This and That

Oh my goodness these last two weeks have been a blur-we packed up and moved from our summer house back to our regular house over the weekend.  We rent our regular house to baseball families visiting our town for 12 weeks during the summer.  G also  has been working with a contractor day and night for 8 days trying to get our second rental house ready for tenants who are moving in this week.   On top of all of that craziness classes started today at the college where we work and we have an exchange student living with us this fall and she moved in yesterday.  I'm exhausted just typing all of that.  For the last two weeks I have done nothing but pack, clean, organize and I made numerous trips to Home Depot to get stuff for the rental house.  I am SO exhausted but I am thankful that we are back to our regular house and almost settled in there.  

I also did manage to squeeze in a few fun things that were already on my calendar in the last couple of weeks.  

 G learned to put in windows and put 16 news ones in our rental house!  Here he is putting in the windows in the dining room of the downstairs apartment.  I took tons of pictures of the renovations that we did and want to make a book of before and after pics.  

The upstairs bathroom needed a complete overhaul.  Here is the before and the (almost) after.  

I love making homemade freezer jam so I made 6 jars of  strawberry freezer jam for us and I also made pesto using basil from my garden.  I was able to make four batches of pesto the basil leaves from one of my plants.

My friend M invited me over for a fun afternoon of swimming, friends, and snacks.  It was a great day!

My friend T had her second annual summer brunch and I made peach hand pies to take to the brunch.  They were so easy to make and I used peaches from the Farmers Market.  Peaches are in peak season in NY right now and they were so delicious.  I will post the recipe soon.

I went to a fundraing event for Hospice over the weekend.  ZZ Top played and it was a lot of fun. Practically everyone from our whole town was there and it was fun night for a great cause!

A couple of weeks ago my friend D hosted our monthly bunco game and her hubby made pizzas for us in their outdoor pizza oven.  They were so good!  

A couple of weeks ago Margaret Atwood, one of my favorite authors, came to Cooperstown to give a talk about her books.  She talked mostly about A Handmaid's Tale and the TV series it has become.  She gave a fascinating talk and I learned so much from listening to her.  She had a dry sense of humor and she kept everyone engaged with her funny stories and sharp wit.  After the talk she did an impromtu book signing and I had her sign a copy of the Handmaids Tale for Ava.  Once school starts for Ava we are going to read the Handmaid's Tale together.  

This morning I watched the finale of Sharp Objects.  I read the book in June and have absolutely loved the series it was SO good.  The finale was intense and crazy and I loved every minute of it.  If you watched it let me know how you liked it.  

Finally our exchange student from Taiwan arrived yesterday.  She slept most of the day yesterday and is still tired today.  She is a sweet girl and we have had fun talking with her and getting to know her a little bit.  We have a couple of fun things planned for her this week before school starts.  

I hope you had a great couple of weeks.
xoxo