My Un-Labor Day at Our Little House

I love holiday weekends.

Dale gets to spend more time with us at Our Little House and time slows to a crawl.

This was an especially nice weekend weather wise. The hot and humid temperatures broke on Sunday. Up until that time, we were still having 100 degree days.

On Monday, we decided on ribs and potato salad for dinner, which means I got to finish my part of the meal early. Potato salad is much better when it sits in the fridge all day.

I finally got to enjoy my new lounge chair that we purchased during our anniversary trip to Kansas City in July. The weather hadn’t permitted much outdoor enjoyment all through the months of July and August.

I wanted a woven fabric lounge chair like the ones I used to sit with my parents in when I was little. We would sit on warm summer evenings, picking out the star constellations.

Our community was still dark enough to see stars in the sky then and my parents had a patio poured just for such occasions.

Here at Our Little House, we have two outdoor upright chair and table sets, but they aren’t comfortable for lounging on the party deck reading during the day or star gazing at night.

Most of the modern lounge type chairs are just ugly, in my opinion.

I found my perfect chair at Westlake Hardware in Kansas City. Well, almost perfect, it’s not made in the U.S.A., as I’m sure the ones my parents had were.

But it is sturdy and pretty and was great for my un-Labor Day celebration, reading and napping under the clear blue sky on the party deck.

I’m looking forward to more days in my chair and even some star gazing.

What did you do for the Labor Day holiday?

24 Responses

  1. Jane Boursaw says:

    Love that chair. And yes, we all need a day OFF once in a while. Once a week would be great!

  2. Merr says:

    The chair in that pic reminds me of the chairs I saw around the pool growing up. Nostalgia!

  3. That lounge chair sounds so perfect right now.

  4. Heather L. says:

    Love your fabric-woven chair. My outdoor chairs are all hard plastic so I have to add a cushion or two to sit out there and read.

    Un-labor days are the best.

  5. mat says:

    Our Labor Day didn’t happen yesterday–it happened Sunday afternoon.
    Saturday was spent fixing plumbing (one of my least-favorite repairs) and getting dirty, dehydrated, and underfed. It took so long, we completely missed our cocktail hour…and it was missed dearly!
    Sunday morning was spent running around, playing catch-up from our lost Saturday. The afternoon was much better. We napped, made up for our lost cocktail hour with some wonderful brie, and my wife made a batch of her amazingly-delicious meatballs.
    Labor Day was spent pretty much exclusively inside, caring for our son who was having a go with a fever and some stomach problems. He really enjoyed playing Lego Indiana Jones with me, though.

    • Kerri says:

      Oh, no, Mat, not a lost cocktail hour! That’s the worst. 🙂 Seriously, we look forward to our Hillbilly Martinis every night. 🙂 I’m glad you got a little relaxing and good eating in though at one point in the weekend.

  6. Olivia says:

    We actually had summer-like temperatures here for a change – it was 27C in the house and I was making mustard pickles with my bumper crop of cucumbers.

    They are so good that I think I shall make another batch.

  7. I love it when David has a long weekend too. We went to a neighbor’s house for barbeque on Sunday evening- made potato salad to take and we had some leftover for Monday. I agree- it’s always better the second day! On Labor Day we went to our land, just across the road from us, to do some chores but mostly to enjoy the glorious weather- temps in the low seventies and sunshine! I made sandwiches, packed the leftover potato salad, threw a couple of beers in the cooler and off we went.

    We call this time of year “yellow season” on the prairie, because of all the yellow flowers that are blooming at this time, and also because some of the grasses that have already gone dormant have dried up and turned yellow. At sunset, the whole prairie glows as the sun sinks beyond the horizon.

    Our dog, TJ, joined us for our prairie picnic. She loves walking the property with us, trotting ahead sometimes or darting into the woods after rabbits and other critters. We had our picnic in a glady area of our land that includes a wonderful, fragrant cedar grove. David spent many summers clearing out brush and weeds from the little cedar grove, and we put a picnic table there a couple of years ago. Now it’s a perfect place to sit and view the glade.

    It’s yellow season on the glade too of course, with saffron being the dominant color of late-summer blooming plants. There is one stunning exception and that is a plant called leavenworth eryngo, a relative of the common thistle, it’s a native plant that produces pineapple shaped blooms that are a brilliant shade of purple. It’s one of the most unusual and interesting plants on the glade, and against the yellow backdrop, is just gorgeous! That was our Labor Day,not much labor involved, but we enjoyed our walk through the prairie and our little glade.

    • Kerri says:

      It sounds as though you truly had a heavenly Labor Day, Kathleen! It was beautiful weather to enjoy a picnic. Your description of the prairie sounds just awesome. Your walk with TJ reminds me of the walks we used to take with Emma when she was a young one, up at the barn where we leased land in the city. She loved being free of the suburban yard and roam the acreage up there. When we moved here, she got to do it all of the time. I’m so glad you found TJ, rescued him and now he is living truly a dog’s life! 🙂

      • We love TJ to death, she’s turned out to be such a good watch dog and companion. How wonderful for Emma, that she got to enjoy life in the country with you and Dale. Not many dogs are so lucky.

        When I watch TJ trotting excitedly ahead of us, stopping to sniff the air now and then, running off into the brush and then bounding back to our sides and just generally relishing her freedom in the outdoors, I see the ghost of our old dog, Licorice, by her side.

        He loved South Fork and always knew when we were preparing to go camping there, back before we bought our house. That was a problem when he got old and crippled up and could no longer go with us. No matter how hard we tried to sneak sleeping bags and coolers past him into the car, he always knew when we were heading to the land. He’s buried there now, in a pretty spot near the place we always pitched our tent. Dogs and country life just go together.

        • Kerri says:

          I know, they do. I wish we would have had Emma back to bury her, but I’ve come to accept she is a permanent part of the land, water and air all around us. Hershey, our Doxie, is buried in the front yard. I’ll never forget the first time we camped here and she heard coyotes. All of the hair stood up on her back and she shook like a leaf! 🙂

  8. NoPotCooking says:

    We had chairs like that when I was a kid too. I’m glad you had a nice weekend. We spent some time with my parents at their lake house which is not quite relaxing, then I worked all day yesterday on my latest cookbook, so there wasn’t a lot of downtime here. Today is the first day of school though which changes my routine.

    • Kerri says:

      You work harder than almost any other writer I know! Maybe you can get some peace in now that school has started again. I hope so. 🙂

  9. Alexandra says:

    Whoops. I mean, decompress, sorry! Although I guess it felt like I was decomposing, too.

    • Kerri says:

      Freudian slip, Alexandra!? At one point, I thought about both innkeeping and pet sitting to earn some extra money. Both were dismissed in a hurry for the reason you describe. When everyone else is playing, I would have to be working! 🙂

    • V Schoenwald says:

      What a hoot, Alexandra.
      I wish I was “decomposing” too, but I worked all weekend, processing produce from the farmer’s market and my garden, so this morning, I feel like I want to decompose! And I still have some sweet peppers to can.

  10. Alexandra says:

    I worked! That’s the life of an innkeeper. What’s more, my guests were particularly needy, so I ended up asking my husband for privacy, wanting to just sit and decompose after a tough day.

    • Mind if I steal your little Freudian slip and start using it when I’m too exhausted to even sit upright? It’s too good not to use.

      There was no rest for my weary freelance self this week, but I’m taking next week off to go to a food writers’ conference (yes, that’s work too, but at least there’s also party time!).