Family

This photo represents 4 generations of my husbands family.

His grandma. His mom. Him. His children.

How fun is that?

Blessings.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from my family to yours.

Blessings.

Gingerbread House Addendum

A lovely new family moved  into our Gingerbread House...

Blessings.

Gingerbread House

One of our Christmas traditions is to make a Gingerbread House.

Everybody gets in on the act.

I think this years is quite festive ~ don't you?

Blessings.

Christmas Cookies

This last picture makes my heart happy. It is my daughter using her maternal great-grandmother's cookie press to shape chocolate cookies made with her paternal great great grandmother's recipe.

:)

Blessings.

Raking Leaves

Do you rake your leaves?

Do you rake them all into a big piles all over your yard?

Why?

And more importantly: then what?

Do you rake them up & then shovel them into plastic bags, set them at the curb & pay someone to haul them away for you?

Do you burn them?

Do you just use your ginormous, loud, gas powered leaf blower to blow them into the street & let somebody else worry about them?

If you do any of these things you are totally missing the boat.

Totally.

Fallen leaves are a gift.

They are the best, cheapest, most abundant source for mulch & compost that will ever fall on your lawn.

Don't throw them away!

Rake them up into piles yes!

But then rake those piles into your flower beds to thickly mulch your perennials & protect them from the winter cold.

Still have bunches & bunches of leaves?

Rake those big piles onto a tarp or into the wheel barrow & haul them over to your veggie garden. Spread a thick covering of them onto your garden. Over the winter they start to decompose & in the spring you can till them into your soil replenishing the nutrients & providing organic matter to the soil.

Still have more leaves even after that?

Or gasp! you say you don't have a veggie garden?  Well, you need to fix that ASAP.

But in the mean time haul all of those leftover leaves into a corner of your yard (someplace close to where you will put your new garden) & pile all those leaves up and...

...leave them alone. Yep. All alone.

Oh... you could throw some grass clippings in there & some scraps & even some manure if you happen to come across any...

And in a year or so you will have the most gorgeous, beautiful, black, crumbly compost that you have ever seen.

All from those wonderful FREE fallen leaves in your yard.

Those leaves are not a bane, they are a boon.

They are plant protecting, soil enriching red & gold gifts from God.

So stop paying someone to haul them away!

Or send them to me :)

Blessings.

Field Trip: State Capitol!

Today was fun!

And long.

Long & fun? ;)

An old friend of my husbands was recently elected to the California State Assembly.

Today was his Swearing In ceremony & we went to down to watch.

What better time to give your kids a political science lesson right?

Assemblyman Brian Dahle & us.

The family picture a super nice total stranger took for us in front of the pretty trees in the lobby of the RCRC building.

The really really super nice mounted policeman (our first ever)

See the scarf  & antlers on his horse? How could he be anything but super nice?

Okay. This is the rotunda in the capitol building. It. Was. Gorgeous. And the light shining thru it was amazing. And the colors were fabulous. And I *may* have taken a few (okay like 40) pictures of it.

It's really pretty okay??

Not terribly sure what they have to do with California... but this is Queen Isabella & Columbus. An amazingly detailed sculpture.

Okay. Yeah. Another one...

The huge, totally cool bear statue right in front of the door to the Governors office.

In case you are wondering why there is a large statue of a Grizzly Bear standing outside the governors office~ it is the state symbol  :)

The state seal~ that is the Goddess Athena. Yes, the Goddess of War is the state symbol. Go figure... 

This is supposed to be a photo of that fabulous tile floor but 2 little boys got in the way...

Just a random walking shot. Sigh. I love these.

Isn't it a pretty building?

All decked out for Christmas.

Okay check these out. Don't know if you can zoom in or Google them or what but this a man on horseback (naked by the way) raising his spear to kill the bear attacking the horse.

This one is even better: a woman on horseback (naked as well) clutching a baby to her breast while the horse is being attacked by a buffalo.

????

WHAT was up with these people? Who designed these things?

:)

Squint hard ~ that's us.

Pretty tree (stupid boom was in the way :P )

The ornaments were so colorful & fun!

These last few were all taken from the roof of the parking garage.

 LOVE the colors.

It was a really fun, full day.

And we met some of the nicest people. Not what we expected in the hustle & bustle of the big city.

It was nice.

And it was nice to be able to support an old friend who is doing a very necessary job that there is not enough money in the world to entice me to do!

:)

Blessings.

Matryoshka Dolls

I have a 'thing' for Matryoshka dolls.

Big surprise right?

They are just so fun.

The way they stack into each other & come in all the sizes & it's just ....fun.  :)

So I just got the coolest gift...

Matryoshka doll measuring cups!

Aren't they cute???

So red & shiny & stacky...

Each half has a different measurement.

See their cute smiling faces?

Best gift ever :)

Blessings.

Thankful for pies.

I spent a really fun day this week teaching my girl the secrets of baking delicious pies.

What might those secrets be you ask?

Well. The most important part of baking pies is butter.

Yep. Butter.

Butter in every aspect of the pie from the crust to the filling.

Butter makes everything better.

And just for those who may not know: margarine is NOT butter. It's margarine. And margarine doesn't make anything better. :P

The second secret to fabulous pies?

Brown sugar. Brown sugar makes rich, thick, gooey delicious pie filling.

White sugar makes pale, anemic, wimpy pies.

Got that?

Good.

What other secrets are there to making delicious, fabulous, yummy pies?

Pies you just can't wait to get out of the oven?

Sorry.

You're on your own for the rest of the secrets :)

After all, how will it become your special signature dish if in reality it is actually  my special signature dish?

See the conundrum here? ;)

Aren't they pretty? :)

Blessings.

The Tale of the Ugly Chairs

This project has been a long time in the making.

A loooonnnnnggg time.

So, like 13 years ago, when we bought our first house, we bought a set of patio chairs.

You know the lovely, hard plastic, white chairs that stack up & were, you know....cheap.

Yep. Those.

So they were great & all. We had a place to sit but after a few years they began to look well, not so nice.

Dirty.

So you scrub them down each year & call it good.

Then I first learned about the spray paint for plastic & I thought "Cool! I can paint the chairs!"

And due to time, money, life & mostly money, that is as far as that project got. Sigh.

So a few more years go by...

(did y'all ever notice I say "so" a lot? Hmmmmm...)

And the chairs just get uglier

You wanna sit in that right?

So (see? there I go again!) this house that we just moved to has a nice patio right out the slider doors & those ugly chairs just weren't getting any House Beautiful points you know?

It was time for drastic measures.

It was time actually buy the spray paint.

Did you know spray paint comes in really really pretty colors?

Seriously. You need to paint something. Now.

My latest color kick is turquoise & I have always had a weakness for red, yellow & pink so there you go ~ a standard 50's color pallet Oh So pleasing to the eye.

It took a LOT of paint. They don't pack as much into those cans as they used to.

It took a can PER chair !

But aren't they looking better?

And just check this babies out!

Under the twinkle lights & everything :)

Happy sigh.

I really, really,really Like my chairs now.

Blessings.