Favorite Ornaments

I LOVE buying Christmas ornaments! Every year I buy at least 2 or 3 because I can't resist! Most of them are just pretty ornaments that catch my eye but I do have a few that are very special to me! 

This ornament was made by my grandmother, my mom's mom. She had heart disease and could not do much in her later years so my mom bought these kits to make ornaments to give her something to do. I don't know what happened to most of them. This is the only one my mom saved. My grandmother died in 1974 so it's at least 46 years old. 

This one is in memory of my mom that someone gave me the first Christmas after she died. It has her name and dates engraved on the back. 

This little bear ornament is special to me because back in 1987 Rich bought me a new diamond wedding band for Christmas, my birthday in January and our 10th anniversary in March. It was hidden under the bears little cap. What a nice  surprise that was! 

This ornament was given to me by my friend Diane. We were best friends back in the day and we used to go to garage sales and rummage sales together all the time. She gave me this ornament shortly before she moved out of state. We eventually lost touch with each other but I'll never forget her!

This ornament is from my current and very best friend Marie. She gave it to me for my 60th birthday! 

Every year Shauna and I get together and make cookies and other Christmas treats. Every year she buys me a cookie baking themed ornament. These next 3 ornaments are a few that I received from her. 

Lastly, this little mailbox is nothing fancy but every year for the past 20 years I have put a little note inside just mentioning a few things that happened over the years. I've documented parents deaths, weddings and babies born.  It's something I hope will be very special to my kids after I'm gone. 

That's just some of my special ornaments. It's the ones that you can attach a memory to or received from a special person that are priceless! 

In other news, Shauna and I did our cookie baking marathon yesterday and Maxwell and Levi got to decorate their own! 

They were eating as many decorations as they were putting on the cookies! 

Even so, I think they're going to be professional cookie decorators! LOL!

Until the next time, stay safe and well my friends!

Christmas Porch

I can hardly believe Christmas is just one week away already. What's even harder to believe is that my shopping is done and everything is wrapped and ready! One more good thing about retirement!

I wanted to show you all this porch of a house in my town.

Every year for Christmas they put this full size reindeer pulling a sleigh on their porch! I just love it and look forward to seeing it every year. 

As a matter of fact, the whole street this house is on is filled with old houses with large porches that are beautifully decorated. I will try to get pictures to show you. It looks beautiful, especially at night!

I'll be back in a few days to show you some of my favorite ornaments!

Until then stay safe and well my friends! 

Bargains Galore

I am always looking on FB Marketplace to see what they have to offer. The other day I saw that someone was selling a child's play kitchen and a bunch of accessories. They were asking $45 for all of it. Someone else made them an offer of $35 and the seller accepted it. But the next day when I looked again it was still available. To make the story short I offered to take it for $35, they said ok and I picked it up a hour later. 

It came with a whole bag of pots and dishes and cups and fake food and utensils. I got it all cleaned and sterilized just in time for Maxwell and Levi to show up to play with it. 

All stored and ready for the next time! 

It also came with this little Keurig coffee maker that sounds just like the real one!

I went to an Estate Sale yesterday and got a bag of Clinique eye shadows that have never been used for $5. There were some lotions and a lipstick in the bag also but I threw them away. The lipstick looked used and I just didn't trust the lotions, but clearly the eyeshadows were not touched so that was a bargain for $5. 

That's all that's exciting in my world right now.  Christmas shopping is done and 90% wrapped. I'm waiting to hear when my son will be able to make it home for the holidays!  I still call it home for him even thought he considers New Hampshire his home now. :( Boo! 

I have to admit it's been a struggle to keep my spirits up right now. Christmas decorating helped a little but sometimes the days are long. I spend as much time as I can with the grandkids but I can't be bugging them all the time! 

I still have a lot of things I would like to do but getting the ambition to get going is another thing! 

We did have a glorious sunset the other day. This is the best picture I could get from our deck. 

I need to see that over Lake Michigan I think. Like my header picture! That would definitely soothe my soul! 

I also got my butt out of bed this morning and  did some cardio  and an online Pilates class after that! I guess that's something!

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends!

 

Better

In my previous post I mentioned that I didn't really care for the beads that I had down with the snowmen display. I was trying to figure out how to make it look like snow without using fake snow and making too much of a mess. 

I thought white tissue paper would work so I put it down and rearranged a little.  What do you think? 

Before:

After

Before:

After:

I like it much better! 

We did do some outside lights although not as much as last year. 

Just  lights around the top of the deck and our large bulbs on the ground in front of the house.

And a lone star over the porch light in the back. 

It was pretty cold while we were putting them up so we didn't want to be outside too long! We missed the opportunity to take advantage of the warmer weather we had before Thanksgiving!

Until the next time stay safe and well.

 

All Decorated Up

We had a nice Thanksgiving and I ate too much as usual! 

On Friday I put up the rest of the Christmas decorations. I used to collect small Christmas trees but I've decided to stop collecting those.  I gave some to Shauna and one to my friend Marie and the rest of them I just distributed all over the house. I do like my miniature tree though. 

Every year I buy one miniature ornament from Hallmark. This little butterfly is my ornament this year. It's pretty enough to be a necklace!

This is the ceramic tree my mom made a long time ago and a couple of my left over small trees, along with my echo. I should decorate that too! I asked Alexa if she would like to be decorated and she said, "Sorry, I don't know that" so I guess she doesn't care! 

This is my snowman collection including the new one I bought a few weeks ago and told you about earlier! 

I have them displayed on the built in bookcases in our family room. Not too sure I like the beading around them, though. It looked good last year when I had them around the small trees but not so much for the snowmen. I may change that. 

This is the personalized ornament we got for Levi this year. 

And this is the one we got for Maxwell.

That's about it for now. 

Got about 1/3 of my Christmas shopping done which is a record for me! It's supposed to be 50 degrees today (Sunday) so we are going to put some Christmas lights up outside. I'll show you in my next post 

Until then stay safe and be well! 

Thanksgiving, Christmas Tree and other Things

 I have one more day left on my job. It's been nice getting out of the house and getting a paycheck again. But I'm ready to be off for the holidays now and hopefully will be able to find something part time after the first of the year. 

We don't see the geese at our bird feeder much anymore. Usually we get a visit every day but now it's several days in between. We did have these guys come by the other day though. 

Wild turkeys! They are much shyer than the gees are and immediately started to walk away as soon as I opened the door! They are huge! There are 5 of them and I count them every time I see them in the park. I'm expecting a few to go missing the closer we get to Thanksgiving! 

Rich and my son Chris have been hunting since last Friday. They are coming home today. I took this time by myself to get the Christmas tree up. 

I originally planned to use a child size Santa hat for the tree topper but immediately did not like it when I put it up. 

The boys will have nothing to do with wearing Santa hats so I think I'll finding something decorative to do with it. There are quite a few good ideas in Pinterest. Stay tuned to see what cleverish thing I come up with! 

I decided to use this stuff instead of garland on my tree this year. 

It's nice but a little annoying to put on as it snags on the branches. Plus I bought two of them and had to go buy two more to get enough to go around the tree a few times.  Note to self: Next time put the garland on before you put the ornaments on so you are not constantly knocking them off! 

Anyway, here is the finished tree. 

I'm happy with it. It definitely looks better in the dark where the lights reflect on the gold garland. Plus I need to dig out my tree skirt. It looks naked without it!

Shauna and the boys came over to help decorate. Maxwell helped for a minute and hung about three ornaments before he lost interest and Levi wasn't interested at all! They were more interested in playing with the monster trucks their Uncle Chris bought for them!

Maxwell just wanted to know where the presents were that are supposed to go under there! 

Finally, my Thanksgiving cactus is blooming like crazy! I have never seen so many blooms and so big!!

Kind of crazy but definitely fitting for this year! 

We are having 11 people at our house on Thanksgiving. The governor is shutting some things down again here in Michigan or 3 weeks to hopefully flatten the COVID curve again. Movie theaters, indoor dining in restaurants, casinos, bowling alleys, and asking people to not have large gatherings for the holiday. We will be taking every precaution including wearing masks and keeping as much of a distance we can. Considering last year we had 25 people in this house this is a small gathering! 

Until the next time...stay safe and well my friends!  

Halloween and Other Things

We did not pass out candy on Halloween. Actually, we haven't passed out candy for several years. When we lived in our other house the family room was in the rear of the house and it was a nuisance to keep running to the front of the house when the kids came. Plus the doorbell would freak the cats out! We only ever got a handful of kids when we did pass out candy anyway.

Since we moved two years ago we have spent Halloween night at Shauna and Brads so we could go with the boys trick or treating. 

They usually only bring them to the few houses that are within a couple blocks of their house. This year most people had the candy out on the porch or on a table in the driveway so the kids wouldn't have to walk right up to the house. 

They were both the cutest little fireman!

It was fun and they were professional trick or treaters! 

My friend and I went to Hobby Lobby because they are having 50% off of their Christmas decorations.   I know, its early! But we couldn't resist! 

I bought this snowman for my collection. 

I love that it has the animals on it and I couldn't walk out of that store without it! 

I also bought a small child size Santa hat. I saw few pictures of Christmas trees with Santa hats as the toppers and I want to try it! If I don't like it I will just buy another one and give them to the boys to wear!

Speaking of Christmas trees for the first time I am putting mine up before Thanksgiving! We are hosting a few people that day and I want to show it off! We don't have a lot of people over for Christmas and I want some people to appreciate my hard work! 

This year has been so different and somewhat depressing so I want to try to be extra festive for the holidays! 

Lastly, there was a white duck hanging around with the other ducks at work the other day and I don't think I have ever seen one before. 

Only three more weeks left to work. They have already cut their hours down and I am only scheduled for about 15 hours this week. Pretty soon I'm going to have to figure out what else I can do for a little extra income! 

Until the next time stay safe and well, my friends!