The Transition

Hello September and Happy Labor Day everyone!  I hope you're all doing well.  I guess today is the unofficial last day of summer.  

     Time to take down the summer mantel decor.        The public pools close after today, and most of the kids have gone back to school.  It certainly does feel like the end of summer proper, but I know we'll still have plenty of hot days here in North Carolina.  As I get older, I can almost feel the transition that is beginning in Mother Nature.  It is getting dark earlier in the evening, we're seeing a few colored leaves here and there, and the light has started to develop that lovely, golden softness of autumn.  How I love this time of year!  Did you happen to see the blue super moon in August?  We got a glimpse of it through the trees as it was rising last Wednesday night -- it was beautiful.          

   
  August was a busy month for us.  On Sunday, August 6th, after their regular church service, my sister and her fiancée were married, followed by a reception in the fellowship hall of the church.  It was such a nice ceremony; Hal's parents attended, as did our son, Will.  It was a second marriage for the bride and groom, and their grown children (and Dave's grandchildren) attended, too.  I wish the very best for Lisa and Dave in their journey through life.  We're awfully glad to have Dave in our family!   

I love their church!  It is a small, Moravian church, built almost 100 years ago to serve as a place of worship for the factory workers in the textile mill located right across the street from the church.  The textile mill no longer exists, but there is an interesting history of the factory and the church located in the church itself.  We enjoyed looking at the pictures after the reception.   

The mill had its own baseball team, which I think was a common thing back in the day.  With my love of history, I really enjoyed seeing these archives of a portion of our local history.     

My mom and I prepared all the food for the reception, except for the cupcakes, which were purchased by my sister.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, and there wasn't much left over, so that's always a good sign.  😉    

My mom's dear friend and neighbor arranged all the flowers for the chapel and the reception with flowers from her own yard; she did a great job!  All the pictures were taken by Hal, and we think he did a great job, too.  😊         On Sunday, August 13th, we celebrated our son's 33rd birthday; oh my goodness, where have the years gone?!  We had a nice cookout here with hamburgers, hot dogs, Coca-Cola cake (made by my mother-in-law) and homemade ice cream.  It was a fun day, and we are so thankful for our son.     

I set up a quick, ocean-themed tablescape, since we all love the ocean here.    

Please excuse my wrinkled tablecloth.  😁  This was a much simpler version of the nautical tablescape I created in 2016.       Since I seem to be doing a wrap-up of our summer, I'll mention that we finally got a new refrigerator.  We've been on the lookout for one since the beginning of Covid; do you know how hard it is to find a white refrigerator these days?  Everything is of course, still stainless.  This is not at all meant as a knock-on stainless-steel appliances, but I do love my white appliances.  Our fridge was 28 years old; it was sold to us with the house and was almost new at that time.  It was an Amana and had definitely been a good one, but we felt that it was living on borrowed time.  It was starting to make a shuddering noise when it cut off, and I didn't like the sound of that. 

We had the two cabinets above the fridge removed two years ago when we had some other work done on our house.  We anticipated that our next refrigerator would be taller, since all the appliances seem to keep getting bigger.  So glad we had that done -- it saved us some hassle when the new fridge was installed.     

   The space for a refrigerator in our kitchen is somewhat small, and that was another thing that made finding a new one something of a challenge.  Costco was running a Memorial Day sale on this model, and it was available in our size and in white, so we jumped at the offer.  It was our anniversary gift to each other this year.  This is a GE Cafe Series, and we are very happy with it.  This is not a sponsored review; I'm just sharing our experience.  I've read mixed reviews on this model, but so far, so good for us.  We absolutely love the design of the French door refrigerators.  You can basically see everything that's in here, and there's no stooping on the floor to look for something in the back of a deep refrigerator.  You wouldn't believe all the stuff I threw away that was tucked in the very back of our other fridge, and I had completely forgotten it was there.     

This one is a counter-depth, but it does stick out a little beyond our stove and counter tops.  That's not a problem for us.   

We're still learning how best to arrange things in here, but it holds more than we thought it might.  Since we're two empty nesters, we should be able to make this work fine.  The only complaint I have thus far is that the produce bins are very small; our others were much bigger.  Thankfully, we have a smaller refrigerator in the basement for extra storage, so we can make use of that.  We love how light and bright this new fridge is with the modern LED lighting.     

It's nice to have an automatic icemaker again; the one on our other fridge had died several years ago.  The shape of the freezer in this is a little hard to get used to, as well, but again, we have another in the basement.  Overall, we are thrilled to have a new refrigerator, and it matches our other appliances beautifully.  If you have a French door refrigerator, how do you like it?  Do you find it easy to use?     Have you had a good summer and are you looking forward to fall?  Personally, I'm ready to get out the fall decs here.  😄  Thank you so much for stopping by here today, and I hope you have a wonderful week!!     All the best,