Just a Little Wine Tasting-Fundraiser

For years, when we owned our farm, we'd have a large party for friends and family at least once a year. We had friends who would come from cities around ours, some traveling for over a couple of hours each way. We were quite honored to have friends who enjoyed our get togethers as much as we did. Funny, we lived in this 2 bedroom little old farmhouse that needed a ton of work but no one seemed to notice. It was called the “Siemens Annual”.

When we moved into the city in 1997, we continued to entertain but as I was in law school we limited our large parties. We've always had an Octoberfest mostly for close friends, even had our friend's daughter who was studying opera sing for us one year. Italian songs were a good fit, right?

In about 1998 I worked a storm in Detroit and brought home several different wines for Dale to taste. As we were tasting we decided to turn our annual party into a wine tasting party which itself has turned into an annual event. Our first tasting was just a birthday party for my own 50^th, with an idea from Hillary Clinton. I prepared a dinner of my favorite food and wine and combined the party with a little fundraiser; everyone had to contribute to a fund to haircuts for women at the battered womens shelter. If my friends couldn't buy me a Ferrari then I didn't want any present at all!

After that birthday party friends started asking what we'd do next so we decided to have a wine tasting that would mostly be based on where either I worked or we traveled. The meal would be based on the wine. We've had Mardi Gras during Mardi Gras week, complete with cajun food and Louisiana wine, California champage with bbq'd salmon, Virginia wines with crab cakes and Virginia style foods, North Carolina wines and so on.

This year has been really busy so we decided to have our wine tasting to kick off the holiday season, next weekend. We'd planned to go to one of our favorite places, Taos, last week so thought that we'd pick up some New Mexico wine and have us a New Mexico wine tasting and dinner. Well Taos didn't happen so we decided to host our annual Octoberfest that didn't happen in October and have a beer tasting. So next weekend we will have our first beer tasting.

We do laugh about our wine tastings; we have friends who only drink beer, some only drink white wine, some only drink red wine and some taste the wines as the wines are tasted in a true tasting. We just want to have a fun time so don't worry too much about not having a true strict tasting.

Our fundraisers have varied from everyone bringing a business suit to donate to Carieer Training Resources, a bag of personal items for women arriving at the Battered Women's Shelter with bags of items for the children, books for the pupils of a couple of friends teaching in the poor sections of the city just to name a few.

So next week we will host our friends for our Octoberfest with a varity of beers, some German wines, Shislik, and other foods. Our fundraiser this year will be non-parishable food items and grocery store gift certificates to go to Optimal Hospice. The food items will be put together into baskets for families in the hospice care who have no money to put a holiday meal on the table. How horribly sad to facing the death of a family member and have no money to purchase food for a Christmas dinner. We are happy to be able to make a family or two a little better for one meal and so fortunate to have good friends and the means to host this party.

Loving Photography

Oh how I love photography! I love, love, love to shoot photos and work with my photos.

When I was a little girl my maternal grand mother gave me a little Brownie Hawkeye, much like hers. Now she was a photographer for her time, always carried her camera and took a gazillion photos. I think I used my little Brownie until I was in junior high.

Now that I have moved into my great digital camera I rarely use my 35, a nice Canon itself. But I enlarge my good photos and definitely enjoy them.

So now that it is nearly Christmas I had the idea to make a bunch of calenders using my photos. I found the design I wanted and the cheapest on vista.com where I've had other items made before. I chose my photos and ordered 5 plus get one free. Then I got an email with ½ off each calender so decided I'd extend the gifts to some of our friends so made up 5 more.

I decided to put a calender up on etsy.com but thought that it would be fun to make a calender using photos of the National Parks. I dug out my digital photos, where I'd used my early cameras (I've had several over the years), yikes, they are a horrible resolution and won't print well.

Last night I found a box, one of 4, with 35's from the 1990-2007 after which time I bought my good digital. There are so many photos. As I started looking I thought who is going to want all of these. There are good photos but many are not great photos and I certainly will never print, enlarge or show them to anyone. I got a big paper bag and started throwing away all these photos; I mean really who needs 100 photos of the 2006 Historic Car Races, or photos of some unknown landscape.

Now back to my task at hand, to find the negatives of the good National Park photos. I must get these calenders ordered. And if I can't sell the extras then my neighbors will get a calender.

A Busy Granddaughter

I had my 3 boys each about 1-1/2 years apart but that was over 30 years ago. When I had our boys we had just taken over our family farm on Jan 1; our oldest was about 1 year old and our middle born in July. I helped out with tractor driving, laying irrigation pipe, learning how to run the financial end of the business, cooking meals and caring for kids. I was busy all of the time like most working moms. That was then, now is now: kids are grown and gone, farm sold, I work sometimes but am home these days and hubby has a regular job.

Our oldest boy has 3 kids, 2 older kids and then one nearly 2 years old. These days our son and his family are in a transition mode so they have asked if I'd take the little one 2 days a week. I thought that it would be good to spend some time with our little one as I haven't spent the quality time with her as I have had with the other kids. Great idea right?

So yesterday we had our granddaughter from late morning until about 8pm. She ran most of the day, from one thing to the next, chattering, imitating everything we said. Inside to turn on the area heater, out the door to run into her little house, back in to turn off the heater and get more stuff out of the drawers, into the great room to play with her kitchen, back to turn on the heater, off to shake the chinchilla house, back to turn off the heater, more Ziploc bags onto the floor, heater on, out to her play house, and on and on.

I began to wonder how did I take care of 3 little boys and work at our own business plus cook. All I could do with my granddaughter was to chase after her, closing doors, making sure the door didn't scrape her little toes, that she didn't shake the chinchilla, and that she didn't go out the front door.

By the time my son came back I was tired, grabbed a big glass of wine and headed off to bed. And I'm going to do this twice a week? What was I thinking? Well at least I don't need the gym on granddaughter days.

More of the DIYer's

And the DIY er's adventures continue:

We'd removed the tree by the dining room above the roof line but not next to the fascia and still had the garage to go but then realized that this was actually a better week to get the bedroom painted. My husband Dale must sleep during the afternoon so I can only get into the bedroom during the day when he is not working at his county job, this week.

We decided several years ago to paint our bedroom much like the great room; 1 wall a darker Terra cotta and 3 walls a lighter shade of terra cotta with an off white ceiling. We got the paint and got to work, Dale helping do the trim work.

As Dale was working on our ceiling he needed to use the 10' ladder and put the can of lighter paint on the very top of the ladder. Unfortunately he needed to move the ladder but forgot that the can of paint was sitting up there. The can fell, fortunately landing on the next rung but unfortunately spilling about ¼ of the can. The paint splattered on the newly painted ceiling, dark wall, dressers and poured onto the carpet. We rushed to clean the paint off the dressers where the tarp had been pulled away all the while tracking paint all over as we rushed around.

The bedroom painting did get finished after a week of work except for a couple of doors and the carpet will be replaced next month. The carpet was going to be replaced anyway, but in the meantime we have an artsy carpet. Fortunately painting the great room and entry went much smoother and the walls after a quick one coat are clean and free of grimy grandkids fingerprints.