that? I know that it has been some time since my last post, but I never expected that things had changed here so drastically!!! What is going on and can someone please help this simple-minded country girl deal with and understand what I need to do in order to simply share a post. From my understanding I need to integrate my Blogger and Google Plus accounts and then be reassigned a new blog link? Will I lose everything from my blog? Will I have to start all over again? I am almost in tears right now! Too old for all of these changes....I just need life to remain as simple as possible. I need lots of help right now. Please leave any helpful (and simply worded~no code terms please) advice in the comments. (sigh) :-( 

Wake Up Little Susie.....

Good morning my dear blog friends!

     Happy Tuesday! I am having a really hard time waking up this morning as I took a Benadryl last night before I went to bed. I very rarely do this but my eczema was really flaring, painful and itchy so I took a 50mg tablet and fell into a deep sleep. I didn't even rouse during the night and woke up at 8:00 AM which is really late for me~WOW! I am on my second cup of good old coffee and see a third one happening in my near future. My eczema is always worse during the summer months with all the pollen, heat and humidity. I know that for some it is better, but for me those conditions equal much more itching, scales and oozing (sorry to get gross, but that is the reality of eczema, folks). I have been finding some relief with extra virgin olive oil, but yesterday I tried soaking my feet in warm salt water because I had read about it on an online forum. I WON'T be doing that one again~OUCH! Even the coat of olive oil didn't ease the pain of it! I probably used too much salt. It was table salt and not Epsom salt, too. I have used Epsom salt before and it is soothing, but the post specifically said to use iodized table salt for this one. The poster said that it stopped their itching and oozing and made their skin feel great. So much for truthfulness on the web~HaHa! Anyway, it is feeling better this morning and is not itching any more.

     I am planning on getting back to some form of posting here. Maybe even a line or two a day and hopefully some posts concerning decorating and housekeeping since that was the original vision of my little home on the blog. I do miss writing here and reading your blogs, too. I remember the wonderful world that blogging opened up to me in 2006 when I discovered all of the wonderful people out there on the internet sharing their daily lives, hopes and dreams via their beautiful "web logs". I have so many dear friends on FB that I have met from these wonderful places on the net. Some of them I now call "sisters" (you all know who you are, girls). So I hope to never just give up posting here altogether. I am just kind of slow on the draw these days, I guess~lol! 

     I will close for now, but wish you all a very bright and blessed day wherever you may be. Hope to be back here tomorrow with another snippet of news from my little cottage. Love and hugs to you all! 

Stay Cozy, 

Charlotte