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Two days til Christmas!

 

Well, the gang's all here! And then some---

 

My mom needed two more dogs about like Carters needs more pills, but you have to admit--Gunther and Charlie are awful darn cute!

 

I'm sure by the end of tomorrow the girls will tire of watching Caleb play the Wii, but for tonight he was pretty happy with the situation. :-)

We received a holiday letter today that I wanted to share here. You know I've spoken of Betty Chinn before. There's pieces in this letter that can be gleaned and put into action by all of us. What a world it would be...

See you tomorrow.

click to enlarge

Three days til Christmas,,,

 

Thanks for the sweet comments and support regarding yesterday's post. Yeah..it's kinda scary putting that personal stuff *out there*, but I reckoned it would help someone else and of course; that's always a good thing.

All the company is arriving tomorrow so I'm headed out to shop for lots of FOOD 'cause you know we all love to eat!! :-)

Stay warm and safe. I'll be back tomorrow. 

Four days til Christmas

   

I took the above picture this morning just because  I thought it was cute. You know, the way I used the firetruck as a tree stand. And how Winnie The Pooh is such a cute driver. Then I started thinking off and on the rest of the day if it would be appropriate to tell the story of how and when Winnie came to live here. See, Caleb; my seven year old grandson; has only met his father once in his life. He flew out here from Illinois when Caleb was four months old. He carried that big ol' bear through three plane changes and whatever else his day entailed. Every night that Caleb has slept here at my house since then he has had that bear in bed with him. To this day. He'll ask for it if I forget to get it. Justin, Caleb's father, left after that one week visit with big plans to go make something of himself back home, but at 18 years old, with no support or plan, within a year he ended up in prison for drug related crimes. He is still incarcerated.  Well, today wore on and I was finally to the point where I just didn't have any words for a post at all so I was gonna skip it altogether.  A few minutes ago (it's dark--after 7) the doorbell rang. Five or six ladies with a big white garbage bag full of presents! Initially I'm thinking, "Uh. Do you see this house? Who in here might you think needs charity?" (that'd be the old ego speaking). They said they were with a local church who was participating in the Angel Tree Program . That people in places "such as Caleb's father" contacted them with a wish list and they got donations to make these wishes come true.

   The form said "coat or jacket, size 10"

 

and "Action Figures", which they gave him four super cool ones. (and yes; of course I let him open it all. I'm a grandma, for heaven's sake!) Plus a stocking full of candy and a sweetly sung Christmas carol before they left. It was good fortune that he happened to be here at my house, as most nights he's at his mom's. I could hardly nudge Caleb to say 'thank you' because it took all I had to hold back the tears. 

There are small miracles to be witnessed every day. Caleb did wonder aloud, even tho I think he knew already, "Does this mean my dad's not in jail anymore?". The visit and the presents served as a much needed reminder that he does have a father who cares. It is my sincerest hope that this will be Justin's last year spending Christmas locked up.  I also hope that someone reading this may feel their heart grow a size bigger.  It really takes so little to make a huge difference in people's lives. 

     

Five days til Christmas!

 

Here's a little scoop o' cute, huh?

 I don't think we ever realized how much we would end up loving a dog. We never really considered ourselves *dog people* at all. But this little honey sure has captured our hearts. She is six months old now, and just so smart and good.

We love her! Stay warm, and have a great day.

Six days til Christmas!

 

"It has been determined with the use of age generator computer technology, that John and Jennifer, last seen going to their Winter Formal in 1974, would look like this today..."

lol. I can't believe I'm showing these pics but apparently this is what we look like so what'reyagonna do? My mom always says, "Five years from now you'll look back on this picture and think, 'Boy! I looked pretty good!'" Now that's a depressing thought! My hair was nice. Here's a closer look at that.

 

It's hardly long enough to touch my shoulders so she did an impressive job with the curling and the teasing all that fullness into place. I literally spent more on the hair updo than I did on the dress ($18 at the cancer society thrift store) and shoes ($14 at Ross) combined! I didn't think I'd ever admit that in public (well, I didn't tell the other fancy ladies last night "Oh this old thing? I found it at the thrift shop the other day! I don't even know if it'd been cleaned or not!" ) But I do think it's worth mentioning. See, the thought of spending a couple hundred dollars on a dress in the size I need now but hope NOT to need next year or ever again, was really stressing me out. So I walked into the thrift, looking for vintage Christmas items I'm sure, and I see this dress and think "Gee, that almost looks new! And it's not ugly, either." So I wonder, "Could I get away with maybe wearing some stranger's hand-me-down possibly right in front of them?" And I answered myself, "Honey, you can get away with whatever you want. It's all in the attitude." Whew. That darn thing couldn't have fit better and even if I give it back to them next week it was still cheaper than renting! So there you go; that's how I talked myself into being fine with it, and I highly recommend it if you ever are in the same situation.

We went to John's Rotary party at The Carson Mansion, also known as The Ingomar Club. It is quite fabulous. We got this lame picture of it all lit up.

 

Hopefully you can take a few minutes to look at the pictures in the link above. The wood and carvings are unlike anything I've ever seen.

Gotta go! Tick tock...only five shopping days til Christmas!!

Seven days til Christmas!

Hi all- A quick post, earlier than usual. I'll be running from here on out today. We're going to a *formal* hoity toity occasion tonight and I can not begin to tell you how much stress I have put into the mere thought of getting all dressed up. urgh.

Here's my tip for the day

If you read my blog last year you'll recall that I numbered all the gifts, so it did no good to shake and guess because you had no idea who each package was for! You don't have to go to great lengths say; like disguising a watch in a much bigger box because it's just a bunch of anonymous packages down there! Oh, my kids are officially convinced now that I am just evil! hahaha. This year I'm just using a sheet of alphabet stickers. The main challenge is to remember where I keep the master list of who's is what!

See you tomorrow.

Eight days til Christmas!

 

Today I was invited along with Kadence and her mom to go see Santa at the preschool.

Everyone waited as patiently as they could.

 

There were visitors of a very small size that kept the girls quite intrigued (they sure are different from boys, aren't they?!)

 

After the kids sang Jingle Bells along with all the adults, someone thought they heard Santa coming!

 

I don't think I'd ever seen Kadence so excited! She got a nice book and a candy cane

 

and then went to the cookie decorating table where she got to pick all the different sprinkles and colored frostings that she wanted on her own special cookie.

 

They were all very sweet and darling and I felt lucky to be a part of it.

See you tomorrow!

Nine days till Christmas!

 

     

Are you feeling the spirit of the season yet?  Me, not so much...but I'm still hopeful ;-)

Today I thought I'd share a crafty idea for using stencils. You know, these kind of stencils;

I went to a scrapbooking site where I used to post things I've made (pre-blog days) and snagged these couple of photos where I used molding paste and stencils.

A simple card using one of the nicer brass stencils

And the front of a tin I submitted to Somerset Studio's call for Girlfriend's art about three years ago

On the piece above I used a pre-colored red paste. It is also the same stencil that I used around the mirror on this umbrella stand recently

It's really hard to photograph a mirror! My camera's 'brain' just wants to focus on what's in the reflection, which somewhat blurs out the frame I'm trying to show

 

How going around this oval frame with a square stencil over and over (waiting for each section to dry before moving on) and having it meet nicely in the end is still a mystery to me! I'll just consider it a little gift from the universe and say 'thank you'!

So for those that have no idea what they're looking at here, you just grab about any ol' stencil (as seen above) and a jar of molding paste (in the paint section at Michael's). Lay the stencil on a flat surface, I use the short side of a flexible credit card and swipe the paste over the stencil, then lift the stencil straight up and rather quickly. It provides one with a very pleasing, instantly gratifying "ahhhh!" moment.

                                        (more wonderful Christmas artwork from Tracy Dodson)

This was the first time I'd even thought to try it on furniture, but now I'm looking around for other pieces where a little touch here or there may be just the ticket. Try it and see what you've been missing! :-)

 

Ten days til Christmas!

 

A funny thing happened today. We'd finally come to the decision to turn our home phone off. It makes no sense for us to talk on cell phones most of the time yet continue to pay for the land line, right? So after weeks of switching over email addresses, getting used to cable internet, yadayadayada....we woke up this morning to no phone. Which in and of itself was weird...that'd been MY phone number for 14 years. I go to look for my cell phone to call the house and see what one would hear and my cell phone is nowhere to be found. Hmmm. I remember having turned it to silent during Caleb's school performance last night, so calling it is of no use. Checked the church, checked the pizza parlor we'd gone to last night. No cell phone. Drats! Believe me; I didn't mind having to go buy an upgraded new one today, but OH how I hate losing all the numbers I had programmed in there! Not so ha-ha funny, but the timing with having turned off the house phone was certainly noticeable! When we were standing around at the cell phone store (charging up the new phone, piling up the contract paperwork) John's cell phone rang. "Hello? May I ask who's calling? What is this in regard to? Well, she's busy right now. She'll have to call you back." Even tho pretty much no one ever called John on the house phone, he has his number on the forwarding message for the next 30 days. Have fun with that, my dear!  Now I've just sat here for half an hour trying to load stuff on ebay but either they're having issues or I am. I just realized I went out and turned the heater on in my studio around noon today...I think I'll finally go out there now and call this a day! See you tomorrow.

Eleven days til Christmas!

 

I saw a magazine picture not too long ago with a whole messa mercury glass arranged on it. Martha or maybe BH&G. Anyway, I think I may have gone overboard on buying it everywhere I saw it for the whole month of October. :-)

  This is my latest piece from Diane Duda. LOVE her stuff just about like I love Tracy's in the previous post. Luckily I don't have to pick a favorite. Sending big thanks up for etsy...love all the creativity that has been discovered there by so many.

Yesterday I took Caleb for a holiday haircut. As I sat there watching Ron Zhang give his usual "precision and perfection is KEY" cut I couldn't help but think back on how long we've been going to him.

 

We took Caleb, my first and at that time only grandchild, for his first haircut when he was about nine months old and we were down south visiting my parents.

 Awww! They used scissors only and it was evidently a happy experience. Soon after, for some reason I can't recollect now, we got it in our minds that he started needing a cut with electric trimmers. For the next several months we tried this lady or that lady beautician, and he would SCREAM bloody murder the ENTIRE time. Then as soon as they were done he'd be back to smiling and they'd be letting us know not to ever bring him back again! So then we bought our own electric trimmers at Costco. Melissa would call me to come over and tackle the whole mess out in the backyard. We'd warn all the neighbors and ask them not to call the cops, I'd sit him on my lap and hold is arms and Melissa would race around through his hair with the trimmers while he SCREAMED bloody murder the whole time. One day she called for my usual help and I said, "Dude! I'm the grandma...I don't wanna keep being the bad guy! Make Travis hold him!" Well, the choppy mess they made in that boys hair made me pick up the phone and call Ron, who I happened to be going to for my own hair at the time. For the first five or six visits Ron would put the vinyl drape over the two of us, I'd be holding Caleb like a human straight jacket (see how Melissa got out of the job for good?), and just squint my eyes from all the hair that was flying. Then I'd tip him real good. Ron would cut it as short as possible, so that it'd be that much longer before we had to come back.

 

One day, maybe when he was around four? Caleb hopped up in the chair all by himself.  Ron and I both looked at each other like, "This is weird! He's sitting perfectly still and quiet!" I don't know what changed, but it was never a problem again. As I recall, that's when Melissa stepped back into the "Oh I'll get it done!" mode. When she takes him it's usually to a mall shop like SuperCuts, where they do a straight buzz and he looks like an outgrown chia pet within 4 weeks. When I have him and realize he really needs a cut I still take him to Ron. I think supporting longterm relationships in a kids' life is a good thing, and besides; now that the boy is getting older Ron's perfectly precise snip snip here and buzz buzz there really makes a nice difference when it's growing out.

 

Thank you Ron Zhang, for being a consistent, kind and calm male figure in this boy's life.