A special thanks goes out to the Bacon siblings who so generously invited us over to their home for the NTBMO and showed us around their town that Sunday. It was a very inspiring and also enjoyable time. Here are a few videos from their royal NTBMO. We were all treated as royalty and it truly was appreciated!
I'll try to make this interesting by telling it in narrative form. :-)
I'll try to make this interesting by telling it in narrative form. :-)
ABOVE: Your backstage reporter pass. :-)
...and here are the pics of their set-up!
I may not be English, but a lady I am. ;-) (written on the menu.) They did an excellent job with their menus. Very creative. At this very special dinner we went around the table and everyone told, in detail, of how they came to be where they are in life now w/God as their center. It ended up taking up the entire evening. Some pretty neat things had happened in some peoples lives.
The candles were so serene.
A bonus to this trip was traveling with Katherine. Katherine lived with me her Senior year of IA back in her high school years. We joke and say that I was her foster parent that year. Her parents lived far away, and she wanted to attend IA, so permission was granted for her to be under my care that year. She drove us on this trip, and we joked b/c in her high school days I was driving her to school, picking her up from school, taking her to teen activities, etc, and now, she is all grown and driving me around. Wow! Time flies, and I am still super proud of Katherine. She teaches at IA and is a super special young woman of God.
...ummm I don't know why we felt the need to switch sides, but I guess they say we all have a better side, so we wanted to make sure to get that right. ;-)
Here is our lovely host and hostesses! It was really neat seeing the three siblings and the newly added Bre (Justin's wife) to the mix of siblings. Their family worked together beautifully to ensure we had a royal evening, and it was neat to see the fruits of Armstrong College in Justin and Bre hosting and giving back in the education that they have received. I think that is wonderful!
SUNDAY was the FUN DAY! :-)
After the more serious tone to the end the previous week, we decided to make Sunday a lighter more fun day. We went into their town which happens to be the town in which Walmart was founded where Sam Walton lived, and we toured this very touristy town and visited the first Walmart which is now a museum and learned about the Walmart and Sam's Club founder, Mr. Sam Walton. I have to say, he seemed to really have a giving, sharing, wanting to help people attitude, and not a get from people mind set, and I noticed how even after he was successful and became super rich, he didn't even buy a mansion or a new car; he kept his old house, his old beat up pick up, and was seldom in his office, but always out in the stores with his ranks. His purpose of starting the store was to help those who weren't rich to be able to afford things at a working mans salary, and he put his increase back into the store rather than on himself once it was a success. I wonder if that character is why his business was so successful. I have more respect for him after going to that museum. I definitely don't worship people who many see as important, but it's neat to study about people of exemplary character. Below is the video of the tour about to start, but we before I post the pics of the tour, I'll go back in time that same Sunday to when we went to an art museum earlier in the day, and go back to the grand Walmart tour later down in this post. The Walmart tour will resume after these art museum messages. :-)
At the entrance of the art museum was an old fashioned car, not sure of the year or model; in which an artist had taken nickels and pennies, and covered the car. The tour guide said that the car had $1000 worth of coins on it. I like looking at old cars, so I personally found this feature fascinating.
Then, we saw a piece of art that mimicked a grand piano. It looked so real that at first I thought it was a real piano until I got closer. It's just a lovely piece of hand crafted wood art work by an amazing artist. Since I'm back into piano lessons these days, this piece of art was one of my favorite. If you can't afford a grand piano, have an artist to make you a wannabe. Just joking! ;-)
The wooden "keys" almost look real.
Next, we found a picture that was made by a shot gun. If you look closely, the below portrait was made by an artist, probably from Texas....LOL.....who shot bullet holes into a piece of wood to get this pic. They had to shoot off the white and know where to leave the white by not shooting in those areas. If you think about it, that took a lot of skill and right aim. Being a Texan gal, I can appreciate this. I purposely let an artist wax figure photo bomb this pic to add a little humor to it. ;-)
Below: If you can't make one goal, just make sure to have plenty more! (Maybe I would play BB if this is how the hoops were made.)
The lovely Kim and Wendy at the art museum. They were troopers to allow their art appreciation friend the time to go through the museum. I'm big on art, but hopefully they didn't get bored or tired of me there. Great friends!
Nice piece of art. My next hair do. Just joking!
Above: They have "a street" in their town just so everyone knows! ;-)
Below: Because their town is Walmart Headquarters, there are Walmart's everywhere a person turns, and people cycle a lot there. It's really kind of neat actually.
FINALLY, the WALMART MUSEUM TOUR! :-)
Below: A pic of the first Walmart that Mr. Sam Walton opened.
Here is a pic of Sam Walton's office as it was when he died in 1992. We were amazed at how he kept even his office. He was super rich and could have had fancy things in there, and by 1992 there were a few more updated things around that would have been available, but his office furniture still looked like it was 60 or 70ish. Humble man it seemed.
Information on the lovely woman behind Sam Walton. See the pic of her wedding dress.....
...well, they have it on display. Being that I'm into modest fashion design, I really enjoyed this feature along the tour. I love the simple elegance to her dress. So lovely!
Some would have gotten the billion dollar cut, but he chose the 5 dollar one. :-)
His truck that he kept and drove even when rich. Hey, if you're rich you could at least get a million dollar car, but not him, he kept his old pick-up. Pretty neat.
A picture of him with his old pickup.
Below: It was neat to take the tour and re-visit this mans shoes. I now understand Walmart's history a lot better!
SWITCHING GEARS!!!!
The gals and I went shoe shopping earlier that morning. Summer shoes are now in order. Below is what we found to our liking. The middle pic are my four pairs that I picked, and the bottom pic are the pairs that the friends picked. I'm not one to shop a lot as a person has to be frugal with money and things are just physical and don't last forever, but shoes are my thing or maybe I should say my weakness in being honest, so since I was in vacation mode, I had a little fun and got several pair, ummm, maybe a little too much fun. I think we should have gone to the Walmart museum first before the shoe shopping as maybe Mr. Walton's example would have rubbed off on me to be content with what I have. ;-)
Anyway, below are the new shoes. :-) I cannot say that I don't have a sufficient amount of spring and summer shoes now to start the new year off and hopefully to start many more years off to come in trying to be modest.
After a packed fun day out on the town, Justin and Bre came over and said what I thought was my goodbye to them.
....but Katherine and I got lost in between Kim and Wendy's house and Justin and Bre's place to pick up Katherine's things, so we had to connect with them again at their place, and I learned that Justin has gotten into fencing as a hobby. No really, he has. He let me hold his sword. Pretty cool. Though I'm sure he will beat that sword into a plowshare in the future. :-)!
Bre has her little deck patio garden going. She is growing stevia. I think she may have inspired me to entertain the thought, at least, to growing my own stevia. I use it daily as my preferred natural sweetener since I can't have sugar on a regular basis, and it's expensive, so why not just grow it yourself. She let me taste a leaf, and it's definitely, well, stevia! :-) With my dehydrator, I could easily dry it and get it into the proper useful form and everything.
Going back in time, yet again, that same Sunday we went out to a swanky restaurant called "Pressroom." It had a beautiful menu for ULB to a certain extent as we caught it in time to have the brunch menu.
Above: Cucumber infused water
Below: We made it a champagne type of brunch. The Bacon's had treated us like royalty, so it was my little treat to them as a small way to say thank you! Ordering a bottle of champagne was definitely in order.
We mixed the champagne with orange juice and made tasty mimosas!
Here's to beautiful true friendships
The food at the top notch restaurant was A+. This food was blog worthy. We noticed that there were no salt and pepper shakers on any table in the restaurant and foodies know that when that happens, that means there is a master chef in the kitchen who cooks so well, no extra seasoning is needed, and it is an insult to the chef if you were to add anything, and we all agreed their chef was good enough not to need any salt or pepper shakers. Best grits in a long time. Delicious food! :-)
Take one above and take two below by the lovely Kim Bacon photographer. ;-) She and Wendy liked the below pic better, but I thought the above pic looked more natural of how I carry myself, so I gave up figuring out which one to post and just posted both in the hopes that it doesn't come across as posting too many pics of myself which is totally not my style. :-)
They can consider this a toast to their super friendly and lovely hospitality that they showed to us while we visited. It was very much appreciated! Here, here! :-)!
PRE--Spring HD's!
As it is with everyone, life was super hectic before the Spring HD's began. You know, the usual in getting the house ready, the car, the work space, etc, as well as even more importantly preparing mentally, etc. In the midst of it all, I went on a tabletop fountain fad and bought each one of my family members a fountain and got the below one for my home for a little serenity. This fountain is definitely a "Carolyn fountain." It's got the changing "disco" lights, yet it's peaceful. ;-)
Healthy Recipe Time!
In cleaning out the frig, I went to our local little Sprouts and stocked up for the HD's. Below, I treated my frig to organic uncured, without nitrates turkey bacon. It's about the healthiest you can get, but you certainly pay for the healthier kind. I baked one pound of asparagus in the oven with olive oil, sea salt, and cracked black pepper for about 8 minutes, then chopped up the baked asparagus in a bowl; chopped up three or four large avocados; chopped up a bit of raw red onion; added a bit of minced baked garlic; cut one lemon and squeezed the juice into the bowl; and put bits of the organic uncured turkey bacon to the bowl; added sea salt to taste, mixed together, and voila, had a very tasty and healthy what I would call a salad. I've done different variations of this in the past. I made ULB to go with it, but somehow was too quick in making it and didn't get a picture, but my good friend, Gladys Welsh, let me try some of her yummy baking, and she had stuffed her ULB with cheese and turkey bacon, so I decided to try it, and stuffed mine with fresh garlic cloves and turkey bacon, and it turned out delicious! Basically, it's flour, butter, spices to taste, sea salt, water, etc. It's kind of add what you want if you have the basics down to making ULB. Anyway, this was so yummy I thought I would share it for whatever it is worth.
With the ULB made, sweet healthy treats were still in order, so I dehydrated some mangoes in my blessing dehydrator. Getting the dehydrator is a story within itself that I won't go into to spare time. I decided to dehydrate them without enhancing their flavor. They were sweet enough on their own because they were a little overripe. When I make fruit roll ups in the dehydrator I'll add lemon juice and maybe a touch of stevia, or if the fruit isn't fully ripe I'll do that. It took all night for the mangoes to dehydrate.
....but when they did....voila!!!!......they come out like candy chip bites. I can't describe how tasty they are, and how they are of a candy consistency. It's something one would have to try for themselves
Post 1st DULB
When you are out of town you miss things including lovely long time friends who visit. Thankfully, Jennifer J., and her daughter and niece came into the HOA Monday, and we got a few minutes of catching up in before I had to get back to work and she had to hit the road on her several hours journey home. Beautiful family. Anyway, that is my tale of the Spring HD's start! Thanks for "listening!" :-)!
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