The Ice Day

Last Friday night we had an ice storm. I woke up to a yard full of sparkly trees~beautiful! In years past, we've had enough snow and ice that we've had to worry about branches breaking. Not so this time…only about a 1/4 inch of ice covered everything. Not bad enough to do any damage, but definitely bad enough for my husband and me to be stuck at home. We have a steep driveway, with the temperature holding steady at 25*, we weren't going anywhere.

What to do?

This is too funny, but we ended up polishing silver. For hours! When we were in California, going through my mother's things, I found quite a few silver trays. Neither my brother or sister wanted them, so I shipped them home. They arrived about a week ago~and their condition was pretty bad.  After I unpacked them, they'd been sitting on our dining room table, practically begging to be cleaned. I kept putting it off.

Around noon, my husband Tom decided it would be a great project for us, so out went the gloves, polish, and old towels. We got to work. I had to smile~turns out Tom had never polished silver before. I've polished plenty, so I had to give him a tutorial. Turns out it was a good project for us. It took forever-not only had my mom not cleaned the pieces in years, she'd put them away dirty. We talked, we scrubbed, we talked some more, and admired how much better everything looked. But before long, shiny trays decorated the dining room table and we had a kitchen full of dirty rags and towels.

 Don't you just love projects where you can see results in just a few hours? I wish everything was like that!

After cleaning that up, we dug around the kitchen. I'd planned to go to the store on Saturday morning, and we'd planned to go out to dinner on Saturday night. Since we were iced in, Tom and I decided to make the best dinner we could-using what was on hand.  I found frozen corn~it became corn pudding. Two forgotten frozen steaks, some canned mushrooms and an old onion became an impromptu Steak Diane of sorts. Three bananas that had seen better days became dessert-banana bread!

 None of it was fantastic, but we had a good time.  The best part? We were still dressed in old sweats~no fancy dinner clothes for us! We ended the evening watching an old movie.

Saturday's ice storm ended up being a very good thing for us. A day together doing nothing special.

Today, it's a balmy 52 degrees! My husband's flying out for the week in a few hours, and the weather report says the temperature the rest of the week will be in the 40′s.  I'll be able to run errands and eat out as often as I want. But I think part of me is going to wish for another excuse to stay home soon.

And since it's only January…I have a feeling we'll get more snow and ice very soon.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a good week! Please come back on Tuesday~it's time for another contest!

Shelley