Surprises for my Birthday!

Today is my birthday, and yesterday my DH surprised me with a gift!! We don't usually get any major surprises, simply cause we don't have lots of extra money laying around for them, but this year he managed to surprise me cause he's done a little work on the sly (that I didn't know about) for some of our neighbors. What a sweet, resourceful hubby I have!

We've had a wide two drawer pressed wood piece of junk file cabinet for years now that I set our printer on. It's heavy and full of file folders...and is completely annoying. The drawers have to be fiddled with a lot, just so they will operate, and the folders are always falling off the rails...cause the rails move. It's life has been threatened on numerous occasions, mostly by DH cause he's so tired of having to "fix" it as best as he can, so I'm able to actually open the drawers.

Every time it gets moved it gets worse...and this last move just about did it in totally...but hubby managed to make it usable again, if we didn't breath on it to hard.  We use it to put our printer on, which is why I wanted one that was wide like it was...although we were considering getting two short matching ones, to sit side by side so the printer could fit on them.

Yesterday he came home with a new, handmade, solid wood file cabinet!!! It's SOOOO much nicer than our old one, and the middle rail doesn't move, so the folders SHOULD stay hanging like they are suppose to! The drawers even glide like they are suppose to!!!! LOL  There is nothing like rubbing your hand over REAL wood!  I Love my surprise Dear!!


Our Amish neighbor, who does wood working made it for him...he may have gotten a discount on it even...being it was for my birthday, hubby isn't talking about that much.  LOL  I tell you, this move has given us some really NICE neighbors...handy ones to have around!  We had a few good ones in Nebraska, don't get me wrong...but these here seem to be extra nice.

It was a really NICE surprise, and even gave me a chuckle, cause I know how much HE was happy to get it too so the old one could be chucked!  it's always nice to get actual wood furniture, and chuck the cheep pressed wood junk...sadly we still have some of that in our house, but least the MOST ANNOYING piece is now gone!

I actually got more surprises yesterday for my birthday...an online friend sent me a couple kindle books I've been wanting to read!  Thanks so much Jenny, I'm looking forward to reading them!!!  :-))


In the not such a surprise category...I ordered myself a couple birthday gifts the other day. The only surprise part of them is...I didn't think I was going to be able to come up with the money for another couple months, but finally managed to. I've been wanting a new larger soap mold for well over a year, but with the move didn't end up getting it...so got that ordered, and then this little gem pictured above!!

Over the winter, I've been getting some more cheese stuff together, getting ready to start learning to make hard cheese since I now had an extra refrigerator to be able to turn into a cheese cave. I kept searching on the net, for some other cheese molds I could use with the press my Daddy made me, that would let me do a bigger batch of cheese and just couldn't find anything that wasn't expensive...the one thing I considered was almost as much as a new press that I'd heard about last year and started drooling over.

After looking for several months and even having DH see if he could find where we could buy some food grade water pipe and make our own, I finally concluded I may as well just get the press I wanted, instead of spending so much for JUST the molds. I love the press my Daddy made me...but for two things, one being the mold I have to use with it is to small for making a 4 gallon recipe of cheese, and the other is, it's hard to place the weights on it just right, so it doesn't go lopsided on me and give me cheese that is higher on one side than the other.

So, I bought the press pictured above...it doesn't use weights at all which is wonderful, and came with two different sizes of molds, so I can use it with a small batch or a big batch of cheese!!!! I'll keep my Dad's press for a backup/2nd press, but will be using this one now the most! I got it just in time, in fact, to fill it with my latest batch of cheese. It's a fresh cheese, that doesn't have to be aged, but does need pressed. I think I'm really going to LOVE this press...and am especially happy because I somehow managed to get a discount on it too!!!

Not sure how I got SO lucky this year, but God has really given me several things I've been needing along with some I just wanted!

On top of the stuff I talked about above, my Mom gave me a decorated t-shirt and some money so I could get a trellis for the clematis vine I bought as well as a few hummingbird supplies!  Gotta feed those hummingbirds this year, they are so fun to watch!  My brother and SIL also bought me a cake so I didn't have to bake my own (which is ALWAYS nice!! LOL) and gave me some money also!

Needless to say, it's been a blessed birthday already!  Hubby took me out to eat yesterday...and is cooking my favorite thing for supper tonight, (chicken Alfredo...and HIS is THE best!!) so... all in all, I'd say I've had a VERY BLESSED birthday this year!!!  :-))

Thanks so much to everyone to helped make my birthday weekend special!!  :-))