Category Archives: holiday

Dec11

Sneak peek

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Close up of snowmen display, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

You’ll have to wait until Monday to see everything. Everything isn’t up yet-not the tree until the weekend. I like to leave our tree up until ‘Little Christmas’-January 5th or so. It’s not real anyway.

We are getting pounded with rain, that cold drenching kind. We were going to a diner tonight, but Bri just went through McDs. Maybe next week. Right now we hope our basement stays dry!

May meet my mom at a farmer’s market for stocking stuffers, etc. tomorrow.

It was definitely one of those days to take a nap-which I did while trying to watch Ellen. I cuddled up and 15 minutes later the show was over. Try to go to her website and enter the 12 Days of Christmas giveaways. Today they all got Kindles-the portable readers-I was so jealous! Rachael Ray has some good giveaways too. Regis and Kelly are giving away a car in January, but you need to collect 7 of the 10 clues to enter.

Stay warm and dry!

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Dec9

Oh snap!

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(exclamatory phrase) a playful indication of surprise, misfortune, or insult

That’s me describing me there-especially when I almost poked myself in the eye with the end of the dust mop today. I didn’t realize how much work this decorating stuff is now. It’s like I have to rearrange everything! ; )

I’m getting packages everyday now-yahoo! I need to do a little shopping (for church gifts) and mailing a few things soon too.
No baking yet. I don’t freeze cookies-they all go in tins. Not to say I won’t ever not consider it. Maybe to save some for Sean to take back to school.

Come Monday-for BooMama’s tour of homes tour-things should be tidied up enough so I don’t embarrass myself-that’s if I don’t break anything or show certain areas of a room.

In the meantime-still doing a little photoshopping:

roseglow5

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Stop by and say hello if you haven’t lately.

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Take my poll too!

Dec8

Now where is that?

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I spent way too much time looking for things today. I had a rebate offer to complete and looked everywhere except the most obvious place, a little receipt basket I use before the receipts go in to storage. Please don’t ask about the receipts that I was going through last week-ok-well…I gave it up for a while. I’m halfway done though and need a container for the ones I have rubber banded and separated.

I don’t know what I did with the handmade calendar for December that I made last year. I remember taking it down and folding it up-that’s it. And my only Santa cross stitch pieces are MIA. Gotta look harder.

Mom continues to improve, though her eye hurts. She is bummed as she hasn’t done any shopping. I told her to get out some catalogs and shop that way! She seems to need the tactile sensation of handling the merchandise. Once a shopper, always a shopper. I helped Bri to set up a Amazon account and he did pick out things off my wishlist. I already got my new car coat today-a pretty lavender with a chartreuse lining. I tried it outside in our cold weather today and it felt good.

Slowly decorating….hope to get the tree up over the weekend.

I had a little mishap Friday- I tried to climb on a child’s chair I have at a old-fashioned desk to adjust Christmas lights in the front window, slipped and made a 4″ bruise on my right leg and have a groin pull-lucky me. It bothers me enough to make me feel grouchy. I will hang in there.

Bri’s car is in the shop-it needs a major tune-up! So I won’t have a car tomorrow either. He could have taken it for a tune-up months earlier, but had to ‘wait’ until it had a hard time starting. Bummer.

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Dec7

I Recommend-#6

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Welcome to the sixth edition of ‘I recommend’. As the name implies, this is a share to recommend just about anything you like or have tried. It can be a book, drink, food, movie, music CD-anything. Mister Linky will open to another page (that’s how it works on WordPress). Please add your link there and don’t forget to leave me a comment here.

Bloggers-this is a meme kind of post to help you think of things to add to your blog. So if you comment here, don’t forget to post about your favorite Christmas music (or whatever) on your blog. It doesn’t have to involve an entire blog post, just a small part of it. Thanks. : )

Short and sweet-what are your favorite Christmas CDs? I think the yearly offerings from Hallmark are pretty good. James Taylor did one a few years back and it’s excellent.
jtxmas
Michael McDonald was the next year or so-love his soulful voice. I’d like to get Sheryl Crowe’s Hallmark CD-new this year.

Love Sarah McLachlan’s too:

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Other favs- Nat King Cole, The Carpenters, Jewel, Mariah Carey and Josh Groban.

My favorite radio station starts playing Christmas music 24/7 before Thanksgiving now. Although I enjoy hearing some favorites, I want to pull my hair out by the 18th of December I’m so sick of the music.

I do enjoy Handel’s Messiah. When I went to community college, I signed up briefly for the choir there and we were going to perform it. Not an easy piece of music to learn, especially for sopranos. I ended up leaving the choir, but later was in our church choir for a number of years. I told Bri I may join again next year.

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It’s your turn:

Dec4

My mom

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Just a short post to let you know that my mom still has a bad infection in her right eye, which was the worst one when she had cataract surgery a few months ago. Yesterday she had to go to the eye doctor and now later this afternoon, I have to take her to a retinal specialist. I’m hoping he just puts her on antibiotics. The infection is playing havoc with her glaucoma too. We only have to go to the end of her town to the newer doctor. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers as she’s had a rough 3 weeks and is scared.
I worked on my Christmas cards yesterday-got them printed at the copy shop and did a little cutting and gluing on them. I’ll be sending them off in the next few days. I’ll show you how they turned out soon.
~Update~
This was a really long day of sitting and waiting. My mom saw the new eye doctor and does have to have surgery to remove the infected jelly like substance called vitreous humor fill the space between lens and retina behind her lens implant. She also needs a stitch in a tear in the corner of her cornea. He wouldn’t give us a clear answer how she got an infection there. He’ll also inject the area with antibiotics. This will probably happen next Wednesday. I’m praying she’ll be able to see out of that eye again as it’s just a blur right now.


Nov30

Sunday’s I Recommend vol. #5

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Welcome to the fifth edition of ‘I recommend’. As the name implies, this is a share to recommend just about anything you like or have tried. It can be a book, drink, food, movie, music CD-anything. Mister Linky will open to another page (that’s how it works on WordPress). Please add your link there and don’t forget to leave me a comment here.

I thought I’d recommend some online shopping places. Over the last few years, I found it easier to shop online. Not to say I don’t go to a few of my favorite stores (TJ*Maxx, Home*Goods, Wally World), but I do not like to have to stand in long lines. It helps that I don’t buy for a ton of people. I find that doing a search on Google is great too. I believe there is a Google shopper where you can bookmark interesting finds.

My favorite place by far is Amazon.com. Sean and I both have wishlists there. Amazon isn’t just books, it’s clothing, appliances, etc. I like that you can find a book you like and have the option to buy it from an Amazon associate if it is gently used (or even new) at a lower price. I just went on there and bought my mom a few paperdoll books for her collection.

I also like Overstock.com. I believe during this season, they have free shipping or very low shipping. Sean is getting PlayStation 4 as a gift to himself (his grandfather gives him money) and is getting a lower priced, refurbished model. I had an Entertainment.com coupon (I get the coupon book for this area each year and it includes .coms and stores also), so he saved another 10%. I think he is saving close to $100 buying it there. Not bad.

I like Dover Publications-a book site-where they sell amazing books on just about anything from paperdolls to cliparts. I utilize their Friday freebies. You sign up and can get a sampling of their books each Friday. I have an huge folder of them for my artwork.

There’s always eBay, Cafepress, Imagekind, Current and the various stores online. I ordered both my mom’s camera and printer and Sean’s camera last year from Wally World. They were last minute thoughts and thank goodness they came in time.

Happy Shopping!

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It’s your turn:

Nov27

Happy Thanksgiving

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thanksgiving

The above is a desktop I made a few years ago. If you click on it it will be bigger and you can add it to your computer.

I have a big dinner to get together and need to put the turkey in to roast by 11:30 or so as it says it takes at least 5 hours to cook all the way. My oven is pretty efficient, but I hope it’s thawed out well. I do use the Reynold’s cooking bags that help to keep the moisture in.

I hope everyone takes photos of their meals. I wish we thought to do that years ago at mom’s-especially when my brother made the turkey dance. : )

Have a great one!

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Nov26

On her way

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Just a quick post to let you know Sean has gone to get his grandmom and is bringing her here for a few days. She had a scare this morning with pain in her right eye and called me briefly, not giving me too much info, thus scaring me a bit. She called later to say she has an infection behind her new implant in her eye. She had some drops, but the doctor gave her other ones.
Trying to get things done like running to the produce place and baking pies (I didn’t make them from scratch). I wanted to try a few new veggie recipes, but the place was out of Brussel Sprouts. I drove by the grocery store and saw the parking lot and thought fresh green beans would work fine. And on top of all this, I have a groin pull from sitting on the floor wrapping that humongous vase! It’s better, but I was hurting everytime I opened the oven to look at the pies. I got Mincemeat for the men (Bri’s dad loves it-ick) and pumpkin. No Cool Whip either.
Looks like pizza for dinner. ; )
I hope your Thankgiving Eve is going well.

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Nov26

Plugging away

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Seems like I’m moving in slow motion today (Tuesday). All I managed to do was clear off the coffee table in the family room and move some stuff around in the basement trying to find a box for the below named gift. The box I found was not that great, but I added some stickers and pretty gray pearl tissue paper to it inside-much better. I did make a spaghetti dinner and some banana chocolate chip coffeecake (pictured below). My main thing tonight was watching the finale of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ (I won’t say who won for west coast readers). That is one awesome show to watch in HD. I sat and went through the Lakeside.com huge Christmas catalog and ordered about 19 things, a few things for most of the people on my list (and me to save Bri). I did order these to split up with mom. I have to hop over to Amazon (probably on Friday) and order a few things for Sean. I will then hit Wally World and Tuesday Morning and call it a holi’day’-hopefully. : )
No word from mom yet. I so hate disagreements!

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