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.

.

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.