Happy new year

What a great New Year’s Eve at Chris’. 

Wendy is entertaining us with music after a rousing game of Pictionary.  Dan and Gretchen showed us a travelogue of their trip to Japan. It is amazing to spend time with them. 

Here is what Ryan and the kids did today. 

Climbing swimming eating out and an escape room. 

Time spent with family

There is nothing I like better than to spend time with my family. I so admire the way my son and daughter in law are raising their two children. Ryan always tells them that there are only two things he wants for them in life...to be happy and to be safe. They instill in them values and respect and to love each other. They teach them problem solving skills and independence so that they will be able to make their own way in the world. 

  It has been a week of activity. One day we went to Dolly Parton’s Smokey Mountain Christmas Adventure, a dinner theater with a show of dancing and singing. We went to the movies to see Mary Poppins. We played lots of card games and Pictionary. We shared a wonderful Christmas morning with lots of fun and laughter.  It has been a awesome week. 

Chris and Wendy were there also and Wendy had time to get to know us all bettter. Today we are going to Chris’house to spend New Years with him and Scott. Dan and Gretchen are back from Japan and will be there too. 

How are you spending your New Year’s Eve?

Adam Lambert

  Adam Lambert honored Cher by singing Do you believe in Love after Love. It brought tears to her eyes...and to mine. He is still amazing.  

Surprise

Jenny is pairing my new Apple Watch with my iPhone. What a great surprise gift from Chris. Shades of Dick Tracy. 

Give yourself time.

I am reposting this from my friend Donna’s blog. like Medicine for me.  She is a great photographer and a great writer. I loved this quote from Naomi. A new year is coming and I think we all reflect on how we can be a better person in the coming year and how we can take advantage of every day and every opportunity that comes our way. 

I’ll leave you with these fine words from Naomi Ernest. If you haven’t signed up for Naomi’s newsletter, it’s the perfect gift to yourself. 

 In an interview a few years ago, I was asked the most important thing I’d learned in my career. 

 It’s still true, and it has both nothing and everything to do with creating. It is this:

Give yourself time. Care for your family. Serve others. Read often. Love daily. Keep a prayer on your heart. Fold laundry. Sing. Bake bread. Be kind to those who frustrate you. Wash dishes. Go for walks. Make your bed. And sometimes, don’t make your bed. Cook dinner. Sweep the floor. Make amends. Smile when you can. Cry when you must. Look at the stars. Let ideas simmer—creation comes when it is ready. Meanwhile, simply and humbly live.

Yesterday the family went to see Mary Poppins Returns which was very good. We also went to a great book store to look around before the movie started. I had forgotten how much I love a bookstore. In our small town a small bookstore just opened so I used to go to Barnes and Noble in Erie to sit and look around for a hour. I haven’t done that in such a long time. I loved this bookstore Books a Million and all the selections. I treated myself to a few Bella Grace magazines. Just reading this magazine brings me peace and hygge. 

What a wonderful day

Christmas certainly is for children. I am so blessed to be sharing the day with my grandchild. Last night Sara and Sean carried on a tradition started by my two boys. Every Christmas Eve they opened the presents from each other. It gave them a special bonding activity away from the excitement of Christmas morning with all the presents to unwrap. Sean gave Sara a mermaid tail blanket which she loved. Sara gave Sean a game for his Ds system. They were so excited and the first thing they did was hug each other and say thank you. 

  

Sara is really in to slime this year and got a purse that holds the slime that she decorated with glitter.  This morning there were screams of delight as they opened each present. Everyone shared so well and we had a wonderful Christmas. 

Merry Christmas

I will be taking a little blogging break to enjoy the holidays with my family. I may post from time to time. I will be following my favorite blogs when I get a chance. I hope you have a wonderful holiday.  

The refrigerator saga continues

So…..we got another repairman to come out to check the fridge. It didn’t take him long to say that the trouble was that the gas had leaked out of the system. He looked at our paperwork and said the good news was that it is covered under warranty. Therefore, he didn’t fix it but still charged the consulting fee for coming out. Yikes. Then we called for an appointment for the Sears man to come. What a rigmarole. Finally we could get an appointment for next week. But we are not going to be around on Thursday so we had to schedule for the third of January. Meanwhile it’s a good thing that we could put all the frozen food in our other freezer. But the refrigerated stuff is still sitting in boxes in the garage and a pain in the neck. We can put a few things in the refrigerator because it is working slightly. The ice cubes in the tray are freezing and the top still has some cooling enough to keep things ok. I don’t think that this problem is something we needed right at this time of year (or anytime for that matter).

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  We cannot always control everything that happens to us in this life, but we can control how we respond. Many struggles come as problems and pressures that sometimes cause pain. Others come as temptations, trials, and tribulations.

L. Lionel Kendrick

My wants

Me

Those little bumps in the road

Yes, I know it looks strange to see the refrigerator doors hanging open like this. But there is a method to my madness. We have noticed that for the past two weeks our freezer didn’t keep the ice cream quite hard enough. I thought it was because there was too much in the freezer and the air wasn’t circulating so I removed a lot of the food to our stand up freezer in the garage. But that didn’t seem to help. Then I noticed that the milk wasn’t staying ice cold in the top of the refrigerator either. It was not warm it didn’t seem exactly cold enough. Then the ice maker stopped making ice. That is when I knew something major must be wrong. 

   I called the repairman but unfortunately he is extremely busy this time of year and ddn’t know when he could get out here. We did get on his list. One other time we had left on vacation and accidentally left the freezer door open just a smidge. When we got back the ice had formed all over the back of the freezer and we had to have him come. He thawed it out with a hair dryer but told us if we had left it sit 24 hours unplugged it would have thawed. 

   So we had nothing to lose. I unloaded everything from the freezer to the one in the garage and took all the food out of the top and put it in our garage. You must know that in Bradford our garage is as cold as a refrigerator.  We unplugged it and are let it sit all night.  Today we will see if that helped any and unfroze anything that was blocked. Wish us luck. 

Chris and Wendy

Love this photo of Chris and Wendy. 

Visitors

Look who showed up at the feeder. Now that the bears are in hibernation we can put out food for the birds. 

Mr. Squirrel really enjoys the suet. 

Christmas get together

Every year I love to have my friends out at Christmas time. It was a great afternoon filled with laughter and love and a way to show my good friends how much I love them. 

I forgot to take pictures of the food.....little Smokies with honey mustard sauce, Sausage Wellington, charcuterie board, spinach dip and chips and for dessert peppermint ice cream with hot fudge sauce.  As a gift I made mini loaves of cranberry and banana nut breads.  

Christmas past

In 2006 we decided to add on to our home by making a sunroom that was 16 feet by 20 feet. That additional space has made all the difference in the way we live. We added a large table where everyone can sit around comfortably and a tv area. We live in this room. At Christmas time it is one of my favorite rooms to decorate. Over the years I have had different Christmas themes and I thought it would be fun to look back at them. One year, as in the picture above I decided to bring some of my blue pottery into the light green sunroom and it worked. I liked a garden theme and made this centerpiece with branches and snowflakes. 

The garden theme continued and I made a moss centerpiece and added white tulips with berries. 

Plaid was also a theme one year with a centerpiece of tulips and greens with silver as well as flowered red placemats and green silverware. 

Black and white and red seemed to prevail one year with a black checked tablecloth and a lantern. 

More garden Christmas centerpieces came over the years with this amaryllis. 

This was the set up for a Christmas luncheon I had one year. 

This was a very plaid year. 

More red and green for Christmas. 

I always love to decorate the “candle-ire” above the table too. For me the fun of decorating is to do something different each year but still add some of the same touches. Do you love to decorate for Christmas?

Sara

Sara is only eight but all girly girl. 

CHRISTMAS CAROLS

These days I am enjoying sitting at the piano and playing Christmas songs. Music is one of my greatest pleasures and I always have said that you can tell my mood by music. When I am happy I am listening to music or playing a tune. I can no longer sing since I’ve had my throat stretched over ten times and my voice now sounds froggy. But I enjoy playing and try to fit it into my day. Recently I got out my keyboard which hasn’t been used in a while and set it up in the living room. It really enhances my playing with rhythms and background music as well as different instruments. 

Is music part of your life?

Cookies

It’s that time again. At Christmas there are all kinds of treats that you don’t find any other time of the year. Peanut butter blossoms are an easy cookie to make but yet you never see a kiss on top of a cookie at any other season. The same with another favorite of mine snowballs or pecan balls rolled in powdered sugar. And do we make fudge any other time?  Hours are spent in the kitchen mixing dough and cutting out and icing sugar cookies. To me this ritual is all part of a Christmas tradition that I remember from my childhood. It makes me happy to present a tray of treats as a gift or see my children and grandchildren picking out their favorites. Time to bake. 

Winter

My new mantra for winter is ...I love snow. So far this winter has not been bad compared to our harsh winters previously. I blame global warming which has caused the storms to go either above or below us. We have plenty of cold air..in the low twenties here today...but only about an inch of new snow. That doesn’t keep me home at all.  After coffee I went to Olean to finish some Christmas shopping. The choices are limited but I did find a few things. Since I spent so long shopping I didn’t have time for lunch before I had to be at Literary Club at two. We had an interesting program. Rick Fredericks, a former history professor at the University of Pittsburgh presented a few Christmas stories. On was the Gift of the Magi which most people are familiar with. The second was an older story written in the nineteenth century. And then he gave a brief history lesson on the real meaning of the song I heard the bells on Christmas Day which was originally a poem by Longfellow about the Civil War. It was such an enjoyable program and put us in the Christmas mood. (Of course, the cookies helped too). 

More organizing

Still organizing today.  I’m really making progress in getting things done downstairs. It is a foggy day and cold but I am thinking about going shopping tomorrow. I have ordered some gifts from Cabela’s today. I find it very easy to shop online but I like to see and touch the things I want to buy. And I hate to send things back. But Amazon makes it so very easy. Speaking of Amazon do you watch the Marvelous Mrs. Mazel on Amazon prime?  It’s quirky but fun. Set in the fifties it follows a gal who is trying to be a stand up comic. It’s sweet to look back at the fashions and customs of that time. Does it seem to you that it was a simpler time. Or is it just me?

I’ve got the organizing bug

I’m not a slob or a hoarder but organizing doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve had too many priorities in the past to bother with the theory that everything should have an exact place in your house. Over the years I’ve overcome the habit of laying things down instead of putting them away but even though I can put my hands on most everything in the house and most things are where they belong there are areas that need attention. Today I’ve tackled my basement. Specifically the small store room where my seasonal decorations were carried down from the attic. Don has put up metal shelving and I’ve bought plastic bins..clear ones...that fit two to a shelf.  Over the past few years I have made a great effort to pare down my decorations and now I am down to just one shelf full of fall decor.  Plus a big bin of pumpkins and a large floral arrangement. Now I am working on the Christmas shelf. 

It’s all about the Christmas tree

Whether you put up a sixteen foot live tree or a small tabletop foot high one Christmas just isn’t Christmas without a tree. Growing up we almost always had a live tree complete with silver tinsel and colored balls and lights. There was that one or two years where aluminum trees were all the rage and ours had a revolving colored wheel of light which changed the color of the tree as it spun around. After I was married I wanted to carry on the tradition of a live tree so my husband and his father went out in the woods to cut one down. I’ll never forget the day he carried it into our first house. It was not shaped like a Christmas tree at all. It wasn’t one of those perfect triangle trees that you see in the lots. This tree was a long needled pine with generous spaces between the branches. And I loved it. I decorated that tree as if it was the one headed for the White House. I proudly hung ornaments and balls on it and sat dreamily in front of it on many cold December nights. As the children grew they helped with the decorations and live trees finally went by the wayside as artificial trees became more popular. Now the big tree which stood in the living room has been replaced by a smaller tabletop tree in the sunroom. It is easier for us to manage but I decorate it as if it was ten feet tall. 

Each year I have a theme and this year it is Silver, green and white. The topper for this tree is one I bought at the craft show. The ribbon is green velvet and I added a stripe of glittery silver mesh. 

It is decorated with berries, silver ornaments, garden ornaments, green balls, eucalyptus, and silver balls. 

I love mercury glass and added those balls filled with amaryllis to the table.

I think the tree fits the mood of the room very well. What do you put on your tree?  Do you have a special theme? Do you add the same ornaments every year?

MIA

Sorry I have been missing in action this past weekend. Don and I went to 

Carlisle to stay with Chris. I planned a weekend with my family including my sisters and Diane’s husband Jeff. 

AS usual I didn’t take the time to take too many photos. We arrived on Thursday with a van full. I brought a ham dinner which we ate on Thursday night. On Friday morning the sisters got up early to go to Harrisburg where there was a huge craft show at the Farm Complex. To say it was huge is an understatement. I have never seen so many crafters in one place before. There were hundreds and hundreds. I hadn’t been to a craft show in quite a while and we walked up and down aisles for hours upon end. We were very reserved in our buying since a lot of it was country and that ship has sailed for us. I bought a few decorations for my tree and some dip mix and some gifts for Christmas. On the second floor of the complex they had a cafeteria set up which seated 600. I enjoyed some corn chowder soup and quiche before going back down to shop in the largest of the buildings. There was local entertainment and we sat down a while to listen to a high school hand bell choir. As we walked around we looked for that something special that just shouted at us to take it home but there just wasn’t anything there I couldn’t live without. After seeing almost all of it we decided to go home since our legs and backs were telling us that we had had enough. Diane had made chicken pot pie and we were grateful to have that all prepared for dinner.

   On Saturday while the guys went to Hershey to an antique car museum we ventured out to shop some more in Mechanicsburg  and Harrisburg. We went to a few favorite places..a florist, a consignment shop , and Goodwill before driving to Harrisburg to Strawberry Square. It started to get dark and was rainy so we cancelled our plans to meet the boys at a nice restaurant and just went home where Chris fixed us his famous burgers. We settled down in his theater media room and watched a cute movie called GAme Night. 

  Sunday we all departed for home after a great weekend of visiting with family. We even got to see Wendy for a while too and she got the “auntie’s” approval. It took us about four hours to get home and a few hours more for me to get things put away. Today was a Giggle Girl day but our hostess got sick and had to cancel. Since I was worn out I spent the day redesigning my tree (more about that later). Now I am going to settle in and finish reading The Mistetoe Promise by Richard Evans with a cup of hot cocoa.