Another cold, wintery February day. We’ve had more than our share lately, having gotten spoiled the last few years with mild winters. We were threatened with ice this morning, so yesterday I decided it would be a good day to stay home from work. I had an ulterior motive – to be at home all day and get things ready for the Valentine Tea I’m helping to host at our church this Sunday afternoon.
Normally I would do most of the work on Saturday, but I have to attend the annual Deacon’s meeting which will last most of the day, and it’s about a 45 mile drive one way. The aforesaid winter weather postponed it from earlier in January, and I don’t know why they didn’t take my personal plans into account, haha.
I tend to get off track if I have a large amount of tasks to do (or sit around on the computer playing games or scrolling through Facebook), so I made myself a nice list this morning and got to it after a breakfast of oatmeal and hot tea. I baked four small lemon tea cakes and got them in the freezer. I’ll take them out on Saturday and probably ice them that evening. I also decided to trim the crusts from three big loaves of bread that I’ll be using for egg salad tea sandwiches, and a small plate of peanut butter/grape jelly sandwiches for the little girls who will attend. I saved the crusts in a bag for birds outside….they go through a lot of sunflower seeds and cracked corn, so they can have some bread crusts too! Storage space at church is always a problem for our tablecloths. Every time you need to use the cloths, they’re a wrinkled mess so I brought them home and ran them through a rinse/spin cycle, then tossed them in the dryer, one by one. They came out as smooth as if I’d ironed them, and I have them suspended from hangers, ready to go for Sunday. I also put together some “fabulous door prizes”. One of my co-hostesses picked up eight clear glass heart-shaped trinket boxes from various thrift stores. I’ve had eight paper gift boxes from Hallmark (also bought from a thrift store years ago, and sitting in a drawer just waiting for a function), so I lined each one with red or pink tissue, added a little trinket box, a tiny red packet of Lindor truffles, and a few Hershey’s kisses. The tops of the boxes themselves link together with little heart-shaped tabs covered in pink roses, so they’ll be perfect as centerpieces and serve as door prizes.
I’m especially tickled with another decoration I’m planning. I love vintage anything, and last year for Christmas a friend mailed me a packet of very old children’s Valentine cards that she found at an auction. I purchased tiny red, pink, and white wooden clothespins at Michael’s and will use them to clip the cards to a red ribbon “clothesline” across a big mirror in the room, and drape some pink tulle from the mirror too. I have the door prizes, the Valentines, and various other small decorations and bags of candy packed up to take down to church this Friday, when I’ll get our sexton to set up all the tables, and I’ll help him carry chairs into the room too. We don’t have a church hall “persay”, but instead our parish house really IS an old Victorian style house, and one large living room area has to “do” for all our functions (whether they fit there or not!). It’s a challenge sometimes to make things work, but somehow they always do.
Did a few other mundane tasks today too, like wiping out all the refrigerator shelves and bagging snacks for my husband’s lunches, as well as running the dishwasher. Now I’m writing a diary entry and the cat is sitting next to me on the couch. I have an apple pie cooking the crockpot, and I’m anxious to see how it turns out. We’ll have some venison steaks for dinner, and I’m not sure yet what side dishes.
This marks the third online diary I’ve started, on the third website. The first was many years ago on Third Age, then I had one for a long time on Open Diary. I made many dear friends through my diaries, but the first was a woman named Sally who passed away in 2011. Third Age had a very small journal community, and we liked to fancy ourselves the renegades in the bunch, because we never wanted to listen to the group leader. Bless his heart, he had very definite thoughts about what should be in journals, and Sally took great pains to go against him. Our mottos were, “If you can’t be profound, then at least be prolific!” And, “If you don’t know what to write about, then just tell what you had for dinner.”
I haven’t said anything profound so far, this entry is fairly prolific, and I’ve told what I’m going to have for dinner. Sally, I’d say I’ve made a good start.
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