Category Archives: holiday

Jan8

All kinds of busy

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I had fun picking out the photos for Carolyn’s Birthday bash yesterday! Teal/aqua is my favorite color! I’ve never been dripping in diamonds either and it was fun to pretend.

Today is my brother Ken’s 42nd birthday. I hope he has a nice day.

So…been so busy and need to take a breather, but Sean the food bulldozer has plowed through all the food, so I need to food shop later. Tuesday, we got out the deep carpet cleaner machine and did the Oriental rug we acquired from Brian’s dad. This gorgeous rug was stuck under the dining room table at his dad’s house on top of wall to wall carpet. It was all puckered and wouldn’t lay flat. It looks divine under my round table! It’s the right colors-mainly blue with pink. I’ll have to take a photo of it after I clean up the rest of the Christmas things. The cat loves it so much as it’s wool  (pretty sure it is) and plush. I also did the majority of the other rugs, having the guys move the coffee table, big chair and sofa in the family room. This proved to be the dirtiest rug. I only use Oxiclean now and it does a great job. Sean’s rug is 22 yrs old and the family room rug is 16 yrs old and both sprang back to life.

Yesterday I took down the Christmas tree. I was up and down the basement steps a zillion times. I still have the lights and a few breakables to pack up, but that took almost 3 hours. The guys got it in the coffin-like box and pushed it back up in the attic. I am rearranging my basement shelves which look like a tornado went through them. That’s a job and a half.

Today at Brian’s work, there will be an employment meeting. As of 12:10, the ‘big cheese’ hadn’t arrived at the paper yet.They are coming there after leaving the office where Bri use to work-they fired everyone over there. Wish him and his fellow office workers well. In case the worse happens, I went on the Long*wood Garde*ns website and they had a job that Bri could probably do.

Update-Brian’s job was ‘spared’ for the time being-thank goodness, but about 2-3 people lost their jobs.

Sean just went to use a Wawa gift card he got to buy us lunch. I should watch what I eat as my tummy has been in a funk. Oh well.. Off to get ready for shopping.

Jan5

About 200 photos later

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Sean and I tried again at Longwood Gardens and practically had the entire place to ourselves! Yeah. I think I took at least 200 photos and narrowed it down to 175, which I will upload to Flickr. The gardens are using LED lights, so all the wrapped trees and hand fashioned trees look brighter. I really need to see how people are getting tri-pods in there, that would make a difference. I’ll share a few shots, first of the face I’ll be missing in a few days:

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Taken through a window in the orchid room. Sean treated me to dinner in the ‘fancy’ restaurant at Longwood. He had pasta with olive, mushrooms and capers and I had Citrus grilled chicken with white beans and spinach. I treated him to dessert in the cafe section. I had chocolate chip cake and he had a creme brulee type of cheese cake.
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The water in this area was decorated with cranberries!

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A natural themed tree with white and gold lights. I’d like a tree like this next year.
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A sampler from 1802 found in the DuPont House.
Thanks Mr. DuPont for Longwood Gardens!
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Here is the slideshow from today. I only got up to 60 uploads. The above photos are the unedited versions of what will be on there. Enjoy!

Jan5

Our tree is still up

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Last year I was ready for the tree to come down (it may have been too red even). This year I’m quite enjoying it. Because I had to set up my mom’s tree, it took away from me wanting mine up as I knew I’d end up taking hers down also. This year she figured it out, so I was off the hook. I took a few things off the walls and have a pile of Christmasy things to put away. My storage area looks so dishelved, I have my work cut out for me, unfortunately.

Sean and I went  out for a few hours Sunday to look around a few more stores, though I am broke and shopped out. I can’t believe how many decorations and gift bags are left over at most of the stores. I am being really selective, trying to find things to use for crafting.

When we got home, Sean headed for a pal’s house to watch the Eagles football game. He missed out on a good roast beef dinner. I cooked most of it before we went out and had Bri keep it warm at 170. I only had to do a few things like cook the potatoes and warm up the peas. And how neat was it the Eagles won! Our local sports teams are in general doing great this year.

Sean and I are hoping to go to Longwood Gardens tomorrow-our second try. The kids are going back to school, so that should cut back on the crowd. Then Sean heads back to school on Saturday.

Cosmo Capers blog has been getting lots of hits because a pal added him to a cat blog. I just can’t keep up with everything!

Hopefully my next post will include pretty photos!

Jan1

Welcome 2009

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img_3381“Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.”
–   Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne
A year of milestones for us:
April 14th –25th wedding anniversary!
May——- Sean’s graduation from Penn State Universary
Nov 19th-the big 5-0 for me!
Here’s some shots I just took from Times Square (I’ll make a collage of many of them):
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The Clintons and Mayor Bloomberg get ready to drop the new ‘tourist

attraction’ ball. (lots of shameless advertising abounded tonight!)

(Photo used on Scott’s blog)

img_3406Purdy isn’t it?

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God bless Dick Clark!


THE WINNER OF THE ‘LIVE, LAUGH AND LOVE’ NECKLACE IS DEBBI-LUCKY #13! CONGRATS!!!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR ONE AND ALL!

Dec31

2008 in a nutshell by Dianne

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Want to play along? Kelli over at ‘There is no place like home’  is hosting a meme. You take your first blog sentence for each month of 2008 and add a favorite photo from that month too. Be aware that most of my ‘first’ sentences have nothing to do with the photos. :O)
January-

That’s my life for the last few days.(I had been sick and so had Brian)
Yellow roses
February-

Let’s start off February with a fun event thanks to Lisa/Oceandreamer’s 2nd time around hosting it.(One World, One Heart blog giveaways)
Punch needle design
March-
This is my mom’s birthday last year and my youngest brother is giving her the cupcakes that I made to blow out the candles.(for a Photo Hunt)
Purple and yellow orchids
April-
It’s 70 degrees outside!!! I’m inside and wearing a sweater though.

May-
Thanks to Scrappy Jessi for hosting this fun event.(showing our childhood toys)

June-
Like I did last night!

July-
I really did see a camel! (a place on our road had several exotic pets or boarders)

Strasberg, PA 7-30-08, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

August-
Today I’m sharing my baby book.

September-
I can’t believe it’s September already!

October-
….the cataracts are gone! Well, that may be so for my mom in a few hours.(My mom had both her eyes done, and one got an infection, so she had to have a third operation!)

Celebrating after 28 yrs!, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

November-
This is from the Philadelphia Flower Show 2006.(We try to go every year since I am so snap happy)

Grant Park and a new beginning!, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

December-
I just realized that I was pretty much on the go for over a week, since my birthday on the 19th.
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Dec31

New Year’s Eve

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Don’t forget to leave a comment to try and win my necklace above!

Not much going on…making more cookies as my nerves are bad.
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Chocolate Cherry Cordials Thumbprint cookies (made with the same named Hershey Kisses-got half off at Wally World last night too) Tastes like little brownies with a hint of creamy cherry goodness.

Bri’s dad went out this morning to get his hair cut, didn’t call us and we thought the worse when we tried to call him for over an hour. Bri was on his way over there when he called us-finally. We got Bri on the cellphone before he got too far.
My mom woke me up this morning thinking I forgot to call her as her clock said 11 am and it was a bit after 9 am. Yikes!
We plan to get them both ‘Life Alerts’ soon. Too much worrying.
Bri is going to get me some Arbor Mist to toast in the new year. I sure need some!
Update-my Arbor Mist is chilling and Bri also got me some Peach Fuzzy Navel Wine cooler. : )

I had purchased two orchids from a Hawaiian seller at Longwood Gardens in March. One didn’t make it, but lookie here-one is blooming again!
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Dec26

Family gathering

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My family had a get together tonight so we were all together  (ALL brothers too) for a dinner and gift exchanging. I was happy my mom had all her kids and grandchildren together.

Here’s a photo of my 9.5 yr old niece and me:

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and my mom and her oldest grandson, David age 23:
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Last night I was wondering if my father-in-law was enjoying the steak dinner I sent over. He usually calls and thanks me for any food I send over. Right before Brian and Sean got back, he called not to thank me for any of the oodles of food I sent, but to say he almost choked on the steak! I felt terrible, but he must have put it in the microwave to reheat and made it tough. I wished I had sent it a bit under cooked now. Then I thought well maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned it because it was Christmas and he was okay. It ruined the rest of my evening. He does have these choking episodes once in a while, was probably starving as it was 7 pm or later. Yikes!
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Please go check out the gorgeous home of Jessi-she must be a decorator for a magazine or something fabulous. I was blown away!

Dec25

Pass the cookies-Merry Christmas!

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To all my pals in blogland that I call my friends-Merry Christmas. I have made some newer blog pals that I have enjoyed getting to know. I think back on my second grade teacher who taught use this little song in round-‘make new friends and keep the old, one is silver and the other is gold’.

Here are my cookies for this Christmas-

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7 layers cookies, Russian Tea cakes, Sour Cream Drops, Sugar cookies, Rum Raisin squares, Mini Reese’s cup cookies and peanut brittle.

And one of my favorite gifts from Brian-
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Adorable little mushroom salt and pepper shakers from Anthropologie! I thought they were just mushrooms for my collection. : )

I also got a GPS for the van-which will be great if I get into going antiquing in unknown parts along with some books and music CDs. I highly recommend Sarah Brightman’s Christmas CD-it’s beautiful!

Brian and Sean got new watches-Bri a Ford Mustang one and Sean a new Penn State one. Sean got almost everything off his Amazon wishlist-a cool big book on the history of Penn State Football with removable ‘artifacts’ like old banners, etc. He looked at it for a long time.

It was nice to have my mom here this year. We took her to midnight mass at a church in Delaware. We sat off to the side instead of in the middle pews and it took away from hearing the choir as well. I saw her singing quite a few times.

We had shrimp and chicken carbonara last night:

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It was good-very rich with maybe a wee bit too much garlic. The recipe wasn’t written well and I skimped on the sauce-but in retrospect, I didn’t use all the milk product it called for. I think I would do a breaded chicken next time and not put the shrimp in with the sauce as it was hard to peel.

Tonight we had ‘Surf and Turf’! I cooked the sirloins from BJ Wholesale and cut them in half as they were huge. I bought two lobster tails and cut them in chunks so we all got some. Also made the green bean casserole with fried onions in the can; Potatoes and sweet potato au gratin and asparagus. It was a great dinner and everyone enjoyed it.

The fellows took Brian’s dad some dinner and his gifts, so mom and I are hanging out relaxing.

Hope everyone had a great day!
The entire song from above:

Make new friends,
but keep the old.
One is silver,
the other is gold.

A circle is round,
it has no end.
That’s how long,
I will be your friend.

A fire burns bright,
it warms the heart.
We’ve been friends,
from the very start.

You have one hand,
I have the other.
Put them together,
We have each other.

Silver is precious,
Gold is too.
I am precious,
and so are you.

You help me,
and I’ll help you
and together
we will see it through.

The sky is blue
The Earth is green
I can help
to keep it clean

Across the land
Across the sea
Friends forever
We will always be

Dec24

Favorite Toys

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I’m pretty sure I posted this when I first made it, but I thought you’d like to see what children of the 1960s played with:

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I should have had more Barbies, but I actually did a Barbie collage too one time.
I also finished a cross stitched ornament I started in 2005! It had ‘one over one’ that’s one little square. I had a terrible time, even with a magnifying glass on a few parts, but alas, it’s finished and I can move on. I added it to my feather tree!
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The glue is still wet-you can see it. I may take it done and put it under some heavy books to get that pucker out of it.
I expect a busy day ahead as this is the first Christmas Eve that I cooked for years. I am doing a knock off of The Olive Gar*den’s Shrimp and Chicken Carbonara. Think I better start around 2 to make it! Sean will go get mom. I hope we can get her to go to midnight mass with us, it is such a wonderful service at the church we go to every Christmas Eve.