Tag: Brewery

Fall Peak Weekend, Presidential Winner, Baby Shower, and a Big Night Out

On By BackporchwriterIn Uncategorized6 Comments

What an absolute joy of a weekend. The temps were perfect. I could not stop taking pics. So many years the beauty has not been as vivid and just dried up, but this year we had more color and I had more time to enjoy and bask in its beauty. Above was the scene while ironing. Always love looking into the woods while ironing.

The kitchen view of course had color.

The sun room was gorgeous! And the doors were kept open to the sunroom since the temps were mild.

A Winner has been “CHOSEN”?

While posting pics I saw that Biden had been called has the winner of the presidential election. I posted a statement in Facebook that it wasn’t my candidate but that regardless I had BIG BIG expectations from Mr. Biden to protect our rights as citizens and not let our country go to pot, as it already has and that he has some big tasks ahead to reverse it. I really just want to live in a safe place, have appropriate rights as a person, and for everyone to love one another. Even though he is not my candidate, I will hope and pray for him and will still expect for my rights as a US Citizen to be met and to not have any further hardships as a country. He has a lot on his shoulders and I hope he is up to it. Of course as soon as I posted it – my friends started commenting and attacking one another on the post. And telling me not to get ahead of myself. I stayed out of it. Even when you say something nice and have good intentions people attack it on Facebook. I’ve come so close to just deleting the entire account a few times. But it holds so many memories and photos on there, that I hate to. Plus I don’t want to lose contact with friends.

I was told it wasn’t over yet. It’s not. They are still counting. Yes anything can happen. Still, I can post what I want. I don’t know who to trust and who to believe but I remember what it was like in HR and you did an investigation and the mud slinging started and anything and everything started coming out – true or speculated. So glad I don’t have to deal with that stuff anymore and this reminds me of those days. I just try to ignore it because you don’t really know what is fact or fiction as I sit in my little house in Mount Juliet.

So I’ve not looked at the news this morning. But as of now, as far as I know, Mr. Biden, “Tag, Your It” and we will see what you can do in those shoes. I expect much of you as I would any leader! I will still expect the same from you as I did Trump. I was not a fan of Trump’s arrogance and tweets, but he seemed the best candidate in my opinion that matched where I wanted the country to be. I think those traits really hurt him in the presidency. I’m not sure any candidate can adequately run our country to tell the truth. Our country is mainly changing because of the people in it and their attitudes and corruption. So if anyone can solve those issues and keep us our rights, more power to you literally! I will pray that the Lord moves through you!

Katy’s Virtual Baby Shower

Saturday morning we had time to leisurely work on household projects, laundry, some planning, and getting ready for the week ahead. We were in Gallatin, TN by 1:00 p.m. for Katy’s virtual shower.

My SIL Susan had some little snacks sitting out.

What great fun!

We then hung out for a while after saying our good bye’s virtually and we headed to Madison to the new Yahoo Brewery there. We had plans to celebrate Susan’s birthday.

Everyone nearly was outside. And why not – lots of spread out tables and seating and the weather beautiful and deer grazing nearby.

George, Kevin, and Susan. And I did my best to get a selfie with ALL of us. I’m not good at that.

Afterwards we went to have a nice meal at Lincoya restaurant in Hendersonville. We shared a poutine dish which was OUT OF THIS WORLD!

Poutine is fries, gravy, cheese curds, and onion straws. It also had bits of roast beef in there. They had so many nice things on the menu that it was hard to decide. So when Susan said she was getting a burger I let me eyes wander over to that side of the menu. And I liked what I saw and could get my salad too! And as it turned out. I think it was the best burger around, possibly the best one I’ve ever had. I was hungry and it was snarfed down in a hurry! No fries. We already had them under the poutine! I needed the salad!

We sat by a most unusual clock. Susan said it was previously owned by Conway Twitty. The restaurant we ate at used to be Mallard’s. I will want to go back here. I really liked it.

We came home and slept well and then had a big day Sunday at home. Once again the leaves falling got my attention as we had some wind gusts mid-day. This is looking out my office window.

More of the sun room. I told ya I couldn’t quit taking pics.

Big Day of Shopping Online

George and I gave Alexa a lot of ingredients for our shopping list for Thanksgiving. We will go ahead and get what we need for the meal this week. George secured the Smoked Turkey from Aldi. And I sat down and began ordering things. George’s, Momma’s, Aunt Martha’s, some for Katy. George will have to help me with the men, and he always does. But we are in good shape.

Christmas plans are also coming together sortof. So I am feeling good about our weekend progress. I stripped the guest bedroom sheets and washed them so I will shift some focus onto the cleaning – as there are things that need to be dusted and cobwebs in the corners and such. I did get our blue linoleum floors mopped yesterday – except the part where Maisy was sleeping. LOL With each mop stroke, I dreamed of my new flooring – coming soon!

And now I need to go get a second cup of coffee and get to work. Oh, I painted my nails which needed it. It won’t last but 3 days. I need to get a top coat I guess. I just cut them all short as my attempt to grow them is not working right now. I really miss getting them done but I am wanting to use that money toward my monthly subscriptions I have – in support of my hobbies. So when I look at my nails I remember how much I love making the imovies. However, I did not have time to work on the current one in progress due to the HOLIDAY HOOPLA and events we have had planned but I keep making some more footage so we’ll have a lot to do going forward.

I am trying to remember to video more as life happens. But not very good at that in public yet. I also have noticed my iphone getting slow. I deleted a lot of old video footage from it Saturday while we were traveling in the car and that helped. The goal is to keep getting better on every level. I am going to start working on my 2021 plans soon. Looking forward to that. In the mean time we stay focused on the holidays to try and make it special for everyone as it’s different this year.

Here’s my 2021 goals so far! LOL. Don’t worry it’ll be filled up soon. January is Grandbaby Month and February is Flooring and Hibernation Month. That is all I have so far. Ok off to more coffee! See ya mid week or as I have something to say!

Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom on Pexels.com

Retirement Ahead, Anniversary Outings, and Today’s To Do’s

On By BackporchwriterIn Food, Nashville, Restaurants4 Comments

Ahhhh, it’s been two days of no blogging but it feels like a half of a century!

Friday we went to our financial meeting in Hendersonville. I always enjoy going to these as I learn so much and it’s interesting to me. Financial subjects have always intrigued me but also has intimidated me as the terms and the concepts can get away from you really fast. I always had an interest in everything financial – just like I do science, but both topics took a back seat to everything else in life. George began doing our finances as he asked to do so when we got to together. We have come a long way since then. And we are set to retire in just 4 years now, Lord willing.

The pic above is our coming back from our meeting, but after our dinner at Casa Vieja in Hendersonville. Was a really nice evening as a cool breeze and fall weather has begun, so we sat very comfortably out on their patio.

It was nice going home and realizing that we had 2 days off.

Saturday, The dogs had to be at their groomer at 8:00 a.m. And George and I dropped them off and went to the store for a few things for the crab boil we are having tonight. Fun to see fall coming together.

We went the back way to check out another store close to us and found something interesting and disgusting. I guess whatever was in the trash at the Thai restaurant was totally calling in the vultures. Interesting isn’t it?

There were SO many more than this. Like 3 times more. You should have seen them take flight when we came through. I’ve added a video here of the vultures but may come back and take it out because it doesn’t appear to be working too well. In case it doesn’t work and I forget……..If you see it – then we are lucky. If you don’t – you know that WordPress failed at being able to show it. This feature has been iffy in the past if you don’t put it on YouTube or Vimeo. Right now as I’m in draft mode, it looks black and says “loading”. So no guarantees.

When we got home yesterday from the store, I worked in the house some, fixed us egg sandwiches for breakfast, started laundry – mainly my normal routine. I did catch up watching a lot of the YouTubes I watch throughout the day here and there – mainly while eating – lol since I am sitting anyway.

We did a bit of meal planning for the week.

One of my favorite things is to dip food into Catalina Dressing. I tried to pick one that wasn’t too sugary and had the best oils in it. I’m sure it’s not the healthiest of dressing choices but it’s better than most. I enjoyed this snack and it made a perfect lunch yesterday.

We picked the dogs up from their trim. They came home and snoozed to recover from the excitement of getting baths and poked and prodded. We hear Roger is not fond of getting his paws done. With no teeth, when he tries to bite, he only gums you. lol. Bless him.

Miss Maisy
Mr. Roger

They look sharp after their trims. I really like Maisy with her butterfly ears but we get them trimmed back as they grow pretty fast. She looks like a boy til it grows back. But we know that she is our dainty little Maisy so no gender confusion there! lol

We have kept the sunroom open! Not many times in the year that can happen as no heat/no air makes for a very hot or cold room.

Later on we headed over to HomeGrown Tap Room. Wow it’s been a long time. Hardly anyone there. Everyone wearing masks when moving around, waitresses and waiters wearing masks, and hand sanitizer on every table. I wasn’t as impressed with the beer selections. None of my favorites were there but they did have an IPA I liked.

We didn’t really NEED food, but we had bacon pop corn. NOT your healthy pop corn here. We sure knocked it down.

We discussed Christmas plans a little bit. That is always fun. We used to budget as we had a lot to buy for. There is not as many to buy for these days so we nixed the budgeting.

Later we headed over to our dinner reservations at Hermitage Steakhouse. We were unsure how they would handle the salad bar, or if there would even be one. No one was allowed to do their own. There was one lady, wearing a mask that completed all the salad bar entries. Their salad bar keeps people coming. Well as does their steaks. I don’t think I’ve EVER had a better steak!

We swapped our anniversary cards at the table. A side perk to this is that every time, we end up getting a free dessert. It’s always fun to see if we do each year. This year was an excellent one.

I am not sure how this menu turned out so pink. I guess it was the glow of the light through the wine bottle. But look at these choices of desserts. I mean how could one decide?

It’s torture to pick from those as ALL were my favorites. George, not a big dessert person, usually lets me pick. I picked…..drum rolllllllllll……………….

Our waitress was cute and sweet. She was learning. She had never uncorked a wine bottle and George showed her how. She blocked her managers view so she wouldn’t be thought less of I guess. And when we ordered dessert, she was really pushing the chocolate cake. I ordered Bananas foster and she said “I’ve only made this once”. So I know she had hoped we ordered something else, but she did great. I wasn’t going to take a pic as I didn’t want her to feel “watched”. But George encouraged it. I missed the big flambay though by the time I actually hit the button to take the pic. You can see a little of it.

The restaurant is so nice and elegant with white table cloths. And a log cabin interior. I took pics after the people in the seats next to us left.

So you can imagine how stuffed we were? I realized later while looking at other tables, they had forgotten to bring us bread, but I was so glad they did. After all we ate yesterday and also this meal of salad, and loaded baked potato, a steak and then bananas foster which had an entire banana and 3 scoops of ice cream as well as sugar and other ingredients. Oh my gosh! But we left nada! NOTHING!

We were absolutely miserable by the time we left the restaurant and remained so through the night. We were going to watch a show but for me a food coma had set in. I went to bed. I had to eat a Rolaid at 1:30 a.m. and drink water. Wow, it was so good though. Every bit of it.

We are trying not to eat anything today until our crab boil. I think I may mix up one of my cleanse drinks. LOL

So today’s agenda:

  • Devo
  • Laundry
  • Change sheets
  • Iron
  • Work in my office which includes below
  • Carpet places research
  • Cleaning the office
  • Prepping for next Video
  • Uploading footage I did yesterday
  • Working on some projects
  • Planning
  • Telling Alexa the grocery items needed for my upcoming dishes.

So, I am cooking a couple of times next week. White chicken chili and BBQ meatloaf. So I may need a few things. I’ll have to make sure we have what I need.

I am excited to get on with our day. Hoping to get started on the next video, but I have to do a few things. One I already figured out. I figured out the subscribe button. It now displays all the way thru my videos at the bottom right hand corner. So now you can easily do this while on YouTube. But you do have to have an account. It is FREE.

The other thing is I have to redo the Intro and Outro. The audio in my current intro is not working. So I’ll have to silence the video on the intro where I introduce myself and George and the fur babes – as the audio is on the video itself. I will silent the video and then add a voice over. That will solve that. But I also want to add a quick little branding start up – I’m not even sure what you call it. They call it an intro but it’s just part of an intro. I can’t explain it but hoping I get to work on that today as well.

I better get started if I want to accomplish everything today. At least I feel great other than being overly stuffed and very WHALE like! lol

What on earth are YOU doing today? I love to hear your stories! Leave me a mini blog post in the comments below, ha! Love it.

Starting the Labor Day Weekend and a Fun Day Out.

On By BackporchwriterIn Uncategorized9 Comments

So this front came through and gave us some great temps yesterday with MUCH LESS humidity. We are getting our first taste of cooler drier air and a bit of fog in the mornings. And it is lovely by comparison to the hot humidity we have had the last couple to three weeks.

It’s a good weekend for the weather to give us hope for fall, as Labor Day Weekend is the weekend I get out the fall decor, put up my whites, and begin thinking about our fall schedule. We have some plans beginning to perk up but nothing huge. And likely no travel. I have a lot of plans for getting the house in order and some improvements done.

I am soon to be focusing on going through some things in the house and either disposing of it, donating it, or selling it. I’m not really wanting to do any more yard sales. I’ve said that before. But eventually we probably will do another one. It’s nickels and dimes and then some of the folks that have come kinda scare me a bit. There have been some crimes related to them as we live in that kind of world today. But all those little things you paid $ for you hate to just NOT get anything back for it.

So I need to find some type of on line sales thing for smaller items. I have one for my clothes with Thred UP. We have one for books, games, and such as George gets credit with his McKay’s membership. I guess I could look at Ebay again. I just don’t know much about the online sales. I don’t want anyone coming to the house but there are some things that are big that need to go. But all in all there is just a lot to go through that has collected over the years. I quit going through things because most of it seemed like George’s and I didn’t want to mess with it. At some point I think I just got discouraged at so many things collected and ignored it as a lot of it wasn’t mine. But it’s time to tackle it over the next few months. And it’s time to get the insides of this house fixed. Even if we don’t stay here ourselves, if we decide to move again, it will be more in a position to sell and we’ll be in more of a position to move. Those things have been on my mind lately.

So yesterday morning I was able to start doing a lot of things. I was in the middle of a lot of projects when it was time to go out for a fun afternoon of George’s birthday with my SIL and BIL, Kevin. We have had it planned so I knew it was coming, but still I tried to cram as much in as possible Saturday morning because I don’t really get a lot of home time and I had double extra projects this weekend.

Projects:

  1. Fall Decor
  2. Bathroom Storage
  3. Organize the Camera equipment in the new camera bag.
  4. Organize my iMac files
  5. Cleaning out and going through some things
  6. Starting the next iMovie

And that is about it for the main projects aside from all the many normal ones like laundry, store, getting ready for the next work week, and so forth, and all those things on my list that I want to do as far as learning curves on iMovie, TubeBuddy, YouTube, and making graphics and so forth.

BOTTOM LINE? I was able to do enough yesterday morning to MESS UP everything. I have not cleaned up for the weekend yet, so there is all the normal mess of a lived in house on top of the projects lying around. I had just enough time to start working on things and not enough time to finish. So there is a LOT of “messy” about the house. I don’t like leaving it like that, but we went out and had a great time and I left my frustration behind as I was totally in my REORG and CREATIVE zone and had to switch gears. But we had a great time and had looked forward to it and it was nice to get out!

We met at Half Batch Brewing in Hendersonville.

It’s nice to be able to do breweries again. We wore masks when standing up in there and tables were distanced away. Honestly there was hardly anyone there. So that was nice too. I had us take this pic so we could remember this day, in our masks, at some future point in our lives when we look back.

We then went to a Liquor Store George wanted to go to – to see if they had certain things other ones did not for the cocktail hours at home. We needed Vodka for the fruity or herbal drinks and then an orange liquour for a special drink he wants to make. I bought a favorite, Quilt which you can now get at a $27 price point instead of the $44. And I bought another favorite Coppola’s “Rosso” which we first began enjoying in the days we frequented Sole Mio in Nashville (no longer in business).

Then we went to Sam’s Club. We had a great time there getting flounder, steaks, some canned goods, and some other frozen goods. We had assessed our freezer capacity so we’d know when to quit throwing things in the cart. lol We have a lot still in our freezer because of the cow, the pig, and our frequent going out and buying chicken or other meats during the “meat scare” and other freezer things we bought during the pandemic. It seems once we have space, we fill it up again.

Then off to the Lost Cajun where George had been wanting to eat. He loves that place.

I got a dish that was perfect and was not heavy with a lot of fried food. Most everything there is fried except for like Gumbo, red beans and rice and things like that. Mine was a sautéed shrimp, rice and veggies meal.

So back at home I watched my You Tube shows and George read. We were both happy. By 9:30 I fell asleep with clicker in hand searching for the next “show” so then I decided maybe it was time to go to bed.

Sleep was good. George has tried to take care of Maisy the last two days while I get sleep. It is nice that he tries, but it doesn’t work too well. Maisy is NOT happy until I’m UP! She doesn’t want me petting over Roger when I try to stir him up. If it’s just Roger and I in bed, then I have to wake Roger up and let him stretch so his legs will hold himself up. Maisy does not like it when I’m talking to Roger and taking care of him. She wants a tummy rub and my attention. Other times of the day she is not jealous but she wants that morning attention. I can’t leave Roger in bed though by himself. He will fall off or try to jump off and his little body can’t take it. So I end up just getting up and getting Roger up too. And Maisy barks through the WHOLE thing and it’s BEFORE COFFEE! No one wants constant barking before coffee and to be told what to do. LOL. But she is a demanding one. She is also a sweet one. And I would do anything for her. So I do. She loves me so. And I love her.

As I type, she is at my feet sleeping away. lol.

Well, I’m moving onward to get many things done. We have to go out to the store today to get a few things and then we will be in for the rest of the weekend. We are looking forward to our steaks today and doing our projects or doing whatever we want.

Are you doing anything special this weekend? Any favorite Labor Day meals you are cooking? Having any cookouts?