Yippee, I’ve got wheels!

Happy, happy, joy, joy…I’m back in the driving business. After two weeks of not having a car since my accident I am happy to report that there is a new 2012 Town and Country in my garage. I am in love! It’s charcoal with a dark brown/tan interior and wood trim. It has such amazing features that it will take a while to learn all of them. One thing I really liked was the Bluetooth which I used on the way home from Erie. I traveled through New York state and it is against the law to talk on a cell phone. So I called by way of Bluetooth (handless). The nice salesman at the dealership set it all up for me. I still have all the features of my former van (except the heated seats which will be missed this winter) and then some. ..(like a back up camera and changing the radio stations by just saying the number).

When do you decorate for Christmas?

 

When do you get out your decorations? I remember when I didn’t start decorating until after the first week of December. But each year it got earlier and earlier. I still held off until well after Thanksgiving. But this year I’m having a hard time not going up to the attic and bringing down the pretties.


Are you the person who always loves tradition and puts out the very same decorations in the same places year after year? These pictures of my boys when they were small and their letters to Santa are a must to be on display each year.

 
 
Or do you change your decor every year? Yep, that’s me too. Each year I try out different ways of decorating. 

There was the blue and white Christmas in 2007:
 


In 2009 it was a Garden Christmas:





In 2010 black and white was the theme:



2011 seemed to be the woodland theme:

So what will this year bring? Each year I vow to make it a simpler Christmas with less decoration. But when I open each packed box and see those beautiful things I can’t help myself. I want everything to be out on display. Is it too soon??? I’ll try to restrain myself until next weekend.

What do you measure?

These darling measuring bowls are from Anthropologie. The colors on them are so bright.


I don’t bake as often as I used to but when I do I love using these to measure liquids.

What was the last thing you baked? For me it was banana nut cupcakes. I find myself using mixes instead of recipes these days. I fear that the next generation will not know how to make food from scratch.

CLOUD ATLAS

Yesterday I went to Erie to have lunch and see the movie “Cloud Atlas”. I came out of the theater awed and sure that Tom Hanks needs the Academy Award for his various roles in the movie. I absolutely loved it and want to see it again to catch all those intricacies and subtleties that I didn’t get the first time through. It was extremely difficult to follow the reincarnated characters through many time periods but was so well acted that you didn’t realize that the movie was almost 3 hours long. Here is a little summary:
Cloud Atlas consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. The first five stories are interrupted at a key moment. After the sixth story, the other five stories are returned to and closed, in reverse chronological order, and each ends with the main character reading or observing the chronologically previous work in the chain. Eventually, readers end where they started, with Adam Ewing in the nineteenth century South Pacific.


Cloud Atlas explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future. Action, mystery and romance weave dramatically through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future. Each member of the ensemble appears in multiple roles as the stories move through time.

Now I can’t wait to read the book.

Saturday thoughts

5 Reasons to say I love you

My good buddy Kim Klassen challenged us to do “Five on Friday”. It can be five pictures, thoughts, or a list. So today I’m doing”


Five Reasons to say I love you

1. To express how you are feeling at the moment. When you are overwhelmed with that emotion you’d better darn let the other person know it.

2. Because..you never know. You never know if that is the last time you will have a chance to say it to that person. After my near miss with death I am so more aware that I need to say it all the time.

3. Because we all need to hear it. I love to tell people that I love them. People need to know that no matter what the disagreement, no matter what might have been said, no matter how ugly it gets, no matter how hard the times I still love you.

4. Because we need to hear it back. It reaffirms that you are loved also and gives you a warmth in your heart to know that you mean something to someone.

5. To realize how lucky you are. You are able to love. You can give your heart away without becoming someone else. You can know that you have a power to feel that emotion deeply and warmly.

 

Home, sweet home

I love to light the candles at night and enjoy the sunroom.

WHAT DID YOU DO TODAY?

Sadie spends a lot of her time just looking out the window hoping that a squirrel will come by to distract her. She is such a smart dog and gets bored so easily. Most dogs we’ve had were just content to be dogs. They laid around, ate their dinner, and mainly left you along. Not this one. She wants to be where ever you are, even in the bathroom. She watches you all day and goes from room to room with you. Even down in the basement when you are doing laundry. She sometimes just sits and whines under her breath when you are on the computer. She begs for you to take her on a walk every day and doesn’t understand if it’s too cold or too rainy to go. When you are watching tv at night she sits in front of you on the couch going “Ohhh, whooo” till you tell her to find a tuggy toy. Then she’ll play till your arm falls off. If the car leaves she’ll sit in the front window and watch until it returns. She loves to ride and is thrilled when she’s asked to go. When she isn’t pestering you she can be found in the above position, just waiting. She has the patience of a saint when it comes to waiting for a critter. She gets very obsessed with things and never, never forgets. We used to play with her using a laser light until she would spend hours sitting in front of the drawer it was in…just waiting. Or running to the drawer every time you got up. Yes, Sadie is a really different kind of a dog. So lovey that she must be on top of you laying down, sitting, or even on the couch above your head. So devoted..and so obsessed. But I wouldn’t trade her. But would I ever get another Jack Russell Terrier….That would be a NO.

I know it’s too early

I know it’s too early to be thinking about Christmas, but how can you help it when you see these beautiful pictures. Just thought I’d share. Sit back and sigh.

Good news or bad?

We found out today that the damage to my van is much worse than previously thought. We thought it was just exterior body work that was going to need to be done but upon further inspection the motor is filled with mud and would require a great deal of repair. The insurance adjuster is coming again to assess it and it may be totaled. So it looks like we will be van hunting soon.

Memories

Memory is the diary we all carry with us.


Isn’t it fun when you see something and your mind digs a memory out of its subconscious. That’s how I felt when I saw the Louvre picture above. I can still feel the excitement of being in Paris and walking up to this famous museum. It was surprising that the modern pyramid structure was the entrance to the older museum. Inside my eyes were darting around with so many statues, pictures, and pieces to see. Our friend had arranged for us to go on an artistic tour so we joined our group. 

The first thing we saw was “The Winged Victory of Samothrace”. It was so beautifully done and our docent went into great detail pointing out all the features. As we went on through the museum we realized that our “artistic” tour was an in depth accounting for people who are interesting in the finer points of art. Instead of an overall view of the museum contents we were overwhelmed with information about each painting and statue. We began to realize that this tour wasn’t exactly what we had wanted when we reached the Mona Lisa.
.

Our tour guide barely gave us time to walk over to the small picture and view it before he was saying for us to move on. But when we finally reached the extremely large painting

Liberty leading the People we decided that we didn’t need to hear 20 minutes about this painting. We left the group and went on our own to finish touring the Louvre. There were two things we noticed. One was the wonderful cafeteria with many international cuisines. The other was the strong body odor from the Europeans packed into that space. The women do not shave their underarms or legs and we are not used to the strong body smell.
     But how exciting that day was. Here I was in Paris. Everywhere I looked each view looked like a postcard and each new turn in the street was an adventure. Oh, how I’d love to return.

From the House of Edward

Her house sat close to the street in the center of a quartet of maple trees that burned red as flame in October and rang out with birdsong in May. 

from The Holiday Tour

There is an amazing blog that I read and I felt that I just had to share it with you. It’s called From the House Of Edward and you can link to it by clicking on it from the sidebar of my blog. Multi talented Pamela Terry and her big white dog Edward live in the South. Her blog is full of stories, insights and beautiful photography that makes it a pleasure to read. It is like receiving a wonderful gift to read her words. It is like a soft breeze which blows across your mind. Her Halloween story: The Holiday tour is amazing. Hope you like it.

IT’S BEEN A CRAZY MORNING

Does it seem to you that you just get one problems solved and another one crops up? That’s the way my morning has been going.

First, I lost the sound on my computer last night. Yes, no sound at all. It happened after I hooked up my camera and Skyped with Ryan and the family. I hadn’t used Skype in a long time and it was interesting trying to figure out how to get everything to work right. I finally got him on the computer and he could hear and see me, but I only could see him and not hear him. So we used the phone to talk instead. It was great because he took his laptop out into the yard and I could watch the kids climbing on the play structure that he had built for them. (Yes, it was 72 degrees down in Tennessee yesterday) and 35 here. So this morning I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I had no sound at all. First of all the indicators of sound said that it was working. The volume was turned up enough and there didn’t seem to be any reason why I didn’t hear anything. So I googled it and they said to restore the computer to a previous time when everything was working. I did that. But still no sound. Then another site said “check the connections”  BINGO. I had forgotten that when I hooked up the camera that one of the wires came loose from the back of the computer. I plugged it in where I though it should be. So I doublechecked.  Who knew? They are color coded and I had the green one in the gray hole. Duh! After I made it right the sound came back. Halleluiah. Problem solved.


Then another problem came up. I tried to import a picture I took this morning of the blue jays. I did as I always do. Stuck the little chip from the camera into the slot and it came up that it was downloading 703 pictures. I know I didn’t have that many pictures on the memory card because I always delete after each time. Where were those pictures coming from???? So I downloaded them and then erased them from the camera memory card. Then I had to go to the Photo Gallery and erase them from there. I don’t have a clue how those pictures were on that chip. Hmmm. What do you think is going on?  Gremlins in the camera? 

Let’s hope that no more problems come up today. 

If I could turn back time

If you could really turn back time, would you? If you could just go back for a day and be that younger self, how old would you be and why would you like to relive that moment?

There were so many good moments it’s hard to pick just one great one to relive. There was this one teenage night during a school dance when Don took me outside for a minute. We walked along the football field and talked. I didn’t know it then but he was to be my forever love. Right then I just knew he was special and I was infatuated with him. I’d love to be sixteen again for awhile. Just to remember what it was like to be that carefree. 

What about you?

BLESSINGS

Sometimes we don't realize the blessings we have until we no longer have them. Appreciate all the blessings in your life, take none for granted.
Catherine Pulsifer

At times we tend to focus on the negative aspects of our lives and we forget the blessings that we all have. When you change your attitude to one of counting your blessings you will find you will experience less stress.

When you practice counting your blessing, you will be amazed how many there are. As you are riding on the bus, or walking through the zoo, or shopping for groceries, there are countless blessings that are in full view for you to recognize and acknowledge.
There are many quotations and sayings that reflect this message:
- "Count your blessings, not your troubles."
- "A sense of blessedness comes from a change of heart, not from more blessings." Mason Cooley
- "The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it." Seneca
- "A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world." Joseph Addison
So the next time you are feeling stressed remember these sayings. As Willie Nelson once said, "When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around."

Why does it take an event to realize how blessed you are. My recent accident gave me a pause to think. When you realize that you possible could have lost your life it makes you a lot more appreciative of all that you have. How blessed I have always been in my life. I was raised by great parents and have wonderful sisters. My family is strong and we love getting together whenever we can. I was lucky to have a good job all my life that I enjoyed. My retirement has been joyful. My life is so happy and satisfying. I count my blessings every day.

If you don’t have a prelit tree

Every holiday season, when you hang the lights on your tree, the crossing strands form a wire net that’s a bear to remove. But there’s a solution: “The trick is to go up and down, not around and around,” says David Stark, co-owner of Avi Adler, a Brooklyn floral and event design company. Here’s a pro-tested technique that ensures orderly wires and a dramatic display.

• Divide the tree vertically into three sections and string lights by section.
• Plug the lights in before you begin, to weed out defective strands. Leave them plugged in as you place them so you can spot dark spaces in the tree.
• Beginning at the bottom, weave each string in and out of the branches, to the top of the tree and back.

Need more proof that this tactic is the way to go? Decorators at New York City’s Rockefeller Center (and who would know better how to light a tree?) use a trunk-to-tip method to create “not just a shell of light but an inner glow and a three-dimensionality that cannot be achieved any other way,” says David Murbach, the manager of the center’s gardens division.

November

"How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.

At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow."
-   Elsie N. Brady, Leaves

Kindness is a simple thing

We must remember that even though we got through Sandy without any trouble there are still people without power, light or heat. How kind this person was to share a simple thing like electricity with those that really need it. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the world could be this kind to their fellow man?

More sketches

Were you bad?

All my life I wanted to be a “good little girl”. I had the most wonderful parents and a great upbringing. So much so that I rarely rebelled and let loose. But there was that one Halloween. It was during my teenage years of course. My girlfriend and I were frequent guests of my neighbors when they went for the weekend to stay at their friends’ home in New York state. They lived on a farm and had sons our age (yes, we were boy crazy then). It was a free weekend to just about anything we wanted without parental supervision. One particular year on Halloween we were dropped off in the center of the small community town with soap in hand. It was just a small band of boys and girls. I don’t even remember how we came to have the toilet paper but the boys threw it up in the trees. We soaped all the school windows we could reach and even tied tin cans on the back of a car who stopped at a stop sign. For this “good girl” it was thrilling to be so wild and do things that I would have never even thought of at home. It was fun, dangerous, and crazy and I loved it. I’ve lived my life conservatively but still remember this one instance of wild abandon.