Countryside Homemakers...

Wednesday, November 7th was my turn to host our Countryside Homemakers at our home. Claude smoked us a brisket for our main course. I cleaned up the main level of our home and declared this an upstairs party. We were ready to go.

As the first guests arrived Claude made his departure. Kathy and Sue arrived first, then Stephanie arrived. Stephanie was going to teach our lesson and wanted to be set up before everything started. She rang the door bell and I heard one tone only. As I went to answer the door, I heard a bad buzzing sound and realized it was the box that contains the door bell workings over the entryway table. Oh dear...

Once I had Stephanie in and pointed to what she needed to set up for her lesson on the island in the kitchen, I picked up the step stool from the pantry and headed to the entryway. I climbed up and took the box off the door bell workings. I couldn't tell what to touch and what not to touch and had a little trepidation about being electrocuted. I determined I should try the breaker box and see if I could reset a breaker that fed to the door bell workings. I tried many switches with any label that looked like it might work. Nothing happened with the door bell but several lights in the house went off and on. What to do, what to do. That buzzing was not going to work during our morning of meeting and lunch.

I called Claude. He was only at City Hall so he returned and set to work. His diagnosis was that the door bell was broken and needed to be replaced. As he worked I closed the door to the basement so in case he was shocked by electricity and fell backward he would only hit the floor and not roll down the stairs to the basement. Sometimes, I'm just the most thoughtful wife!!!  Claude ended up taking the door bell workings off the wall leaving the wires exposed. We carried on with our meeting.

Stephanie taught a wonderful lesson on bread making. We all moved chairs around the island in the kitchen. Stephanie put on her apron and looked a great deal like Betty Crocker. She brought dough she prepared at home and showed us how she makes focaccia bread and a cinnamon loaf. It was delightful and we would enjoy the bread with our lunch.

After our meeting we all enjoyed lunch together. These ladies are good cooks and there was plenty of great food.

We needed to complete our four items to donate for the membership auction Scott County Extension Homemakers will have December 3rd. For our final item we decorated a small Christmas tree with homemade angels. We actually made these little angels at our October meeting as the craft. We loved them so much we decided to make 15 more and decorate a small tree as one of our clubs donated items. I had the 15 angels all made with the exception of putting on their heads, gold thread for a hanger and gluing the bow under their heads. Kathy made the heads and brought them ready to add. While I picked up the dishes and cleaned a bit in the kitchen, Kathy directed the ladies in finished and decorating the little tree with these angels.

At our October meeting we were all challenged to bring to the November meeting a Grab 'n Go Bucket full of emergency supplies. We were given a suggested list of items to fill the bucket with the idea to use an old ice cream bucket. I was very grateful for this goal. As I began to fill my bucket during the month, I realized it was duplicated effort. Claude purchased for me for Christmas a couple of years ago two nice backpacks. We were going to make 72-hour kits out of them. This has been started a couple of times but never completed. I took this opportunity to fill these 72-hour kits instead of my bucket. I can't thank Detta enough for giving us this goal. Here are the buckets that the ladies who remembered brought for our photo op.

We ended our day with a craft class on stenciling which I taught. We had five of us complete our little jar lid covers. The jars can be filled with a Christmas treat and given away.

Since I serve as president this year, I have been giving a little treat to each of the ladies each month. This month I gave them a turkey head that can be placed on a pineapple and serve as a centerpiece for Thanksgiving. It would look better to surround the turkey with fruits and nuts but I had Easter grass and used it instead. The little head is made of felt.

We had a full meeting this month but it was great fun to have all these ladies come to our home and enjoy this time together.