Author Archives: Dianne

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About Dianne

Domestic goddess, wife, mom, gardener, paper and collage artist, geocacher, local traveler, cross stitcher, baker, crafter, Facebooker, blogger, decorator and photographer.
Dec27

Natural disaster

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I don’t know what to say except that I am deeply saddened by the earthquake that killed so many people. A 30 foot wave of fast moving water won’t leave anyone standing in it’s path. The poor women and children who couldn’t out run it, the homes that are gone. The people on holiday. Well I could go on. I’m glad that the US is sending some aid mainly water, food and medicine.Life is so unexpected. The little boy Matty I talked about a few months ago on my blog said that every sunrise is a blessing and a gift not to be taken for granted. My motto: take it one day at a time. God bless these nations.

Dec27

Ahhh…some quiet time here…for a while

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Well the guys went looking for a computer desk and it’s ‘me’ time right now. No cookie baking, cleaning, etc. My time to surf the web and do a little blogging. I am dying to hit a few after Christmas sales, and I may….afterwards.
Christmas Eve and Christmas were nice. Not really hectic. We didn’t have to go out on the 24th until 4 pm. We then went to my mom’s and I basically had to redo the lights on her tree. My hair totally fell out and I had spent like an hour with the steam rollers! Mom’s house was a disaster. She can’t seem to allot time for cleaning much. She only gets moving around 11 or 12 every day. We told her not to worry about gifts and she got me like 6 tops that I really didn’t need. We went out to our favorite local restaurant which is conveniently up the road from my mom’s house. Her boarder and friend Jim came and somehow I got stuck sitting next to him and not my son or husband. He gets really tight wadded and pointed to the children’s hamburger and wanted to order it! Craphead. I think this will be the last year he will come along. His room is a mess and the rest of the place is starting to look bad.
We went over to my brother’s house to see them which was nice. Their house looks beautiful as they did a reversal making the dining room the living room (now the eating area is closer to the kitchen where he knocked down a doorway). My little brother amazes me with his talents. He does tend to get overwhelmed at times and takes it out on my mom, etc. Next he wants to redo his kitchen-just what I want to do next in my house. Bet he beats us to it!
That night we got home at 10:30 and decided to find a midnight mass service to attend. We went to a church in nearby Delaware and it was a nice change. We got to lounge around the next morning instead of running out the door to our church. Christmas was still a bit hectic for me as I made a big roast beef dinner. We gave each other thoughtful gifts, my favorite was an amethyst crucifix from Brian and Elton John’s 4 set DVD from Sean.
Sean and I went over to see my ailing uncle and his wife yesterday. Mom, Ken and his family went too. It was a nice visit and the kids opened their gifts from us over there. Tori went ga ga over a Barbie Swan Lake musicbox I gave her! I love when that happens. I got it for half nothing at a Kohl’s sale last year.
Well, that’s the last few days in a nutshell. Glad it’s over, but miss it already.

Dec23

Jesus was born on April 17th, 6 A.D.

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I was watching ‘The Mummy Detective’ on TLC tonight-http://tlc.discovery.com/schedule/episode.jsp?episode=1&cpi=54712&gid=13084 and the discussion was about the three magi who came from
the east to find the new king. First, the man who invented the calendar way back when, messed it up. We are five years off. He was going by the rein of the emperors and was off 4 yrs there. They he went from the year 1 B.C. to 1 A.D., he forgot the year ‘0’. We should have celebrated the millennium in 1995! So, then they figured Jesus was born in Aries, from the way the planets were aligned.
The star the kings saw was actually Jupiter the planet. The magi- or ‘kings’
were from Persia and there was an old one, a middle-aged one and a young one. A photo of their skulls was examined by Bob the host (they are in a church). There were drawings depicting that the kings were 3 different ages. And forget the ‘no room at the inn’, they didn’t exist back then. Jesus was born in a cellar type area where the families animals were kept.
December 25th was chosen as it was during the winter solstice, a quiet time on the Christian calendar. The three kings actually made it to see Jesus when he was about 8 months old on Dec. 19th, 6 A.D.

Dec21

Martha loses one in the slammer…

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Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm! I heard that Martha Stewart was in a Christmas decorating contest at ‘Camp Cupcake’. They decorated their different ‘units’. They had to purchase items from the prison commissary to make their visualization a reality. I mean, popcorn, boxes and other generic stuff like that. Well didn’t her group lose! I would pay to see who won over Martha! Could it be that she lost out of spitefulness? This is also saying to me that she may have help with all aspects of her ‘business’, mainly ideas too if she can’t even win a prison contest. Poor, sad Martha.
PS-Martha also lost 10 pounds in prison. Guess the food isn’t ‘gourmet’ enough for her.
http://www.kfi640.com/hosts/handel.html Check out the Martha Diary down in the right column.

Dec20

A nice Christmas surprise

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I have relatives out in Oregon whom I’ve never met from my father’s side (he is out there someplace too, but he doesn’t bother with anyone). My mom and I have both corresponded with my great aunt Dessa (now deceased) and her daughter Ann. Ann’s sister Shirley and her husband Dwayne visited us when we were little kids. Ann sent me a Christmas card and said she would be sending me a special family photo book as a gift. I had no idea what it would look like. Well, didn’t Ann send my mom a book too! It’s huge! It’s a three ring binder with about 2-3″ of photocopied photos in plastic sleeves of my Oregon family dating back to the late 1880s. There is also a genealogy booklet compiled back in 1978 that shows my Knowles family roots back to the 1660s! Seems my forefather (going back 11 generations) was John Knowles from New Hampshire. This is funny to me as I never knew I had east coast connections from both sides of my family.
Ann put in about 6 photo pages of my immediate family with pictures from my mom’s wedding including one of mom and my mom-mom and grandfather Alan Stroud. Ann has them listed as Straud. Whoops. There is a huge graduation photo of my father Carl from 1949 and Sean looks like him! The only thing is there are no photos of my brother Ken. I’ll have to color copy some and send them to Ann. Of course this touched me to the core (tears) as there we were part of this huge family book of people who we really didn’t know. I’ll have to scan a few of the photos. I can see why we haven’t heard from Ann in a year, she was really busy!