Harvest Lane Cottage

Hello everyone! When we adopted our little pound puppy, Penny, she was 8 weeks old. Her mama was a Dachshund, and her papa was a ramblin' man. ~grin~ I had been looking for a Dachshund for months, but I just couldn't find one. I found little Penny along with her sisters and brothers at the local animal shelter. They had been born in the shelter and not handled very much prior to adoption. Although she was not a pure bred like I wanted, I decided that she was God's thrifty option for our family.  At the time, I was working part-time with my husband at our restaurant...meaning I was on-call at a moment's notice, I was driving the family everywhere they needed to go in a three town triangle (only 1 vehicle), and I was homeschooling. Penny went along with me in the van sometimes and became very well-behaved in the van on the go. She did not have much contact with strangers except through the window. She's five now, and I'm trying to get her used to ...

Britfield & The Lost Crown by C.R. Stewart A book to get lost in with a good cup of tea... the British answer to everything!   Britfield & The Lost Crown by C.R. Stewart is billed as a kids' book. Yes and no. Yes, it is an exciting read for kids, but no you don't want to miss it just because you're an older teen or adult!   Britfield sounded thrilling to me. I like juvenile fiction. It's usually clean (this is) and if it's good, has a great storyline that draws you through the book. This is an excellent book for young and old. C.S. Lewis said, "Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again." He also said, "No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally—and often far more—worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond."  This is just such a book. Don't let the first few chapters scare you away. Yes, it does begin in a rather cliche way. A couple of children living in an orp...

Hey y'all! I hope you're starting your summer well. I've dear friends visiting from out of town this week. It's so good to relax and enjoy time together as we catch up. We try to visit a couple times a year. We love you Smith ladies! Let's catch up a bit shall we? Here are some of the thrifty things we've done lately. 🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼 🔸Our kids, 17-28, helped us move. Thanks kids! 🔸We borrowed a trailer to move. Thanks Ray! 🔸Free boxes from Wal-Mart for packing. 🔸Hubby fixed headlights on two vehicles! He saved over $100 by doing it himself. Thanks YouTube! 🔸He bought several loaves of bread 🍞on sale. 🔸We made French bread pizzas with the bread for Sunday night family dinner. 🔸We sold several household items on Facebook Marketplace. 🔸We had a sale at our old house. 🔸We donated nearly everything that didn't sell. 🔸Lowell and I shared a single meal for our date. 🔸I received a free muffin for signing up for Panera rew...

Hello ladies,  It's summer bucket list time again! I know y'all probably think of Memorial Day as the beginning of summer, and I suppose it is. I like to publish my list between the end of May and the first day of summer in June. However you count summer, it's definitely here now with the sunshine and warm weather. Actually, we're still having a lot of rain. Have you had any flooding troubles where you live?  My Lowell put up my computer for me last night. Yay! It won't connect to the internet. Boo! For now, I will have to continue my little chatty posts on my phone or borrow a computer. Either way, I'm going to get back to writing at least once or twice a week. After all, that's what bloggers do, blog!   Have you made your summer bucket list? It's just for fun. I've done it for a few years now. I even did it the year I was taking chemo. It gave me something positive to look forward to. Even in the hardest times, we can find little bit...

  Hi everyone. I'm trying something different. My computer is still not set up. Therefore, I have not yet been able to write a blog post. So, I thought I would see if I could do this on my telephone. So far, it is writing down what I say. I notice, however, that the print is really large. I don't know if I can fix that or not. We lived at our last house for nearly 10 years. It was a great blessing. However, I do find that we accumulated far more things than I realized. We have been busy just sorting and deep cleaning. You can't imagine how dirty a house can get when you have been recovering from a major illness for two years. It's scary. Living in the country, I think we grew dust in our house. I've truly been enjoying central air and the laundry room on the main floor in our new home. I'm trying to find places for the things that we have brought here. The garage is still half full of boxes. I have found that we have more dishes than we can probably u...