Saturday is kick off day in the SEC. We’ve waited a long time for this day. It’s one of the things I love about fall….football, tailgating, socializing with friends, good eats and the sound of 80,000+ fans cheering on their favorite team in the stadium. Our favorite team won the National Championship 2 years ago, so we’re always excited to see what each year holds for us. Good luck to all of ya’ll and WAR EAGLE!
This past weekend we celebrated the joint birthdays of my Birmingham grandchildren. McKinley is 7 today…born on the day Hurricane Katrina hit! Her brother Cade was 2 on August 18th. For the last two years my DIL has let them share a birthday party with family and a few friends. We met at a local park and thankfully it wasn’t extremely humid and left for lunch before it got too hot.
Here’s my sweet little grandson….look at those curls!
My baby boy and his baby boy!
My two favorite girls….Taylor & McKinley
Cade checking out the cake…he’s very food friendly!
After spending the afternoon with all the grown kids and grandkids, we headed to the lake to meet my sister and her husband at their lake place and dinner at the lake
We got there around 6:30….it was so peaceful and quiet.
We ate at one of my favorite places on the lake…Sinclair’s. We usually go several times during the summer but this is the first time we’ve been all summer long!
I love how you can “drive” your boat up to the dock and get out to eat
This was apparently a party boat as their music was blasting and they sped off really fast
There was a “school” of turtles gathered at the edge of the lake waiting for bread crumbs to be tossed out
Sunset at the lake…doesn’t get any better than this
Thankfully we have dodged the worst of Hurricane Isaac here in central Alabama. We had a little bit of rain this afternoon and other than it being a little windy…that’s it! I know our friends south of us aren’t as lucky. We had planned on going to the beach for a few days next week but after seeing all the news reports, I doubt we’ll be able to go.
My husband is on vacation next week and I have a lot of things I’d like to get done while he’s off (if we don’t go to the beach). I’ve had to put on hold finishing the guest room until he can cut out the headboard for me. We got the curtain rod hung last night and I’ve got to finish up with the drapes and paint the two pieces of furniture going in there. I know I keep saying it, but I absolutely LOVE how this room is turning out!
I worked on a small project today. After seeing my friend Diana’s (@Our Vintage Home Love) mailbox revamp I got busy and started working on mine. I got it painted and the post partially stained before it started raining. Hope I can finish it up tomorrow. I’ve always wanted a copper mailbox but they were too cost prohibitive. The copper metallic spray paint I used makes my mailbox look just like the copper mailboxes I’ve always admired. There was an AT&T phone guy working in the neighborhood that even stopped to admire it! Check out Diana’s post…you might get inspired to make a little upgrade to your mailbox too!
Happy Friday! I’ve been a busy girl the last couple of weeks. We went to Ikea in Atlanta last week to buy the items I needed for the guest room, only to find out they were out of stock! Although the Ikea web site indicated they were in stock and had been for 2 weeks! So, I had to come up with Plan B on the spot. Luckily, I was able to pick up everything I needed and still stay with “the look” I was copying going for.
Just as a reminder, here’s the room I fell in love with at the Southern Living Idea house that inspired this make over:
I’m just going to tease you a little bit for now because the curtains are not hung and I have not made the headboard yet nor hung a gallery wall. Also, I haven’t decided on what I’m going to do with the chest and bookcase so until then, this is all you’ll get to see….
The sheet set I ordered should be delivered today so I can properly make the bed then.
I mentioned to husband that I wanted to do a plank wall behind the headboard but really didn’t get a response so I’ll take that as a “yes”! I’m going to call our carpenter friend to come over and see what he can do about that. On our way back from Atlanta, hubby had me call our painter to come paint the bedroom last weekend….apparently he didn’t want to spend the weekend painting!
Anyone else feeling a little fall-ish? The temps here are a little more bearable….not so much humidity. So I went out to Michael’s this week and picked up some fall items to incorporate in the den. Once I get those out, I’ll be sure to share.
We’re heading to Birmingham tomorrow for the joint birthday parties of my two grandchildren that live there. One will be 2 and the other 7! They are 5 years and 5 days apart!
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
I’ve been reluctant to share the drama that resulted in my sudden job loss at the end of May but since I’ve mentioned it several times (thank you for all your supportive comments and prayers) I decided it was time to tell “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would say.
First a little background. I have been a legal secretary/paralegal for 25+ years. When I remarried 9 years ago my husband didn’t want me working full time so I was lucky enough to work for a friend 4 days a week, off on Fridays. Fast forward a few years and due to an on-the-job injury which resulted in me being out of work almost a year, I then found a job working 3 days a week. That company went under (it was in real estate) so I started working 2 days a week for an attorney friend until he decided he needed me 3 days a week. That was perfect, I was off Mondays and Fridays, and worked 3 days a week, 6 hours a day. Can’t get better than that!
In March 2011 we brought on another attorney, a former judge. I loved working for these two guys, and I thought it would be a job I would stay on at least 6 more years which I planned to retired permanently.
The Tuesday after Memorial Day I got to work and there was another girl there! It had been mentioned to me that they were “thinking” about bringing on another person who was bringing in files from her former boss, but there was nothing in stone about bringing in someone else. Now this ain’t my first rodeo (thanks Dr. Phil) but I knew it was completely unethical for a non-attorney person to bring files in from another lawyer, that was money walking out his door! The attorney I had worked for the longest was on vacation, which I didn’t know anything about. The “new girl” had taken over his office, knew his computer password (I did not) and basically took over my job. She “ran” errands (which I normally did), was out of the office for several hours, opened mail (after I had already checked all the mail) and he had left her the work I normally did. She sat in on a domestic relations consultation after telling me she knew nothing about domestic relations, that was my job, that she was hired to work on SS disability files (the files she brought with her). This all happened on her first day at work. A situation occurred on the 2nd day that was totally out of my comfort zone (not to mention unethical) so I left for the day and e-mailed one of the men that I wouldn’t be back that day but asked them to get in touch with me on the following Monday so we could address my concerns. NO ONE EVER CONTACTED ME! No phone calls, no e-mails, nothing. I was devastated to say the least.
I went ahead and filed for unemployment and after about 4 weeks was notified I had been denied. I naturally assumed my former employers had objected to my filing for unemployment but have since found out the Dept. of Industrial Relations objected to the filing. We had a phone “hearing” a few weeks ago which resulted in the final denial from the Dept. of Industrial Relations for my unemployment compensation, even after my former boss stipulated they “fired” me.
The hearing was a joke! The idiot guy that conducted the hearing wouldn’t let me or my boss get in a word at all…he ran the show from the get-go. I could have appealed that decision as well but it just wasn’t worth it. I was experiencing anxiety and stress and depression from it all so now it’s over and done with. However, my former boss has stayed in touch with me, we have gone to lunch a couple of times, and he indicated he will be calling me to come back to work….but I don’t plan on returning. I feel much better after finding out they did not object but wanted me to get my “pennies”. However, they are compensating me since I got denied.
So now you know “the rest of the story.” I know this is hard to believe but sometimes I miss having somewhere to go every day. Of course, it’s obvious I’m leaving out some things with regard to the “new girl” that took my place but I’d rather not get into that. I just want to move on with my life and start this new chapter.
On a much happier note, we had a huge yard sale this weekend and made out like bandits! I hope to use that money to finish up the guest room and hubby’s bathroom. The purging and decluttering took a month getting ready for that sale but the end is in sight. It feels so good to get rid of so much stuff….I hope I never let things get to that point again!
I’m smack dab in the middle of cleaning out one of our spare rooms. It’s my son’s old room but for quite some time now it has been used as a “drop zone” for everything. Actually, I’m surprised Hoarders didn’t give me a call!!! Where did all this crap stuff come from? After getting rid of everything in the room, I still have plenty of stuff I just can’t part with. The closet is about 1/2 way done so lots of the keep stuff will go in there. I just ordered a mattress and box springs so I’m on a deadline to finish up for that delivery.
Here’s what I have in mind for the room:
This was the bedroom I fell in love with at the Southern Living Idea house in Senoia, Georgia when we toured it back in June. I’d love to have planked walls but doubt I can talk hubby into that. But I will be using buffalo check pillows and curtains, buying white bedding and linen colored duvet & shams. Also, I found this fabulous DIY headboard here and am going to try my hand at making one ..
They made a template for the headboard, cut it out and covered it with a drop cloth (one of my favorite go-to fabrics) and finished it with nail heads.
Now for the “ugly paint job” question….I have a bookcase (very cheap) and a french provincial 4-drawer dresser that I spray painted black a few years ago. The dresser finish is too shiny. My questions are: what color should I paint the bookcase and dresser? Should I use a primer before painting? Just to remind you, here’s what the color scheme will be:
Right now the current wall color is a pale, pale grey and I really don’t want to have to repaint but I might have to….the wall color looks very similar to the one behind the headboard I’ve featured.
Here are some ideas I like…..
Then I would paint the bookcase a solid color. But I’m not sure how these would work with my linen and cream bedding….thoughts?
Now that I go back and look at the two dressers, I don’t think they would work. I’m totally confused!!!! I really don’t want to do just solid color because I wanted to do something a little different on the dresser. I love that grain sack dresser though!
Okay, enough of these “!!!!” and not enough of these 
Tomorrow (Monday) my sister and I are taking our mama to visit her oldest and dearest friend as well as tour the county just south of where we live now and where I did a lot of my growing up. Not only am I a true child of the South, but we grew up in Lowndes County, which is smack dab in the middle of the Bible belt and well known in the history books as having played a major role in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. I was witness to the march from Selma to Montgomery, saw Viola Luzzio’s car where it landed off Highway 80 after she had been shot while driving a civil rights worker back to Montgomery (her body had been removed by the time our school bus passed by the next morning); remember our bus being escorted by the National Guard when the first black students boarded our bus for their first day at school in Hayneville, Alabama, and many other events of that era.
My mother’s parents relocated to Lowndes County in the 1940’s from North Carolina after 3 of their sons were stationed in Alabama. They remained there until the 1970’s when my uncle (who never married) and grandfather moved back to North Carolina. My grandmother has passed away the night man walked on the moon! My mama and daddy got married in the “parlor” of my grandparents home and I have many fond memories of growing up on their farm. It has passed through at least 2 different families since my uncle sold Canaan Farm (as it was named) and it bears very little resemblance to the time my grandparents lived there. My grandmother and uncle worked the grounds until they were a true showplace….today there is no evidence of their hard work short of a few trees that still remain. The inside of the home was gutted and has lost a lot of it’s original charm as it was “modernized” to fit each family’s needs. However, driving up in the yard brings back many many memories for me.
I previously posted about our last trip to Lowndes County here. Since my mom turned 92 she has a hard time getting around. I’ve been anxious to take her back for a visit as I’m afraid it won’t be long before she is unable to get out for another excursion there. She is very excited about seeing all the familiar sights and visiting with her friend.
Do you ever take trips down memory lane?
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