as high as the heavens: Some things I'm thankful for in 2019

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in America. To celebrate I thought I would post about some things I’m thankful for in 2019 that I wanted to post about sooner but didn’t. It's kind of a blog catch-up post:

Tree dramas:

I’m thankful that this large broken tree limb did not fall on our house or motorhome--(The Motorhome is usually parked in that gravel patch between the tree and the house. John moved it after he noticed the limb was broken). I'm thankful that John noticed that the limb was broken in time. And that I had the presence of mind to insist that we call a professional when he wanted to try and remove it himself.

This is just after the tree guys got it down and were in the process of cutting it up and putting it into their trailer

Tree Man healing

I’m thankful that our tree man is healing up from his fall from a different tree in our front yard that he worked on later that day. He broke five vertebrae! But it was the "pieces on the sides" and they don't do surgery on those. Here he is on the roof before his fall.

Painting

I’m thankful that we painted our main hall and part of the kitchen. John said it might be the first time it’s been painted in 40 years. It’s so much brighter and prettier.

Kitchen decluttering

This summer I decluttered the right side of my kitchen counter and drawers. I was inspired from a YouTuber I watch, Dawn from “The Minimal Mom.” She said to help her declutter her own kitchen she pretended it was a vacation rental that just had the basics in it. I love all the space on our counter-top now and my simplified drawers. Here are some highlights:

Before:

The before: Counter top on the right very cluttered! (A couple of years ago I decluttered the left side of the kitchen counter and drawers. I did do a little bit this time on the left hand drawers and cupboards too.)

Junk drawer before--right most drawer next to fridge.

Wraps and clips before--drawer next to stove.

Exploded junk drawer! How did it all fit?

And Now...

The right counter top with so much less clutter! I love all the space!!

This used to be the wraps and clips. Now it is the utensil drawer.

Wraps and "junk" combined. It's not really junk because I use it. The rarely used things are put away elsewhere. The true junk is gone for good :-).

New Kitchen role cart with cabinet

I’m thankful for this new roll cart in my kitchen. The cabinet gives me more storage space. The bottom shelf has my china in protective sleeves. It will be nice to have the china so accessible for our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

The drawer is a good place to hide the things that used to live on top of our other stand that was there. So, it has the potential at least of being less cluttered on top. 😉

Here it is in use ;-). I considered removing the things from the top but I wanted to be honest! The kitchen wall is bare since we painted as I haven't figured out what I want to put on it.

Here is the old stand--behind the table--and the kitchen wall before we painted. As you can see the previous stand had no storage below and a lot of stuff lived on top out in the open.

Cross stitch hung at last

I finally framed this cross stitch I made years ago. We hung it in the bedroom in our motor-home. It’s nice to be able to enjoy it when we go on trips. I got the frame for a dollar at a garage sale. It was all gray but I painted it aqua and white to make it look like a frame with matting. We hung it using strips of stick-on Velcro.

Implant complete

I was so pleased when my new implant was finally completed in August after many delays that I couldn't resist taking this photo. It's the back bottom molar on the left side of my mouth, but on the right in the photo. I am also thankful that the pain I had around it at first has now mostly subsided.

Vacation

Here are a few photos from our second week of vacation. We were at Talimena State Park in Oklahoma: