Lisa Archives - Life with Dee

What I’m Into (July 2015 edition)

August 2, 2015 By Deanna Piercy 4 Comments

I haven’t done one of these in ages. Seems like a good time to get back in the habit. Since it’s been so long, I’m going to include a bit from the last of June, too.

Celebrations

July, for our family, always begins with our daughter’s birthday. Isn’t she gorgeous?

We celebrated the 4th of July at the home of our niece, Leslie, and her boyfriend, Will.

Chris hosted a going away party for his friend, Eli, who is moving to Baton Rouge to attend LSU. We had about 25-30 people here for a campout, music and karoke.

The last weekend of June we attended a wedding in Tulsa then spent the weekend there celebrating our 34th wedding anniversary which was the weekend before.

Around My Home

We’ve been busy but still made time for several nights of stargazing. Last night we took the telescope outside and looked at the blue moon. Shiloh likes to join us for these quiet evenings under the stars.

Reading

The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story by Julia Reed

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo

Watching – Movies and T.V.

T.V. –

I bought the first two seasons of The Donna Reed Show for a little old-fashioned entertainment for myself but it turns out that David loves the show, too. Just so long as he doesn’t expect me to start wearing heels and pearls around the house!

We are also enjoying The Astronaut Wives Club. The history is interesting, of course, but I’m also loving the fashions and home decor.

Movies –

The kids took David to see the new Terminator movie to celebrate Father’s Day. Absolutely not my thing so I watched Magic Mike XXL instead.

Last night we watched My Old Lady on Netflix. We both really enjoyed it.

Listening – Music and Podcasts

Our city has been hosting “Music in the Park” several Sunday evenings throughout the summer. I was asked to schedule the musicians. So far we’ve been able to attend two of these and really enjoyed them.

Food – Recipes, Restaurants and Grocery Hauls

While in Tulsa we looked for a sports bar where we could watch Women’s World Cup. We found Fat Daddy’s where I also had one of the best Reuben sandwiches I’ve ever had, as well as delicious onion rings.

I don’t have any recipes or grocery hauls to share this time but I will next month. Promise!

Out and About – Trips and Events

While in Tulsa we enjoyed a show by Let’s Zeppelin, a tribute band.

We saw Our Mother’s Martyr perform in OKC:

We took a Trip to Idaho to visit David’s mother.

Featured Blog Posts

Special Moments

I had the honor of meeting this Choctaw man:

Karoke in my backyard:

I think that about wraps things up for July. If you write “What I’m Into” posts I’d love for you to leave me a link in the comments so I can read yours. I’m linking up with What I’m Into on Leigh Kramer’s site.

Memory Lane Monday ~ Our Sunshine Baby

July 1, 2013 By Deanna Piercy Leave a Comment

Today is our daughter’s 26th birthday. I simply cannot imagine where the time has gone because it just doesn’t seem that long ago that I heard the words, “It’s a girl!”. Yes, there actually was a time when most of us didn’t know the sex of our babies until they were born.

I don’t know where he came up with it but from the very beginning, Chris called Lisa his “sunshine baby”. And it fit her perfectly. She truly brought a ray of sunshine into our lives.

Happy birthday, my sweet Lisa. I’m so proud of the woman you have become. I love you!

June Grocery Haul

June 14, 2013 By Deanna Piercy 2 Comments

These months seem to roll around quickly! Yesterday my daughter and I did our monthly grocery shopping in the city. As usual, we met up with our friend, Audrey, for lunch at Tres Cantina. I don’t know what was in the air but all three of us ended up ordering some type of burger, something none of us have done on prior lunches there. I chose the one with green chilis, caramelized onions and jack cheese. Yum!

We had a long, leisurely lunch and then Lisa and I got busy. We dropped off our glass recycling and then made a quick stop at Homeland, a regional, employee-owned grocery store. There are usually a couple of items we need which aren’t available at the other stores where we shop. We also check to see if they have any good sales in the small organic produce section. This time they did have a bag of organic lemons at a good price and we decided to split that. I also bought a pair of scissors for the kitchen since mine disappeared during Happyland Music Fest. Oh, I also bought a little travel sewing kit because I noticed a little tear in my skirt and wanted to fix that. Which I did. In the car.

Homeland:

10 lb. bag ice
bag of organic lemons
sewing kit
scissors

total: $16.36

Next up was Dodson’s Natural Grocers. I did end up with one impulse buy – a bag of locally roasted coffee which smells amazing! I didn’t really need more coffee just yet but it will be used.

Dodson’s:

Applegate Farms organic chicken and sage breakfast sausage links
Applegate Farms organic hot dogs
Choice Organics Darjeeling tea
Puffins cinnamon cereal
crackers
salt
parmesan cheese
mozzarella cheese
provolone cheese
pepper jack cheese
Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese
cream cheese
hot dog buns
organic ketchup
coffee

total: $76.97

We then went to Ulta because I was getting low on my perfume, Shalimar, and Lisa wanted to check out a few things. I also ended up getting some makeup brushes (had a coupon) and splurged on a skin care item. I think I’ll do a post about that later, maybe in one of my French Friday posts.

Every few months we like to go on up to Oklahoma City so we can go to Whole Foods. It’s a tempting place so we limit our visits there and then hold our breath while our groceries are being rung up.

Whole Foods:

bbq chips (2 bags)
pure cranberry juice
peach mango salsa
4 bottles Perrier
mustard
honey puffs cereal
raisin bran
wheat waffles cereal
morning Os cereal
(2) 1/2 gallon cartons organic milk
patchouli goat soap (2 bars)
lavender hand soap
iron and herb supplement
organic bacon
organic chicken breasts
gouda cheese
cheddar applewood cheese
roquefort cheese
colby jack cheese slices
sliced deli black forest ham
sliced deli roast beef
mini croissants
baguettes (2 different kinds)
corn tortillas (4 packages)
corn on the cob (2)
red bell pepper
green bell pepper
tomatoes on the vine (2 big clusters)
apples (2)
basil plant
bag of limes
Yukon Gold potatoes
zucchini (4)
artichokes (2)
lettuce
green grapes
bananas
strawberries (3 boxes)

total: $230.96

Grand total: $324.29

We still had lots of rice, pasta, baking supplies, spices, frozen food and other basics on hand. In fact, my freezers and pantry are packed! Later in the month we’ll need more milk and perhaps some fresh produce from the farmers market but otherwise I think we are more than prepared food-wise for the rest of the month.

Here’s the little video I made of my grocery haul:

Well, that’s all, folks. I’m sure Lisa will do a grocery haul post and when hers is up I’ll post the link here.

Update: Lisa’s grocery haul post.

Now I’m going to go fix dinner (ham, pineapple and grilled cheese sandwiches with salad and fresh fruit). Afterwards, David and I are going to kick back and watch “Raising Arizona” which we haven’t seen in years. I had a filling at the dentist today which required FOUR shots of novocaine. I can’t take any pain medicine so I plan to open a bottle of wine after dinner and see if a couple of glasses will dull the ache enough to let me sleep tonight.

*I’m still a little loopy from the nitrous so I’m going to use that as my excuse for the lack of consistency in mentioning which products were organic. Almost everything I buy on these monthly trips is organic. Exceptions are the Tillamook cheese which is a favorite of mine, the corn on the cob and artichokes, and the specialty cheeses.

Plastic, Wikipedia and Field Trips

April 5, 2013 By Deanna Piercy 5 Comments

I hardly know where to begin. My daughter, Lisa, and I took a little trip to Tulsa Tuesday and Wednesday. Beth Terry, author of “Plastic Free – How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too”, was speaking at the University of Tulsa and she had asked Lisa to speak with her. What an honor!

We left town a bit after noon on Tuesday and headed toward Tulsa. It had been warm the day before but a cold front had come through, along with some much-needed but poorly-timed rain. As we were approaching the turnpike entrance in Stroud, we got one of our hair-brained ideas and decided to see if we could find the Keystone XL pipeline and get some pictures to show Beth. Lisa looked it up on her phone and with only a rough idea of where it is located we took our detour. Remember now, it’s raining and has been for several hours. The road we think will lead to our destination turns out to be a heavily-rutted gravel road. And we are driving my Prius. Do you think that deterred us? If so, you don’t really know us very well.

We went about a mile down the teeth-jarring road but it was rather muddy and after slipping a few times we decided to give up our quest. I really didn’t want to have to call David and try to explain why we got the car stuck in the mud when we were supposed to be on the turnpike.

We did, however, find another little gem. Did you know that Stroud is the wine capital of Oklahoma?

And have you ever seen a winery/R.V. park? Neither had we:

Back on our original path, we drove the rest of the way to Tulsa in a moderate rainstorm. We stopped at Whole Foods for lunch and then checked into our hotel. David had reserved a room for us at the Doubletree which just so happened to be the same hotel where he and I had experienced a fire scare and had to leave our room to go stand in a stairwell with a bunch of strangers in pajamas. Ah, the memories.

We changed clothes, fixed our hair and makeup and then headed to the university. When we entered the event room Beth was looking over some notes at the podium but when she saw us hurried to meet us with hugs. We all hit it off immediately. Lisa has known Beth via online and phone interaction for quite awhile but I’ve only interacted with her a bit on Facebook. She could not have been nicer and really helped make Lisa comfortable before her first speaking opportunity.

Beth’s talk was very informative and entertaining. She’s an excellent speaker – funny, warm and engaging. Throughout the talk she would periodically have Lisa speak. She asked Lisa to explain how she became interested in environmentalism, talk about glass straws from Glass Dharma, Lisa’s website – Green Oklahoma, her part in helping Ada get curbside recycling (Lisa is featured in Beth’s book because of this), and Lisa’s current activist project. I cannot begin to tell you how proud I was of how well she did. I recorded the portions where she was speaking but I promised her I’d let her see them before I shared them. Hopefully she’ll let me upload them to YouTube and then y’all can see how well she did.

Following the event and book signing, the organizers of the event took Beth, Lisa and me out to dinner at an Irish pub. Book Smart Tulsa was one of the organizers of the event and the co-founder, Jeff Martin, was one of the three people who took us out. He’s also an editor with This Land Press and encouraged Lisa to write an article for them. We had a wonderful time and the conversation was so interesting.

After dinner we drove Beth to her hotel, went up to her room and then proceded to gab like old friends until after 1 a.m. Unfortunately Beth had an 8 a.m. flight so we finally had to call it a night. We hugged, took pictures (on Lisa’s camera – if they are decent I’ll share later) and made promises to get together again someday.

Here is a picture of the sitting room in Beth’s hotel room:

It’s a really cool little boutique hotel which had been part of a design project. In the hallway outside Beth’s room I spotted this and thought “is that a Remington??” Sure enough. It was:

We left our hotel at noon the next day and went to Utica Square for lunch. When I spotted this, I had to take a picture:

We ate lunch at the Polo Grill where I had perhaps the best burger I’ve ever eaten:

There was a yarn store next to the restaurant so we popped in there for a few minutes to drool over the pretty yarn. We decided we have good taste (check the price):

No, we didn’t buy any. Next up, we went to Reasor’s grocery store because Beth had mentioned at the event the night before that they sell milk from Memory Lane dairy which still uses glass bottles. Yes, I bought some. And we also found a new-to-us, organic, locally roasted coffee there. We each bought a bag to try and Lisa will be adding the company to the resources on her site, Green Oklahoma.

Next up was Whole Foods where we did our monthly grocery shopping. I didn’t buy a lot since David and I will be in New Orleans for 10 days this month (I’ll share the grocery haul video I did tomorrow or Saturday).

We then headed for home. As we got to Stroud, Lisa looked up the town’s historical information on Wikipedia which turned out to be quite interesting. If you enjoyed the Pixar movie, Cars, take a look at the Stroud Wikipedia listing. There’s a really neat connection.

Ever the autodidacts, one thing led to another and we spent the rest of the trip home with Lisa looking up various Oklahoma towns and reading the history to me as I drove. We now have a whole list of potential field trips we want to take. And yes, one of them will no doubt involve taking pictures of the Keystone pipeline but we’ll pick a sunny day for that.

Be sure to read Lisa’s blog post about our adventure. And you can see the picture of the three of us there so I’ll probably not share it here.

30 Days of Thankfulness: Day 10

November 11, 2012 By Deanna Piercy 2 Comments

Sign in front of one of our favorite “hippie stores” in Norman

Yesterday my daughter Lisa and I went on our monthly grocery shopping trip to Norman. It’s always so nice to get to spend an entire day together. She’s smart, funny, interesting, kind and passionate. I’m thankful for her and our relationship. Love you, Lisa!

My daughter married well

June 29, 2011 By Deanna Piercy Leave a Comment

This afternoon I had a delivery from FedEx. Imagine my surprise when I opened the box and found flowers from my dear son-in-law. This Friday is my daughter’s birthday and he sent ME flowers (well, he also sent her some gorgeous calla lilies – her wedding flowers). Aren’t they lovely?

The picture doesn’t do them justice but it’s a dozen pink and white roses. (I added the ivy, honeysuckle and lavender).

And this is the note that came with them:

Isn’t that the sweetest thing? I think Lisa ought to keep him, don’t you?