My Little Artist...

Winter/Fall Gardening

In the midst of our post-thanksgiving lounging this morning we learned that Grandfather was out working on the garden. We quickly dressed and went to join him. His garden has become rather overgrown the past two years. This year in particular. Last November, a couple days before thanksgiving he fell from a barn roof and suffered a very serious break to his ankle. Needless to say, a lot of his projects have gone with minimal attention. The garden fence was not only suffering rotten posts but at least half of it is/was completely covered in wild blackberries. Today we continued the previously begun project of tearing out parts of the fence and getting rid of some of the brambles. Also we worked on pruning some of the trees. Grandfather wants to expand the area under the protection of fencing, which suits us just fine as we will be using the space as well. There is SO much work to be done, but hopefully we will get around to doing it all and have a nice gardening area ready come spring. The biggest and most important project will be the fence. Around here it is absolutely pointless to have a vegetable (or flower for that matter) garden without a very tall fence. Unless your point was to feed the deer...

Here critter #2 is listening to the flames crackle after Papa has jumped on the pile "to give it more oxygen" :)

Tackling an old plum tree. This tree has gorgeous dark red plums. All the fruit trees are suffering badly from years of not being pruned. None of us know exactly what we are doing. But we dive in with a will. Cutting dead branches and branches that are rubbing against one another is not so bad. Trying to shape the tree and cut out excess branches to leave only the best ones is something of a mystery.

Now Grandfather has the leaf blower out to get the fire going. The boys love to hang on to it and feel really big helping with the fire.

More than once when I was sawing at near-dead apple branches with this beauty, I thought longingly of a man with a chainsaw cutting through the limb like it was butter. But, sadly, no chainsaws were in evidence today.

Learning to tie his boots...

And, last but not least...

Tonight's the night. :) Hurray! Less than 2 1/2 hours to go...

Smile Awards and Breaking Holiday Rules...

Fawndear gave me this sweet award a few days ago. :) I'm finally getting around to posting about it. I will get around to passing it on eventually, but for now, Thanks again fawndear :)



So, I have this funny little holiday rule. I don't listen to Christmas music (or dig for Christmas decorations) until the weekend after thanksgiving. It just irks me that the stores go straight from Halloween to Christmas. Now, I know this is because you don't by tons of candy/costumes/ gifts/decorations for thanksgiving. Naturally the store will decorate for their biggest money makers. But, it happens downtown too. Christmas decorations everywhere. Anyway, I just don't like thanksgiving to get lost under Christmas. Thus, my little holiday rule.

This year I broke my rule for the first time (I think) ever. You see, I picked up this beauty last week...

I wasn't going to open it yet. I knew the temptation to listen to it would be too strong. Then one night my kids would NOT settle down at bedtime. Nothing I did helped. In desperation I asked them if they would like to listen to the new enya album. They LOVE enya (and we lost our other album, sadly, so they've been deprived for a while) they agreed to be very still and quiet if I turned it on for them. Whatdya know, it worked :)

The only problem was, now the album was out in the open. It only took two days for me to surrender to temptation... OK, so there are only three Christmas songs on the album, so I didn't break my rule too badly :)

For Fawndear :)

Things That Are Not

This is me so Not working on Christmas presents like I *should* be.




Not happy.

Where I am Not going to be tonight...sigh... (OK, OK, I get to go next weekend, so I can't pout too much:)

Not enough birthday candles. Apparently this is VERY important as hubby and FIL counted and recounted and counted again to PROVE there were only thirty-two candles on the cake.

Not trained to pick up after himself.

Not quite 8...Last year Hubby was freaking about having a 7-yr-old. I guess this year it's my turn... I CAN'T HAVE AN EIGHT YEAR OLD CHILD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKK! ;)

Today's Pictures

Do you see the bird?

This rainbow lasted about three minutes...

So sad. No one will push me up the driveway. . .

Hopefully...

Might be going here in a few months...
Daniel Hoover Children's Village, Dixville, Liberia.

Movies and Ice Cream

Hubby and I were recently to be found eating this...

While watching this...

A perfect in house "date" (while the critters were sleepin)

I remember absolutely loving this movie years ago. I think I've watched it two or three times in the past. This time I was not quite as captivated. In the first place we were constantly cracking up over the hilariously cheesy 80's music blaring through the medieval settings. :) About halfway through the film we quit noticing quite as much. The other thing that threw me was Michelle Ffiefer (no idea if i spelled that right). When I first watched Ladyhawke I had never seen her before. I have since seen her play some pretty dippy roles and I had a hard time taking her seriously. Oh well. We still had fun. Matthew Broderick is so hilarious and cute, and Rutger Hauer is perfect as Navarre.

I think someone should do a remake of this movie, that would be fun to see. They would have to use friesians though or it won't be worth watching. Half my love for the movie was Navarre's splendid mount lol...

Good Clean Fun