A Quiet Valentine's Day Dinner

I hope you all had a wonderful and romantic Valentine's Day! I am finally back home from almost 2 months of spending time with the ever growing grandkids but I am still in a daze, not from the trip but from coming home and walking into a war zone! Yep, I guess 2 months of being away and leaving a man alone will do that to your house. But that is another story. I am sorry if I have not visited you yet but I have been cleaning non stop until my back cannot take it anymore. I thought I would take a break and post my tablescape, which I did while on a break too.

John and I had a quiet dinner at home. I did a quick dinner fix cause I was too tired to go out and too tired to cook something fancy. I had a frozen chicken stuffed with boudin in the freezer, which I bought from a Cajun market before I left for Florida, so I baked that and cooked some corn. Our fridge is empty. John throws everything out when I am away for a prolonged time and I have not had time to go grocery shopping, Luckily, one of  his patients gave him a bag of sweet potatoes so I baked some of that too. And good thing he left the freezer alone, one of the few places that he did not touch in the house. He probably would have if I extended my absence for another week.

For my place setting, I started with a basket weaved hot pink heart shaped placemats that I bought from HG in Fort Myers and the pale pink salad plates, also from there. The pierced plate charger came from Ebay, one of a few packages that came in while I was gone. Did I say few? LOL! I will tell you more about that later. They are made in Portugal. The dinner plates, I have had for a while. They were just convenient for me to use cause they were in a bin that was sitting on the kitchen floor. Nope! I have not unpacked the dishes that I stored in bins before my trip, to prepare for the replacement of our floors, which by the way is 95% all done. I will show you a room on Monday for MM.

 I could not decide which napkin holder to use so I used both, a brass with pierced heart and pink and red beaded ones. I also bought the "love" napkins form HG.

 John gave me this teddy bear for Valentine. Last year, he overwhelmed me with presents. This year, I got this precious teddy and overwhelming packages that I picked myself. He did not buy them but he is paying for them, ha!ha!

 Do you see the jar with tulle and a bow with a rose in the foreground? I made those for my stepdaughter's wedding favors. The jars are filled with honey. I kept 2 of them.

 And here is the table without the food. I set it for 4 even though it was just the 2 of us who ate.

While I was gone, I went on an uncontrollable shopping spree on line. John moved all the boxes to the kids' guest room because there was no room left in the living room and foyer. We hired someone to help me open and empty the boxes for 2 days and here are some of the empty boxes, just so you would know what I meant by overwhelming, lol. I couldn't even get all the boxes in the picture and if you look closely, smaller boxes are piled up in bigger ones to make room.

Thank you so much for stopping by. I will try to visit soon. I am probably 50% done in putting stuff  away but I stilll have to work on putting dishes back in china cabinets. It is a lot of work but the floors turned out beautifully.

I am linking with Bunny Jean for Bunny Hop Wednesday at    http://bunnyjeansdecorandmore.blogspot.com/

Susan for Tablescape Thursday at http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com

Sherry's Home Sweet Home Fri at http://thecharmofhome.blogspot.com

Sherry's Open House Party Thursday at http://nominimalisthere.blogspot.com/
Kathy's Home and Garden Thursday at http://blissfulrhythm.blogspot.com/

Honey's Potpourri Friday at http://twenty-eight-0-five.blogspot.com/

Gollum's Foodie Friday at http://www.designsbygollum.blogspot.com/

Thank you so much for hosting!

I hope you get to visit these gracious ladies.

Laurie's Valentine Party

I have been away from home since Dec. 18th so I won't be able to post any Valentine home decor or tablescape, which is what I usually post for Laurie's Valentine Party. Valentine's Day is all about love and the reason I am away from home is for the love of my family. My 2 daughters just had babies and I came to Florida to help them with the babies. It's just unfortunate that my DH could not join me because he has been very busy at work. He has been so understanding and patient and I am so grateful to him for allowing me to  be away for such a long time. Anyway, I am sharing a family love with you.

Before I go on, I would like to encourage you to visit Laurie and her participants also at http://bargainhuntingwithlaurie.blogspot.com/ and pass the love around.

Our oldest grandkid is AJ and she is 13. She just had twin sisters, Rea and Halle, last month and you can tell that she is crazy about them.

In addition to the twins, we had another granddaughter, Reese, born the day after Christmas. Here you will see her with the twins. The bottom picture shows all of them including the boys, Brendan and Nathan. We do have other grandkids, 3 more boys and 1 girl, but they live in other cities and I did not stay with them so I was unable to take their pictures.

Here is Reese, I stayed to help take care of her for a few weeks before the twins were born and
 I got to play dress up with her before I left. Don't you just love her wink?

Here are the twins again.

I took some various heart pictures while shopping at Homegoods. I bought some of those lacy pale pink salad plates at the bottom left photo.

 I want to thank you all for stopping by. I will be flying home while this party is going on so  I might be late in visiting you. I hope you don't mind my tardiness but I promise, I will try to catch up.

I am also linking with Honey's Potpourri Friday at http://twenty-eight-0-five.blogspot.com/

Beverly's Pink Saturday at http://howsweetthesound.typepad.com/

Sarah's Homemaking Link Up Party at http://bloggingwhilewaiting.blogspot.com/

The Tablescaper's Seasonal Sunday at http://thetablescaper.blogspot.com/

Happy Valentine's Day!

I will miss all the babies but I have to go home to tend to our home, which looks like a war zone right now.

Wish I could put them in my suitcase to take them home with me.

Thanks Laurie, Honey, Beverly, Sarah and the Tablescaper for hosting!

Buckingham Park

Before I left Fort Myers, my son in law took all of us to his football game. There is a playground next to the park and he thought we can have the kids play. He was right cause the boys had a great time playing. I even had fun watching them.

Of course I had to take pictures of palm trees along the way, lol.

I love the man made rocks

Even Baby Reese had a chance to go out and got some sun.

Tina who used to compete in gymnastics had fun swinging on the bars. Did you know she used to be a state champion and she EVEN performed on the Super Bowl XXV Half Time show.

We could watch Scott play from the playground. He is the tallest one wearing a green shirt and red shorts.

Beautiful blue skies! Brendan enjoyed climbing this rock.

See what I mean?

But Nathan was very cautious. He wouldn't climb even with my assistance. 

We spotted this blimp on our way home.

Aaaah! It was advertising for Direct TV.

It seemed to have followed us all the way home.

I am linking with Susan's Outdoor Wednesday at http://asoutherndaydreamer.blogspot.com/

Bunny Jean's Bunny Hop Wednesday at http://bunnyjeansdecorandmore.blogspot.com/

The Tablescaper's Seasonal Sunday at http://thetablescaper.blogspot.com/

Sally's Blue Monday at http://smilingsally.blogspot.com/
Mellow Yellow Monday at http://mellowyellowmonday.blogspot.com/


Thank you ladies, for hosting these fun memes.
And thank you all for stopping by, I am always happy to hear from you.

My Secret Garden Oasis

I am missing my home and garden. I have been away since Dec. 18th, so I thought I would revisit my garden oasis and link with Kathy's Home and Garden Thursday at http://blissfulrhythm.blogspot.com/. I a also linking with Sarah's Homemaking Link Up Weekend at http://bloggingwhilewaiting.blogspot.com/ and Chari's Sunday Favorites at http://happytodesign.blogspot.com/ . You should go visit them for some inspiration.
I can't wait to start working in the garden again. I hope you don't mind me reposting this. This was originally published in the spring of 2011.
*****************

Last Wed. was probably the busiest day of my life. I don't think I've ever worked so hard in my whole life. At the end of the day when I finally was ready to rest, I sat down in front of my computer (it's my way of relaxing) and I started trembling from exhaustion. I could not even get up to take a shower. I sat there for a long while until I was a little rested and then I was back to my normal activities.

Let me enumerate everything I did. I got up in the morning and as usual, made my coffee and just grabbed a muffin and sat out on the pool deck just enjoying the surrounding and the peace and quiet.
After a while, I got my mom up, fixed her oatmeal and hot chocolate and sat her by the pool to eat. She likes her oatmeal with lots of milk and I usually sprinkle a little bit of cinnamon, since I read that it lowers Triglycerides.

Then I refilled the bird feeders around the gazebo. I don't know why those birds are always hungry. They always empty the feeders so fast when I feed them all the time!

Then I took a garden walk. The grapes are growing well. No chance on the strawberries though. The chipmunks eat them before they could get big.

Then, the delivery came for the arbor. If you follow my blog, you might have seen when I posted about it. I wasn't sure yet that we would buy it then cause I did not know if I had room for it in the garden. But I figured out a place for it if I moved some garden structures around. So I called the owner and had it delivered and here it is being set up. There was an iron swing there that I asked the delivery people to move for me. You will see it in the lower photos

These are the "Before" pictures.

I moved the table to the left side to make room for the delivery people to place the swing where I wanted it moved. And I actually liked how the table and chairs look there so I decided to leave them there.
I originally planned to put it on the other side of the yard (see picture at the bottom of the mosaic below) in the corner next to the fence and move the bench to the left. But that did not happen.
I painted the candelier that we bought from the same garden shop where we bought the arbor.

There's the arbor, all set up. I still have to lay more bricks under the benches.

I laid brick flooring under the bar height table and 2 stools but we ran out of bricks so had to buy more.

See those grassy edgers? I dug out a lot of them and moved them to other places. They were just over growing and over crowding that area.
We also bought this angel. I like how she is looking up praying. Since this area is low and the deck is way up, it's nice to see her looking at you when you are up there.
Do you see her by the tree on the left?

This is where the swing was moved to. The cushion was very dirty and is a little longer than the seat so I took it apart, bought a water proof material from Walmart, cut the padding to size and sewed the cover.
I also moved the other iron bench to the left of the swing and the glass tables to create a little grouping.

This is what you see if you are sitting down there.

See the cushion on the swing now? It is clean and sized to fit. I planted the hydrangea to the right of the stone bunny rocker.

I laid more bricks under and around the table.

Those bricks are heavy. John would lay them on the deck and I had to climb up and down and carry them 4 at a time and then lay them on the ground.

I hang the candelier. I could not find any cushions to fit the 2 benches. I went to several stores with no luck so when I saw 2 cushions for chairs at a good price ($14 each) in a discounted store, Fred's, I bought 2 of them. I stayed up till 2:30 AM ripping the cushions apart so I could cut them to size and then resewed them. They worked pretty well so even after needle pricks here and there, I was pretty happy.

I added throw pillows

I bought these stepping stones from the same garden shop in St. Francisville. I think I will stain them a terracotta color eventually. For now, I am going to rest.

How do you like my dragonfly tea light candle holder?

Now that my secret garden metamorphosis is all done, it's time to party! John invited a few couples for an outdoor barbecue on Saturday (today) and I am getting the tables ready.
Thanks a lot for viewing my many pictures. Whew! I am just so glad that project is done and I am loving the outcome. John and I would go to the end of the deck and just stare down where the secret garden is and admire it.

I have worked so hard on this project that I just want to have some fun now, so I am going to join a lot of parties and be a party animal, lol.

Thanks for hosting, Kathy, Sarah and Chari!