I have to be honest. This year I don’t care much about the Super Bowl. My Broncos aren’t in it and I am really tired of the Patriots.  Of course, that doesn’t stop us from having a get together 😀

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Too much food, as usual ?

The game unfortunately ended poorly for the Falcons. Gahh!

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We are pretty close to wrapping up my parents’ kitchen. Just the last few details. I’m looking forward to having some down time. 

I finally broke out my coloring books again:

Coloring is very soothing to me. I need to buy a lamp so I can color at my new (old) desk at night.

This guy has come back around. We haven’t seen him in a while, so it was good to see.

He was really close to the house. I’ll be continuing to make our property a haven for birds and pollinators this year. Spring is coming soon, right?

I am still having computer issues. I  was able to get it up and running again after many hours, but there is obviously something wrong with it. The USB ports only work sometimes and when I try to transfer photos, it crashes. It also just randomly locks up and is really slow, even in safe mode. Not sure if it is worth trying to fix this computer or get a new one.

I’m doing this post on my phone again. Excuse the choppiness, but at least it’s something!

I had all these plans to do meal planning and getting other stuff done, but working, the computer issues and being at my parents’ house kind of put the kibosh on that. (Did I spell that right?)

I did get a project done earlier this week. I really wanted a chalkboard for my work area, so I picked up some of this:

I taped off a section of wall and painted:

2 coats. Next day I had a working chalkboard!

Fun stuff!

Later in the week, John left for a 4-day trip, so I spent the weekend tiling at my parents’ house. All the tile is up and it just needs grouting.

It’s turning out quite nice. My mom is happy with her choices, which is all that matters 😀

I’ll keep this short because typing on the phone is really annoying LOL!

Seems my computer is taking a break. It boots up, but I can’t do anything with it. I’m typing this post on my phone, which takes forever Lol. I don’t have any pictures to share since most of them are on the computer.

It’s a good opportunity for doing this again 

That’s the only photo on my phone that’s new ?

Hopefully it won’t take long to fix.

On Saturday, I will be joining women all over the country in marching. Not just for women’s rights, but for kindness, understanding, unity, for those who feel marginalized, and for our planet. I will be doing this locally.  If you can’t go to a march, I would be happy to take your name with me so that you can join in. It doesn’t matter who you voted for.  You can email me at javaqueen01@yahoo.com  with your name and who/what you are marching for and I will bring it with me.

Monday was a treat day! My sister, mother and I went to the Roosevelt Baths in Saratoga. My sister had given us gift certificates last Christmas and we just got around to using them.

Saratoga Springs has a long history of natural mineral springs and was a hot spot for health. There were a lot of bath houses built and the Roosevelt Baths are one of the original ones. It was built in 1930. It was eventually bought by the state and became part of  Saratoga Spa State Park.  It is kind of referred to as a campus, I guess. Lots of buildings that look like this:

It is almost like an old university campus:

We have been to another spa in Saratoga and that one was very posh and more modern. The Roosevelt baths are original, which is pretty neat! Obviously some of it was modernized, like the locker area:

My sister took a picture of me in my robe. It almost looks like I am ready to go to a karate lession!

The three of us had different services. I had an aromatherapy bath and then a massage.  Once you get changed, you go into the relaxation room while you are waiting for your treatment.

This is an area with tables and chairs. There is a section with teas and fruit as well.

There are also these nice lounge-y things:

This room was empty when I came in. I think I had one of the first appointments of the day. You can go back and forth to the steam room from here while waiting for your treatments.

Here is an original cast iron 1930s bath:

The mineral water is that brownish color. It’s also effervescent and you float like crazy!  These tubs are super deep, too. It goes below floor level. When I sat upright, the water came up almost to my shoulders. I want a deep tub like that.  For the aromatherapy part, you are given a teeny little bottle of an essential oil of your choice (eucalyptus, clary sage, pine or peppermint). I chose peppermint and you just sprinkle it in the bath.

After my bath, I moved over to the table in my room for a massage.

It’s funny how these pictures look a little like a prison LOL! It didn’t feel like that, let me tell you.  I’ve never had a massage before, mostly because I have personal space issues and don’t like strangers touching me. But I thought I would give it a try. Orginally I was scheduled for a sugar scrub, but the person who does them broke her leg, so they gave me another service choice.

I liked the massage. It was a little hard for me to relax, but eventually I did.  Once the massage was finished, it was into the steam room (no pictures there!) and then back to the relaxation room for a while.

My mom and sister popped out at different times. I was done before they were and enjoyed a nice shower and relaxing.

It was pretty late after we finished, so we headed out to lunch in Ballston Spa. Our first choice had a big wait list, so we tried a new restaurant. Henry’s Pub.  It was good!  I decided on an appetizer for a meal, which was the poutine with corned beef on top. I asked for a half portion, but they made a mistake and gave me a full portion:

They only charged me for a half portion, too. There was plenty to share.

We decided against dessert, but I got a kick out of the selections:

😀

We had a great day! It was definitely needed and long overdue.  I definitely will be back to these baths again.

Sorry I haven’t been posting too much lately. I just haven’t been doing anything terribly interesting to talk about here.  Just some tidbits of things.

I shared this on FB so some of you will see this twice, but I had a really good dinner the other night. I lost the football picks for the first week of the playoffs (fantasy) and John wanted to go to Comfort Kitchen in Saratoga. Their food is so good, especially the macaroni and cheese, but I saw a new item on the menu, which was sweet potato gnocchi!

It was in a brown butter sauce with swiss chard, ricotta cheese and some sort of walnut chunks. Breaded, maybe? So good!  It rivals their mac and cheese now.  Any locals that haven’t been there need to go.  I’d like to try making gnocchi from scratch some time, but I’m afraid it would turn out gummy.

More work in my parents’ kitchen.  It is a little slow going just because I have to go over there to work and there are limited hours in which to do it. I guess that’s what happens when you have free labor 😀

The paint is on the walls and the upper cabinet doors are in place.

Color is a little funny because of the time of day, but you get the idea. Below the cabinets will be tile. Hopefully next weekend John and I will do the laminate countertop.

I got a new soap stamp made to stamp my soaps. I was using a fleur-de-lis, but I wanted my logo made. I went to Etsy and found someone to do a stamp for me and I tried it out this weekend:

I like it! I need to get consistent with how much pressure is needed to imprint.

During my volunteer hours at the Chapman Museum, I was organizing files for the suffragist events going on this year. Even though the US ratified the 19th ammendment in 1920, New York allowed women to vote in 1917, so there are centennial events happening this year.

I came across this nugget of information:

I you can’t read it, here is the text:  “No married woman shall be appointed to any teaching or supervising position in the New York public schools unless her husband is mentally or physically incapacitated to earn a living or has deserted her for a period of not less than one year”.

Gotta love it.  You could only teach if you were single. Now think of how many women — single or married — are a huge part of the teaching workforce.  Progress can happen.  I always wonder if I was born during that time period, would I be on the front lines for womens’ rights?  I like to think so, but I guess you never know.

One of my goals for the New Year was to get back into a structured lifting program. I can do that at home, but it’s not as fun. We got our renewal form for our insurance and now it will cover up to $600 in gym fees for us if we go 50 visits every 6 months. So, I’m thinking about signing up at my gym again since there is a new yearly membership special of $149 for the whole year.  That’s a pretty good deal and the insurance will reimburse every 6 months.  So, I might go for that. Not sure if John will or not. He doesn’t care for the gym so much 😀

When I posted about the light box a few days ago, Ali asked about pictures with and without it to see the difference, so here they are.

This is an example of the light box effect.  This first shot is with a light directly shining onto this object (annatto seeds).

It’s kind of dramatic, really, but not the look I’m going for.   Note I used some leftover flooring for my backdrop (although  I ditched this in favor of white later).

This is the light pointed through the sides of the lightbox with a light on the other side as well:

It diffuses and softens it. I took these with my phone, but my camera has a light ring on it so I can get forward light to reduce shadow even more.  I still need to play around with what looks good. I’m not a photographer 😀 This is one final shot I used.

White background much better here, don’t you think? In case you are curious, annatto seeds can be used to make a natural yellow colorant and is used in makeup and food industries.

Since I’ve been so busy taking pictures and what not, John’s been doing most of the cooking this week.  He did a pan fried sesame ginger tofu with rice and ginger sauce. The broccoli is my addition:

Yum! I’m actually liking the tofu when he cooks it that way. The tofu is crispy.

Tonight is more painting at my folks’ house. I am done painting the cabinet doors – finally!

This one just needs a couple coats of polyurethane and it’s done. It will be good to get these out of the house LOL!

It’s now at the point where I feel like I can start doing the things I had been planning on doing for a while, but just wasn’t able to make enough time.  More work has been happening in my parents’ kitchen.  The cabinet doors are just about finished and I have to tell you that it will be a  happy day when these are not taking up all the spare room in our basement.

They look good, though!  Paint started going up on the walls on Saturday. My mom picked out Gracious Greige as the wall color.

Paint going up.

It looks a little darker here than in real life. John and I will be doing the countertop in a couple weeks. Laminate sheeting. I did that in our old house. Not my favorite thing to do as it is unwieldly and has to be really precise, but the results are good.

I got a new toy to play with – a new light box! ( my amazon link). My old one I made of cardboard kind of bit the dust. It was only $20, too. Right in my budget.

Me messing around with the setup:

It comes with some different background covers, but I’ll use my own that aren’t wrinkled LOL! The nice thing about this is that it folds back up (with some finagling) into the little pouch for storage.  It’s about the size of a Frisbee, which is pretty cool!

This is for taking new photos for the business. It’s going to take some work figure all the lighting out. It’s fun so far, but really time consuming.

So while John was away, I kept myself quite busy. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I don’t have to do everything all at once. It’s not like the world will end tomorrow and I have to get everything finished right now.  It’s time for a spa day 😀