Weekly Wrap Up - Week of January 15th

         Every week I tell myself to jot down little notes on highlights of my daily life for my weekly wrap up...and every week I do not do this! Someday I need to do a blog post about procrastination. 

 

Monday - This was Martin Luther King Jr day, so I had the day off.  Just got caught up on household chores and did some crocheting.

Tuesday - All I remember is this was a super busy day at work. I know that our customers don't understand that we were off 3 days so we already come into the work week one day late, but I wish they could be a bit more patient. My biggest pet peeve are the ones that send me an email, a text and then still call right after to see if I received the email and text!

    Wednesday - I took mom to Walmart in the evening. The Walmart we go to during the week is about eight miles away. We used to enjoy going to Kmart there until it closed. We would make an evening of it by having dinner first, but now it seems that all the restaurants we used to love have really bad food and even worse service, and they are so expensive it's not worth it to go and be treated badly just to eat horrible food. Most of the time we just grab a burger at Jack in the Box.

    Thursday - Just a typical day of just working, nothing exciting.

    Friday - I was never so happy to see a Friday, I was exhausted from trying to get caught up at work. I also knew that I had a nice weekend planned. My sister Lisa had planned a get together with our good friend Lupe. We had not seen her for quite a while, so I was really looking forward to the weekend.

    Saturday - Woke up to a drizzling rain outside, I wasn't sure my mom was going to be up to heading out to go shopping which is her favorite thing on Saturday...but she was ready. We headed out around 11 am and first stop was her favorite fabric store. I wish I had thought to take photos of the inside of this store, but here are some photos from their website. It's an amazing place!

I believe these are polyester. Look at all those bolts of fabric!

Check out those prices $2.99 a yard and $3.99 a yard! And that huge box of zippers!

It's just amazing to walk threw a row like this and touch all the fabric.

    As you can see; just rows and rows of delicious fabric; cottons, flannel, felt, satin, silk, polyester. Fabric for curtains, upholstery, quilting, dresses, wedding dresses, bridesmaids' dresses...anything you can think of. The prices are ridiculously inexpensive compared to fabric at JoAnn's or Hobby Lobby. They also offer buttons, zippers, thread and beads. The only downside is trying to slide a big roll of fabric from the bottom, they are so heavy. But they have lots of people roaming around offering help.

    Then we had lunch at Lorene's Coffee Shop. I don't really care for this place, but I may have to rethink it because I ordered the burger and fries on the senior menu and check this out! It was as delicious as it looks and the fries were perfection. Mom had the chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli and garlic bread. I will definitely go there again whenever I want a good burger.

    But we weren't done yet. We went to another favorite store and again I did not get any pictures. Mi Hacienda Rustic Furniture store has the most amazing hand-crafted items by Mexican artisans. 

http://www.mihacienda.net/

    Mom and I are putting together a basket to be raffled at our family reunion in February 2024. We want it to be unique so that it will raise a lot of money. There was one special piece that we wanted to buy and we were lucky they had one in the color we wanted. I can't show it until after the raffle because it's top secret.

    Here are some photos of the items available. It is like visiting a museum, you could spend hours in there.

The little cats are so sweet. I love all the bright vivid colors.

I would love to have those teal vases, I'll have to check out the price next time I am there. Love the bowl with the green pears, that would be so pretty in my kitchen.

These two little guys would look lovely in a pretty garden and I adore the turquoise owl!

Now this is pure happiness right here. Can you imagine serving a frosty Margarita on the patio in the summer in one of these?

They also have custom leather saddles and purses.

    After that mom was about done. She gets tired really quickly. I made a quick stop at a grocery store to pickup up some strawberries and cream cheese for a special dessert I was going to make as I was going to a dinner at my sisters house with our friend Lupe. Lupe was spending the night, I was supposed to also, but my bed was only two blocks away and sounded much more comfy to me!

    Lisa had wanted to try a recipe she found on Facebook. It was a recipe for making Beef Stew, or was we call it in Hispanic households Caldo de Res. This was all she had for the recipe. She wanted to try it because we had never heard of putting apple juice and/or apple cider vinegar in stew before.

    This is how it turned out. It was actually very good. I really think the Apple Juice and Apple Cider Vinegar made a big different. 

    You are supposed to put it in a slow cooker I guess, doesn't really say, but even after 5 hours of cooking it was not done in the slow cooker. I was still practically raw, so she transferred it to her soup pot and it was done in 45 minutes. She also added cabbage because she loves cabbage. 

    For dessert we had the cheesecake stuffed strawberries that I made. Actually...these were made by Lupe because she wanted to learn how to make them so she could recreate them for her grandchildren. Recipe HERE if you would like to make them, they are low carb as I use Splenda instead of sugar. 

    We had a great playing the game Trouble, it's fun to play a game you used to play as a kid as an adult. Game took forever though. Remember playing this? What was your favorite board game as a child?

    Then we played Pon Uno, Pon Dos. I had never played this before, but we had fun. Pon Uno means put one, Pon Dos means put two, Toma todo means take it all. So you pull out all your change and you spin a top kinda like a dreidel and if you get Pon Dos, then you get to choose two of whatever coin you want. Say you put two quarters in the pot, then everyone puts in two quarters. When someone spins and gets Toma todo that means take it all, so they get to take everything in the pot. Cool little game, I enjoyed it.

    Then we sat around drinking wine and catching up. It had been a long time since the three of us were together. We used to go camping a lot, but Covid changed all that. Do you find that your friendships changed after Covid? 

    Sunday morning I got up and went back over to Lisa's house because I was supposed to be spending the night there. We had coffee and sat and chatted...why is it we never run out of things to talk about? Then I made us Chilaquiles. I didn't get a picture but mine are very similar in look to these.

    Chilaquiles are a traditional Mexican breakfast dish consisting of corn tortillas cut into strips and lightly fried, then you add scrambled egg. I did it differently this time, I fried the egg, then added crushed tortilla chops and shredded cheese and salsa. I've never had anything I didn't love if it had tortilla chips in it!

    Then I went home totally prepared to watch a great football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills and promptly fell asleep. I woke up about halfway through the fourth quarter so I did get to watch a very exciting end of the game and I was very happy to see the Chiefs win, even though the Dallas Cowboys are my team.

    That's it for my weekly wrap up, I feel like I've written a book! For those of you that read every word and made it to the end...thank you!