Old-Fashioned Spring Break

The kids headed back to school today after being off for 10 days and truthfully, I did not a thing.  Lol, I needed a day of rest!  Rich stayed home and worked while I took the three kids to my parents home in Bruner, MO.  It's about a 30 minute drive to Branson so we were gonna spend our days there but the weather was cold and rainy.  Instead we spent one day inside the community center in the fun pool.  My boys are the ones in the water.  See the big blue bucket at the top of the picture?  You know where this is going, right? ...

You only see the arm of the little guy, he took off as the bucket turned, haha! 

Now he's back and loving it.  Kids are so funny. 

Crazy kid, he cracks me up...

After playing long and hard in the lazy river, the playhouse, and the slide, it was time to relax in the jacuzzi part of the pool.

Finally a day of no rain... still very cold but at least it wasn't raining so we hit downtown Branson.  No trip is ever complete without a stop at "Dicks 5 & 10".  Born and raised around there, I grew up on this store.  It's a dry goods store... you want it, they got it!  The place was packed!  The small, dim aisles are from the old dime store days and let me tell you, people were three wide down every single aisle.  I lost my kids, lost my mom, lost my sister, lol!

As soon as we gathered everyone, we headed down the street to an old-fashioned candy shop.  Fun!

 I spent so much time looking at all the vintage pieces on the walls, that I forgot to check out all the candy.

But I (and Amariah) did find this old tub filled with one of my favorite candies... Chick-O-Sticks!  =]

I guess you could say this was an old-fashioned trip.  Besides having lunch at Cracker Barrel, we also hit this cool place "The World's Largest Toy Museum" along with "The Shepherd of the Hills, Harold Bell Wright Museum".

Robbie enjoyed this place so much that we had a hard time getting him to leave!  Here he is in the Batmobile with hundreds of super heroes on the shelves behind him.

It's a good thing it was a self-guided tour, as it took us awhile to get the little man through all the displays, lol!  My mom, my sister Jodi, and Robbie checking out thousands of die-cast metal cars of all sizes.

I thought this wall of old board games was pretty amazing!  Ryan and Amariah on the other hand were quite 'bored' with it, hehe.

Robbie having a hard time deciding which horse to get on.  A wall of metal firetrucks in the background along with a vintage Coke machine and a TV that played old game & toy commercials!

Now that we got through all the boy stuff, I'll show you some of my favorite displays...

Steiff!!

A few mammies...

Adorable toy sized general store...

Metal kitchen set with utensils (I want that tiny milk bottle holder, SO sweet!)...

My favorite... 

By this time, all the kids had left me so I made Jodi pose for me.  If you've ever been to Branson, then you have heard of The Shepherd of the Hills.  If you haven't heard of the story, you have seen the road named after it.  Harold Bell Wright was a pastor that wrote these stories.  Even though I grew up here and took school field trips to the play, I didn't realize he wrote so many books.  It was a neat little museum tucked inside the toy museum.

I'm really not sure who enjoyed this museum more.  Me?  Or Robbie?

Despite the weather, we enjoyed our spring break!  It's always a good time to visit family and hit those restaurants I grew up on that I miss so much.  My parents had a big pizza party for the whole clan so we decided it was a good time to start the planning stage of their 60th wedding anniversary coming up in July.  Very exciting!

I'm truly blessed and so grateful for the wonderful family that God has placed me in.  I'm 3.5 hours away from them so when I get a chance to go back home, it is always full of good times, tons of laughter, and old memories.

I hope I didn't bore you too much with our old-fashioned spring break.  I'm sure it's not what the kids would have planned, but we all had a great time!

As my 7 year old sweetie said when I told him on the first day of spring that winter was officially over and spring had started... "Well someone needs to tell that to winter because it's still cold"  Lol!  I hope you all stay warm and safe out there until it thaws and we see spring beauty soon.  Have a delightful week~

Spring Cleaning

Lots of spring cleaning going on around here.  It takes time but I sure love the outcome!  Finished the laundry room and main bathroom.  Here are a couple of pictures from my laundry room.  My parents gave me a few baskets they bought at an auction.  This one resembled a sewing basket and I have been looking around for something to put my colored bobbins in.  I picked up the green bobbins a couple of weeks ago at my favorite antique mall in the Amish community of Chouteau, OK.  See my darling little heart?  That was a free gift in an order that I placed with Shari over at Homespun and Primitives a couple of years ago.  She is so sweet!

I bought this sewing machine drawer last summer at the same antique mall for $5, along with the tallest bobbin for $3.  I found the box of thread at another antique mall for $2.  I was buying it for the old box alone... imagine my surprise when I opened the box and found it full of American Thread Co. embroidery cotton skeins!  The toddler dresses hanging behind were worn by my mom, who is now 78.  The lovely ditty bag was made and gifted to me by Linda over at Parker's Paradise.  Another sweetheart!

From here, I moved on to the family room.  The cleaning part is basically done, now the fun part of re-arranging and decorating!  In-between all this cleaning, I am putting out the spring.  A few little chicks on the chippy old sewing machine cabinet.  I was able to add my father-in-law's Bible to our stack of family Bibles.  It is inscribed with his entry into the Navy in 1955. 

For over a year now I've been looking for a replacement shade for Rich's grandpa's table/lamp stand.  After taking a few back to the store for not looking right, I have decided to cover the one we have.  I narrowed it down to two ideas from Pinterest.  Now, which one to choose:

the burlap covered shade... 

or the Mod Podged book page shade...

I have an old Bible that has literally fallen apart with many loose pages that I have been saving for a project like this so I thought that would be fun.  I will probably do this one.  I figure if I don't like it in the end then I can always cover it with burlap, lol!

Spring break starts today for us with all of next week off too.  The kids are pretty excited about 10 days off!  I'll be honest... looking forward to not having to get up at 6:30, hehe.  We will be spending most of that time with my parents with a few days in Branson, MO.  They live about 30 miles from there so it's always fun to go.

I honestly LOVE to organize and clean so spring cleaning is always fun for me, I actually enjoy it.  I'm truly grateful first of all for even owning a home and grateful for being able to stay home to make our house a cozy home for my family.

Always... THANK YOU for stopping by.  I appreciate your visit.

Have a delightful weekend~

My little broom collection...

Hi friends!  What have you been up to?  I've spent the past 2 days deep cleaning my laundry room.  Whew, that's hard work but I am very thankful to even have a laundry room.  At our last house, the washer and dryer were in a small closet behind bi-fold doors in the kitchen... it was crazy, ha!  So today I played around a little.  I bought a few brooms this past year at garage sales and they've been tucked away.  My very favorite is of course the oldest one with the green handle.  This other one I added a strip of burlap and cheesecloth.

Then I added my favorite homespuns to 2 more of the brooms, along with a strip of green burlap.  I like the rusted handle on the other broom but I'm gonna have to cut off those little blue pieces... I think I'll just pull it off completely because it's such a bright blue (hope my broom doesn't fall apart, lol).

The brooms are displayed on an old corn cob dryer that I found at an antique mall last year marked down to $6.00!!

I found all kinds of neat ways to display brooms on Pinterest.  I came across this corn cob dryer as I was digging out all my brooms and thought it would work well but I didn't want to hang it on the wall so I put some twine through the top loop and tied it to the back strip of my wooden ironing board.

We finally got SNOW!  Ever since my oldest kid was born, we've had snow every year.  Last year was the first in 17 years that we didn't get any and we were all sad.  I love our neighbors home in all seasons but it's so pretty when the snow settles on the big boulders that their log home sits on.

Our neat little creek that runs between our home and the neighbors.  The kids love to play in it year round.

Lastly, it's home sweet home...

I'm grateful for... even having a home to clean although it is a huge pain.  Also very thankful that I have this time to clean the inside of our home before warm weather hits and we can go outside.

Thanks for stopping by friends.  It's back to cleaning for me.  I tried a tip on Pinterest for cleaning the inside of the washing machine and it worked okay but looks like I'm gonna need to use some elbow grease on the agitator.  Once that is done I will be able to move on to the next room, yippee!  Have a warm and cozy week~

Black Buggy Day

This post is dedicated to my sweet friend and fellow Amish lover, Michelle from Simple Pleasures.  I live 20 minutes from a small Amish and Mennonite community in Chouteau, Oklahoma.  Once a year in September the town hosts "Black Buggy Day" that is open to everyone.  I love going just to watch the "English" and the Amish come together and have some good old-fashioned FUN!

How about some fresh apple butter?  Can't get any fresher than this!

Wonderful gospel music by the Harbinger Quartet.

We rented turtles for $1 each for Amariah and her friend Britlan so they could join in the turtle race.

Amariah's turtle  (#3) crossed the finish line in 3rd place, haha!  They had such a good time with this, I was actually quite surprised.

Such a cutie with his blonde hair but I was afraid he was going to fall.  I was shocked at the number of young ones that were allowed to freely roam.

Hanging out at the Horsin' Around Arena.

I adored these sweet little girls in their matching outfits...

My lunch for the day was of course homemade Amish noodles.  They were so delicious, I had to have two helpings, yum!

This frustrated little man was having such a hard time with his horse.  I couldn't help but laugh and feel sorry for him all at the same time.

Yay, he got it!

A row of distinguished gentlemen...

I can't remember what they called this race but it was actually fun to watch.  Each rider had an end to a PVC pipe that held a hedge apple in the middle.  They had to carry it down and drop it in the barrel then race back to the start with the pipe.  Quickest time without dropping the hedge apple was the winner.  I was looking around for some of them hedge apples to take home with me but they must have had them hid, lol!

The girls and I had a great time.  Who knew that teenagers would enjoy hanging out with the Amish?!  Haha!  Yes, actually a picture of me standing by one of the buggies.

I'm grateful that there are still communities around "where cultures come together".  "Chouteau consists of two different cultures coming together with one purpose, to make a better community for our families to live and grow.  Black Buggy Day is a day where we come together to celebrate the ways we are different but more importantly, the ways that we are the same."

Simplify...

Simplify...

I know lots of you do this and can do it quite well.  But for some reason it's really, really hard for me!  Shoot, I don't even know how to relax.  I try but it doesn't last long and I just gotta be doing something.

My father-in-law went into the hospital unexpectedly and passed away a couple of days later on Dec. 17.  My husband was immediately thrown into making the funeral arrangements and taking care of the estate because he is the oldest of the two sons.  Don't you know that it has changed our outlook on many things about life.

You don't realize how much of life you are letting slip you by until you stop and take a good look around.  So we, mainly I, have decided it's past time to simplify.  No, no, no... not my home lol!  I have tried and tried to "simplify" by getting rid of things but I just can not seem to part with a single thing.  Instead, I find myself buying more things that I don't need, hehe.  Like the beginning of my gray granite collection (I only have one piece but it will become a collection one day!).  Also couldn't pass up the Edwards Mill sack because it comes from a real working mill at College of the Ozarks in Branson, MO, a college I didn't attend but had many friends who did and spent a lot of time there.

Had to throw a picture in there because this post needs one, ha.  Back to the subject... along the lines of simplifying, I had two blogs.  This prim blog and a family blog called "Ramblings from a grateful heart".  It became difficult to keep them both up so they both suffered.  I have decided to combine the two blogs into one and use this space to talk about two of my loves: my family and my home.  So if some of my posts seem odd or like they don't belong or my wording is weird... it's because of the consolidating.  One thing I did with my Ramblings blog is to always end a post with something that I am grateful for.  I want to carry that over into this blog because it's important to me.

And because I am bringing my family over to this blog, I gotta show off my handsome son Ryan, a junior (and yes it says Chuck, that's his nickname from the coaches because of our last name being Berry) with his new letterman jacket we bought him.  He's quite proud but so are we!  =]

Then we have pretty little Amariah, who is an 8th grader, and the little guy named Robbie that is in the 1st grade.

I promise you that I will try not to bore you with my family but I am proud of all of them and love them dearly.

Losing the first of our parents has opened our eyes to many things this past month.  I am truly grateful for relationships that I am determined to nourish... my husband, my kids, my extended family, my friends, and of course all of you my prim blog community friends!!

Thank you for being a part of my life, I love you all!  =]