De-lurking Success!!

I just have to tell you what a huge success my de-lurking post was. It actually became a party with a big turn out!! I think it was partly due to the fact that some people got scared. It might have been because of my magic mirror! Here's the comment Betty made, and just keep in mind that she's a friend and a regular here:

After reading your post I'm afraid to not leave a comment on everyone's blog that I visit. They might track me down like you did these three people. Leaves me wondering how you know they've been lurking. I'm scared!!

Just imagine, if I scared Betty who already knew me, the lurkers must have really been shaking in their boots and constantly looking over their shoulders to see if I was there!!

Remember when I said that when I looked in my magic mirror I could see Mary and Kaycie? It wasn't really magic! I actually knew for a fact that they had been lurking and not commenting!! When they were visiting me at Christmas I told Mary that she had better start leaving a comment or she would see herself on my blog. If you'll look here you'll see that it wasn't an idle threat! You'll also notice that I referred to her as one of my "oldest" friends!! :) I hate to keep wording it that way but we do go waayyy back, and let's face it, we are getting older! We've been through the good times and the bad times together. We also had some great adventures too. Our "then" husbands called us Lucy and Ethel. I'm sure you know there are many, many stories behind those nicknames!

Knowing my old (there's that word again) friend like I do, I can tell you she always was one to do things in a bold way. Just step right out there and do it with a "devil may care" attitude even if you don't have a clue what you're doing. So, while she STILL hasn't figured out how to leave me a comment, she just jumped right out there and started her own blog yesterday!! You will find Mary at Country Girl at the Beach. Please take some time to visit her and make her feel welcome in Blogland. You'll be so glad you did. She has a way of growing on people, ya know? Oh, and don't forget to tell her Hopie sent you!

Also on de-lurking day I met some new friends. How exciting is that?? First there were 3 girls who followed each other to my blog. They had been friends when they were younger and were reunited after 20 years through blogging! Rachel at A Romantic Porch, who has only had a blog for a short time. She lives in an old house built in 1904 so I knew right away I was gonna like this girl!! Then came her friend Denise at Denise Truesdales Blog, another lovely young lady, then their other friend Karla at Ramblin' Roads, another sweet girl. I know you will enjoy visiting these girls when you get a chance and please leave them a comment.

Then came a comment from Sandra at Nora Lee's Nook, named for her grandmother, Nora Lee, a woman with much history! I felt an instant connection to Sandra when I visited her blog and enjoyed reading every word and looking at pictures of all her beautiful, vintage things. Drop in on her sometime and you'll see what I mean. And again, tell her Hope sent you!

Sandra Evertson stopped by with a comment too! When I visited her blog I found out she has contributed to Romantic Homes Magazine, has her own line of rubber stamps and is the author of several books among other things! How impressive is that? See for yourself when you visit her blog.

Next new commentor was Katherine at Yellow Rose Arbor. Katherine is a beautiful, genteel southern lady who was drawn to my country supper! There's just something about fried green tomatoes that seems to bring the southern gals right out of hiding!! Check out her lovely blog when you get a chance and tell her Hope......well, you know the drill by now! LOL

Last but not least, I had an anonymous comment from Another Hope, who came out to say "Hi", since we share the name Hope. So, Another Hope, I hope you will come back again and leave me a comment Please don't go back into the shadows and hide. And if you don't already have your own blog, maybe you will venture out just like Mary and start one. I can promise you won't be sorry you did.

Thank you to all my new friends for joining in the fun on De-lurking Week and to all my old friends (sorry for that word again, girls) who take the time each day to leave me a comment. I appreciate each and every one!

Country Supper

Not long ago Lib was talking about how she was going to cook up all sorts of good food and freeze it, then when she didn't have time to cook a big meal she could just take something out and thaw it for supper. Good idea, huh?

I have to point out here that in mine and Lib's neck of the wood, we have breakfast, dinner and supper. Up north they have breakfast, lunch and dinner. When I lived up north I always thought their dinner looked more like our lunch!! They ate a lot lighter than we do down here in the hills!!

One of the foods Lib was preparing to freeze was meatloaf. Then I kept hearing Karen talk about making her famous buttermilk cornbread and I would be drooling. Almost daily I visit Sandi over at the Whistlestop Cafe Cooking blog and what do I see staring me in the face every day when I go there? Check it out...fried green tomatoes...right there on her header!!

What's a hillbilly girl, with thoughts of all this good country cookin' dancing around in her head, going to do? As a general rule I don't like to cook, but sometimes there is only one place to get good foods like these girls made and that's to cook it yourself!!

Last night I could stand it no longer and had to have meatloaf so I made one and stuck it in the oven to bake. You know, don't you, that if you have meatloaf you have to have mashed potatoes (mashed taters) to go with that and I do make some pretty good mashed taters if I do say so myself! :)



It just so happened that this past summer we grew some tomatoes right here in our own back yard. We had to water them faithfully every day because we had no rain here but we had a good crop right up until cool weather was coming. I decided rather than let the frost get the green ones I would try putting some of them in the freezer. I had never tried this method before or any method for that matter but I remember my mother canning green tomatoes. She would open a can and fry them up when we had snow on the ground and it tasted like summertime heaven! Even though I knew the canning was a tried and true method I wasn't equipped for it so I put mine in the freezer.

What could possibly go any better with meatloaf and mashed potatoes than fried green tomatoes? So I took some out of the freezer and fried them up:



Not bad at all. Not exactly the same as fresh ones but close. If you know anything at all about country cookin' then you know that no meal is complete without a pone of cornbread. So I dragged out my cast iron skillet, greased it up and made some cornbread!



Up north they say the presentation of food is the most important thing. Down here in the country, we say it's the taste. Since you only have my bad photography to go by and I'm not big on presentation, you'll just have to take my word that it was good. Can't you just feel your arteries clogging as you look at the picture??

National Delurking Week

Pea passed the word along that Jan. 7-13 is National Delurking Week. I don't know about the rest of you but I was once a lurker( wasn't I Pea?? :) It doesn't make you a bad person or anything, just a person who is shy about commenting. It took me a while to come out of hiding and leave a comment but, do you know what I found out? These ladies were so nice and seemed so genuinly glad that I left them a comment! I don't know if I expected them to say, "You git off my land and don't you ever come back", or seek their dog on me or something! Well they didn't and they won't. Neither will I. So if you are visiting my little blog today please take the time to let me know you're here and at least say hello in a comment.

I have three lurkers that I know of and I'll take this opportunity to say hello to them: "Hello" to Jennifer in Florida and Mary and Kaycie in New Jersey!! Love you all and wish you would leave me a comment sometime!! I feel like the Romper Room lady, remember her? With her magic mirror in hand, "I see Mary in New Jersey, Jennifer in Florida...." lol

If you'll go over and see Pea, she has several of these little caption you can choose from to use on your blog.

Join the Club

Ok, so this is not exactly an award. Well I think it started out as an award and morphed into a club or group. It is the Blogaholics Anonymous Award given to me by Grams. Now I really don't know what gave Grams the idea that I needed this. I mean, just because I have to check my comments first thing in the morning before my coffee has dripped and I still have those night cobwebs in my brain, and just because my laundry is piled up and my house is a wreck, and there is no contact with friends or family unless they blog or read my blog...could this really mean I need help? Is there a 12-step program for this addiction?? Well, Grams, here is my statement: Hello, my name is Hope and I'm a BLOGAHOLIC!!

I know there are several if not all on my sidebar that need to join this club. The award originated from Melanie at Livin' With Me. She has a handy code to copy and paste on your blog. Then just leave her a comment and she will add your name to the Blogaholics Blogroll. I pass this to Lib, Karen H., Brenda, Brandy, Penny, Peggy and Pea.

Thank you, Grams for all the fun you pass along!

One more award!

Ok, one more time!! Grams has given me this other wonderful award. She says I inspire her!! I'm overwhelmed! Thank you so much Grams. You, my friend, are the inspiration!

I'm inspired by so many wonderful women on these blogs. You know who you are. I visit you every day to be uplifted in body and soul. You faithfully come here to comment and encourage me and you'll probably never know in this life what this has done for me. I thank you all for that.

Sometimes, though, you have one specific person on your heart that you feel might need uplifting. I would like to pass this award along to Karen H., my sweet weather girl. Karen is so kind and encouraging to all and is truly an inspiration.

Thanks again to Brandy, Lib and Grams for my awards. I treasure them all.

A New Blog Award

I got another award!! It seems Lib is trying to help get me out of the embarassing situation I got myself in when some of my little skeletons came flying out of the closet!! It's all in fun, folks!! I don't really have skeletons!! :)

Seriously though, this blog award means so much, especially coming from Lib because I feel the same way about her. Thanks so much, Lib for coming to my rescue (wink) and for thinking of me.

New blog award!

I received a new, crazy..er..I mean sweet.. blog award from my crazy..er..I mean sweet.. little niece, Brandy!! Seriously I think it is so cute and I'm so glad she thinks of me in this way...er...I think! LOL

Anyway, there's a funny story behind this award. You already knew there was a story coming, right?? You know me too well!! :)

After reading my post about "poor ole Darty", Lib and I were chatting via email. She was still laughing about the big lie..er..I mean STORY..I told. We had discussed before about how we'd like to meet and go junkin together. Lib said it probably wouldn't do for us to get together and go junkin cause we would probably get kicked out of the stores, meaning because we would be laughing so hard! I made the comment to her that I was also given to peeing my pants if I got tickled and laughed too hard. Then later I get this comment from Brandy telling me to come to her blog and pick up a "special" award she has for me. Do you see a pattern forming here?? LOL

I think I'm starting to get a bad reputation. But now that the truth is out there in the universe I can't call it back. So now you know that I tell lies and I pee my pants. But that's as far as I'm going with this. No more of my dark secrets will I put out there again....at least for now. Well..maybe next week in another post! What can I say...I'm just an open book!! :)

Thank you, Brandy, for this special (and I use the term loosely!) award and the laughs too.

Tobi and the mountain

Well, folks, I finally got out of the house and away from the computer yesterday to visit family in TN. It was a beautiful sunny day here too, perfect for a drive. I took my handy, dandy little camera with intentions of giving you another tour. The problem was, we were driving into the sun the whole time and on the interstate most of that time so I either got a glare from the sun on everything or just a blur as I tried to take pictures of things in passing. I do want to show you a couple of attempted pictures of Chimney Top Mountain. My mother grew up right smack dab on the top of this mountain in a log cabin. My uncle took us up there once years ago when I was just a kid. The old cabin was still standing but I cried when I saw that what was once my mother's home was being used as a barn to hang tobacco in.

I waited until a little cloud covered the sun for a minute and snapped this picture:



As you can see, what I mostly got was the electric wires!! You can see the tall, smoky looking mountain that comes to a peak. Then after we got off the interstate to a country road I took this one:



This time I got mostly the trees in the foreground. Since this mountain can be seen almost from the time we cross the state line and from most areas in East TN
you would think I could get one good view of it. Oh well, maybe next trip.

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This morning I had to venture out again to take my dog, Tobi, for her grooming. I've mentioned to you before that I have a dog but you haven't seen pictures of her yet. There is a reason for this...Tobi is very camera shy! Actually, it's more than that. She has camera FEAR! If she even sees the camera in my hand she runs to the bedroom and hides! Tobi is a little Lhasa Apsa who came to live with us 2 years ago. She had been an outside dog and because this breed grows hair all the way down to the ground, she stayed a matted mess! With Tobi and me it was love at first sight. I could always appreciate animals from a distance, but I actually have a fear of them up close and personal. But it was different with her. Tobi will be 14 this year and she's still very spry for an old woman especially when she gets to go for her walk to the park! She is a somewhat high maintenance old girl, with the hair, allergies, skin problems, but we love her and she's worth it all to us. Since she was all clean and had a new haircut, I wanted to try and sneak a picture to show you. I can't let her see the camera or she'll run away and I can't use the flash because I won't see her the rest of the day if I do, but I managed to get a decent picture:



She is such a sweetie and has big brown eyes that will melt your heart! As soon as I snapped the first picture and tried to take another, here's what I got:



Then she ran away to the bedroom!! I know how she feels. I don't like having my picture taken much either, even when I have a new hairdo!!