Really Trying

So here you have it... I'm really trying to be a lot more Christmassy and less Scrooge-like. I've changed my look for the Christmas season. The picture in the header is a paper tole (3D Decoupage) that I did back when I first got married. I did a course of Paper Tole back when I first got married almost 18 years ago. I wanted to do more of them but traveling two hours to do a course twice a week was more than I could handle. So unfortunately I only did about 5 or 6 of them. Some of them I gave away as gifts and some I kept for myself and over the years the picture frames have gotten broken unfortunately. I would have liked to keep them but they have gotten thrown away and the two that I did for the girls disappeared when we did the move for the renovation. I think Hubby took them to the dump.

This is the first of my Christmas decorations to go up. I will be doing a slide presentation (to the right) of my Advent decorating as each day I add one new item... That is if I can get this to work! The nativity scene went up yesterday and so I have added that too. Today is my Christmas village that I painted myself. This is a ceramic village that I started the year Hubby and I got married and kept adding a piece until they discontinued it a few years ago. I will try to get a couple of pictures of that since it is quite large.

I hope your Advent Christmas decorating..... baking..... shopping..... etc.... is going well....

Jazz and Books

Hubby went to town yesterday for a meeting and since he was late getting home I decided after the Daughters went to bed that I would sit and read while I listened to some music. My favorite.... (today).... musician is Diana Krall. She is always right up there on my favorites list. Whenever I get in a blue funk I can always be assured that crooning to a few of her cds will put in a good mood. Meanwhile I have been doing a little reading of late. Right now my downstairs book is "Have A Little Faith" by Mitch Albom. My upstairs book is "A Redbird Christmas" by Fanny Flagg who also wrote "Fried Green Tomatoes". A Redbird Christmas" is my favorite Christmas Story. It will give you heart even if you are the worst Scrooge..... which I think I am!

So last night the Daughters headed off to bed and I had a lovely hour of just sitting and enjoying a book and some music. What a wonderful treat. I didn't feel one bit guilty about anything... like not spinning for my jacket commission or spinning cotton for level 3 or finishing Pops' wristlets. Recently I finished a duo of books that are written by a youth writer. They are called "The Summoning" and "The Awakening" by Kelly Armstrong. I like to read what the Daughters are reading so that I know if they are being corrupted. I was surprised actually at the caliber of writing. She writes a good story.... but then as all series seem to be today.... they were cut off shortly at the end. There obviously will be more books of hers in the future to continue the story further.

Everyone headed out the door a little while ago and it looks like winter is definitely rearing its ugly head this morning with severely cold weather. Brrr! I'm glad to be home in the house. There will be a little more Christmas decorating today and listening to Diana Krall.... actually I'm listening to her right now and the wonderful song "Fly Me To The Moon".... so mellow.... how could anyone be in a bad mood when listening to her.

The other job that I have set for today is to get a parcel off in the mail to my partner for the secret Santa gift exchange. I took this one on and totally put it out of my mind till yesterday when I finally got an email to remind me that the deadline for getting it in the mail is tomorrow..... I also have my secret Santa sending me something.... it went in the mail yesterday and so I am looking forward to that. But I do have to get mine in the mail this week at the very latest.


So my day seems to be planned for me and it is not even daylight yet. The nice thing is that I will get a little time to listen to Diana and I might get a chance to pick up my book too. What a better way than to take time for a little jazz and my favorite books.

Here's hoping you have a nice December day.

Sparkley Day

I'm once again in the driver's seat behind that face of this computer, and once again I can look out on a terrific day. The trees are covered in hoar frost and the sun is four fingers above the horizon. With the sun shining so beautifully the frost just sparkles brilliantly. Everywhere you look there is hoar frost. There is hoar frost even in the air. It is a sparkley day.

Once again I'm back at my moving furniture. The office/studio/dining room is looking really good and I went to the shed to find a leg for one of the chairs in the living room..... it needed to be fixed. Several years ago Hubby and I bought four leather recliners for our living room. They were on pedestal bases and could swivel as well. Pedestal bases are not good. The wood was a cheap laminate and so they one by one cracked or something until they became a waste of good money. Two of the four are completely out of commission. The other two are in our living room and one has a bum leg. So I went into the shed and dug out a good leg from one of the decommissioned chairs and brought the leg in and attached it to the good chair. So basically we are using the two bad chairs as parts for the good chair.

Advent is here and I had decided some time ago to start putting up one Christmassy thing each day. Yesterday I put up a paper tole picture of Santa Claus in the downstairs bathroom which really is a joke because the bathroom is still under construction. Today I am putting up some shelves to hold a nativity scene. Tomorrow I will put up the outside lights. My goal is to have all the decorating done long before Christmas actually arrives.

One time I loved to decorate the house for Christmas, I'd put on nice music and get the decorations out and just do it. Then as the children came into our lives there came to be more decorations and as they got older they would help. It has become a real horror there are so many decorations and the girls don't seem to want to do anything. Last year they invited their friends over on the day we were supposed to put up and decorate the tree and disappeared upstairs while Hubby and I struggled to get it all done. I swore that it would never happen again. I'm thinking that only a portion of the decorating will be done and I'm thinking that there will be an artificial tree so that it can be done long before the middle of the month. Christmas has become just one more thing to struggle through. No one in our house really enjoys it because we are too busy with other things. About the only thing I liked about Christmas was Christmas Eve Candlelight service and I can't even enjoy that this year as I will have to do it since our minister has retired and I'm it for preacher. By the way I am not an ordained minister. I am just a lay person..... still without a minister I am afraid that the congregation is stuck with me. I do enjoy boxing day.

Anyway I don't meant to bring everyone down.... I think it is great when I find people who do enjoy Christmas. I just wish I knew how to make it fun for us again. If you have suggestions well I'm all ears.

But for today, it is a sparkley day and I'm going to turn on some nice music.... no not Christmas music.... probably classical though, or maybe I'll get out my Dianna Krall cds and crank her up and get that nativity scene up and move the TV to accommodate the new artificial Christmas tree.

Hi ho,hi ho, it's off to work I go....

What Is Wrong With Me!

I'm at it again. Sometimes I think I am a true freak! I looked around me on the weekend and decided that my house was not in a satisfactory situation. So I started moving furniture around. Part of the problem is the almighty holiday coming in the near future. I don't have anywhere to put the Christmas tree. I don't know why this is a problem.... Daughter #2 says we should just hang it from the ceiling.... I think that is what got me. She's making jokes about the tree and I'm frustrated up to the gills. I have space for the new furniture whenever we decide to get that and everything else in the living room will fit nicely except the tree. I could put it under the steps but then we are limited on how big a tree we can have and sometimes when you're out tramping the bush for a Christmas tree you don't always have a choice on the size of the tree. I just like to have all the bases covered. There have been times when we have had to cut off portions of our tree to the point where there's not a whole lot left. So because of a tree I am once again rearranging everything. Sheesh!

In other news.... I slept all night.... without waking up.... like 8 hours of sleep... that's completely unheard of you know!

I think I'd better go chase away a few of those dust bunnies that are threatening my ankles again. I think they are p----d off because I'm moving their hidey holes!

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go.....

Work

I worked hard this weekend and now I am pooped. I got the newsletter finished for the PCSW.... I managed to get a service prepped for today. I prepped an agenda for a meeting. did the service this morning and had the meeting right after. I also painted the door for my bedroom and Hubby hung it and now after 8 years Hubby and I have a truly private room. All along Hubby and I only had a curtain for a door but now we have a real pine door hung up and it slides and it is lovely. (Can you tell I'm excited?) With all the work that has been going on this weekend I have had no time to write here. For that, I apologize to those of you who are wondering what is going on. Anyway I'm so tired tonight that I am going to make this a short blog entry and then I'm heading off to bed at which time I will probably lie there and think about what to write tomorrow.

ZZZZZZ...... oh sorry, I dozed off..... Good night!

Icicles

We have loads of icicles hanging from the roof of our house. With the slope of our house having changed from a very steep 45 degree angle, to a less steep angle of about 25 degrees, we now have the problem of snow taking its own slow time to making its way to the ground and while that has some drawbacks it also has some interesting positives. One of the drawbacks is of course the added weight of the snow to the roof of the house. I think that the roof is still steep enough that the snow will not hang up too long, but I do watch the load. The interesting thing is the really cool formations of snow as the snow slides down the tin roof and hangs over the edge of the roof sometimes as much as two feet before it finally lets go with a huge "thunk" and drops to the roof below or to the ground. I've been watching the process for a couple of days now because temperatures outside have decided to warm, and while we had a quite warm day yesterday, after dark everything cooled down and froze up. The slow progress of the snow sliding off the roof came to a complete standstill and huge hanging drapes of snow stopped sliding and remained suspended in an effort to reach the ground. As it cooled, the snow that melted, from this drape of snow began to form icicles and we have had some really interesting ones. On the North side of the house as the snow slid down the roof it began to curl under and as it did so the icicles that had formed decided to point in a horizontal manner rather than a vertical manner. It has all been quite fascinating to watch. Here are a few pictures for you to look at....

Looking out the upstairs North side window.

Ice formation with flash

Same ice formation without flash.

Temperature Inversion

I live in a river valley. It is quite a large river that runs through my valley and there are steep banks on each side of the river. So it is a deep river valley. This valley has an odd phenomena that occurs. Sometimes we wake up and this valley is filled with smoke. It is not smoke from natural sources that fills this valley but smoke from the wood stoves of thousands of houses and dwellings in the valley. Because this valley is so deep sometimes we get a temperature inversion which is to say that the smoke stays close to the ground because there's no up down movement of the air. On days when there is a temperature inversion it is really hard to breath when you step outside your door. On those days smoke is everywhere in the air.

Today is a day with a temp. inversion and it is really hard to breath out there. Basically it is smog... air pollution that causes asthmatics to stay indoors. I am not an asthmatic but I do find breathing on a day like this really hard. More and more I am thinking that geo-thermal technology and solar heating is the way of the future. Hubby and I live with a forced air furnace that runs on propane. We accepted that because that is what our house came with. It was the system that was in place when we bought this house but lately we have been looking at alternative energy sources. Primarily, we are looking at solar power but friends of ours have recently put in a geo-thermal heating system. Both come with a high price tag and while we cannot afford either type of alternative energy our hope is that eventually we will be on a system that uses both. That is not to say that we will stop using hydro power but that we may be able to cut out our propane use altogether and lower our hydro use as well.

We are middle aged and we are still establishing ourselves financially. It will not be easy to make the switch. But our long term goal is to do just that. What bothers me and frustrates me is that the government of Canada and B.C. don't make it more accessible to everyone. There should be huge rebates for those who are willing to put out the money for expensive technology to use cheaper and more world friendly energy. I won't lecture here about the dismal policies Canada has for energy. You can go to any number of green blogs to get that. But keep it in mind that this little family in this remote region of the world takes issue with thoughtless usage of this world's energy. See that picture of the beautiful blue planet in the post from yesterday? Well I for one want to continue to live on a planet that is blue.... and not red or brown like the planets that have nothing growing on them and not grey like the lifeless moon.