Whew. FINALLY got to take a break this week. I took the opportunity to go to dinner with Monte. We hit up our favorite Indian restaurant. Yum!
The nights are getting chilly (it’s December, already?!). But no wintry weather was going to keep me from having some ice cream for dessert 🙂
Hey, without rewards, where would we be?
It’s that time of year – my Christmas music book has made it’s way to the top of the music stand.
And it is open to this song. I really love playing this one. But, in looking at this just now, I realize that it’s not really a Christmas carol. Or maybe it is, because it’s basically about Mary, who was front and center on the big day.
Here’s a youtubelink if you would like to enjoy it. Note that I know I will never be able to play it like this… I don’t even have a big-kid music book. But a girl can dream, right?
Monday. I won’t even go into what my day was like. Suffice to say I didn’t get to capture a moment to share here.
But I’m determined to keep this 365 project going…so here ’tis. Captured in the wee hours of the next morning 🙂
Every once in a while it’s important to take time out to stop and smell the roses, or to stare at the lava lamp – whatever works for you.
I put up a Christmas wreath today. I’ll probably put a few other decorations up this weekend.
It will be over before we know it, but I really love celebrating this time of year. Monte was playing some swinging carols this morning. It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas…
I decided to brave the Black Friday hoardes, figuring that the things I was shopping for might keep me out of the mainstream retail frenzy.
I want to put curtains up over the sliding glass doors in the gameroom this winter. So, I set out with some color swatches for the wall and floor color to find something that would work.
I found some things I really liked. However, I am going to have to keep looking, as I realized about an hour into it that what I needed was a traverse curtain rod. Two of them, actually – one that opens to the left, and one that opens to the right… so that we don’t have curtains blocking the doorway when they are drawn. *sigh*
Back to the drawing board.
I baked 2 pies and yeast rolls, and sides for the feast. Monte was on turkey duty.
At exactly 1:09PM I stepped outside to cut some fresh rosemary to put inside the turkey before we put it on the grill. It was completely still, and 77 degrees. While I was out there the wind began to blow out of the north – the much talked about cold front had just arrived. By 1:30 the temperature had dropped into the 50’s. We knew it was coming but it’s still amazing to experience it.
As I was standing in front of the kitchen window, this buck deer trotted by. We usually see lots of deer in the winter, but I haven’t seen one in a while.
Well, one year ago today my dad passed away. I can’t believe how quickly a year has gone by. Rest in peace, dad.
I’m thankful for so many things. Friends. Family. Good fortune.
I hope your day was as nice as mine.
Happy Thanksgiving!
This is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I worked til about 1:00 and then the guy came to install the new blinds in the gameroom. I’m hoping they will ward off the cold this year. And just in time, too! It has been crazy hot and muggy here all week. We had a high of 87 today. But TOMORROW night it is supposed to be in the 30’s and then perhaps into the 20s on Friday night.
I think this is the cold blast that brought snow to Seattle over the weekend… it’s just taking its time making it down here.
This is a shot of part of the little forest in our backyard. We have a normal back yard/lawn area behind the house, beyond that a thick stand of trees, and then beyond that a clearing in the part of the back yard by the shop that gets full sun.
I really love my little forest of trees in the middle. We have hacked at the scrub trees and pruned tons of branches every year to help out the native trees – but it still looks wild.
The sun was sinking low on this last warm autumn afternoon. I’m looking forward to some rest and relaxation. I hope you are too.
Finally got away from work this afternoon. I started checking things off my holiday-vacation-to-do-list.
This is a shot of the sky above IKEA, stop #2 on my list for the day. I thought the light and shadows looked interesting and tried to capture some of it.
I ended the day with a nice dinner at Chez Nous. Delicious! Thanks Lori, Laura and Ann!
We had another nice weekend. The weather was really warm – in the 70s. Monte worked on the boat and I worked on fun stuff.
If you recall my post a few weeks back about the catboat windtoy that monte made me… well this weekend I painted it and we put it up, and it works great! Here is a link to an animated gif to see it in motion (you’ll have to wait a bit for the 2+ MB file to load).
I also tweaked my blog a bit and have indulged myself by getting a dedicated domain name for it: sheila365.com. It’s still hosted on WordPress, but you can get to it directly with the new domain name. Any and all old links to sheila365.wordpress.com will still work, too.
This is a shot of the Chinaberry tree outside the shop. All the leaves have fallen and it’s just loaded berries. Monte suggested taking a picture of the many chinaberries looking up against the sky. This is my take at it. The sun was just dropping so there’s a bit of pink in the sky.
I saw the early morning sun filtering through the leaves in of the red oak in our front yard this morning. By the time I got my camera and went outside the light fog had lifted and it wasn’t quite as pretty as I saw through the window.
But it is a beautiful tree and a beautiful Fall morning.
It got pretty warm today, actually. But I know the cold days are on the way.
…and pretty soon all of these leaves will be on the lawn.
Since today is Macro Friday I was looking for a good closeup shot to take.
When I travel to a new country, I like to pick up a little trinket for myself to remind me of the visit. This is a small porcelain jewelry box from Scotland with a hand-carved celtic pewter medallion.
I was searching for a subject to shoot tonight. One of the things I happened upon was this dried bouquet of flowers that I keep on top of our wedding album. I like how the shot turned out. But, I like it also because of the memory the bouquet brings back every time I walk by.
We had booked an awesome estate called House on the Hill for the weekend where both our out-of-town families stayed. It had a main residence, 3 cottages, a pool, beautiful grounds and an amazing view of the Hill Country. It was also the location where we held the rehearsal dinner and reception. (it was AWESOME)
But I digress. On the day of the wedding, the florist was supposed to deliver the bride’s bouquet to the House on the Hill for the formal family photos, and the rest of the flowers to the church.
Well, it didn’t work out that way. When the time came for photos before everyone headed to the church… no bride’s bouquet. Uh oh. Ok, no biggie. We would just take the photos without a bouquet. My sister, Noreen, disappeared and came back about 5 minutes later with a hastily assembled bouquet of flowers and ribbon from the rehearsal dinner the night before. How sweet is that? That was the bouquet we used for the photo shots, which turned out lovely.
While I LOVE the brides bouquet that I picked out for the wedding, and did get to carry that down the aisle, this small bouquet is the one I kept and the one I remember fondly.
Yes. That’s right. Another shot of a zinnia.
Could be the last one of the year.
But I’m not making any promises. 😉
Sheila365 
