*happy birthday to me from Magnolia Grill

The Magnolia Grill of Ft. Walton Beach Florida (built in early 1900's)

The charm to the outside of this dated building gets even better as you walk through the front doors.

This past week my sweet husband took me to The Magnolia Grill for my  birthday. The quaint restaurant was all dressed up for the holidays. 

Isn't this mantle just gorgeous!  We sat for lunch at a little table just in front of this fireplace.  I love how they have used the crystal dishes to be the centerpiece of the decor adorning the mantle.

Each little nook and corner was dressed with small taste of things from yesteryear.  It was not too much, the areas were not clutter, but rather tasteful displays done to perfection.

There is an upstairs area that is dedicate to a "museum" of the past. It was fun to look at all that was on display.  Many things from my own childhood years, and other things dated from years before.

This lamp of course caught my eye and reminded me of  The Christmas Story.  That ridiculous lamp!

Merry Christmas!

I don't think this picture looks that appetizing.. but truly both the fries and the shrimp were delish.   Their menu is very versatile and has anything from burgers, to seafood, to Italian dishes to suit your pallet!

More of what is on display upstairs...

Wow. We had one of these in our house when we were growing up.

I loved looking at all the cameras! 

These are the plans for the house that is now known as The Magnolia Grill, this house was ordered through Sears Roebuck, and was delivered in parts.. and built onsite by the owner (back in the early 1900's).  To get all the correct facts about the establishment known as The Magnolia Grill of Ft. Walton Beach, go HERE

This is one of my new favorite places to go for a nice calm atmosphere that serves good food, fair prices and great care by the server. 

*meet the survivors

We hope your Thanksgiving was absolutely wonderful, ours was. This year's Thanksgiving looked a lot different than last year for sure!  We had a much smaller gathering this holiday and I must say I did miss all the hum of the large group that was here a year ago, but simple was good this year. I would love it if we could have Thanksgiving here every year, all my sisters with their families and our parents, as well as some friends but that is just not realistic. We celebrated and gave thanks with Robert, Henry and my mom. It was nice to have Mom here cooking alongside her on this traditional feasting day!

Over the past 7 months or so we have been raising heritage breed turkeys for the holiday season.  We were blessed to sell three of our healthy free ranged heritage breed turkeys to families this Thanksgiving. We have kept a pair of each breed so we can continue to breed and provide good clean meat for our table and others.  I was delighted to get emails and text telling me how delicious and clean the meat of their turkeys were on T-day!  That my friends was so rewarding.  That is the reason we do what we do!    We have a few more available for the Christmas holiday as well.

This year we cooked half, yes HALF of our 40 lb turkey for or feast and we processed the other half as ground turkey meat for tasty dishes that will be cooked up in the coming months. Mom and I  were able to get 11 pounds of ground turkey packaged and into the freezer.   We have one other turkey (Spanish Black Heritage) that we butchered which is set aside for ground turkey as well.  This is one more food item I don't have to buy from the food industry and that makes me happy!

Is your mouth watering? I know mine is! These two pics of this beautifully smoked turkey is one that we raised!  One of our customers was kind enough to send us pics of this beaut that adorned their Thanksgiving table.

 

*thankful heart

I hope your counters look like this too! Happy Thanksgiving to each of you. I have some exciting news to share with you soon, it hardly seems almost a month ago that I last posted an entry. 

(disclaimer: the bottle of Wild Turkey is not JUST Wild Turkey, it is my Vanilla Extract..  We have always made our Vanilla Extract with Vodka in the past, but we heard that it was better with bourbon so, we changed it up when our last bottle that steeped in Vodka was used up.  We do like the Bourbon mixture better.)

May this year find you thankful for much.  It is so easy to get caught up in every day happenings and not recognize the little gifts that are strewn all along the way. May your heart be filled with gratitude for the smallest of things.  I think when we find our selves thankful, we find that we have enough, when our hearts are full of thanks there is little room for want.  Happy Thanksgiving to You and your family!

*congratulations

Congratulations Graduate!

And congratulations to me, I finished the graduates quilt just this morning. She graduated a few hours ago on this beautiful night. How is that for timing? There is nothing like finishing something in the eleventh hour!

Henry's sweet girlfriend graduated tonight with honors.  She is well rounded student and has been accepted at the college of her choice and will leave for college in August.  She will be an attribute to the college she will be a part of and surely a positive asset in the classroom, on the field, and amongst the young people she will become friends with.

I started her present, a chevron pattern quilt just over a week ago.  Due to the intense hot weather here, I have spent most of my time this week indoors sewing.  It all worked out really well actually. I did not plan to have the quilt finished by her graduation day, but had set myself a deadline for some time around the time she will leave for college.   You can image  my delight when it all came together completely this morning.   I hope she loves it as much as I do.  I was totally pleased with the outcome!

Again, Congratulations to all the graduates of 2012 all around the nation!  You all have worked hard and all that hard work has paid off. May your futures be bright and filled with challenges that will cause you to grow into sound, mature parts of society!

*military ball

This past weekend all the gentlemen of the JROTC at our local high school had the easy part - put on their Class A uniform.  It was not put on for an inspection but for the Military Ball.  The young ladies came in their evening gowns of many different styles most after having spent the day at different salons getting their manicures and pedicures as well as facials.   I know some were nervous and some were completely carefree and ready for the night of fun.



It has been a while since I have been around such a large number of young people at one time.  Their energy was high and they were carefree (most of them) and really enjoying themselves.  There were so many beautiful dresses being worn by the JROTC cadets and JROTC staff.   The staff (upper class men) are the ones who organized this entire event, from the planning, collecting money, selecting a photographer, arranging a speaker, set up, selecting a catering group, to cleaning up when it was all said and done.  The adults were only facilitators, everything was done by many of the students you see in these pictures.

If you are able, support and encourage the young people in your sphere of influence, for one day they will be our leaders. I know that families have always been broken, dysfunctional for many generations but I think today's youth have so much more pressures and junk to deal with today than any generation ever before, having someone to believe in them and encourage them is important.  I don't think any of us should try and be momma or daddy to the youth around us, but if there isn't such a presence in their lives, surely you can give encouragement that may have a huge impact on how they view themselves and others around them. 

I took several hundred photos, I will not bore you will of them.  Many of them turned out nicely, some I was just not able to get the lighting right on the dance floor since the room was dark.  Once again, if your students' school has JROTC program, I encourage you to have them to look into participating. They do not have to be service bound in order to participate in this elective.

In order to dance you must have your "dance face" on... all across the dance floor I was able to see so many different style dance faces. Just cracked me up.  You know we all did it too!

This is likely the same dance face I had when I danced at our prom, oh so many years ago.

Most of the young girls had a blast, but there was the one or two that I saw crying. Just broke my heart, I gave them a hug and an accepting smile. I have no idea what was going on - broken heart, hormones, hurt feelings, feeling left out, home trouble. I did only what I could do, silently prayed for them in that moment.

Here is my handsome boy, Henry and his girlfriend, Tiffany who is the XO of the company.  I hope someone else got some nice pictures of them, because seems I didn't.  :(