Kitchen Aid Mixer Old But Still Working... Like Me

 

Years ago...perhaps fifty...at least forty five... my Mom was baking and decorating wedding cakes for family and close friends.  She bought this Kitchen Aid mixer to make her life easier.  I'm sure that it was quite a financial stretch for the family budget.  We had eight children in the house then so in addition to all the wedding cakes and frosting this mixer was used daily to turn out big batches of cookies as well as pancakes, mashed potatoes and all the other things that you would use a mixer for.  Mom didn't buy things ready made.  Everything was made from scratch and batches were always doubled or tripled.  This mixer made our lives so much easier.

Perhaps twenty years ago. thinking that this one had become to cumbersome for her, we bought  a new mixer.  It was a different brand and smaller.  The Kitchen Aid came to live at my house because we had four children plus another six day care kids.  I also baked from scratch and used the mixer daily.  During that time Mom missed her big mixer and so bought another Kitchen Aid.

The clip that locks in the bowl has broken so now when I run it I hear a clickety click as it spins.  One wire just broke on the whisk attachment  but it still whips.  It has developed a rust spot on the base but it doesn't affect the food so I keep using it.  I am tempted from time to time to replace this dinosaur especially when I see the pretty colors now available.  I am reminded of myself with a few creaks and groans and some age spots but still strong enough to keep on working.  Kudos to the Kitchen Aid company for making a product of such great quality.

 



A Broken Hip....Some Cooky Medicine

 

Several years ago we became acquainted with a really nice lady and we just found out that she took a little tumble and broke her hip.  So we decorated some cookies and sent them off to her in Indianna.   We are hoping that Peg recovers quickly and that we'll see her at another Habitat Build very soon.



The Benefits Of A Nice Climate

 

 

We are really enjoying the weather in Florida.  It's so nice to have fresh fruits and veggies from the farm stands when it's still snowing in the north.  Yesterday Tom and I visited a large Market that sells to area restaurants as well as the general public.  We picked up two cases of beautiful Ruskin tomatoes, a case of zucchini, a case of red bell peppers and a bag of sweet strawberry onions.  All for $28.00.  When we got home I started canning and we ended up with seven quarts of crushed tomatoes and twenty five quarts of an Italian style blend.  I also have a gallon of sauce simmering on the stove that will be canned up in pint containers.  It's so nice to have a kitchen big enough to do these things again. 

Forty Three Years!

 

Yesterday we celebrated our forty third wedding anniversary.  The years have flown by faster than I ever could have imagined.  Looking back, I chose well.  Through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer and all the rest we have hung in there.  Our  lives are richer for having made that commitment all those years ago.



Seven Habitat For Humanity Quilt Tops

When we first started doing Habitat Care A Vanner builds in Dade City, Florida I met a great lady who belongs to the East Pasco Quilt Guild.  Glenda and this guild make and present a quilt to every new home owner.  This chapter of HFH is pretty busy and so that means this group of quilters has to be pretty busy in order to keep up.  I joined this group because I liked the fact that they are service oriented and I have made some very nice new friends.  We'll be leaving here in a month and I won't be around to do my share of the summer sewing so I sewed like crazy these past two weeks and have gotten seven quilt tops ready to go to the machine quilter.   Three of them were already together and someone else assembled the houses.  My job was to add borders to the houses, true them up and then assemble twenty four house blocks into a quilt top.  Next I added the three borders to the outside of each of the quilts. 

 

Seven quilt tops that will soon grace a bed in new HFH family homes. 

 

I love the details that make these quilts so special.  I love that I can play a small part in this process.



Easter Sunday

 

 

 

Easter Sunday we had family and friends over for dinner.  We set the table on the lanai with the tablecloth Tom's mom crocheted for me years ago.  We added some prettily folded napkins, flowers and eggs.  That made the table pretty but the company was what made the day memorable.

I hope your day was special too.



Two Days Until Easter....

 

Two of the grands are here today.  We picked them up last night for a sleep over.  They had us up at 7 am.  Most mornings we are up by 7 anyway but today was that day where we could have kept right on sleeping. 

We had breakfast and went to the neighborhood park for a walk and some playground time.  Then we stopped at the store for some groceries before heading home to color eggs.

After lunch we decorated cupcakes for Easter by turning them into little nests.

Here are the eggs we dyed.  We tried adding oil to the dye bath and that created stippled and spotted eggs.  Rubber bands around the eggs gave us another neat effect.  We also wrapped some eggs in jersey fabric with leaves pressed against the egg.  Those were dyed and the leaves showed up as relief on the eggs.

It's spring here in Florida and the Sand Hill Cranes are busy teaching the chicks how to live.  They are cute little critters.