Church Yard Tree

These pictures are of one of the beautiful trees in the nearby church yard. I'm not much of a photographer but I do like the way these turned out.

Saturday was for the dogs!

Beth, Olivia and I walked over to Main Street for the 3rd annual Beacon Barksparade. We sought out the shady side of the street and watched as hundreds of dogs paraded by...all sizes, from the teensiest new baby pugs to some super sized English mastiffs. Some came dressed up too.




Check out this little video from our local papers coverage of the parade. We ended up at the "tail" end of it.



When we upload our own pictures to the computer, I'll post a few more that have Olivia in them.

Spring!!!

Well, Spring has sprung here in NY. Finally!! We were scraping ice off the windshields just a bit over a week ago, had a few Spring like days, then got hit with a blast of August weather(in the 90's) and today we are back to early Spring! Between yesterday and today the temp dropped almost 30 degrees!! Can you believe that?!?! Many of the trees have bloomed and the leaves are appearing. Yesterday, at work, the maintenance director cut a bouquet of lilacs from the back of the property and put them on the front desk where I sit. Oh the fragrance! It takes me back to when I was a little girl and we visited the Lilac Festival in Rochester, NY with my great-grandfather. My memory is of course the fragrance, but also of Great Grandpa John and I walking hand in hand, with me in my little dress and GG wearing his suit and fedora. I love lilacs!!

Creating the illusion of an hour-glass figure

I went to this class tonight at a local library. The woman had many helpful hints on the subject of the art of dressing successfully/creating the illusion of an hour-glass figure. We had her for an hour and wished it could have been more! She does do 2 hour seminars at her dress shop and as you see on her website she offers other ways to help a poor soul like me. Leslie, she is sending me the phone numbers for 2 different local women who do what we were considering going to NYC to have done! I think I'm going to stop at her shop and pick her brain. She encouraged us all to do that. She'll even pick out 1 or 2 items that will work for us and show us how to use them. She doesn't even expect us to buy from her if we don't want to. She just wants women to use her help to dress better and in turn, have more confidence in how they look. I know, I'll take any help I can get.

I had a hankering for....

STUFFED PEPPERS!!! I made these for the girls and I the other night. Adams' had all kinds of peppers on sale, 99 cents a lb. I couldn't resist. I love stuffed peppers. I made them first way back in the early days of our marriage. The other day I thought back to that time and wondered why I made them because as we know, Dad does not eat peppers. Because of his dislike for peppers, I had to make something different for Dad. He got his favorite, a cheeseburger with fried onions. Leslie, when I found the recipe for the granola(in Gram's recipe box of all places!!)I also came across the pepper recipe I made many years ago(in the same recipe box. I don' know how she came to have my "oldies but goodies" recipes) I'll probably make them again and make it a blast from the past.

???Listen to the video clue!!!

If you look close, you will see the red, red robins bobbin along the backyard at work today! I actually saw many more of them yesterday(rough estimate--50) during my morning break and they were only 8-10 feet away from the window. Today, they showed up at lunch. I made sure to bring the camera so I could get a few pictures. Unfortunately, they didn't come as close. I had to stand on the chair to take pictures so the screen wouldn't be in the way. People thought I was nuts of course. In the lamppost picture you'll see one on the table and two right above it in the tree. The other picture has one on the ground. You might have to increase the pictures to see them.

All of us together--4 Generations

We managed to get a pretty good pic of all 5 of us before Olivia let us know she had had enough. I'm so glad Beth, Olivia and I were able to make the trip back home and have these pictures taken. Thank you Deb(sister) for being the photographer.