My Resolutions

~ Make a complete, detailed (legible) garden plan by the end of January.

~ Keep tucked away this year's good memories, toss into the fire this year's bad memories.

~ Bring new life (please!) into my cooking repertoire.

~ Go through old papers and destroy the evidence most of them.

~ Redecorate Decorate our bedroom.

~ Lose the extra weight that has taken up residence on my hips and tummy.

~ Step out of the box, get out of my rut and be spontaneous.

~ Take downhill ski lessons.  (How's our medical insurance?)

~ Ban potato chips from my life.

~ Stop procrastinating on jobs I don't want to do.

~ Do stretching exercises regularly so I can pick something up off the floor without looking like a 95 year old crone.

~ Start wearing nail polish again.  And shaving my legs more often.

OH, WAIT!

That was last year's list!  Oh well, maybe I'll be more effective at carrying it out this year.  After all, if every day is a new beginning, certainly a new year is all the moreso.

Best wishes to all you wonderful people for a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious New Year!  Let's do it!

The Saturday Between Two Wednesdays

Does anyone else think a Wednesday is the worst day of the week on which Christmas or New Year's Day can fall?

In one of his columns many years ago, Andy Rooney said he thought a Tuesday is the ideal day for Christmas.  That would give you Sunday to sit back and think about what last minute things you still needed to do on Monday.

I don't know if I can agree with the good man.  Maybe it's just me, but falling on a week day (especially smack-dab in the middle of the week as it did this year) made Christmas much less festive than it would have been on a Saturday or Sunday.  Or even a Friday.

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We're looking to get some more snow this afternoon and tomorrow.  Continually getting snow when it's so cold is really confusing me.  The good thing is that when it snows at low temperatures, it's always light and fluffy and MUCH easier to shovel.  (Hum along now . . . "Look for the silver lining . . . ")  I'm not real fond of the temperatures forecast:  -28° tonight and a high of -11° tomorrow.  All winter, so far, here on ye ol' homestead we've not been experiencing temperatures as low as they warn of.  Hope that rings true this time!

* * * * * * * *

In our efforts to get some real down time this winter, we decided to skip any more wood working until spring.  Turns out it's a good thing we made that decision.  Can you see us trying to safely cut and split in this much snow?

* * * * * * * *

We spent part of this morning getting wood in and stockpiled for the two house stoves and the wood stove in the workshop part of the garage.   Also picked up and moved (and restacked) the wood that took a header out of the big woodshed into the snow.  

I ran errands in town and spent a leisurely hour in the library scouring the stacks and picking out random books that looked interesting.  One book I'm eager to get into shows how to knit two socks at once, on a circular needle, from the toe up.  I've heard friends talk of trying this method and for the most part, they say it's not real easy to master.  Eeeep.  (You may hear screams of frustration after dinner time tonight when I set myself up in my nest on the couch and give it a go.)

* * * * * * * *

I'm taking quite a bit of time for myself this week between the two holidays and, to my surprise, haven't spent much time quilting.  For some reason, I've been doing a lot of reading as that's what seems to feel good right now.

I did make one small quilted piece recently.  It's just 7" square, made specifically for a small space when I put up my January decorations.  I like to use blue and white for that time of year (blue sky, snow covered ground . . . get it?) so used only blue and white fabrics for the piece.

* * * * * * * *

Well, we'll face the same thing with New Year's Day falling on a Wednesday this coming week.  And does anyone want to celebrate New Year's Eve on a . . . Tuesday night?  Geesh.

We're planning a quiet evening at home (as usual) then.  When I read statistics of all the legally inebriated people on the road behind the wheel on New Year's Eve, I figure that greatly increases MY chances of being involved in an accident which scares me enough to say, thanks but I'll be very happy at home.  There are plenty of other nights of the year to be out "croggling" about, as my Scottish grandmother used to say.

Happy Holidays!

My very best wishes to all of you for a holiday season filled with light and love and all those you hold dear.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Nearing Hibernation Mode

What with all the cold weather and snow our area has been having so far this winter, Papa Pea and I are very, very thankful we are spending the holidays here at home without having to drive any long distances.

Summer before this last one, I made lots of juice concentrate from our blueberries and raspberries.  The plan was to mix the concentrated stuff with water to have our own juice to drink.  It's worked out well although certainly the juice is not as sweet as commercially prepared juices.  But that's okay as it's the nutrients from the fruit we want rather than added sugar, right?  This morning I found another use for the pint jars of concentrate I still have left.

A while back I bought a case of organic frozen orange juice concentrate.  But drat and dang, the juice had a sour twang to it and because of that wasn't being consumed with any regularity.

This morning I mixed one jar of my blueberry concentrate into the jar of mixed up orange juice.  Wow!  Don't know what magic happened, but we now have an extremely tasty fruit drink which will encourage us to drink not only the orange juice but the homemade concentrate left.  As Kristina has on her blog header,

Eat it up,

Wear it out,

Make it do,

Or go without.

Such a good feeling to be able to resurrect that sour orange juice by making it into a very desirable drink using my homemade concentrate.

This is my nest these days.  I park my bottom on the chaise lounge part of the couch and cover up with my Christmas quilt.  I have books to read, paper and pencil for making notes, knitting needles, yarn and patterns and should the desire hit, remote controls for the TV and DVDs on my right side.  Last night I toppled over onto the pillow against the couch arm and was sound asleep when Papa Pea came out of the bathroom after getting ready for bed.  Awake or dozing, it's a mighty comfortable spot when it's time for some relaxing.

It's another day when it's too cold to snow (9°), but it currently is snowing and blowing out there.  The above is a shot of one of our window boxes outside the kitchen window.  One would expect there to be green boughs and red berries underneath the little drifts, but instead there are branches of fall leaves and miniature pumpkins and gourds.  Weeks ago, we had our first wet, freezing snow before I could get the fall decorations pulled and the winter ones in the boxes.

Yessir, if you want to experience real winter time this year, come to northern Minnesota! 

Snow Report

Nope, not a report of any new snow (well, not more than an inch or so), but rather of the snow we have on the ground.

This morning we bundled up like Antarctic explorers and hiked out our driveway to get the mail.

This shot is of our mail box and Papa Pea returning from it coming toward our driveway.  An impressive bunch of snow by the mailboxes, don't ya think?

Back at the house, we did some moving of wood that had fallen out of the wood shed.  It was half a tier at the front that for some reason decided to leave the comfy confines of the shed and hurl itself out into the snow.

Then we filled the wood box on our enclosed porch.  Yep, a mite on the excessive side, but it may save us from having to haul any wood tomorrow.

Next my energetic husband wanted to go for a snowshoe hike back up on the ridge behind us.  I used my quick wit (cough, cough) to come up with a good excuse as to why I couldn't go.  

~  The skin on my face was approaching the frost bitten stage.  (No joke.)

~  I needed to finish hemming a pair of slacks I just got.

~  Dinner would be better if I started it now and let it simmer all afternoon.

~  The toilet needed cleaning.

~  I had a real desire to spend a couple of hours paying bills.

He got the drift right quick (!) and headed out by himself.

When he returned, I was oh-so-glad I hadn't gone.  Because our temperatures have been so low, the bulk of the snow we've gotten is very soft and has no crust on top.  He said even with the snowshoes, he sank down about 12" with each step.  Do you know how much effort is required to tromp along under those conditions?  I do.  I was very glad I hadn't gone on that little outing!

Unrelated Thoughts Bouncing Around In My Head

I still haven't managed to take a picture of all our snow.  That may have something to do with the fact that it's been so darn cold outside that I go out, do what needs to be done and get back inside where I can breathe without my lungs wanting to close up and go south for the winter.

However, hubby just looked at the thermometer and announced the temp has zoomed up to 20°.  Um, what's with that at 7 p.m. when it should normally start dropping down, down, down?  What's going on here?  Dum-da-dum-dum!  Another big snow coming?  Twenty degrees is supposed to be the perfect snowing termperature, right?

Papa Pea was amazed that he was standing only fifteen to twenty feet from an attack in the chicken yard when a HUGE bird swooped down and just missed nailing one of our hens.  (The hen reports that anytime you lose that many feathers, the event was plenty close enough for her.)  Hubby didn't have a lot of time to study the characteristics of the bird for identification, but after coming in and consulting our bird books, he's pretty sure it was a Northern Hawk Owl.  They are basically nonmigratory, but do come slightly south (which would possible put them in our area) during the winter.  They also hunt in daylight as well as at night.  He saw the owl's attempt at a chicken dinner in the mid-afternoon.

I know there are those of you who cannot wait for the days to start getting longer.  Personally, I like the short days.  (Ducking from barrage of snowballs aimed at my head.)  I really enjoy the time around 4:30 in the afternoon when darkness descends outside, I'm in my cozy kitchen leisurely starting to pull dinner together while sipping a glass of wine.  Except I'm in a bamboozling period (get out the violins) when I. cannot. drink. alcohol.  One sip of anything (and I've been trying everything) and wham, I get an extremely uncomfortable feeling from the top of my head to the nether regions of my stomach.  What's going on?  Anyone who knows me can tell you I am not a person who has ever over-indulged, but heck, 'tis the season to be jolly and I'm expected to do it without tippling any spirits?  Oh, well.  Makes me a cheap date.

I also truly like the longer nights this time of year.  I will admit I do not have to gird my loins and traverse the roads to go to a job in the dark in the morning and come home in the dark at night.  (That scenario would cast a whole different glow on my rose-colored glasses.)  Being able to be home as much as I choose, I love the dark early morning hours with the Christmas lights and music on which seems to create a slower, easier start to the day.

Typically, the evening hours are our "time off" from the daily hafta-do tasks so when it's pitch black outside from 4:30 p.m. on, evening starts pretty early and we feel we have longer "time off" hours each day.

I've asked Papa Pea (my personal Mr. Claus) for a couple/three books for Christmas and I've been waiting impatiently for them to arrive so I can take a quick peek at them before wrapping and putting them under the tree.  (Yes, I have to wrap my own presents [are the violins still handy?] because I learned long ago that seeing how much of an onerous chore [and how much paper he used] wrapping was for my husband, I couldn't in good conscience inflict that task on him anymore.  Actually, for years he gave my presents to our daughter to wrap for him, but I didn't feel that was fair either.)  After Christmas, I'm looking forward to some very enjoyable hours on the couch, devouring my new books.

Speaking of the couch, I'm going to get my pj's and robe on right now and go snuggle on the couch for a long evening of snoozing relaxation.