Mountain Musings

When Friends Come to Visit and Hike a Mountain With Us!

This past weekend friends came to visit us here at Mountain Musings, and we had some fun activities planned for them.

It had been years since we had climbed Humpback Rocks (and it's still been years for me as I waited down below at the Visitor Center while the group hiked up)!

This is a beautiful area, and we are privileged to have lived here in the Valley for 22 years:

One of our all-time favorite things to do at the top of the mountain is sing together. The Solid Rock is often one of the choices, so other folks who have made the climb are treated to an unexpected concert!

We also love taking any of our guests who have visited through the years to the picnic area on the Parkway for a picnic while there: Hiking the trail at Appalachian Farm is another fun part of the Parkway to see how folks lived many years ago:

Raven's Roost Overlook is also a popular stop for a view of the Valley. Everything looked different to us in this season...we're used to traveling the Parkway in the fall with the other leaf peepers:

Back home again, we checked out the garden while some of the young people played volleyball in the yard, and others rested after the tiring hike:

Then it was time to get supper ready. I appreciated having so many helping hands in the kitchen! The main dish was Baked Stuffed Sweet Potatoes topped with barbecue chicken, cheese, and red onion...one of Jonathan's favorites:

And here we are chowing down out on the deck...what nice temperatures that evening to be outside:

That evening was music night! Our friends brought their instruments, and we sang and played violin, guitar, whistle, and ukulele. It was a fun time!

Every person picked their favorite hymn, and we sang some good ones! The music sounded wonderful!

The next day our friends traveled with us to church, and Jonathan hosted all of us for a meal on Sunday evening at his house. He did a great job...here's the buffet line for barbacoa tacos and all the toppings:

Lots of conversation, games, and fun!

And this game of spoons was wild! LOL!

And a final photo for Jonathan's Guest Book:

Monday morning and travel day for our friends came way too soon! We gathered out in the driveway, and they sang a blessing song to us as they prepared to leave:

Yes, I will miss this sweet boy!

~Deb

Thanksgiving 2022 ~ Friends and Family Together Again!

We sure hope you had an enjoyable and blessed Thanksgiving with your family and friends as you gathered around your harvest table! We wanted to update you and share some photos from our holidays.

We absolutely enjoyed our time in Georgia with Sarah and her family and with her in-laws, who invited us into their home to share their Thanksgiving meal.

Hannah and Christopher drove down from Michigan to join us--our first time seeing them since their wedding! It was wonderful to all be together again!

On our way to Georgia, we split the travel up and stopped to overnight with friends in Tennessee.
They are well-known for their sweet hospitality and welcoming signs, and this sign delighted us as we approached their home:

Our friends treated us to a delicious pre-Thanksgiving feast around their beautifully decorated table!

We toured their home and property and were better able to visualize their swim academy after seeing their pool and hearing success stories of the children who take lessons at their home.

Here I am with my friend Lynn around a warm cozy fire:

I always enjoy seeing how friends' homes are decorated, and these quail on the chalkboard and the saying definitely caught my eye above another fireplace near the kitchen:  "Lord, prepare me for what You are preparing for me."

After we left our friends in Tennessee, we arrived in Georgia with great anticipation for the days ahead!

Then the newlyweds arrived, all the way from snowy Michigan! So good to see them!

First thing on Thanksgiving morning, we started preparing the dishes that we were to contribute to the meal. Here I am making the cranberry relish:

And Christopher and Hannah peeled apples together for the apple pie Hannah was making:

Rolling out her homemade crust:

Quietly reading her Thanksgiving book, dressed in her pretty Thanksgiving outfit:

Grampa found something to do with the boys. He repaired Sarah's cutting board and re-oiled it for her. The boys enjoyed watching and helping:

Arrival at Sarah's in-laws and getting some conversations in before the meal. There were 20 in attendance!

This is the young adult and married couples' table below:

Holiday scenes throughout the evening

Sarah, admiring sister-in-law Abby's newborn daughter:

Brother and sister, Jonathan and Sarah, sneaking in a hug:

The grandchildren loved watching the Georgia Grampa's trains:

And, of course, the evening ended with music!

Christopher played piano:

There were violins and flutes and whistles:

And, of course, an accordion!

And they sang Christmas carols while the grandparents listened, with a kiddie xylophone chiming in:

The day after Thanksgiving was a decorating day...lights, trees, action!

The finished product...looking good!

One evening we had game night..a new one to us called Code Names. Very fun!

After such good food and being inside over the holidays, these three decided to get outside for a much-needed walk in the fresh Georgia air:

This was the very first time Christopher had been in Georgia and his farthest travel down South. But he sure made a good impression on these four kiddies. "Uncle Christopher! Uncle Christopher!"

Uncle Jonnie is a definite fave too!

Well, the weekend flew by! It was time for us to head back to Virginia, and the Michiganders to head north. Here's a quick pic of the kiddies just before church on Thanksgiving Sunday morning:

Christopher and Hannah decided to take advantage of their travels and stopped by the Creation Museum in Kentucky on their way home:

To sum up this Thanksgiving post:

~Deb

Early Fall Activities and Munchkin Visitors

All of a sudden, the season that we all love has arrived. We've had a few chilly mornings here in Virginia, and the gorgeous 70's temps are telling us the calendar page has turned to delightful October.

Hannah has been in the garden picking the last of the black-eyed peas, and we've been enjoying them for lunch...just today, in fact!

Someone told us last week that we hadn't posted many garden pictures this season, so here you go...a photo of Trinidad Scorpion peppers growing in our garden:

There's a story behind this particular peck of peppers...my fault, actually. Hannah sent me to the nursery for some hot pepper plants...I unknowingly went to the extreme, heh, heh.

So she planted them anyway, and Jonathan has a co-worker who wanted to take them off our hands and dry them into chili powder. Interesting how many peppers those four plants produced....dozens and dozens! This is just one small batch.

With the garden winding down, Hannah has been knee-deep in soap making, labeling, packaging, and boxing up hundreds of soaps lately for a big order. Here she is meticulously adding toppings to the soaps:

Granny likes to watch her work, and here's Hannah showing her one of her boxed gift sets:

Hannah often packages her soaps in Granny's room to keep Granny company:

Speaking of Granny...continue to pray, please. Most days are very hard for her. Here's Tom sitting and talking with her a few nights ago:

This summer Tom has been quite occupied in his workshop building a dining room table:

He's staining the legs now, and next up is staining the top and apron. A big project finally nearing completion!

In other news, part of our family joined other adventurous ones in our church group recently and hiked the Blue Ridge Tunnel Trail near Afton Mountain one Saturday morning. I thought this was an interesting photo of the dark tunnel:

Munchkin Time!  Eric, Sarah, and children came to visit a couple of weekends ago on their way back home to Georgia from another trip.

It was a short stopover here, but these grandparents will take anything they can get! Always love having them visit, even when this Little Miss was scared of us at first!

Jonathan made sure to get in a brotherly hug with Sarah:

Here are the four cuties all ready to travel back home. Bye Bye, kiddies: 

Well, we sent them off and started prepping for our next guest to arrive a few days later....my friend, Carol from Texas, whom I've known for over 40 years. She was headed home after traveling for a few weeks and stopped by the Mountain Musings B & B.

Carol is an avid hymnologist and was here years ago to teach a class to friends who gathered in our living room.

She brought a bag of favorite hymnals with her, and we sang around the dining table that evening. Very entertaining and enjoyable:

It was fun to catch up with each other's lives.Thanks, Carol, for coming to visit!

So she wrote in our guest book, we took a final photo, and she was on her way back to Texas.

I'll close up this post with something for you to think about:

~Deb

Sunday Night Hymn Sing

Our nightly family devotional times consist of Tom alternating reading each evening after supper from either...

1) a book in the Bible (right now we've just finished Thessalonians and started on John).

2) Voices from the Past, daily devotional readings written by Puritans (do names like Stephen Charnock, Thomas Manton, David Clarkson, Thomas Brooks, John Bunyan, and Jonathan Edwards sound familar?).

3) Evening by Evening by Charles H. Spurgeon, a classic daily devotional that's been an encouragement to millions for over 150 years, and one that I've been reading for over 50 years!

But...Sunday evenings are a bit different. We get out the hymnals and sing around the table.

Granny seems to really enjoy it and likes to pick her favorite old-time hymns (I'd Rather Have Jesus was tonight's choice) when it's her turn to call a number: Here's Hannah singing tonight, and she picked Children of the Heavenly Father...you can read the lyrics and hear it sung here on youtube. Tom's selection was a song that he'll be teaching the folks at church to sing in four-part harmony soon...The Lord is My Shepherd. Jonathan sometimes serenades us with his guitar playing on Sunday evenings, but he wasn't available tonight. We missed him.

Just thought I would check in tonight on the blog and wish all of you a Happy Valentine's week coming up.

As in years past, Hannah's giving me the best gift ever this whole week! She's planning special meals for the family each night, and I get a break from cooking!

I'm looking forward to using the extra time to cut some fabric for an online sew-along I joined. And thinking of these blockheads 3 quilt blocks here. And this clover quilt too. I will be busy!

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loves is born of God, and knows God. He that loves not knows not God; for God is love. ~I John 4:7-8

~Deb

Happy 1st Day of Fall, Y'all!

Well, the calendar may say it's September 23rd and the first day of fall, but the thermometer says the high will be 88 today....and that sounds like summer is sticking around awhile to me!

However, we were given a quick taste of some glorious cooler fall weather this past week....and oooh, it was so good to open the windows and let in fresh air!

We were outside a lot of days! And here are some snapshots of our activities.

Granny had not made any new baskets for quite awhile....until this past week. She decided she needed to make a napkin basket to add to her inventory for the upcoming 40th Annual Dayton Days Autumn Celebration--it's now less than two weeks away!

Here she is outside sponging some walnut stain on her basket:

I loved getting outside to repot some new shamrock plants...one for me and one for a friend. It was fun working at the opposite end of the table as Granny:

I used two new Magnolia pots I ordered this spring...love them, especially the white stoneware one!

The weather was nice for our resident woodworker, too. He took some of his sanding outside. He's been very hard at work preparing for Dayton Days. Today he's working on two Shaker tables while the three quilt racks dry after brushing on the finish last week:

I've been outside collecting seeds from around the yard and garden...some were mailed to my sister-in-law in Connecticut...and some will go to daughter Sarah for her new yard in Georgia, so she can have some remembrances of her Mountain Musings' roots!

I'm collecting hollyhock seeds in this picture, but I also retrieved money plant, columbine, and coneflower seeds to share. I'll collect the hyacinth bean seeds once they dry:

It was a wonderfully relaxing evening last night, so we sat out on the back deck with the twinkly lights on and listened to Jonathan playing songs for us...from Granny's request for Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Rock of Ages to Riding on that New River Train (swipe left to second picture to hear on his Instagram).

Here he is playing a short snippet of Palms of Victory: (click video link and wait for download)

That was our slice of life last week...although I didn't tell you another special project that I've been working on outside. Hopefully, I'll finish this week and be able to post soon. 

Watch for next post: "He Shed, She Shed."

~Deb

Celebrating National Quilting Day

Did you celebrate this weekend with your sewing machine and some fabric? It was National Quilting Day!

I spent Saturday afternoon at my machine and sewed three Room and Board blocks to add to the eight blocks I'd already completed. Here are those three on the design wall:

I joined the online Sweet Escape/Room & Board quilt-along hosted by Camille of Thimble Blossoms on her Instagram. Knowing that hundreds of other quilters across the country are sewing the same pattern makes it extra fun.

Quilting Day was an added reason to make sure some blocks were finished! It's always productive for me to quilt with a deadline.

Here are the previous eight blocks completed: All this fabric was a Christmas gift from my son, Jonathan. How did he know to buy Thimble Blossoms fabric!?? Perfect! Here it is all laid out as I was deciding which colors to put together: Also in honor of Quilting Day...

• stuffing and finishing my heart pillow from the previous post.
• binding a baby quilt that I've already quilted.
• quilting the Sewing a Village houses, another sew-along I participated in last year.

Then I can start my original plan of making a quilt for Hannah. Of all things, I've never made Hannah a quilt! Fabric and pattern are already purchased, so I'll post my progress when it happens. Spring mulching may interfere a bit....but she'll get it eventually!

Nothing to do with Quilting Day....but everything to do with Saint Patrick's Day, here are Tom and Jonathan playing some Irish music to end our Sunday evening: If you'd like to hear a short clip of Be Thou My Vision and an Irish ditty called Billy Brocker's Reel, check out Jonathan's Instagram at jonathan_girotti for the real music.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

~Deb

Musical Weekend in Gloucester

At the end of the last post we were headed back to Atlanta for a rush-down-and-rush-right-back trip to pick up Hannah. Once we returned home, everyone quickly repacked for the trip to Gloucester the next day.

We had been invited by the Parker family to arrive on Saturday afternoon for a time of visiting, followed by dinner, music, and an overnight with them before attending their church on Sunday.

Here's a map of the Hampton Roads area to pinpoint Gloucester, which is located across the York River from Williamsburg, Newport News, and Hampton.

We've lived in all three of those places in the 80s and 90s, so we were headed back to a familiar area. Good ol' Williamsburg!

The weather forecast for Sunday wasn't ideal so we really debated on making the trip...but we decided to "go for it" since Gloucester was calling for rain more than snow.

We had a very nice visiting time over a delicious dinner (cannot believe that I completely forgot to take pictures!).

Then the young folks brought out the instruments...Hannah played flute and Jonathan played his guitar as we sang from the hymn book:

More instruments were represented in the group too...piano, dobro, guitar, violin, mandolin, banjo...

And don't forget the down-home washtub bass instrument you see below...great for bluegrass numbers:

Below they are playing a song that was new to us...My Blue Ridge Mountain Home. Quite appropriate!: Playing and listening to special numbers being played during the evening: Our visit was very enjoyable...but quick checks on the weather as we were turning in for the night indicated that the snow might be worse than originally predicted.

As Sunday morning dawned, we made the decision to head back home first thing instead of staying for church and lunch with our friends afterwards. It was definitely a disappointment, but at least we were able to make the trip. Thankfully, we made it back home without incident and ended up with 8 inches here in the Valley, and Gloucester had several inches, too. Snowy Sunday afternoon, and we were cozy inside. Thank you, friends, for your hospitality and a warm welcome to your home!

~Deb

Giving Thanks for a New Grandson!

Thanksgiving 2018 found us heading south to Georgia. And what better time to spend Thanksgiving with family than to welcome Sarah and Eric's third baby boy! We were thrilled!

Upon arrival we all took turns holding the newest member of their little family. Granny Deb below is all smiles:

This little guy received a lot of attention all weekend. Aunt Hannah and Uncle Jonathan were a proud aunt and uncle, too! Let's not leave out Grampa Girotti. It's his turn: The other two boys were already asleep when we arrived late in the evening, so we were looking forward to seeing them again the next day! Would they remember us? It had been four months since we'd seen them at Great-Granny's birthday party.

Thanksgiving was so much fun! We quickly renewed acquaintance with the boys, and Grampa loved having them in his lap!

Children’s children are the crown of old men, And the glory of children is their father.. ~Proverbs 17:6

And Jonathan, affectionately known as Crazy Uncle Jonnie, took a turn reading to the boys:

Sarah opened a baby gift I made for her...a nautical-themed baby quilt. I won the Rolie-Polie Seaside fabric over at Happy Quilting. Thank you, Melissa, for the fun giveaway. Your generosity became a fun fall project for me to sew, and I hope it will become a treasured baby quilt in their family:

Here's Sarah holding her little one: The Thanksgiving meal was enjoyed over at Sarah's in-laws, and it was such a good time of seeing Eric's family again: There's always a music time with the young adults whenever we've visited, and this holiday was no exception. I guess these two little tykes are the next budding musicians:

Christmas carols, classical, and hymns were played on piano, flute, violin, penny whistles, and accordion:

I really could listen to them play all evening...very talented!

And, of course, the weekend came to an end before we were ready to leave!

Hannah was the lucky one...she stayed an extra couple of weeks to enjoy the boys and help her sister adjust to three under three!

We headed home but knew we'd be making the 9-hour drive again very soon to pick up Hannah at the end of her stint. Another chance to see our treasures before quickly leaving again.

It was a great Thanksgiving! Many, many thanks to the Georgia folks who hosted us!

~Deb

Up Next: Musical Weekend in Gloucester

Family Fall Conference in Asheville, NC ~ NCFIC ~ The Glory of Jesus Christ

Last weekend we traveled to Asheville, NC, for the annual family conference hosted by NCFIC. Here are Hannah and Tom arriving on campus:

As you can tell from the photo of the campus this year, the skies were threatening for our time there, and the normally gorgeously colored fall leaves we always enjoy seeing had not yet started to turn: However, the timely messages, uplifting music, and fellowship with like-minded families were not at all hindered by the rain. Such fun and encouraging times:

Fellowship with these two young ladies from Alabama was delightful....we found out they've been attending the conference with their family for many years, and yet this was the first year we had met them: Talking below with a family from Oklahoma whom we see just about every year...that's quite a distance to drive for the conference:

Friends from Georgia were attending with their new little baby. It was fun seeing him in person after watching him grow on Instagram: Music with the Bowers Family during the conference:

My friend for over 38 years drove from Texas to attend the conference for the first time. It sure was fun catching up with each other's lives. Here we are in the vendor hall browsing the books:

Lots of talking and getting acquainted came at meal times in the cafeteria. We try to sit with a variety of folks during the conference taking advantage of the meal opportunities. Here are Jonathan and Hannah with Sarah from Kings Blooming Rose ministries and another Hannah whose family runs Psalm 78 ministries in Florida: Another new family from Indiana that Hannah and Jonathan met for the first time at the conference: After the conference was ended on Saturday afternoon, some folks hiked or shuttled (shuttle, please!) the one mile to the top of the mountain behind the conference center for an afternoon of volleyball and ice cream and more fellowship... and to celebrate these two gentlemen's birthdays:

While most of the conference attendees were enjoying the ice cream social, another group of young folks decided to go off campus to hike Catawba Falls. Isn't it beautiful?

Here's part of that group:

And here's another shot of more hikers:

Hannah on the hike:

Jonathan on the rocks:
We left the conference headed back to Virginia on Sunday morning. As we were waiting to say final goodbyes to some folks, these young men started up an impromptu hymn sing:
Final goodbyes: That about wraps up the NCFIC Conference for 2018. I hope you enjoyed following along with us!

~ Deb 

A Week in Hannah's Life

We recently blogged about A Day in Granny's Life, and a regular reader asked that we do the same for Hannah because they were interested in seeing how she spends her days. Thanks for the idea, Alice!

I've been taking some photos of various aspects of Hannah's day-to-day life, and I'm titling it A Week in Hannah's Life so you can see a compilation of activities she does on a regular basis.

These photos show her involved in three different activities...on the same afternoon, all at the same time! In this first photo...she's baking bread and roasting butternut squash she harvested from the garden this fall:

And in this second photo, while the bread's rising, she's making Laurel Bay Shaving Soap. I hope she remembers which ingredients go in soap and which go in the food! The tube on the counter on the right is what she uses for a soap mold: Blending another batch of soap batter for Jasmine Vanilla goats milk soap:

Here's the finished product after the bread came out of the oven:

And here's Hannah's shaving soap that she's just finished cutting after it hardened in the mold for a couple of days:

Where does the soap go while it's being cured? If you guessed in my living room with all the woodworking projects, that would be an obvious guess...ha ha....but, thankfully, Hannah has a room dedicated for her soap racks as they await being cured, ordered and shipped:

Here's Hannah adding the newest shaving soap to the racks. She'll then pull down the blue tablecloths to protect the soaps from dust and light. I don't think we've ever shown her upstairs work space before now: Running a home business means a lot of keeping records on the computer. Hannah spends many hours here at her computer logging in how many soaps of each fragrance she has in stock, processing orders and generating receipts for the customer, writing her newsletter that goes out to customers, and maintaining all the records for the business: When an order comes in from a customer on her website, she then wraps each bar ordered in the appropriate labeled wrappers. This isn't done until the order is ready for shipping to insure that the wrapper is kept tight when it goes to its new home.

And then it's time for a trip to the local post office: Often times soap orders will come in from local businesses...which means a trip downtown to deliver in person.

Here's the front of the Frontier Culture Museum, one of the several businesses which stocks her soap...I dropped Hannah off here for the delivery and took a picture of the Gift Shop--quiet and not many visitors in the wintertime at the Museum: Well, soap doesn't take up all of her time, although there's a lot involved in keeping the business going. When she gets free time Hannah likes to sew and is making a red and white quilt this winter...sewing along with me in the craft room...which is great fun for me to have company as I sew: Hannah recently signed up for an online flute workshop, so she's been working on her lessons on the computer and practicing the assignments: Everything can't be fun and games....so as far as daily household chores, Hannah is the clean dish put-away-er and also the clean laundry put-away-er...after I've done the dirty part of those chores. Ha!  Here she is hard at work taking care of the laundry: Hannah has always had an interest in calligraphy and lettering. Recently she revived that hobby and here's her latest scripture practice: She just took a few days off last week from household chores, soap orders, and other obligations and made a trip down to South Carolina to the BJU annual Bible conference. Here's Hannah with Aunt Bet after one of the sessions: And...drum roll, please...since South Carolina is close enough to Georgia, where some certain adorable grandsons live, we traveled a bit farther at the end of the conference to see Sarah and her family. Hannah is a doting aunt to these two lovable little boys: This post is a sampling of Hannah's day-to-day activities. Of course, she also does a lot to help me in caring for Granny and takes care of Granny's Etsy basket orders on the computer when they come in.

Gardening season is right around the corner, and Hannah happens to be the chief vegetable gardener. Oh my, I think she needs more hours in her day!

Tomorrow I leave for the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival and for a Quilty Girls' Sewing Day with my friend (post coming later), and I'll leave my day-to-day chores for Hannah while I'm away...only because she doesn't have enough to do now. :)

I hope you've enjoyed reading A Week in Hannah's Life! Thanks for being a faithful blog reader. See you on the blog next time!

 

~~ Deb