One Part Inspiration...

I planned a family dinner last week - to commemorate the choosing of names for our annual stocking exchange.  I made a big dinner - roast beef and potatoes and cheesy veggies and salad and blackberry-apple pie for dessert.  I know.  I went all out.  I was excited. Along with the excitement of choosing names, it was an initiation of sorts for my future son-in-law.  This year, we add his name to the stocking exchange. The time for him to find out what it is like to be part of this family tradition. We generally pick names amongst great discussion - and by discussion, I mean arguments  Either Someone gets the same name they've drawn for the last three years, or Someone picks their own name - and usually they are the last person to draw.  This means we have to start again.  Then, SomeoneElse suddenly decides to use the facilities.  This generates a run on the bathrooms because of the power of suggestion.  T...

I am so excited.  I have started Christmas shopping.  Actually, I started it in January - added to it in June, and now, am in the thick of it.  I have taken myself shopping a few times and have had fun finding the little bits of nothing I can put in stockings, or give to friends and family.  In fact I have found the occasional little addition to add to my own stocking and I am practicing the perfect gasp so no one will be the wiser that I am so thoughtful towards myself. Some of these people read this blog, so I can't give too much away.  But maybe just a little bit about the above gift. I have had this idea since last Christmas and have been waiting for the right time to put it together.  In fact, I am so pleased with the effect that I am half tempted to keep it for me.  But I won't because it is just the perfect look for my friend who is one of the most splashy-effervescent people I know. After I took the picture, I went onl...

My house has been full of flowers lately.  I love it.  I have taken them from one room to another to enjoy them.  At first, I thought I should share the wealth; but as time went on, the more I enjoyed waking up to them, making dinner while they looked on, having dinner with flowers to accompany the food, taking a relaxing bath and letting the flowers add a decadent ambiance. These came from a friend of mine.  Her gift inspired my husband.  He commented that he should bring me flowers more often.  I concurred.  I don't know that he could beat the gift of two dozen roses, but I would be game for him to try.

One of the things that the sheep did was to eat everything in sight.  While this was good for us, in that we never had to mow the lawn, neither did we enjoy the bushes on the property because they were so chewed up, we didn't recognize them.                                                                                                                                                                  Then we added a puppy into the mix and things just deteriorated further.  He ate drywall, shoes, socks underwear and got himself so worked up about being tied up (because ...

This is how I amused myself the other day while waiting 1 1/2 hours to get into see the doctor.  I had taken this picture of the rainbow and since I had finished playing all the games on my phone, and had checked my messages a million times to see if there was any news (none), I mucked around with Photo Studio and came up with these couple of pictures.  On the phone, it's hard to see that the pink writing doesn't show up very well.  But it was the better picture of the two that I'd taken while driving home from an errand on a rainy day.  So I didn't want to delete it.    I particularly liked this picture and how it turned out because it looks like it is sitting on the floor.  The words are from a song by John Denver.  I see that I transcribed them incorrectly.  It should be "Some days are stone."  But gold might be better and more optimistic. The last few weeks has dumped a lot of rain on our area.  The mornings are very d...