Retire In Style Blog Too

We created Christmas gifts with thrift store finds and some spray paint. Take a look!  These are all real attention getters!  Visit you thrift store looking for theme gifts like cocktails, young adult beer baskets, canning supplies, kitchen tools, cookie making, etc. Find containers for the gifts like baskets, trays, etc. Use spray paint to update containers. We used blackboard paint for the interior of the containers because it is so trendy right now. Wash, polish, remove price tags etc. Visit $1 Store to buy napkins, towels, snacks or any other accessory you may need. We also bought Christmas ornaments and cookie tins at the thrift store. We filled the tins with ornaments so the young adults could take them home and use them. We filled one tin with cookie cutters for some small children. Here are some pictures so you can get an idea about what we did. Before First coat of paint. Trays after blackboard paint was added. Before After blackboard paint was added on the inside of...

English: Stack of books in Gould's Book Arcade, Newtown, New South Wales (NSW), Australia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Note: Christmas is coming and what better gift could there ever by than a great book. Here is a place to start:  10 Best Books for 2014 (Amazon) I don't know if you have been watching but my slideshow of books from Amazon that I display in the sidebar just keeps, growing and growing. I really want to own a paper version of everyone of those books but there are #rules you know...even when you buy a book. Let me see if I can explain. My daughter has rules for napping on weekend. The nap can only be so long, outside of the covers, with the curtains open and so the list goes. That is the thing about buying books. If you don't have rules, you will have a house full of books and no place to sit and read them. Only buy a book if you think about it for a while and still want it. Always buy a book that is on your wish list and is then recommended by someone else. If ...

Christmas gifts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) My husband and I have been absent from the family holidays gift giving tradition for quite a while. Oh, we have given gift certificates and money but no shopping or thinking was required. Actually, it wasn't even very much fun. I am one of those people that loves buying gifts and I have a hard time not giving the Christmas gift away long before Christmas if I buy it early. Why did I stop doing that? But things are different this Christmas Season. It has been a lot of fun. We have come up with the idea that we might "re-gift" this year and, when we didn't do that, we searched at thrift stores for perfect gifts. Then we filled in with new things we found as we shopped at every store in the area. It wasn't easier but it was more interesting. As we age we do seem to forget how to shop for gifts. I found myself surprised at the cost for some items and surprised again at how little others cost. In fact, it could be that my hus...

Moonrise in Tucson, AZ Honestly, every time I talk to an age mate the same thing comes up...they can't find their keys or don't remember the name of the person that fixed the plumbing 5 years ago. When they do that, the worry is that aging may be taking their minds away and the dreaded Alzheimers disease is looming on the horizon. It is very sad I think. Most don't talk about what they remembered when they were 50. If they did, they would know that life and their mind was not perfect then either. My contention is that we should never worry about that sort of thing. If we are living life to the fullest, continuing to learn as we age and remaining socially active, what more do we need? It seems to me that a lot of our mind problems might be a self fulling prophecy. We all draw a blank once in a while. It is perfectly normal. I have a friend that has gone to a specialist to be tested for her IQ and goes back every several years s. I just don't see any point in it. Last win...

I am barbblogtwits ...in case you are interested. Free twitter badge (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I really do want to be cool and hip and trendy and all that. Really I do. But I simply do not understand Twitter at all. In fact, when I started with the media, all the buzz was about followers. Then something changed and I just lost interest. But now I am see more information on hashtags (#). It all seemed much more interesting. I think the trick is to find a hashtag that will help me be seen by a group of like minded bloggers. The group needs to be not too big and not too small. I want my tag to be inclusive but not too inclusive. You can see it might be a little tricky. The  PAULA REED NANCARROW blog had a wonderful suggestion about using "meme" hastags. All of her hashtags and Twitter follow links save one, had the word "blog" in them. The one that was the simplest was #ArchiveDay used only on Saturdays. That worked for me. That is what I am online...a blogger. I th...

English: *Portrait of Pierre Fauchard's historical book Surgical dentist. The following artwork was obtained from The Library of French Medicine website available on http://www.bium.univ-paris5.fr/sfhad/vol1/art05/article.htm (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I suppose I could write a book about how different my life is becoming as I age. I am a walking talking study in gerontology. I have written about the way youngers treat the older me and how I feel about my life experiences but I have never written about going to the dentist. Like most people, my dental visits are not a favorite of mine even though dentists are very nice people and necessary to my health. Over the years I would say that my experiences have been pretty typical. Nothing really changed from the time I was 20 other than a few methods. But when I went to my new dentist this last week it was a totally different story. We talked about, gasp , my age! The poor hygienist was saying that I didn't look my age and the dentis...

The Santa Catalina Mountains just north of Tucson. We are STILL in Oregon. Family you know. My husband and I are snowbirds so we go south when Fall season gets deep. Even though we call ourselves "snow" birds, we do NOT like the snow or even frost! I love being here in my home but my body doesn't like the Northwest temperatures as winter approaches.  Our friends are in Tucson golfing and having cocktail hour. We look forward to joining them soon. So now I am getting very ready to fly away for the winter. My husband and I don't think about Arizona until we are ready to go. But when we are ready, it is all we think about. As for my body, it will wait a little while I suppose. The cold is not good but the warmth of our home, family and friends somehow makes it all okay. Be well. b+ Note : Be sure to check out the links at the bottom of this post for earlier stories about our snowbird lifestyle. An evening with friends. Our porch in the evening Related articles 10 Photogr...

English: Christmas ornaments on a Christmas tree. Français : Décorations de l'arbre de Noël. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Christmas shopping at Goodwill was something totally new to me. In fact it never had occurred to me that it could be fun and that a person could gather such wonderful gift together by just scouring the shelves in that big used goods store. It all started out about a month ago when my daughter suggested that we bake a cake for the adults on our Christmas list. Her thinking was that we would buy the baking pans at Goodwill and then wrap the cake in cellophane with a ribbon and a tag. Simple, inexpensive yet personal. We were very excited. So we make a trip to Goodwill (the first time for me) looking for the baking dishes. I was amazed at all the stuff they had. My eyes dilated as I raced to the glass wear aisle and we were off to the races. We had a stopping cart and a mission. Somewhere along the line we lost our focus and changed direction. The gift idea exploded ...

You know that there are computer programs out there that can turn a handwritten document into a computer document. It is just amazing that my computer can do that yet I do not even know what my grandchildren's handwriting looks like. When did computers get to be so smart? After all handwriting is a very personal and individual thing and I think I know my grandchildren pretty well. A person's writing is almost as telling as a photograph. Sadly, it is one of the ways of knowing a person that is going the way of the dodo bird . When I was an educator I learned that there are many ways of knowing about things. There is the auditory way of knowing, tactile, smell and even a musical way of knowing. A family is much the same way. We recognize our family in many different ways. When my children were at home I learned to recognize their voice, the fall of their feet and even their handwriting. I could pick their figure out from a group of 100 even when they were facing the other way. Kn...

Have you ever wondered what women REALLY want for Christmas? Here is what women told me without anyone watching or listening. I saw a post the other day about joy...you know, that kind of joy that you can feel right down to your toes. I think it was over on Alphabet Salad but I could be wrong. Anyway, the person was not having a good day and then they remembered something that made them happy beyond reason. It was like receiving or giving the perfect Christmas present! So, that brings me to the question I asked the group of women on Facebook that provide the articles for the very popular Midlife Boulevard  website. I was wondering if anyone could tell me something that they really wanted for Christmas...the perfect gift they dreamed of opening. I could see smiles on the faces of both the giver and the recipient. Because I had just finished writing a post about cool Christmas gifts for women, I was looking for some very good gift ideas to use in a future article. And that is what I...