January 2017

Back to kitchens… Though we are not absolutely sure if we are moving the kitchen from the old location to the red room… though we are not sure if we are tearing down a wall… we are still progressing with our choices of what will be in our kitchen, no matter where it is located……

My precious George, who still tolerates me calling him Georgie, reminded me of a time we were visiting Grandma. The kids, yes I know kids are baby goats, but children behave very much like baby goats, found a baby owl that had fallen out of her magnolia tree. Well, you can imagine the commotion! “Grandma!”…

Thirty-six years ago, somewhere in Seoul, Korea, a woman gave birth to a baby boy, but something was very wrong. When he was born, the middle of his back was open. Nerves and his spinal column were sticking out, not even connected. He had Myelomeningocele, also known as open spina bifida. (Spina bifida is a…

I guess it sounds silly to think of a cottage having a logo. So modern… High tech… Not at all like an old-fashioned cottage… But, because I don’t see well, I do not write well manually. When someone wants our phone number, writing it down on a piece of paper requires proper lighting, a large…

As a little girl I remember daddy bringing mom a magnolia tree home for her birthday. Which birthday? Doesn’t matter. What I do remember was how thrilled mom was? She had daddy plant it where she could see it from her kitchen window. At the time I thought magnolias were just that… magnolia trees. But,…

As we dream about our new home there are still the practicalities of our day to day life here. The sorting, the packing, the giving away… Which items stay? Which items go? No need to take our bookcases as almost all of our extensive library has been moved to “The Cloud” and is available through…

Now to our choice of ovens… gas or electric? Well, for baking, electric is more stable as the heat is more consistent than with gas. Since I plan to do a lot of baking, electric would be our best choice. So our baking ovens will be electric. Now to the question of whether we choose…

We so love everyone’s opinion! And, please keep expressing them! You help us think, rethink, and, hopefully, in the end, make wiser choices for our new phase of life. Since we have received more than a few comments about our choice of Tranquility Cottage as the name for our home, I thought I would address…

A question I keep receiving is, are our appliances going to be stainless steel? Well, yes, but not the shiny metal-looking stainless steel we are used to seeing in many kitchens today. We have chosen the new black-colored stainless appliances for our home. Since the more authentic Victorian-period looking appliances cost an arm and leg…

It is time! We must purchase our plane tickets to go to our new home which also means we are leaving our home of over half a century, all our friends, but most of all my oldest surviving son George… George is the pride of my life. He is, and always has been, one of…