Monthly Archives: December 2020

Good-Bye 2020 Welcome 2021, I Think

What a year 2020 has been and it just keeps on giving.  When the new year started, it seemed like everything was so fresh and new and that wonderful things would happen and then,…. China gave us the present of the Covid Virus. I’ve heard that was an act of aggression on their part or even an act of war, but we Americans calmly accepted it and started the journey of quarantining ourselves, wearing masks and not gathering together.  It was all so strange. We are a people who like to do things in large groups.  This year we won’t even be able to gather in Times Square and welcome in the new year. Oh, the ball will still drop, but no one will be there to see it.  Is it kind of like if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there, will anyone hear it kind of thing.

I hate wearing a mask. I have breathing problems at times anyway and wearing a mask gives me claustrophobia and shortness of breath so I try to avoid places where I have to wear one.  Thankfully, we are not required to wear them in church.  I try to do all my shopping at once so I don’t have to go several times a month.  I try to spend time outdoors in the fresh air as much as possible. With three dogs, I have to be outside.

Speaking of dogs, they have been a life saver, keeping me company and giving me entertainment.  Lucy and Sugar have definitely become MY dogs. David can be outside playing with them and all they have to do is hear me open the back door and they are off to the races seeing who can get to me first and jump on me.  We are working on that jumping part because when you have two fifty pound puppies slam into you, you really feel it!  At least they are happy to see me and I am usually happy to see them unless they get muddy paws all over me.

Three needy dogs.  They are all three people pups. They love being with people.  The puppies have grown so much and they are still only about half the size they will be.  Our vet said they were slightly overweight, but they look skinny next to Molly and she has lost some weight. The vet told us Labs were always hungry and she was right. They act starved all the time.

They are so darn cute, I can’t get mad at them even when they tear up everything in the back yard. One of them dug up all the flowers I planted around our porch.  I hope they get that out of their system before next growing season.  Lucy still has those beautiful eyes.

They are all partners in crimes. Here David has a treat waiting for them.  All eyes on it!

All our dogs when they were puppies destroyed something. Well, our new pups tore the pool liner getting in and out of the pool so we are going to have to replace it next Spring. The pool is eighteen years old, so the liner was needing to be replaced.  David didn’t even act disturbed about it. Hmmmm.  When Molly tore up the pool heater he had built, I thought she was dead dog walking for a while.  He is attached to these puppies like no other.

Then there’s the chickens or chooks if you are in Australia.   They are such good little layers.  We haven’t had a period without eggs for a long while.  Our new layers are starting to lay some pretty big eggs.

One of these eggs is not like the others…..

I love our eggs. They taste like butter.  We have given away dozens of eggs this year. People always offer to pay for them, but we like giving them away.  As long as we are able, we will continue to do so.

I call this one our loner chicken because she stays outside looking in. When I feed them, she waits for all the rest to begin and then she will find a place to fit in. She’s not henpecked, just chooses to be alone.  I guess if some people live like that, so can chickens.

This is our bossy hen. She meets me at the gate every single time telling me I’m not feeding them fast enough. She has grabbed a bowl of feed right out of my hand and will peck me if she feels like it.  She is also a talker and will follow me around clucking up a storm.

Our only Buff Orpington left. She has been a good layer and the next time we get chicks, I’m getting more Buffs.  They are a gentle, sweet chicken.

No exactly sure what kind this chicken is. I thought I was getting a Silver Laced Wyndotte, but I don’t think that is what she is. She is a lot smaller than the other hens.

It’s been a little cold for bird watching although I still feed the birds, but the other day I got a few photos.

He looks well fed, doesn’t he?

Remember Frankenbird?  She has blossomed from an ugly bird.

She’s got a crest and more feathers. Here she almost looks rainbow colored.  I’m happy for her.

Sitting in the living room the other day I noticed the light at the window was beautiful through our lace curtains.

I took a few pictures.  “Scarlette, it’s the land you love.”  Does this look like that scene a bit?

The sky was on fire.  Just beautiful. God’s creation on display for all to see.

Back to the puppies. I couldn’t resist.  David had to build this gate because the pups were eating our shoes we leave on the porch and they tore the screen door out.  David didn’t seemed disturbed by that either. Hmmmmmmmmmm.  Is he getting soft in his old age?

In the new year I am starting a new quilt project. I have never joined a quilt along before. A quilt along, if you don’t know, is where several people get together online and follow instructions on how to make a certain quilt and we make our quilts together and when it’s over, we should have a finished quilt top. There are over 5,000 people all around the world getting ready to quilt with this quilt along.

We are using this quilt book by Kathleen Tracy.  All the blocks measure four and a half inches square and there are 72 squares and a middle medallion with a saw toothed edging.

It’s not too late to join, but you need Kathleen’s book and lots of different materials. You will need to follow her on her Facebook page. I’ve been going through my stash.

As you can see, I  am very well organized. I’ve got boxes and boxes of material and it’s like shopping for new when I go through them as I’ve forgotten a lot of these fabrics. but…

Wouldn’t you know?  I ordered more!  And I’ve ordered more again and am waiting for it to come!  And,… I will probably order more before this quilt is done. I always can find an excuse to order more fabric. One of these fabrics has chickens on it, too!  I’m going to try to make two of these quilts at a time. One in reproduction fabrics from the 1800’s and one from Christmas fabrics, so I will have two finished quilt tops by March, I hope.  It’s going to be so much fun.

Years ago, I use to quilt with a friend and all of a sudden one day I lost my quilting mojo. I just didn’t feel like making quilts. It was awful.  I could not get interested. My friend was worried about me. Thankfully, that little blip lasted a very short time and I was soon quilting again. We had just closed our quilt shop at that time and I think I was just burned out with quilts, quilting, fabric, the whole thing. But now I am as passionate about it or more. I love making quilts I can share with others and our house is full of them.  I told my daughter that was my legacy to her and she can do whatever she wants with them when I’m gone.  She already has several quilts I’ve made her as do her two boys.  I love knowing that when I’m gone people will still be snuggling under quilts I’ve made for them.

So I already know what I will be doing the beginning of the new year. These are a few of the blocks I’ve been practicing on.

Do you make new year’s resolutions?  I use to long ago, but I found that I could never keep them or I forgot all about them. I think it’s best to just live each year and be the best you can be. Be kind to people. Enjoy what you do each day.  Find a passion and stick with it. Take a walk.  Get a pet.  Grow something.  Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.  Remember each day could be your last one. We never know.  I’m glad God made it that way.  I don’t think I would do anything much differently if I knew when I was going to die, Maybe patch up some broken relationships if I could.  I’ve tried before.  But the people I love know I love them so I’m good.  Make a new friend.  Go to church because we are to assemble together with one another.  Pray for your country and its leader. We still are not completely sure who our president is.  There was a lot of chicanery that went on with this last election.  I hope it all turns out well. It will be up to the electoral college so pray for those people.  Give money to a charity that helps people.   I’m all for helping animals, but we people are in need of help too. I find that the Salvation Army is one of the best charities to get the most  to more people.  Pray for a cure for all the illnesses in this world. I pray for a cure for MS because my daughter has it and I truly believe she will be healed one day, but pray for anyone you know who is suffering with any illness.  Pray this Covid thing will go away for good.  I could go on and on about what we could or should do, but you know all that.

While it’s been very different this year, I think it’s been a blessing in disguise, too. Families have had to stay together and do things together.  I know my daughter and her sons have had some real quality time. I do hope the boys get back into school at some time because they need that social connection with their peers.  I’ve enjoyed not feeling like I have to be on the go all the time. I’ve read more books, sewn more quilts, and had more free time than I ever have had before and I love it.  My life was not as interrupted as many have been and I know all you social people are ready for a BIG party so I hope you get it soon.

We will face this new year and we will live right through it like we did 2020.  Many did not survive, but we who did have been blessed and we should make the most of every day.  Thank God in Heaven for all you have because we do live in the richest country in the world.  I heard the other day that just one of our states, California, has the fifth largest economy in the world.  One state!  So we are extremely blessed and we really don’t deserve to be. So thank you, God.

I pray for all of you who read this blog that your year will be full of blessings. That your troubles will be few and your blessings many.  Hugs to you all.  Virtually, of course.  Happy New Year. Pray for 2021 that it only can get better from here.  Bye.

 

 

A Good Christmas

I’ve had many happy Christmases in my life.   This year’s was no exception.  As long as we have family around and gifts to give them, I’m happy.  This year I decided to make all our grandchildren something, but that comes later.

First was the decorations.  It seems that we hardly get the Autumn and Halloween decorations down than it’s time to put up the Christmas tree and all the other decorations. I like to spread Christmas quilts I’ve made all around the house.

This is a Bullseye quilt i finished this year. I had made our grandson one for his graduation also.  But I never got mine completed until just a few weeks before Christmas.

I love this quilt for it’s simplicity and all the different Christmas colors that are in it. It was fun to make and to quilt.  I did it all on the sewing machine.

All my favorite Santas came out.  Those two red ones belonged to David’s grandmother which she gave to us.  They are celluoid and very old.  I think of her every time I put them out.

Santa in his canoe is my very favorite one.

My little village. My daddy made all the houses and the church and I treasure them.

The cubby holds small Christmas decorations. If you can see them, there are three little wooden Santas altogether that our children received on a flight to the Virgin Islands about forty years ago. They’ve lost their beards, but I still put them out every year to remind me of the good times we had that year. The house quilt behind the cubby I made years ago and is probably one of my very favorite quilts that I have.

Christmas does bring out memories, doesn’t it? Some good and some not so good, but we take them because they did happen.  The year before David and I were engaged, his mother wanted him to move back down to the Virgin Islands. He had been living with his aunt and uncle, but it wasn’t working out.  When I thought he was going to move away, I cried for days. He went down to visit his family and they made arrangements for him to move in with his grandparents so he could finish his senior year up here.  I was so glad.  Then we got engaged, he joined the army and the rest is our history.

I love putting out my Christmas quilts. This is my chicken quilt.

A sheep quilt I made years ago.  These little sheep were fun to make.

I made a special block with this Bible verse on it. We are His sheep if we choose to be and I choose to be.  He takes care of us like we were His sheep. He does not want one to be lost. He will leave the ninety-nine to find the lost 100th one.

Finally all the gifts were wrapped. David wrapped every single one of them. We say if he didn’t wrap them, they would never be wrapped and if I didn’t shop for the gifts, there wouldn’t be any, so we make a good team. I did most of the shopping online. It’s so easy. Almost too easy.

Everyone in the family is getting taller than David and I. I am one grandchild short of being the shortest person in the family and by next Christmas, that will happen.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care. I knit about twenty-five pair of socks this year. I hang them and let everyone choose a pair.

I love knitting socks. I’ve already started on next year’s.

What they called the Christmas Star.  I imagine the real Christmas Star was much brighter. Two planets, Jupitor and Saturn.  I saw a picture on Facebook of the planets taken using a telescope and it showed Saturn and it’s moons.  We don’t think about the wonderful things all around us sometime.  It’s amazing how wonderful our universe is and it’s still expanding because God is still creating.  But He chose this one planet to place men on and to send His only Son. It’s all pretty miraculous if you think about it.

Then it was time to give out the gifts.  My favorite thing to do.

Years ago I got a magazine with the quilt pattern called Grandmother’s Fancy. I’ve made a quilt or two from it, but never for the grandchildren. So this year I decided to make them all quilts with matching pillow and pillowcases.

He loved his new pillow.

Our granddaughter who will be getting married next Summer.

We gave our daughter and son-in-law a shared gift and David wrapped the present in two different wrapping papers and made each of them unwrap their side.   That sweater our daughter has on, a lady knits these and sells them. It looks so warm. I wish I could knit something like that.

Now it’s the day after Christmas. I always enjoy this day almost as much as Christmas Day. No stress and no worrying about a meal.  I slept in this morning and have been watching my favorite tv show, The Incredible Dr. Pol. It’s about a veterinarian in Michigan, his family and his fellow vets and all the animals they attend. I always thought I would have loved to be a vet until I see those young girls putting their arms in a cow’s butt to check on their babies or whatever.  Then I decide, no, I would not make a good vet.  I’m really impressed by those lady drs., though and what they can handle. My niece is a large animal vet, so I guess she probably does the same thing these girls do. .  I’ve got all the shows taped and have been watching all day.

Well, I hope your Christmas was a good one.  I will wait a few days before I start thinking about the next one and what we will give as gifts.  Merry Christmas and may your new year be healthy and happy and may the Covid virus soon be a thing in our memories and no where else. Bye.

 

You Can Tell it’s Almost Here

Right after Thanksgiving and even before, hints of Christmas start showing up. Usually the stores are months ahead on every holiday and Christmas is no exception.  I really wish the Christmas season was longer. I’m just getting my house decorated, the tree up, my mantle decorated, the nativity showcased. I pretty much love everything about Christmas and I love buying presents and trying to give presents I know will be well received.

A couple of years ago, we gave all our grandsons Hover Boards.  Probably the best gifts we ever have given and the looks on the faces and the “wows!’ we heard was worth it all. They all rode those Hover Boards with ease. I tried getting on one and almost killed myself.

Last year we gave the younger boys jumping shoes. They could wear them and bounce all over.  Also all the boys got hats with beards and/or hair attached that made them all look like lumberjacks.  My daughter told me later that her boys wore the hats and the jumping shoes to the park and everyone was laughing at how they looked.  Another good gift. This year the younger boys are getting something I found online, but I can’t tell what it is, yet.  It must be popular because when I went to try to buy another one it was out of stock everywhere.  All my grandchildren are getting something that I can’t tell yet, but after Christmas I will show you what it is. I’ve been working on it all year. My grandchildren may read this so I have to keep things secret, you see.  This year our only granddaughter and our oldest grandchild announced she was getting married next year. Another great gift for her grandma.

I  have never been able to surprise David at Christmas, but he surprised me one year.  It was years and years ago and I was at home with the children and someone knocked on the door. When I answered it, a man was there who said he had a piano to deliver. I told him he had the wrong house, but he assured me he was at the right one. David had bought me a piano for Christmas!  I was so surprised.  I don’t play the piano well, but I like to try. I never took piano lessons, but I was always playing on the piano when I was a girl. One time the man who worked on the telephone lines told us our phone had been off the hook and all he could hear was children playing the piano and laughing. It was my younger brother and I.  He was a friend of the family and his daughter was my best friend at the time and they all got a kick out of hearing this about us.  Those were the days of the party line so the whole party probably had heard us!

Christmas was so magical when I was a girl.  And there always seemed to be snow. We haven’t had a white Christmas for a few years.  Every year we would take a trip to town and visit the toy store called Veach’s.  It was the most wonderful toy store piled to the ceiling with all kinds of toys, dolls, trains, etc.  I remember one year looking at bicycles. I had learned to ride a bike that Summer when I was nine years old. I learned on one of my older brothers’ bikes coasting down the driveway in the barnyard.  I was hoping for a bike that year and I got one!  It was a blue Schwinn with padded seat and a place on the back for someone else to ride.  I rode that bike all the time up and down the road in front of our house. We lived in the country and there was very little traffic so I had the whole road to myself.  I pretended my bike was a horse galloping up and down.  I was only allowed to go so far.  A friend of mine lived only about a half mile from our house over the hill. If the hill hadn’t been there, we could have seen her house from ours, but even at that, I was not allowed to ride there except on special occasions. My sister lived about a quarter of a mile the other direction and I got to ride to her house. My sister was eleven years older than me and was married and already had a baby so I loved visiting her house.

My dream was to receive a horse for Christmas, Every year from the time I could remember, I asked for a horse.  I would dream of waking up Christmas morning and running out to the barn and seeing a beautiful horse in a stall just for me, but it never happened that way. What happened was that when I was about eleven, one of my older brothers, Fred, knew a man who had two horses for sale. One was a Clydesdale and the other was an Appalousa.  Fred told me if I had any money, he would put up some and buy the horses for me. So we went to the bank where I had a very small savings account and I took out money and Fred added his and we bought the horses.  They were delivered and I was so excited.  The Clydesdale we called Charlie and the Appalousa I named Tornado and he lived up to his name in many ways.  Tornado was a stallion when we got him and stallions have a temperament and you couldn’t trust him to be gentle so Daddy had a vet come and castrate him to calm him down. Otherwise I probably would not have been able to ride him. I rode Tornado bareback all that Summer and that Christmas I got a new saddle!  Another wonderful Christmas.

I love Christmas because it is the time to celebrate Christ’s birth.  We always had a nativity on the table. My daddy had made my mother one and it had a straw roof from straw in the barn.  The figures were made of some kind of material that would break if you dropped them, Mary had a crack on her head where someone had dropped her.  Baby Jesus lay in a bed of straw. A soft blue light glowed in the stable.  I loved looking at it and imaging the holy family having to stay in a stable. A newborn king, no less.  One Christmas after I had had our first little boy, our church did a live nativity and our baby was Baby Jesus. A teen-age girl carried him and I remember hoping she wouldn’t drop him!

I have so many wonderful memories of Christmas. Sometimes I wonder how I would celebrate if I was all alone.  I probably would not put up a big tree, but I know I would decorate and listen to the carols and read the Christmas story in the Bible.  It will come, whether we celebrate with a crowd or all alone and Jesus will always be the center of it all.  It really isn’t all about the gifts in the end.

I would love to get a Christmas picture with me and the dogs, but I’m not sure how they will co-operate.  So keep watch and see what happens.

How do you feel about the election? I still believe it is being stolen from our president.  Too many lies are being told by too many people and there are way too many discrepancies in the votes to believe Biden really got more votes than our president.  If is it stolen, we all should be afraid of a government that can do that to us. Even if you believe your guy won.  Just think about it. President Trump got eleven million more votes than he did last election, he got more votes than Obama did his second run for president and yet, Biden got more votes than them both. You got to really kid yourself if you believe this vote count was legal.

Here’s to Christmases past and to elections in the future. May we still have them.  Bye.