A Very Sweet Kind of Valentines Day

I'm just wondering how many people buy Valentine's Day presents that say THIS on the bottom of the box??

Lol lol lol

I thought that was so absolutely funny!!! Steve and I decided to buy each other a Valentine's Day present. We needed a new mattress for our bed. Vodeeohdodo! (In honor of Shirley Williams who passed away last week).

We decided that our memory foam mattress was going on 8 years and could probably stand an upgrade. It was getting a little too soft and too saggy.  So we decided to pick up another 12 inch thick memory foam mattress, this time made by Nectar. The reviews were good and we decided this would be our gift to each other. This sucker is really heavy!!!  A king size in the box weighs 90 lb. We had to use the dolly cart to get it into the house and up the steps to the bedroom.

Once we got the old mattress lifted up and off the bed and hauled out into the dining room, then we were able to open up this one. The very explicit instructions also came with a little cutting device, similar to a letter opener. It's to make sure you don't cut into the mattress when cutting off the plastic. This thing is shrink wrapped and compressed into a wrapped up tube. I made a video of us unboxing it:

It worked out wonderfully and our other mattress got a new home with someone who really needed one. It is better than filling up a landfill. A single mom who works hard at two jobs needed an upgrade. She lives nearby and we even hauled it over to her house for her on our flat trailer. She was quite grateful, and we were happy to pass it on.

Also on Valentine's Day, my darling Steveio surprised me with some beautiful flowers and a heartfelt message in a thoughtful card. I love the pussywillows in the top as accents.

~~~~~~~~

What would be a more fitting thing to do on Valentine's Day then attend an event called "Stitches of Love"??

I belong to the Oconto County HCE Homemakers, HCE stands for Home and Community Education. It is a division of the UW Extension Office from the University of Wisconsin. It's origins were a rural gathering of farmer's wives who meet regularly. They share educational skills, tidbits of hints and helpful information, homemaking and gardening skills, recipes and usually a nice lunch. I have belonged to them since 1997 when we lived out in the country on the river.  We get together on a monthly basis, but also we gather with a larger group from other areas as well. 

Two or three times a year we have a gathering called "Stitches of Love". We create fleece tied charity blankets that are given to hospice and cancer patients. We also sew book bags for a program called BooksR4U. This program supplies small rural schools that maybe don't have a lot of funding with extra educational materials for the children. They are given these book bags that are chock full of things like their own very own set of 2 hardcovered reading books, coloring books, notebooks, crayons, rulers, pencils etc. The little schools that are short on funding really appreciate when we bring these in to their students. It's a lot of fun making these and all of the materials are donated.

I bring a sewing machine and work on the book bags. Usually there are three or four other ladies that sew with me, but their main driver lady from their district had a medical emergency and couldn't come. So I was the only one with a sewing machine this time, kept busy working on the book bags.

The ladies spread out, putting groups of two tables together and work on double layers of fleece fabric. They cut slits into the edges all of the way around into tabs that are then slowly and carefully tied into knots.

There's a lot of chitter chatter and laughter going on, while we work on the fleece blankets or cut out fabric for more of the book bags. We take a break for lunch... someone makes a pot of soup, and everyone brings a sandwich cut in half.  We put all the sandwiches on a platter and we all take different ones than what we brought.  Someone also brings desserts and we have coffee and tea. 

There is always something to keep everyone busy.

I managed to get eight fabric book bags completed before lunch time. I hope the children that get these enjoy the treats inside and read their books over and over again.  Some of the rural schools up on the reservation land say some of these kids never owned a book of their very own until they get these from our program. They get to take the books home and they are able to get 2 new books for each child every year.  This is in addition to all of the other supplies that are included too. 

Most of the blankets have one side that is brightly colored printed fleece and the other side is usually a coordinating solid color. This one is so cute with the kitty cats scattered all over the front of it.

On my way home, I dropped off some little Valentine's treats to our kids and grandkids. Who wouldn't love a chocolate brownie adorned with a great big Reese's peanut butter heart and little jelly beans? 

With the leftover frosting I made a special treat for my darling Steve. He likes the leftover frosting spread between graham crackers. It was a fond memory of a childhood treat when he was little. His mom would make them for him and his siblings as a snack. On top of each graham cracker sandwich I stuck in extra jelly bean with a dab of frosting!

So that was how we spent our wonderful Valentine's Day together. And the big bed with it's new mattress in place is going to be a wonderful treat to sleep on each night.

Vodeeohdodo!

~~~~~~~~~~~

We finished painting the living room and the dining room as I mentioned in my last blog. I still had some trim paint left over so I decided to give a fresh coat to all of our kitchen cabinet doors.  

The first step is that Steve needs to remove every single door handle and drawer pull so I can neatly roll a new layer of fresh paint over the top surface of the doors.

 

I was not about to paint inside and around every cabinet. Just painting the front surface of the doors where the grimy little handprints land. That's what happens when grandchildren and a certain husband who don't use the handles and drawer pulls. They shut cabinets and drawers with the flat palm of the hand, usually wet or full of food!   LOL  When you have white cabinets, this is kind of a yearly event!

After they dry,

then Steve puts all of the

handles and pulls back on.

I did manage to pick up two little sample jars of two different colors of a soft sage or mossy green color. I chose a lighter tone and a darker tone. I want to get rid of the same beige mauve color that was in the dining room and living room. It's also in our kitchen and the upper portion in our master bathroom.  

So I painted both samples onto this extra hunk of wood and set it up above the beadboard in the kitchen. I think the darker looks better. I was worried the lighter might be too light.

I also set it over on top of the wine cabinet by the coffee bar. I think the darker color harmonizes quite well with the counter-tops. So the winner is the darker color called Mossy Meadow.

During the next few days I will work on one little portion of a wall at a time. Everything will require two coats and some taping off around the cabinetry. But it will be nice to brighten it up and get a fresh color there. Kind of like we're doing spring cleaning before spring has sprung?

But amazingly, all of our snow is melted with this warm weather the last few days. There were a few flakes floating down today but everything on the ground has now melted away. This is so absolutely unusual for February in Wisconsin!

~~~~~~~~~~

On the quilting side, I have been working on this really bright fun multi-colored quilt. I think I'm going to call it something like Summertime Picnic in America or something like that or Picnic in July? It has such fun colors. These are fabrics from The Pioneer Woman series.

I put together 20 large blocks and actually I did 21 by accident. So there's one left over. Then I flip-flopped and switched around and arranged the blocks on my bed until I made sure there were absolutely no two pieces touching that were of the same fabric.

I think it's going to be a really cute quilt, and it will go up for sale later in my Etsy store. So keep tuned in to my blog to see when it is completed if you are interested.

Once I got the quilt all laid out, then I had to mark each 16" section with a number and a letter so I knew the order in which they needed to be joined together. 1a, 1b, 1c, and then 2a, 2b, 2c etc.

Then I take them back down to my sewing desk in the She Shed and work on my cute little antique Singer Featherweight machine. I put together all of the blocks into rows. Then I join the rows into one large quilt top. I will go around with a couple border pieces to set it off with an accent color and make it into a queen size quilt.

See my helper???

Well, that's about it now on my blog today. Just as I was finishing this up the mailman came with a big box for me????

One of my wonderful blog readers by the name of Linda, (you know who you are!) sent this beautiful box full of very interesting historic quilting and needlework books. What a delightful thing to read by the fireplace in the evenings as we finish out the rest of winter and wait for spring.

On a health update,

our family member is doing as well as can be expected, 

and we are doing what we can to help. 

A Romantic Valentine's Fireplace

After twenty-five years, Steve and I have reached the point where we now decide to buy a mutual gift together to celebrate our holidays. Much like at Christmas, when we purchased the tankless water heater, which is something we both wanted. That was our Christmas present to ourselves.

Well, the next holiday coming up is Valentine's Day. There was something we had wanted for the house, and Steve suggested that we consider it our Valentine's Day present to each other! It's not very sexy, but it COULD be.....

In our living room we have a big brick fireplace. We have long ago blocked off the chimney and made sure that it is no longer accessible from outside.We did not want to go through the expense of relining an entire chimney flue for something that we really weren't even going to use.

In the fireplace opening, a while back we placed a natural gas vent-free stand-alone fireplace unit from Charmglow. With the pretty screen in front of it, you really don't even see what is in the fireplace opening. Just the beautiful flames flickering against the curly cues on the brown mesh screen. It's very soothing and relaxing, plus it takes the chill out on a cold morning. It's supplements the central heating and is a comforting and yet practical way while adding ambience to the room.  Here is the pretty screen:

The only problem with the older natural gas fireplace that we had installed is that it was "manual". We had to reach down inside, and reach underneath the back edge to push the igniter or to control the temperature knob settings. We had to reach down below underneath for a switch for the blower.  And reaching way down underneath was achieved by laying on the floor to turn on and off the gas at the main valve. Although it worked, it wasn't all that fun to operate.

Now, to those "purists" to say the only fire is a real wood fire, I beg to differ. We get enough wood fires when we're camping. Keep in mind, our experiences in the past have led us to enjoy a gas log fireplace instead of woodburning type.

I grew up in a home that was heated solely by wood in a big old wood stove. That meant all of us children helping to haul wood, chop wood, stack wood, and keep the fire going at home, around the clock.  This was in the dead of winter in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Stoking the fire every few hours was a necessity, not a pleasure. It was not fun. Plus cleaning out the wood stove, bringing out the ashes, dumping them in the back garden, and then cleaning up the mess is a whole other process that needed to be done.  Cautious use and dangers of a chimney fire were always present in the back of the mind.

After I grew up, and had a home of my own, I had a wood burning fireplace. It was not the main source of heat, but it was nice to have on cold winter nights.  Again it meant hauling firewood, starting fires, keeping it going and not being able to close off the damper until the fire went out. That meant sucking the room heat back OUT of the room and have it go up the chimney before the fire was completely out. That was not fun. And did I mention cleaning up the ashes?  There was always the issue of bugs coming in the house with the firewood. Having to clean up the soot every once in a while because smoke would puff back into the room when it was windy. I would have soot on the bricks, the wall, the mantle, etc. Not fun.

When we built our log house out on the river, again we had a wood burning fireplace. Then again the same stuff of hauling in wood, maintaining the fire and cleaning it up afterwards. Steve did most of that, and it was not fun.

After 50+ years of this, I think our days of messing with the real woodburning log fireplaces are done. 

When we moved to the house in Chilton, we had a faux electric fireplace. We installed a natural gas log fireplace kit into the opening.  From then on we really appreciated the ease of having natural gas logs instead of a real wood burning fireplace! 

When we bought the house here in Oconto, we knew that there was was a real wood burning fireplace but the chimney was of questionable quality. Sooo blocking it off and putting in a gas log unit made the most sense for us. Even if it wasn't the easiest to use, we were glad to have something in the opening.  We also have a nice gas log unit down in the She Shed that we use during fall, winter and spring to heat the space.  Although they have electric blowers to help move the heat, both of the fireplaces can operate without any electrical power if need be. Perfect solution in a power outage due to storm or other mishap, our pipes won't freeze and we wouldn't have to leave our home.

Steve's Valentine gift suggestion was to replace it with another similar fireplace, but this time with a remote control! That's just what we did. We ordered it from our local Tractor Supply Company that had it shipped directly to the store a couple miles away from us. We did a curbside pickup where they carted it right out the door to our waiting vehicle.

So here we are, posing with our new Valentine's Day gift to each other. We are finally feeling about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way better from last week's sickness that we could finally get up some energy and decided to start the installation.  Not too bad for a couple of sickos?

Here is the older fireplace fully operating with pretty flames flickering. Once the installation of the new one is done, we will sell the old one on Marketplace. Somebody else will be able to use it. Our decorative screen is removed to take a good pic to sell it.

Yesterday, Steve opened up the box and started assembling the new fireplace. He was mounting the legs on and we were reading through the directions. Imagine that, a man reading directions? The old one is pulled forward out of the fireplace opening, so we could start disassembling that one at the same time.

He worked on it for a while and then we decided to take a break. He had all the tools assembled and ready to go. We vacuumed out the fireplace opening before installing the new one. Then we kind of ran out of energy. So it sat like this in the living room overnight. Nobody says we have to rush rush rush and get it done in one day. Although, when we were both feeling better, that's exactly what we would have done.

Bright and early this morning, Steve was feeling better, so we decided to tackle the rest of the installation. Step-by-step--- everything was correctly switched over, the new blower unit installed, and the settings all correctly adjusted for the space.

One of the best features on this new unit, which is made by ProCom instead of Charmglow, is that the controls are right up front underneath a little flap door. This is similar to the one that we have down in the she shed. It makes the controls much more accessible than the other one that we had.

Now it was time

 to put the pretty fireplace screen 

back in front of the unit. 

Once this is on, all I want is some nice flickering flames and warmth and heat coming into the room. Plus now having a remote control is great to handle it all.  P.S. I got the screen from Wayfair last year.

We'll look at that. It fits perfectly in the same spot it did before and you really don't notice anything has changed at all in the room. But we know now with a flick of the remote, we can be enjoying the flames and heat and warmth of the new fireplace, just much easier than before.  

No wood to haul.

No bugs.

 No ashes.

No soot. 

We toasted to our new gift to each other,

a few days early for Valentines.

~~~~~~~~~

Since I had so much energy today and I've been recouping from being ill, I decided to get out my grandmother's big old Singer sewing machine and set it up on the desk in the office. Of my five sewing machines, this is the only one that will sew through a triple folded hem on my hand-woven rugs.

It was nice to sit at the desk with the beautiful blooms over my shoulder from the amaryllis plant. I'm now enjoying four large stalks full of blooms and more to come. One website I read said the blooms can last from 30 to 60 days! 

I fold over the hems twice and clip them into place so I am sewing through three layers of woven header material. It's nice at the desk to have all this space to move the rug around while I sew on the hems. I used to do this on the dining room table and had to move everything out of the way.  Since I repurposed these two end tables into a desk for the office, it's made a nice area to set up the sewing machine for the occasional times I need to hem a rug or two or three...

This machine from 1942 just goes and goes and goes

a real work horse.

The weather outside has warmed up nicely and we were almost to 40 degrees today. 40 and February in Wisconsin is a pretty nice day. 

For supper we were actually grilling outside because it's so nice and warm. Of course, we ate inside. Our appetites are coming back and we enjoyed some freshly grilled hamburgers tonight.

We don't need to be fancy,

just comfortable.