Miniature Tree

 

You may or may not remember that I have a miniature Christmas tree that I buy a new miniature ornament for it every year. 

This is the tree last year.

As you can see it's getting pretty crowded, and I never liked the way the ornaments didn't hang very well due to not having enough room. 

So I decided this year to replace it with a bigger, but still pretty small Christmas tree. 

I've actually had this tree for a few years. I bought it to use in a craft I was making for Shauna's baby shower I cut pieces off of various branches and that's why it looks a little uneven. 

My little deer wouldn't stand on the cotton so I had to cut slits in it. Now it looks like they are standing in snow! 

And here it is compared to the 7ft tree. 

Coco approves! 

This year I treated myself to TWO new miniature ornaments!

An angel and a cute little frying pan! 

Yesterday Shauna and I baked a bunch of goodies. 

The boys are always happy to help, one kiss for the pretzel and one for their tummies! 

Shauna always gives me a cooking related ornament, and this is the one for this year. 

That's all for now.  I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping. Just a few more to go. Today's my day off so I'm heading out to finish and as I type this it's pouring rain! Oh well, it's better than snow! 

Thanks for stopping by and see you the next time!

Phone Photo Dump

 Tine to clear the pictures off of my phone! 

Every Christmas I get ornaments for the boys. I try to get ones that reflect what they have been doing all year. We usually go to Bronner's during the summer to get them and they personalize them for free.  Last year I didn't really like the choices I had so this year I ordered them from elsewhere and personalized them myself. 

This is Levi's 

He's been obsessed with fire alarms and smoke alarms for most of this year, so it was only appropriate to get him this one. 

This is Maxwells. He had discovered roller blading and loves it!

His roller blades are black and red, so this one was perfect. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture after I personalized them but they both said their name, the year, a heart and Nonnie and Bonk. 

This picture was taken around Halloween. There is a very modern looking house in DT Plymouth that looks really out of place with the old houses. but it's a nice-looking house. 

They had these two giant skeletons in the front yard, and it may be hard to tell but they were both painted silver! They looked pretty cool actually!

I took this picture on my way to my dentist office a few weeks ago. 

These geese were certainly taking their time crossing the road. They had several cars stopped both ways! 

One of the residents at work had this gingerbread house made for them by their granddaughter! 

It's super cute! 

I took the boys to Home Depot last Saturday for a kids workshop. We had a lot of fun! 

They made snow globes! Here they are modeling their aprons and their projects! 

Finally, I passed this house today on my way running errands. 

I think they are a little obsessed with blow up snowmen! 

OK That's it for me for now. 

I replaced my miniature tree with a bigger miniature tree so I'll be showing you that next time. 

See you then and thanks for stopping by! 

DIYing!

I've started my Christmas decorating a little early this year. 

We always put the tree up before Thanksgiving and this year I wanted to do something different as far as the tree skirt goes. The last few years I have used an old white tablecloth for a tree skirt. Although it looked nice it was a pain to keep it straight due to cats wanting to lay under the tree!

I've seen these Christmas Tree collars in the stores a lot and although you can get one for pretty cheap, I thought I would attempt to make one myself.

I started with an Amazon box which I cut open flat and taped the top flaps together. 

When I measured it under the tree it was too tall, so I drew some lines and cut it down about 3 inches. 

The I went on the hunt for something to cover the box with. I looked at contact paper that looked like wood or bricks or a basket, but I just wanted it to look Christmasy. 

 I decided that this metallic tablecloth would do the trick. 

I cut it in half and then taped it all around the box. 

Then I wanted to embellish it with a ribbon. I bought a huge box of Christmas ribbon a few years ago at a garage sale so I had plenty to choose from.

I laid out four of the ribbons that I thought would look good. Then eliminated two of them.

I couldn't decide between the two. I sent this picture to Shauna and she said she liked the top one so I decided to go with that.  

I like the cardinal one too so I'm going to find another use for it. 

Anyway, here's how it turned out. 

I like it! It's much neater looking. 

Excuse my tree looking wonky! I just threw it up and haven't straightened the branches out yet! 

We are not having Thanksgiving this year. Turns out I have to work :( I knew it was coming so I'm not surprised. Actually, I get the trifecta of holidays this year, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Years Day. They all fall on Wednesday or Thursday and those are my regular days to work! 

Oh well, it is what it is and we are making alternate plans! 

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with family and good food!

See you the next time! 

 

More Dolls

First to answer Debby's question: The Madame Alexander dolls are 7 1/2 inches tall. I think that's part of why they are so cute, they are so small! 

There are a few other dolls that I have stored away with my Madame Alexander dolls.

This is a Cheerful Tearful doll like one I got for Christmas when I was 6 years old.

What's cute is when her left arm is raised, she's smiling

and when you lower her arm, she frowns and cries! 

And if you feed her water with her bottle, tears would come out of her eyes too!

This is actually not my original doll. I got it off of eBay years ago when I was going through a childhood nostalgic phase! 

My original Cheerful Tearful doll was probably destroyed by my brothers!

I loved my doll so much! I distinctly remember hugging her and thanking Santa with all my heart! 

These are my two Barbies. 

I only have one dress so I had to wrap the one on the right in a little piece of cloth. 

I played endlessly with these dolls. I built them furniture out of cardboard and made dresses for them out of scraps of cloth and tape! 

This doll is particularly special. 

A tradition in my dad's family was whenever someone got married my aunt made a doll with a replica of their wedding dress to display at the wedding shower. I showed you my mom's wedding dress a while ago. This is the doll that was at my mom's wedding shower. The dress is a close replica of her dress. 

So that's my doll collection. They all mean a lot to me.

That's all in my world right now. I finished physical therapy last week thank goodness! I was so done with it! I also had an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon, and he said I'm ahead of the game now and usually he would want to see me at the 6-month mark, but I'm doing so well that I don't have to go back! All my diligence and hard work is paying off! 

I'll see you the next time and thanks for stopping by!  

Dolls

Recently I posted a picture of a bunch of Madame Alexander dolls displayed on a lawn and I mentioned that I had about 12 of them but I actually have 14. 

Madame Alexander dolls were International Dolls and also dolls from stories like Little Women and such. I only have International Dolls. 

My grandmother gave them to me for my birthday and Christmas every year for 7 years. She stopped when I turned 18 and they got too expensive for her to buy anymore. 

The first one she gave me when I was 10 years old was this one:

Betsy Ross or the American doll. Isn't she cute? I love that they all have the sweetest faces. 

The second one she gave me was, of course, the Italian doll. 

Besides those, a couple were my favorite like the India doll.

She has a gold necklace, earrings and a snake bracelet! 

I also loved the Spanish doll. 

She had a red and green beaded necklace which you can't really see in the photo and I loved the way her dress was longer in the back. 

Here's the rest in no particular order. Actually I don't remember what order she gave them to me. I know the ones that I got when I was a little older still have their tags on them. The earlier ones I got when I was younger I played with sometimes! 

This is Ireland and Poland

The Ireland doll has red hair and beautiful green eyes!

This is Czech and Indonesia.

Canada and Japan

Dutch and Norway

And although it's not obvious, the Dutch doll does not have any legs! I have no idea what happened. I guess I played a lot with her! It's too bad because if I recall she had a little pair of wooden shoes! 

Argentina and Korea

I loved Argentinas beautiful long braids. 

That's all of them. I have a few more dolls that I found in the same storage tote as these that I will show you on my next post.

I don't know what will become of them after I'm gone. I'm not sure Shauna wants them and there is no granddaughter to leave them to. 

If she doesn't want them, I may find somewhere to donate them where some little girl would appreciate them. They are not worth anything moneywise.  

Thats it for now. See you the next time and thanks for stopping by! 

Phone Photo Dump

It's time to purge my phone of some photos for you all to enjoy!

The other day while walking past the retention pond in our community all the geese in the water were honking like crazy! When I looked to see what was causing all the commotion, I saw this beauty flying overhead. 

He circled the pond a few times and then flew off. I got a pretty good video and this blurry picture is taken from that. It's a rare sight to see an eagle around here so I was pretty excited!

On the nights that I work when I leave at 8:00 I always turn and scan the field next door with the car headlights. 

There is almost always deer there and I caught these two just chilling and enjoying the evening! 

I know this is a little hard to see but this is a display in front of an old house in DT Plymouth. 

In case you can't tell it's a bunch of Madame Alexander dolls. I thought it was pretty unusual. 

I have about 12 Madam Alexander dolls that my paternal grandmother gave me. I used to get one for Christmas and one for my birthday until I turned 18. Then she stopped giving them to me. They were getting too expensive for her anyway. She made sure I knew that! 

I should do a separate post on her. She was a hoot! 

I don't think they are worth much anymore, anyway. I guess not if they get displayed on a front lawn! 

Rich and I were at BJ's warehouse the other day and their inventory robot was going around. 

It makes a funny little tone that sounds like it's saying, "excuse me". 

My shoulder feels pretty good. So good that I made the mistake of carrying a large purse on it for a day and ended up making it hurt more then it already was! I was scared I did some damage but my physical therapist checked it out and said I just irritated it! Back on the inflammatory medicine I went and it is slowly getting better! 

A local funeral home donated some flowers and plants for our residents to enjoy. We kept the flowers but the executive director did not want all the plants around so she told us anyone who wants one can take it. 

I snagged this peace lily. Looks how giant it is! 

We had my brother and sister-in-law for lunch yesterday. We wanted to say goodbye as they've become snowbirds and are heading to Myrtle Beach SC for the next 6 months. Lucky them! 

That's all for me for now. See you the next time and thanks for stopping by!

Little Getaway

 Last week Rich and I took a little getaway to Traverse City. 

I took a few pictures on the way up of the trees. 

Only about half the trees were changed but they were pretty. 

The weather was sunny and not super cold but the wind was crazy! I usually like to walk along the beach and browse the stores in Downtown TC. Because it was so windy walking on the beach was out of the question, so we browsed a few blocks of stores downtown then went to dinner and back to the hotel to swim and use the hot tub. 

The next day we decided to go to Sleeping Bear Dunes. We hadn't been since the kids were little. 

Our first stop was the Dune Climb. 

It's a big climb and at the top you see more dunes and Lake Michigan in the distance. We opted not to climb it this time but there were quite a few people who did.

Next we wanted to drive the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive along the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Because it is a National Park it cost us $25 to drive it but it was so worth the money! 

There was a bunch of places to stop and see the beauty along the way. 

This covered bridge was so pretty with the sun and shadows on it. 

Another place to stop was this view of Glen Lake and Lake Michigan. 

Driving along the winding road takes you higher and higher along the dunes until you reach the top. We parked our car and walked up a small sandy incline to see this sign. 

 

Because on the other side is this drop. If you go down and can't get yourself back up it's going to cost you. When we were there only two people were brave enough to go down to the lake. 

See the two people climbing back up in the picture below? A guy and a girl and the girl was way ahead of the guy! 

The picture shows how steep the dune was! The girl made it to the top while we were watching. 

Everyone clapped and cheered for her when she got to the top. Here she is in the purple shirt resting! I heard her mom say, "Thanks for saving me $3,000!" 

The guy was way behind and you could not even see him yet over the top of the dunes. We didn't stay to watch him and he could still be there for all we know! 

Note to Mari: We tried to see the Little Mac bridge in Manistee on the way back south but it was closed! 

It was a nice to get away for a few days. 

In other news: I had a follow up appointment with the orthopedic surgeon on my shoulder and healing is progressing exactly as it's supposed to be. He figures by the end of the year my range of motion and movement should be 100%. It's a long road! I'm still getting physical therapy twice a week, but I only have one week left and then I'll just do the home exercises. 

Oh and the fall decorations are up at work

I think it looks so pretty! 

That's all for me for now. See you the next time and thanks for stopping by!