Yea! working on the walls again!!

I bought a bunch of book cases at Ikea in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, to put in the personal sitting room on the 3rd floor. (I love books and have many). So....

Yea ! The spirit(me) finally moved Don to finish the room. We have been using it for storage all this time, because he really does not like to tape and mud. Doesn't mind the texturing and painting, but is such a perfectionist he feels he can not tape and mud 'good enough'. At this point in time, ANYTHING is good enough.
The 10 foot high ceilings makes it more difficult. It IS an attic room, so there are many angles to have to deal with as well.
It is my job to put the trim on the door and get it painted. I was relieved to finally get the latch on the door. We keep our 2 cats in this area when we have guests .. and they were getting way too smart for us to just wedge a block of wood to hold the door shut. They figured out how to get it open and suprised us with a visit downstairs from time to time.

I hope the next photos I take will be of the finished project. But that might be a while, since Don can find many excuses not to get back to work on it.

Scrap booking weekend.

March 13-14-15 was the annual Spring Fling Scrapbook Retreat planned by Back Roads Plum Crazy Scrapbooking shop. They plan one for Spring and Fall. It is 3 days of fun and learning and food, with comfy beds.. all at the Dairy Barn Bed and Breakfast. As proprieter of the Bed and Breakfast, I get to clean and cook. I LOVE to scrap book and make cards, but did not get to cut or paste paper on that weekend.
Lisa brought her new Cricut so Donya and Michelle could give her instructions on operating it.

Michelle gave Jo some pointers and techniques for her scrap book page. Jo completed that scrap book at the retreat.
There are 8 guest rooms at the Barn, and all were filled except 1. The Back Roads girls had make and takes as well as some technique classes. Judging from the laughter I could hear from the kitchen while I did the dishes (poor abused little me) everyone had a great time.

Donya is a semi-famous cupcake baker. You can always count on the cupcakes to have an exotic filling of some sort. She made 2 varieties for the Sunday brunch, one raspberry filled and the other was chocolate/peanut butter. I forgot to take a picture until they were almost gone. The pie is Key Lime Pie, made with key lime juice from 'Robert is Here', a fruit stand I visit every year at Homestead Florida. There was much more on the brunch table then just dessert.

The cat standing guard over the vittles is a flat piece of wood painted by an artist that lives in Waverly Iowa. She signed it 'Miller' She does a fantastic job painting animals on wood. I would like to meet her someday.

The girls from Back Roads Plum Crazy Scrapbooking are already working on the Fall retreat that will be in October.

The dna results are back

Maternal lineage test results for Geraldine Etter shows that I belong to the Haplogroup T, the Agrarians.

The interesting thing about this test: My sister and any daughters she has will have the exact same results, as well as my daughter and her daughters. Also, my female cousins from my mother's sisters will test the same. It goes all the way back 50,000 years of mother to daughter mtDNA. And forward as long as there are daughters.

There is a test for men with the same type of results, except it will test the same for all the fathers and sons.

I have discovered that my mother's group emerged around 50,000 years ago in the Near East, not long after the first modern humans left Africa. They likely remained in the Near East until about 15,000 years ago. They probably moved into Europe via present day Northern Italy. Today's Syrian, Palestinian and Turkish populations still have notable numbers of Agrarians.

To find the group my father would be in, I would need to have a brother or male cousin on my father's side, take the test. I would, indeed, belong to both groups even though I can not personally be tested for my father's Haplogroup.

Although I have just shown the front page of the results, the report is 6 pages long. There is mention of Vikings in my report. Since it is maternal, I doubt my ancestor had anything to do with raping and pillaging. heh heh heh

dna test

For Christmas '08, my daughter Rhonda, laughed as I opened the gift she had for me. She said it was the oddest gift she had ever given anyone. It was a dna test kit. Fred asked her if she was trying to make sure I was her mother. She had ordered it from Ancestry.com. This month I finally opened and read the instructions.
The test was pretty simple. Wait at least 1/2 hour after eating, so you do not contaminate it with food. There are 3 long handled swabs and a special package to put them in after doing the test. First you stick a swab into your right cheek and rub it firmly for 30 seconds. Then the same with the second swab in your left cheek. About then Fred walked in and asked 'where do they tell you to put the 3rd swab?!!' Smart Alec. Actually, you rub inside your bottom lip for another 30 seconds. Then package it all up.....
And take it to your friendly Post Mistress and mail it. Then wait........

Tea etc.

I got carried away at the Family owned Oriental shop near Jeff's home in Florida. It is a good thing I did not see the push around cart when I went into the little store, and used the little shopper's basket. I got as far as the tea isle and stopped. My basket was filled to the top and running over by the time I got to the counter. I found coconut vinegar, sesame oil, fried sea weed, coco jam, horny goat weed tea.. and lots of other teas.

The fried sea weed is a snack that is eaten in place of potato chips. It is tasty, though a little fishy tasting. However, after you eat one of the strips.. in a little while you want another one. It is very healthy for you, unlike potato chips. Jeff's wife, Cindy, was at work when I made the buying trip and was interested to see what I was attracted to at the store. She laughed when she saw the sea weed and brought out her bag that was opened so I could taste it without opening mine.

After I arrived at Rhonda's in Kansas, I let her go through my box of goodies from the Oriental store and shared a few bags of the different teas. She spotted the sea weed so we opened it to share a taste. Mike and India also wanted a taste. Okay, I can spare a taste. The next morning while packing the tea back in the box so we could head back to Iowa, I could not find my bag of sea weed. So I asked if they knew where I put it. The look Rhonda gave me was 'deer in the headlights' before she told me "we ate it". They REALLY liked it. That sure makes it easy for me to know what to bring back to them from the next Florida trip.

Old photos

Don't you just love old photos? I borrowed this photo from my Aunt Susie. It was taken in the late 1940s. The happy little girl standing with her brothers is 'moi'. We have been researching ancestors (kind of like to know where I came from). We have many ancestors listed on ancestry.com, but no photos to put on their data pages. I was so excited to find some needed photos in Aunt Susie's photo box, so we have a picture to put with a name. History has become very exciting, now that I have relatives in those places, at those times, doing those things.

Before leaving warm and sunny Florida, we helped Jeff harvest his coconuts from the 4 trees in his back yard. There were 2 wagon loads, and we piled them all in our pickup box. We had many people ask us what they were as we traveled North. I have plans of using them for coco frio. yum!! To serve coco frio, the coconuts are put in a tub of water that has lots ice in it, husk and all. After they are good and chilled, drill a hole to the middle large enough to stick a straw in. Some like to add a spoonful or 2 of rum, through the hole. Then... walk around carrying your big ole cold coconut, sipping through the straw. When the 'milk' is gone, split the coconut open and peal out the coconut meat and eat it fresh.