Jerry Loggins

One of the most annoying things that I experience on a very frequent basis is the absence of any kind of address sign on may of the business buildings along the Main Street in our town.  If I hadn’t grown up here, I swear I would never be able to find anything based on just being given an address!  The vast majority of the buildings along the road need some kind of address plaque.

That is one of the things that I think makes a town more “user-friendly” to tourists and out-of-towners.  What good is a GPS unit if it tells you that you’ve reached your destination and you look around for address signs and can’t find one anywhere?

I think that it should be part of the town code in downtown that easily seen address plaques are a REQUIREMENT.  And by easily seen, I mean easily seen from a vehicle from the road, not something tucked up under an eave that can only be seen by pedestrians!

Comments (0)

One of our nieces had a baby right before Christmas.  A beautiful, healthy baby girl.  It’s hard to realize that she’s two months old already!  Before you know it we are going to have to worry about baby proofing our house for the many visits we will be getting from them.  It just seems like a few days ago that we put away our old baby gates!  Funny how life sneaks up on you that way.  All of our kids are grown up now, and some are having kids of their own.  I’m not sure I’m ready for a newest generation!  I don’t feel old enough to be worrying about the newest child safety tips - I was just starting to get used to (and enjoying) knowing that the kids were past that point in life!

Ahh… the circle of life.  I think maybe we should just suggest that we go visit them at their house instead, so we don’t have to go all nuts and fortify our house with all the newest safety equipment!  Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see them, but if we go to them, then they are the ones who have to make sure the baby is safe.  And, we can decide when the visit is over and leave to come home when the baby is cranky!  I think I’ll suggest that to my wife!

Comments (1)

My wife has been buying some more dangling earrings lately, and has run out of places to store them. She’s been looking at buying a new earring tree, but can’t seem to find any that she likes. And they are wicked expensive to boot! So I decided I’d try to help her out and do a little bit of looking around about a quick, cheap and easy way to make her something that she might be able to use. I found a website about instructions on how to make things, and found some suggestions about just taking an inexpensive splatter pan, bend the handle, and put the earrings in the mesh holes! I think that is absolute genius! I know we have at least one unused splatter pan around here! Now to figure out where to put it – that is going to be the real challenge! I’m thinking about just not even bending the handle, and just put a hook in the wall behind the bedroom door. I think that will work out just fine, don’t you?

Comments (0)

I will never forget those hot summer days of working in the garden. Grandpa would plant lots of cucumbers, rows upon rows of potatoes, long rows of green beans, melons, corn, and quite a few tomato plants. There were other vegetable plants I may not remember but I do know I didn’t like gardening all that well. It was too hot and laborious.

Grandpa would always make Grandma drive the tractor, as he would follow along with the hand plow creating the rows. Grandma would cut the potatoes he had bought so there were potato eyes showing on each piece she would cut. We would haul the buckets of potatoes across the field to where the garden was and grandpa would drop the potatoes in the rows, step on them once with his shoe, and then use the hoe to pull the plowed dirt over on them. It only took them about fourteen days to pop up through the soil and start growing.

The only real part of gardening I didn’t like was pulling out the weeds. It seemed back in those days the weeds would outnumber every plant we sowed in the garden. Once a week we would go out and pull weeds while my grandparents would tend the vegetable plants. Toting the water in five gallon buckets out to the garden was no easy task either. I would spill half of it before I got there with it. Grandpa always expected more of us than we could actually physically do. I think it was his way of actually making us stronger as people.

Comments (0)

Not too long ago I saw my wife looking on the Internet at different wall mounted mailboxes.  I asked her what in the world are you doing?  Well, she is a decorative painter, and she loves to give hand painted items to people as presents.  Her latest idea for giving presents to friends and family members is to hand paint their house mailboxes for them.  I know that a couple of her siblings have beat-up old wall mount mailboxes  just barely hanging on the side of their houses, so I have to admit that she has come up with a great gift idea for them!

I think that she could do a great job of personalizing each wall mount mailbox to complement the interest of each sibling, or to dress up the house in a really fresh and exciting way.  And, it will be a gift that no one else would think to give them!  I have to hand it to my wife – she sure comes up with clever ideas from time to time!

Comments (0)

My wife has been thinking about getting some new window boxes for our house this spring.  When we first bought this house it already have several window flower boxes on some of the windows and we’ve used them throughout the years to help the house looking cozy and inviting.  One of the things that she likes to do with a window box is to not just use it for traditional flowers but also to use them to decorate through out the different holiday seasons.  For example she used pine garlands and holly with small twinkle lights in them last month.  She did a really nice job of it!

When she was decorating them a few weeks ago she noticed that they were starting to rot.  The old boxes are made of wood and are quite old.  So I agreed that come spring we’d replace them with some new ones.  It wasn’t until she started looking on the Internet for some new ones that I realized that there are so many different styles to choose from!  I’m going to let her pick out the ones she wants.  I’m more than happy to defer to her sense of style!

Comments (0)

I have to say that it has been a very long time since I’ve built a snowman. We just don’t get very much snow around here! Over the past several years I’ve seen other people’s attempts to make snowmen from the snow that we do get and it is rather sad to see because the snow is heavily dotted with twigs and grass clippings and just plain dirt scraped up from the ground.

Yesterday I went out to clear off the deck so the dogs could go in and out as needed through their doggie door. The temptation to build a snowman was intense. I picked up a handful of snow and it packed so nicely! I put it down on the snow and rolled it a little and before you knew it I had a snowman’s head in my hands. I gently put it down in the snow and looked at it for a minute. If I had the rest of the snowman’s accessories close at hand (nose, eyes, pipe) I’d have myself a really great snowman! But I don’t have anything I can reasonably use as eyes, so I just abandoned the idea. Maybe I’ll come across something over the next day or so that I can use. I don’t think that snow is going anywhere very soon! We sure got a lot of it!

Comments (0)

I’ve always enjoyed the look of the stone benches that are becoming popular these days. I’ve seen some very nice stone garden benches online at stonebenches.com and have thought that I might one day go ahead and order. They are offering a wide variety of memorial benches and garden benches as well there that seem to be affordable and they accept Pay Pal, which is always a plus for me.I like that they are made in the U.S.A. from cast stone and that they offer free shipping.

You can find some deals online these days, no need to go hopping around from place to place in order to find what you need and want. With spring time not too far in the near future, I’d like to be able to have a few things ready to get going on around the place. I take great pride in having my yard looking good and always feel good getting my hands dirty with all that spring brings with it. The tilling, the planting, the weeding, it’s all good and all worth the time and effort that it takes to get it all done, producing and looking good.

Comments (0)

What a nasty Sunday this has turned out to be. Our local weatherman warned us that we were in for a cold and rainy day, but since when have I ever listened to what he says. With Christmas less than two weeks away, so much to do and all I want to do is stay inside where it is warm and dry, sigh………

Comments (0)

I love to decorate the yard for Christmas! I have a couple of those big inflatable decorations that look like big snow globes with Santa and/or Frosty inside them. I have a couple of wire forms with lights on them that look like reindeers. And of course I like to line the rooftop and windows with strings of lights. I like to hang a big wreath on the front door, too.

My wife fusses at me, though, because she is trying to save money and she is always turning all of my decorations off by 8pm. She says we are all home, so what do we care what the outside of the house looks like? I can’t seem to impress on her that I want to entertain the neighbors and the passers-by. I think she is being just a little bit too scroogy for me! When I point that out to her, she doesn’t seem to impressed and suggests that maybe I should take over the duty of paying the bills and figuring out how to pay the electric bill when that comes in!

Comments (0)