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Out of commission

 Have been in the hospital since last Thursday with COVID . Been up and down but getting better and may get to go home tomorrow. Has wiped me out😕😒😒😒 but I am alive.

Gadgets are wonderful

 I recently needed to buy a new box of brown sugar and it was sealed tight but by the time I went to use it, it was hard as a rock. I went searching for find a solution and here it is...

A Teddy brown sugar keeper.

 All you have to do is soak it in water for about 20 minutes and pat it dry before placing it inside an airtight container of brown sugar, baked goods, or even dried fruit. Once inside, the bear will help maintain the right amount of moisture. I ordered mine from Walmart free shipping and I love it. 

Uplifting Wed. 127 via Pinterest

 

Did you know

 

Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overmixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since. 

Better late than never

 

My Christmas cactus gave me a bloom in Feb. there is another one coming:)

Our first Ladies #4

 

 Dolley Payne was born on May 20, 1768, in the Quaker 

In January 1790, Dolley Payne married John Todd, a Quaker lawyer in Philadelphia. They quickly had two sons, John Payne (called Payne) and William Temple (born July 4, 1793^]). After Mary Payne left Philadelphia in 1793, Dolley's sister Anna Payne moved in with them to help with the children.

In August 1793, a yellow fever epidemic broke out in Philadelphia, killing 5,019 people in four months. Dolley was hit particularly hard, losing her husband, son William, mother-in-law, and father-in-law.

While undergoing the loss of much of her family, she also had to take care of her surviving son without financial support. While her husband had left her money in his will, the executor, her brother-in-law, withheld the funds and she had to sue him for what she was owed.

In May 1794, Burr made the formal introduction between the young widow and Madison, who at 43 was a longstanding bachelor 17 years her senior. A brisk courtship followed and, by August, Dolley accepted his marriage proposal.

When Thomas Jefferson was elected as the third president of the United States in 1800, he asked Madison to serve as his Secretary of State. Madison accepted and moved Dolley, her son Payne, her sister Anna, and their domestic slaves to Washington on F Street. They took a large house, as Dolley believed that entertaining would be important in the new capital

Dolley worked with the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe to furnish the White House, the first official residence built for the president of the United States. She sometimes served as widower Jefferson's hostess for official ceremonial functions

In the approach to the 1808 presidential election, with Thomas Jefferson ready to retire, the Democratic-Republican caucus nominated James Madison to succeed him. He was elected President, serving two terms from 1809 to 1817, and Dolley became the official White House hostess. Thel first “first” lady to live in the White House. Dolley helped to define the official functions, decorated the Executive Mansion, and welcomed visitors in her drawing room. She was renowned for her social graces and hospitality and contributed to her husband's popularity as president. She was the only First Lady given an honorary seat on the floor of Congress, and the first American to respond to a telegraph message. In 1812, James was re-elected. This was the year that the War of 1812 began with Great Britain

After the United States declared war in 1812 and attempted to invade Canada in 1813, a British force attacked Washington in 1814. As it approached and the White House staff hurriedly prepared to flee, Dolley ordered the Stuart painting, a copy of the famous George Washington portrait to be saved, as she wrote in a letter to her sister at 3 o'clock in the afternoon of August 23:

Our kind friend Mr. Carroll has come to hasten my departure, and in a very bad humor with me, because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. The process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas taken out ... It is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen from New York for safe keeping. On handing the canvas to the gentlemen in question, Messrs. Barker and Depeyster, Mr. Sioussat cautioned them against rolling it up, saying that it would destroy the portrait. He was moved to this because Mr. Barker started to roll it up for greater convenience for carrying.

Popular accounts during and after the war years tended to portray Dolley as the one who removed the painting, and she became a national heroine. Early twentieth-century historians noted that Jean Pierre Sioussat had directed the servants, many of whom were slaves, in the crisis, and that house slaves were the ones who actually preserved the painting.

Dolley Madison hurried away in her waiting carriage, along with other families fleeing the city. They went to Georgetown and the next day they crossed over the Potomac into Virginia. When the danger receded after the British left Washington a few days later, she returned to the capital to meet her husband. However, the rampant pillaging and systematic destruction had desolated much of the new city. As Congress began discussions over the construction of a new capital, Dolley and James moved into The Octagon House.

On April 6, 1817, a month after his retirement from the presidency, Dolley and James Madison returned to the Montpelier plantation in Orange County, Virginia.

In 1830, Dolley's son Payne Todd, who had never found a career, went to debtors' prison in Philadelphia and the Madisons sold land in Kentucky and mortgaged half of the Montpelier plantation to pay his debts.

James died at Montpelier on June 28, 1836.

Dolley remained at Montpelier for a year. Her niece Anna Payne moved in with her, and Todd came for a lengthy stay. During this time, Dolley organized and copied her husband's papers. Congress authorized $55,000 as payment for editing and publishing seven volumes of the Madison papers, including his unique notes on the 1787 convention.

In the fall of 1837, Dolley returned to Washington, charging Todd with the care of the plantation. She and her sister Anna moved into a house, bought by Anna and her husband Richard Cutts, on Lafayette Square. Madison took Paul Jennings with her as a butler, and he was forced to leave his family in Virginia.

In Washington 1837–1849

While Dolley Madison was living in Washington, Payne Todd was unable to manage the plantation, due to alcoholism and related illness. She tried to raise money by selling the rest of the president's papers. She agreed to sell Jennings to Daniel Webster, who allowed him to gain his freedom by paying him through work.

Unable to find a buyer for the papers, she sold Montpelier, its remaining slaves, and the furnishings to pay off outstanding debts.

Paul Jennings, the former slave of the Madisons, later recalled in his memoir,

In the last days of her life, before Congress purchased her husband's papers, she was in a state of absolute poverty, and I think sometimes suffered for the necessaries of life. While I was a servant to Mr. Webster, he often sent me to her with a market-basket full of provisions, and told me whenever I saw anything in the house that I thought she was in need of, to take it to her. I often did this, and occasionally gave her small sums from my own pocket, though I had years before bought my freedom of her.

In 1848, Congress agreed to buy the rest of James Madison's papers for the sum of $22,000 or $25,000.

In 1842, Dolley Madison joined St. John's Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. This church was attended by other members of the Madison and Payne families.

On February 28, 1844, Madison was with President John Tyler while aboard the USS Princeton when a "Peacemaker" cannon exploded in the process of being fired. While Secretaries of State and Navy Abel P. Upshur and Thomas Walker Gilmer, Tyler's future father-in-law David Gardiner and three others were killed, President Tyler and Dolley Madison escaped unharmed.

She died at her home in Washington in 1849, at the age of 81. She was first buried in the Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D.C., but later was re-interred at Montpelier next to her husband.

Uplifting Wed. 126 via Pinterest

 

Did you know?

 

This represents the amount of earths that can fit in the sun

The sun lies at the heart of the solar system, where it is by far the largest object. It holds 99.8 percent of the solar system's mass and is roughly 109 times the diameter of the Earth — about one million Earths could fit inside the sun.

Trouble

 I am no longer able to access bloglovin which is where I have all my bloggers listed. Anyone else having trouble?

Surprise

 I walked out into the back yard this week and got this wonderful surprise!!

Only one but it smelled wonderful.

Uplifting Wed. 125

 

Sharing

 Sharing my Arizona sunrise with you today....

Blessing

 My husband bought this  air compressor five years ago  and he has used it almost daily since but I must say he is not good a doing up keep on equipment so is had never had a oil change or been cleaned off and it had a hole it the bottom and was losing air. In other words it was on it's last leg but a friend of his said "I can maybe weld the bottom and you might get some more time on it". 

Low and Behold look what he  brought back!!!!!

 Now that is called a blessing. He even repainted it and it works great.

Did you know"

 

The artichoke is actually the bud of a thistle—a flower. The leaves (called “bracts”) cover a fuzzy center called the “choke”, which sits on top of a meaty core, called the “heart”. The heart is completely edible (and amazingly delicious). The end of the bracts are edible as well and some people like them dipped in butter, I like them dipped in mayonnaise.

Uplifting Wed. 124 via Penterest

 

 A friend of mine posted this picture and information.

The 25-foot-tall Christmas tree made of tumbleweeds, a tradition that has been taking place in Chandler since 1957. City workers spent months collecting nearly 1,000 tumbleweeds to adorn a wire frame shaped like a tree. From there, the tumbleweeds were sprayed with 25 gallons of white paint and 20 gallons of flame retardant, then dusted with 65 pounds of glitter. They say Chandler's Tumbleweed Tree was the brainchild of Earle Barnum.

 For those of you who are not from Arizona this is what a tumbleweed looks like

Merry Christmas

 

Courthouse in Prescott, Arizona

Uplifting Wed. 123 via Pinterest

 

Did you know?

                                                                   Mistletoe

Did you know that Mistletoe is a parasite – it steals water and nutrients from trees.

The custom of kissing under Mistletoe comes from England. The earliest recorded date mentioning kissing under the mistletoe is in 1784 in a musical. There was kissing under the mistletoe in the illustrations in the first book version of “A Christmas Carol” published in 1843, and this might have helped to popularize kissing under the mistletoe.

The name mistletoe comes from two Anglo Saxon words “Mistel” (which means dung) and “tan” (which means) twig or stick! So you could translate Mistletoe as ‘poo on a stick’!!!! No exactly romantic is it.

A little bit of Christmas at my house

 

He is a favorite....

Uplifting Wed. 122 via Pinterest

 

Recipe for two

                        Ham and Spinach Two-Cheese pasta

Ingredients

2/3 cup penne pasta

2 tsp. olive oil

1/2 cup shopped onions

1 tbl. flour

1/2 tsp. dry mustard

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 cup evaporated milk

1/2 cup shredded Italian-blend cheese

2 tbl. shredded Parmesan cheese

1 5 0z. pkg. baby spinach

2 ounces cubed cookded ham

Preheat oven to 400 . In a medium saucepan cook pasta according to package directions; drain and set aside.

In a med. size pan heat oil over med. heat. Add onions, cook about 5 min or until tender. Stir in flour, dry mustard and pepper and cook and stir for 1 min. Gradually stir in the evaporated milk and cook till thickened. Stir in the shredded  cheese and 1 tbs. of the Parmesan cheese until melted. Gently stir in the pasta, spinach and ham.

Divide the mixture between two ungreased 10 oz. ramekins. Sprinkle with remaining parmesan cheese and bake uncovered about 10 min. or until tops are browned.

Served with chilled pears 

Our first Lady 3

 Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson

This was such a odd story as Martha's mother died just 3 days after her birth and was raised by two stepmothers one of which was a mixed black slave whom her father married.

She herself married at 18 years old but her husband died just 1 year and 10 months after their wedding. She gave birth to one son and inherited the Forest Plantation.

At 23 years old she met and married Thomas Jefferson who was at the time a lawyer and a member of the House of Burgesses for Albemarle County at the forest plantation but moved to what would come to be known as Monticello.

The following is from this web site http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=3

Martha Jefferson's health began to rapidly deteriorate, the result likely of having given birth to seven children in less than fourteen years. The British invasion of Virginia under Lord Cornwallis in 1781 forced her to flee Monticello for their more isolated Bedford County home " Poplar Forest , and it weakened her 16-month old daughter Lucy, who died weeks later. Jefferson shortly thereafter resigned his position as governor and promised his wife that he would refuse any more political posts. Thus Jefferson turned down an important diplomatic mission to Europe. Her final pregnancy proved more burdensome than her marital separations; she died four months after childbirth. 

Martha Jefferson, however, was also to leave an unwitting legacy to her husband on two accounts. With the death of her father in 1772, Martha Jefferson inherited substantial property, including approximately 11,000 acres of land ( retaining 5,000 ) and slaves, including her half-siblings. By law, his wife's property became his own upon marriage, and so Jefferson came into ownership of his slave half sisters-in-law Thenia, Critta and Sally and brothers-in-law Robert and James Hemings. 

Since they were one-quarter African-American and three-quarters white and also related by blood to Martha Jefferson, the five Wayles-Hemings children occupied a unique role within the Jefferson family. None were called " slaves, " but always referred to as " servants. " They worked in the most personal and private servantile roles at Monticello. In 1790, Robert Hemings bought his freedom and joined his wife and daughter in Richmond, where they worked for a doctor. James Hemings was particularly close to Jefferson, working as his personal aide or " body servant, " traveling with him to Philadelphia during the Second Continental Congress and later to Europe. While in Paris, James Hemings studied the culinary French arts; upon returning to Virginia, he trained his younger brother Peter to oversee the detailed French cooking that Jefferson now insisted on serving. Jefferson gave James Hemings his freedom. Critta Hemings helped to raise her half-nieces Patsy and Polly. Thenia Hemings was the only one of Martha Jefferson's half-siblings who was sold as a slave - to family friend and future President James Monroe.

Thomas Jefferson never married again and while President the wife of his highest-ranking Cabinet member, Dolley Madison served as the public hostess.

There were no known pictures of Martha Jefferson and only a painted portrait done 183 years after her death based on descriptions of her.

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