What's on My Kitchen Counter

Hello friends. This week our Grandsons all played each other in a scrimage game - the midgets from two neighboring and rival towns.  Two of them play on one team together.  It was super exciting and fun.  We were lucky it was tie as there was a little trash talk before the game, and we were hoping it wouldnt get too bad after the game. LOL. I cased a layout from this week's Featured Stamper on Splitcoaststampers.com - THIS is the fun card I used for my inspiration. I kept her bordered panel and the stars, but made the rest my own.   The bulldog is from Deep Red (Bulldog Portrait) - I colored him up to match the colors on the team. I plan to do another page for Patton's scrapbook with a lion for the image.  Fun memories. This was also inspired by Neet's September **Art*Journal*Journey challenge of Fur or Feathers .  Hugz 

I was lucky enough to get to hang out with my work family last week.  Here are some pictures of a few of them. Those pictures are all as we were just arriving and sitting down.  We had an all day meeting and then we went to Dreamland Barbeque again.  It is an easy place to go to with a large group so we default to that place when we have limited time to plan.   Here is my drink - I got the chocolate oatmeal stout.  They brew it in the restaurant.  The location was a brewery several years ago, and they kept the equipment and continue making the beer.  The chocolate oatmeal stout is one of the best I have tried and you all know I have tried a bunch!  LOL.  This is my ticket to the T-day party over at Elizabeth's blog.    I also got to spend some time with one of my daughters and my three grandson's last week.  We went to an interactive museum in Birmingham, Alabama.  Here they are right before we went in.  I love t...

 So what did I buy at the Haunted Bookshop ? I bought all these books except the top one.  I added the top one because I just finished reading it, and I loved is so much that I wanted to recommend it.  I think I cried at the end of it more than I cried with any other book.  Not even sure why I cried. I think it was over the lost opportunties we all have in life and for all the deep losses we all experience or will in the future.  It was a great book.  I finished murder at Mardi Gras a few days ago.  It was written by a former Mobile police detective so I wanted to support a local writer.  Great story and great insight into the workings of a police detective and the politics involved in the police world, but the writing style was hard to work through.  It was a bit formal and dry. Still, I don't regret buying it or reading it.   I am reading Anno Dracula now.  Evidently (according to the Haunted Bookshop staff), if you like vamp...

 I am always on a mission to find a fun new-to-me beer.  This weekend, I found this fun espresso porter from Palmetto Brewing Company at Squid Ink.  Squid Ink is a restaurant in downtown Mobile, Alabama.  It is a fun restaurant where you can sit outside or inside. We tried outside, but the wind came up and we ran inside. This is my ticket to T-day over at Elizabeth's Blog .  If you want to join us post something about a drink (movie, book, actual drink, poem, etc. - can be any type of drink).  Allie (Alex) had a Queen Victoria - something with peach, cucumber, mint and other fun things. We were celebrating Allie's new big girl car.  And visiting the famous Haunted Bookshop .... Definitely worth the visit.  The people who work there know their books and can recommend something you will absolutely love.  I bought 7 books and a T-shirt.  Allie even bought a book. Fit in some art this week too - mostly scrapbook pages.  This was my favo...

Hello friends! I discovered a fun beer this week at my local rural grocery store (still surprizes me that they find such interesting beers!).   It is a coffee milk stout from Wiseacre Brewing Company in Memphis, Tennessee.  The name and the can are creative and the beer was outstanding.  I looked them up online and now I want to go visit and try a bunch of their beers - check them out HERE .  They have a restaurant and store too so I am feeling a weekend trip may be in the cards for me after peewee football season is over - lol! This is my ticket to T-day which I totally missed but I am going to link up anyway and check out what all the other T-day gang has been up to over at Elizabeth's blog (our clubhouse) .  A little art from the week to share too. Back to school card for my youngest grandson to give to his teacher - I did some stamp surgery on a Sassy Cheryl image and added in his little face from a recent picture.  Had to make another one for anot...

  Every once in a while, I have a day at work that rivals my best day at work.  Last Wednesday was one of those days.  We had one of our sales teams come in for a visit and they were the nicest, most humble, interested, and interesting people.  They made giving our presentations fun.  Then we all went out to dinner at Dreamland Bar-B-Que in downtown Montgomery (one of the best bar-b-que places in Alabama) and had even more fun.   I asked the bartender to give me the coolest wine or beer they had.  She let me try her two favorites and I settled on the oatmeal stout.  The few oatmeal stouts I have had before had a bitter aftertastes, but this one was sweet.  I loved it, but forgot to ask the brand. This is my ticket to T-day at Elizabeth's blog where we share drink posts every Tuesday. I talked the bartender for a few minutes after deciding on the beer (she was soooo nice).  I  glanced up, quickly and thought the sign over the b...

One of my favorite things to do is visit craft breweries so hubby and I visited the  Great Flood Brewery  on our trip to Louisville, Kentucky. The brewery doesn't have a public room so we went to their offshoot restaurant/bar in Middletown.  As I am a Porter fan, I tried the Coffee Porter served in a Toasted Brown Glass. It was wonderful. We tried one of their New York Pizzas too.  We were tired and didn't read the size very well - it was HUGE and could have fed 4-6 people.  We had them go light on the cheese (we think they didn't hear that part) and add chicken, bell peppers, mushrooms, and jalapenos. It was wonderful. We had pizza for days! We wondered about the brewery name.  The brewery has a very informative website HERE . I didn't see anything about how they came up with their name, but it turns out Louisville has had a number of huge floods.  The most famous one is the flood of 1937. In 1937, t he Ohio River flooded in late January/early Fe...