First Snowfall

We had out first no-kidding snowfall last night and  this is how the back yard looked at eight this morning.

The first fresh snow is a pretty sight.

To be continued.

Decorating Magazines Are Not Knocking At My Door

Some of my  favorite blogs are written by women who live in old farm houses painted pristine shades of white inside and out, and the furnishings are sparse.

They go quietly wild over Christmas by tramping outside to find enough cedar boughs to form a nice display for the front door, the tree is cut on their property and the few trimmings are hand-made.

So why am I the total opposite of these dedicated women? Beats me.

My tree is totally artificial, as are the decorations and if one strand of tinsel would make a statement I toss on an a truck-load.

Whatever drives me to do what I do, it's my comfort level at stake so I continue to do it while admiring the restraint of those minimalist ladies.

The dining room table is already set for Christmas day. There's a good reason for this--I do as much ahead as I can to have energy left for the last-minute work.

I guess it's too late to ask Santa for a better camera.

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The  family of lambs are settled under the tree.

And here's Mr. Cheerful who is probably not fond of any of us over-the-top or carefully austere.

Merry Christmas to you anyway, you old coot.

An Exercise in Messiness

It's a good bet that I feel secure in my own skin  otherwise I wouldn't show you the aftermath of a lovely afternoon of Christmas baking.

I begin neatly, and then things just happen. I stop to water the plants, find three bottles of pure vanilla and pause to reflect on that, then wonder when I last used that big bag of whole wheat flour.  

 

The phone rings and I deal with those pesky snake oil sales people, run upstairs to Google how many children Mia Farrow has, all the while keeping a careful eye on the cookies.

Eventually the baking is done and when the last cookie is out of the oven, clean-up begins and the place again is pin-neat.

I'm not showing you pin-neat--but honestly, Dr. Jekyll never had a lab so pristine.

And all is well with my world.

Slap Happy Butterscotch Men

                           
  I made these people for the kids attending my son's staff Christmas party

They were going to be the usual gingerbread people until I ran across a recipe using dry butterscotch pudding mix. Add to a basic sugar cookie dough and there you are.

It tasted just fine.

I'm an all-thumbs kind  of person when it comes to using a pastry bag; either a little squiggle comes out when I want a big squiggle or it becomes a shapeless not-to-salvaged- blob.

So I ad lib.

A pair of tweezers and the back of the paring knife did the trick.They look pie-eyed but who will notice?

I mean,  the kids just want to lick  the icing anyway.

Welcome to John

This is my new great grandson. John Jason, age two days.
His brother Daniel is stroking his head and he'd thunk his rival if the photographer parent wasn't watching.
Understandable when you realize that until yesterday Daniel was king of that particular castle.

It scares me to think that I had my first four in slightly less than five years.
No wonder I have trouble recalling which was which.
And those were the days of cloth diapers. Yikes. I washed diapers every day for twelve years.
Forget the poor trees--those packaged non-fabric diapers are a godsend.

Welcome, little boy. I hope to hug you and your big brother soon.

Sweetie and Me

Right off the top let me say I have been sewing since I was fifteen years old,  a long, long time but recently I learned the hard way I haven't been keeping up with  sewing machine technology.

A couple of years back I upgraded to a super-duper type of  machine and I thought we were compatible until last summer when I packed her in her special container on wheels and trundled  her in for a checkup  because  she sounded like a thrashing machine.

$300- plus dollars later she was back to her quiet and refined self and sewed brilliantly but not before I was  confronted at the shop by a  bunch of solemn head-shakers about the broken gear and the absolutely impacted mess of thread in her gizzards.
Can't be thread I said since I don't sew that much. Oh yes, said the store people-- you sew a lot. The way they talked, I must be sewing 23- hours a day.

On the drive home, feeling put-upon, a scenario flashed into my mind and I knew what really happened. I recall the day when another repair man  pulled a ton of cat hair out of the refrigerator gizzards just before the condenser was about to wave the white flag.

 It was long, thick Himalayan cat hair--from the same cats that  slept on the sewing table curled around the back of the sewing machine.
My reasoning was that there wasn't any place that their hair could travel into  the machine, right? Oh so very wrong.

A few months earlier when  I sadly realized  that I couldn't keep up with their care and grooming,  I took them to the vet for a  check-up, got their shots up to date, then to the groomers for adorable haircuts and finally gave them to a younger, enthusiastic couple who adore Himalayan cats.

Back to the sewing machine.

 I was still smarting from the expensive bill and finger-pointing when I recently ran into another problem while I was trying to finish a couple of shirts I was making for son #4 for Christmas.

I reluctantly  headed back to the shop.

Well, said the nice lady, for starters there's a burr in the needle. A brand new one, Id like to add. She put in one of her own so it had to be burr-less. Try as I might I couldn't see a burr.

It seems the bobbin was in backwards also. This day was not going well.
She spoke very slowly to make sure I didn't miss a word and changed the bobbin around. Then I heard myself mumble  that since the machine returned from the factory it ran too quickly.

"You don't know how to adjust the speed ? she asked  incredulously.
Um, no.
She showed me.

There's more.

Apparently the tension was set so that it couldn't possibly run properly.  I never, ever change the tension so I don't know how that happened.
By this time she was sighing

As if  I hadn't suffered quite enough humiliation  I mentioned it took forever to thread the needle since I couldn't see that tiny needle hole very well.

"You don't know how to use the automatic needle threader?"

Just throw me in the dungeon and toss away the key.

The thing is, if you just make up your mind it will be a humiliating twenty minutes out of your life you come away from the store with a machine that sews more slowly, you know why she said the the bobbin wasn't wound correctly and the needle can now be threaded automatically. A really nifty trick,that one.

At last I was released, skulking out wheeling my sweetie behind me, with a mental picture of the nice lady in the shop regaling  her fellow workers about the ditz she just dealt with.

Back in the peace and quiet of home I photographed the proper settings, practised threading the thing automatically and vowed to read the manual one page daily until I have the thing memorized.

And to be on the safe side I photographed the correct settings.

So, yeah, it was worth the aggravation.

And sweetie's gizzards are immaculate.

Let the Season Begin

As always the dining room corner will be village headquarters for the next month. I get into decorating mode  in early November and when I can't hold out any longer  I begin hauling upstairs the basement-stored bins of decorations, beginning with the village.

There's an over-abundance of churches, recalling my childhood when we travelled through small towns with a church on every block. There never seemed enough people in town to keep the churches filled, but they looked pretty.

The sweet shop at the top right looks down on the ice pond where in my world walruses,  skaters and skiers happily share the ice .

There are lots of my sight-seers. Like me, they get their jollies watching others exercise.

This skier has an evil look; I wonder about him.

The lights work and there are no cats this year to nibble at the artificial snow that slowly melts as they chew.

Let the season begin.

The First Snow

We had our first smattering of snow and icy particles were still falling as I took this picture.

Now the  ornamental grasses come into their own own and will display beautifully for the winter months.

The Zebra Grass looked like this a month or so ago

And this morning.

Winter has crept in slowly around these parts .

Now that I am driving a small car I am not looking forward to testing it out on snowy--freezing rain days. My last car resembled  a mini tank and I always felt safe; sadly it got older than me and had to be pastured.

In the meantime I'm all for the pre-winter weather and  the beautiful look of the grass.

The Annual Christmas Shirts

Here is this  year's almost-finished pair of shirts I've been making for son #4.
He's the musician-mountain climber with a passion for cleaning up the planet and he lives his life that way, frugally and tidily.

If the distance isn't too far, he takes a bus to his gigs and fortunately he plays small instruments that can be toted.

The bird or animal patterns began years ago when  as a joke I made him a shirt with sea turtle  pattern; he loved it and asked for more. The shirt above on the right is an owl pattern.

I've been working my way more or less through the endangered species  and I've covered a lot of them.

Last year the gorilla shirt was a big hit.

This year, on compassionate grounds, I made one "normal" shirt to accompany the owls.

You're a good sport, #4.

The Case of the Missing Shoe Polish

These basement shelves are action central in my house-- I  label anything that can't argue and keep like with like so my system makes it easy to locate items.
Unless I change my system--then there's trouble..

 I was putting away the summer stuff  and thought I'd better give the winter shoes a polish but the polish was missing.  

In the past it had been stored in an open pink  plastic basket on those shelves--really easy to spot.

I vaguely recalled that I had switched the container for a smaller plastic bin with a lid. So how hard can that be to find?

It took days to zero in on it. I scoured the basement and then moved my search upstairs.

The logical place to keep it was in the sewing room; that made sense because the shoes were kept right across the hall.

The elusive box is in this picture but it took me three days to actually locate it.

See that shelf to the left of the clock? That's where it is.

I was ironing and idly glancing about with the dratted polish in mind and the box almost jumped out at me.

I blame it on my gem of a label maker. It's digital and lots of fun but the label is  tiny.

See what I mean?
Now that interfacing label is calling out to me to give it a tidy do-over.
The good news is that my penny loafers are gleaming.

Saturday Night Family Dinner

Saturday night is family night at my house. Come if you wish, take a night off, it's okay.The only rule is that I want to know how many I am cooking for.

Tonight is individual Beef Wellingtons along with baby carrots and Brussels sprouts in a brown sugar glaze, oven fried sweet potatoes and dessert is coming with one of the girls.

The veggies can be partially cooked earlier in the day, then blanched in ice water to stop the cooking, drained and stored in the garage. The garage is a great walk-in cooler in the winter, especially when there's a lot of action in the kitchen. The fridge won't be loaded with stuff teetering on the shelves.

This is how it looked at serving time after a short time re-heating in the prepared glaze.. The idea is that the colors will be pristine but I messed that up by adding the leftover mushrooms and onion from the wrapped tenderloins. It tasted lovely.

The beef tenderloins were browned in butter and seasonings earlier and also stashed for later and the above mentioned mushrooms and onion were prepared separately.

This left time to get some decorating started.

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Under the red stained glass is a lighted wreath. Trust me on this.

It's getting close to show time so the beef is now wrapped in puff pastry. The directions said let the frozen pastry thaw in the fridge. Done. Then the directions say to roll each pastry sheet into a square. What it doesn't say is how to separate the sheets. If anyone knows, please tell me.

I finally had to slice the sheets apart and as you can see the front ones are on the bulky side.  Included in the parcel is a handful of the sliced mushroom and chopped onion, sauteed until soft and a dash of sherry added. A beaten egg yolk is brushed on the pastry and it's ready for a few minutes in the oven to brown the pastry and re-heat the meat.

The directions called for 25-30 minutes but in the future I'd do some serious checking at the 20- minute mark.

And here we are, ready to roll. My people have arrived so there will not be a display of the finished product neatly arranged on platters. Everything tasted just fine.

We have some catching up to do.

Is There A Plastic Lid Thief in The House?

They have to go somewhere, right?  We store them away and then a genie takes over. You go for the appropriate lid when your container is filled and the lid is missing. Gonzo.

I live alone so I can't blame someone else for spiriting it away, although I do anyway.
I just know it's gone and It wasn't my doing.


So here's my new system--it takes up a lot of space but it is pretty well fool-proof. Snap on the lids immediately after cleaning and store container on the shelf.

Now let's see if the lids can make a break for it.

And down here in the oven drawer are the orphan lids and non-matching orphan containers. The matching parts will show up eventually, right?

So far so good.

Time For Settling In

Two things you can count on--pansies will be the last to pack it in for the winter and grass will endure forever.

I lost interest in weeding around late summer, so the grass weaseled its way in where it could..

Next season I think I'll give the pansies their own showcase; they ask for so little and give their all.

As for the grass, well, I'll just keep adding more brick "lawns."

Dove has been sitting outside for years, providing silent companionship for the neighboring cat that likes to nap on the ledge.

This is my variegated dogwood; in the summer it has nice leaves and scraggly flowers but in the winter the branches turn vivid red and look fantastic against the white snow.

The red leaves here actually belong to the bush behind it, in the neighbor's yard. Still, it's a nice effect when everything is settling in for the winter.

The Stragglers

This shaggy little group of plants was ushered in from the garden before the frost got them.

 African violet at the left is used to a comfortable summer tucked away in the shade  before coming  indoors to settle in under the grow lights, but no more. I am giving away the three-tier unit and going for simple and simpler.

Next in line is the amaryllis that I have been nurturing since last Christmas. They are finicky things but I'm hoping this guy will tire of the naked- bulb look and burst forth with new leaves.

I bought the fuchsia on sale just before the supermarket nursery closed for the season. I  found an old  macrame hanger for it and hung it on the front porch, then left it to get rained on. Except this was the season of no-rain. There are a couple of buds in sight so we'll just see what time in the kitchen can do.

Last is the clump of garlic chives I dug up and stuffed into the pot. So far so good. I mean, if you're going to make an omelet in the middle of winter, you want nice fresh chives to add to it , right?

Keep this in mind fellas--simple and simpler and try not to feel the pressure.

Ready, set---start.

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Lunch Bunch

This should be a shameful secret but just between us--I'm a junk-food junkie. Love the stuff.

At lunch time, I drive to my favorite spots--first to Burger King for the burger and then on to Wendy's where they have the best value for the diet coke.

I park at Wendy's, pull out and spread over my lap and the gearshift  a garbage bag to catch the sesame seeds and goopy dressing in the burger.

Then out comes the veggie burger and my book, propped in front of the steering wheel

I was trying to be discreet when I took this shot but around me are several lone munchers, some reading while they eat, some who listen to the radio, read and chew. I'm in the latter category.

I'm breaking myself of the meat- burger- everyday habit, hence the veggie burger.

Often I bring a sandwich from home and just buy the diet coke. Not just any diet coke . It has to be in a waxed cup, lots of crushed ice in the bottom and a nice straw.

Heaven.

be Careful What You Wish For

I found these geraniums on my front porch the other day and I'm happy to have them.

Lately I've mentioned to a lot of people that it's such a waste to toss geraniums at the end of the season when they can be stored and re-planted in the spring.

I'd rather not mention those senior moments (come to think of it I've had them most of my life) but I have no idea where these came from.

I'm glad someone was listening but who do I thank?

Over the years I've kept to the same quick-and-dirty storage method and it works quite well; brush away as much dirt as I can, then stuff the plants into a plastic bag and store them in an a cool, dark place.

Cool is hard to provide. My garage isn't insulated and things freeze into Popsicles out there so that leaves the basement.

I have an empty plastic bin ( a miracle in itself but I'm really trying to thin out) and they are now stashed in the bin  at floor level behind the box of birthday decorations..

In the spring when I'm just itching for the snow to melt, I'll retrieve them.
I  pull off the dried leaves, make sure the stalks has some green in them and pot in  lightweight soil.

Finding a sunny window ledge is always a difficult process  and  the best window is beside my desk.
By the time all the pots are strategically placed, I have a six inch square all to myself to pay bills and do things like, you know--carry on with life.

But first, there is a pesky winter to get through. and someone to thank, but who?

 

Stained Glass Reincarnation

This is one of the stained glass windows I bought at an auction around thirty years ago and I think I paid $11 for each half. At the time I didn't realize they were originally one double-hung window, probably from a farm house. The center panel was plain glass with blue and red inserts on the sides.

The picture above shows  the bottom section missing a center and side panel and I decided that was a good time to refresh the paint.

 

Here's the top, relatively unscathed. Over the years I've replaced some of the stained panels as well as the center panel that started out as clear glass.

I shudder to think what I've spent on these simple windows over the years.

 

During an earlier incarnation I had a frame made to hang them on the deck, with hooks holding the top and bottom. and the top window shows here. Any strong wind had them waving back and forth violently so I removed the bottom part while I reconsidered.

I retired the top part (probably another broken pane) and the  bottom panel tried life outdoors. The wind was still a problem so this one went into the basement. I didn't have any space to hang them indoors, separately or together.

 

Then came the eureka moment when I turned  part of the family room into a home theater; a rather grand name for a nice little nook to separate the viewing area from the rest of the room.

(I had a better picture but I haven't figured out the new blogger codes for switching pictures around.)

The windows hide the telly and they look perfect. The top center panel is still frosted glass and the lower window now sports a mirrored center panel.

Barring a nasty tornado or another move, chances are this vignette will remain unscathed for a long time.