Christmas Tree, oh christmas Tree…

Nathan and I usually go out and cut our own Christmas tree in early December. He always applies for a permit and we try to make a small trip out of it. We always seem to make some interesting memories on these trips.

One year one of Nathan’s coworkers offered us accommodation’s at their cabin/ store. We showed up and could not believe our eyes.. The whole place was full of stuff for sale, the pictures on the wall, the blankets on the bed, the stuffed animals, the furniture.. We felt so uncomfortable we found a motel to stay the night in.

We distinctly remember a place called The Blue Sapphire… It was a hole in the wall bar. We went because we were so bored. We played cards at the bar and chatted with the locals. It was interesting!

A few winters back, our first winer here in Flagstaff we went out to cut our tree down and got stuck in a huge storm. We were just finishing cutting our tree down and it got really overcast and cold. Once we got back to civilization it began to snow. We got gas and figured we would be alright driving in the storm so we continued on our way back home..

Once we entered the town on strawberry the car started to veer off the road. The road was very ice covered and I knew I no longer had control so I told him to hang on and we went sliding into a very deep ditch in front of the Windmill Corner Inn. The inn keepers son ran out to help us push ourselves out of the ditch and he offered to let us sleep by the fireplace in the lobby since they had no rooms available. We opted to continue driving home in the snow and ended up taking about 3 hours to travel from Strawberry to Flagstaff.

We were so impressed by the kindness of the inn keepers son that we decided to try and check the place out this year on our way through Strawberry.. The innkeeper was nice and the price was low but it wasn’t quite what we were looking. We ended up driving into Payson to find a room with a bathtub for my aching back. We stayed at the Majestic Mountain Inn and had a great dinner at the privately owned Fargo’s Steakhouse.

The thing that surprised me was that we encountered more hunting excursions in the last two days than I have ever experienced in my life!! Hunters were everywhere in trucks, ATV’s and camping. I more dead deer/ elk than I would have liked to..

The tree cutting adventure went well, we had fun and didn’t get shot by hunters so we are happy! Our tree is the perfect size and we got to play in the snow and take some photos!!

Post turkey day reflections & a new holiday tradition: The Advent Basket

Thanksgiving day Adalyn took her first solo steps. Time is just flying by. Everly starts school this last week. Last week we also had our first snow flurries. We found a butterfly living in our office. I am betting it’s the offspring of one of the many bugs Everly has captured and brought inside.

I cut off a bunch of my own hair and im flabbergasted that Christmas is just a few short weeks away.

I’ve been working hard at planning and prepping for our new advent tradition… The advent basket. Continue reading “Post turkey day reflections & a new holiday tradition: The Advent Basket”

Getting the holiday ducks in a row and not looking like a hobo anymore!

Last night the temperature got down to 8 degrees here in Evansville, right now it is about 20 degrees and I am inches from my space heater trying to keep warm.

Can you believe there are only a few days left until Christmas? We managed to get lots of stuff taken care of this weekend and we even got to see a holiday show while we were at it.

We saw the Evansville Dance Theater’s Performance of The Nutcracker on Saturday night. We were expecting some more like this video.

What we got was not the traditional ballet presentation we were expecting (I am a ballet snob being a trained dancer and all) but it was cute and entertaining. It was also cool to see such a wide range of dancers executing the still being perfected technical ballet stuff they teach you as an aspiring dancer. Kids from about 5 all the way up to teens performed in this and some really are on the way to being stars!

Then we had a nice dinner out at an Italian restaurant and blitzed Walmart at midnight for some stocking stuffers and pet gifts. We got a ton of cat toys and also grabbed Dixie a soccer ball and some big bones to chew. We also found a fun “parents to be” ornament for our tree that we liked.

Sunday N helped me color my hair after we did some house cleaning in preparation for the holiday. I’ve been waiting several weeks for the green light on hair coloring. My doc said hair color in the 1st trimester is not proven safe so I waited till the 2nd trimester to dye away my gray hairs. They were getting bad and I started to joke that I was looking like a hobo with my frizz and multi-colored hair.

We cannot believe that after the holidays I’ll be 4 months pregnant. It doesn’t seem like it has been that long at all, it also means we’ll only have 5 remaining months to get all our ducks in a row. Oh and Christmas is only 3 days away! Time flies.

Oh, the mold tests are looking moldy. It seems we have some mold spores in the basement that are different from those naturally present outside, you can see this in the varying colors of mold growing. Here is what they looked like over the weekend:

The outside sample test resulted in only black and white mold growth, the basement one resulted in black, white, greenish/ blue and yellow mold growth.

Our second basement mold test is sill incubating.

So how are the holiday preparations shaping up for you? Got everything you need? Do you still have baking and wrapping to do? I am trying to stratgize the holiday stocking thing right now. How do you normally handle stuffing and presenting stockings?

NaBloPoMo ends and I made it!

Today marks the end of NaBloPoMo and I made it. Woot!

We also went out and bought our christmas tree from a local boyscout troop. We didn’t cut our own tree down this year as we usually do since we didn’t have a feel for out new home town yet and we didn’t have time to file for a permit. Next year we will try to follow tradition again.

Anyway we are drinking eggnog and decorating the tree up tonight and we didn’t get any snow. And the basement is full of water again since it rained last night… We expect more water down there tomorrow morning.

Good thing we have a letter out to the landlord about the flooding that will start the resolution process. The thing is the basement looks like it was finished back in the 70’s or 80’s so if it has been flooding and soaking all the wood paneling and carpeting since then we are bound to be growing som mold back there right?

Know where we can get our hands on a mold test kit? We do want to make sure we aren’t breathing in mold that has grown as a result of past years flooding. If we are watch out, I am going to raise holy hell!

Today is a snow day!! It's still snowing!

dsc03102.JPGWell, school was canceled today! It’s a snow day because the roads are not clear.. They are very snow packed. It’s such a pretty sight! When we first move into this house (we are renting) we didn’t think we would be her for the holidays because we are renting on a month to month basis since the house if for sale. We figured the house would sell soon and we would have to move out. Surprise, the house has not sold because it kind of over priced and the economy is not doing so well so we may not have to move for a while!

This house would be a nice started home for if it was not so over priced. It’s a 2 bedroom, 2 bath little home outside of town. We want to live outside of town because we enjoy the wildlife and the forest living. Maybe when the housing market drops more so will the asking price of this place!

We put up or store bought Christmas tree (we could not make it out to cut or own down in the weather) last night with the fire roaring. The fire is still going and we are keeping warm while looking at the tree.

I also published the December edition of Motivational Writing over at Gather. If you are looking for some advice or tips on getting through the holidays while staying positive and happy you should check out the article!

So today I have to figure out how to get sweat stains from the arm pits of shirts. I have a few shirts that are pretty awful looking and I am afraid they have gotten so bad that they can’t be cleaned. I have tried soaking them in bleach and also in peroxide.

 Now I am turning to my online friends for advice.. What is you best homemade remedy for pit stained shirts? Please help!

Oh, if you want to see a video of my doggie and boyfriend shoveling the snow you can by visiting this link that takes you to my gather contributions.

It's a stormy, stormy day.. Yay!

december-rain-snow.JPG

Well, today has been stormy and interesting. My dog ate some chips last night and got very sick today while we were gone. We crate train her so she is in the crate when we are gone.. It’s a very big crate but not big enough when you are having stomach trouble and leaking from both ends.. She made a stinky mess of her crate, bedding and the pillow I made her. She is better now but it was a messy and dramatic situation.

When I was meeting N for brunch today some lady gunned it into the parking spot I had been waiting for. It was a stormy day so driving and parking was difficult. Anyway this upset me quite a bit. Some people are just so nasty and rude. This aggravates me even more during the holidays because that is when everyone should be displaying “good will towards men” and all that… Lately people have just been the opposite.

Our Christmas tree plans are still up in the air. If it snows a bunch on Sunday we wont be going out to cut our tree down… We will have to use my fake tree instead. Well we will see how the weather plays out. How has your day been?

More winter weather is on the way and we have more babies!

Well it looks like I am getting my wish for snow! We had a light snow storm last weekend and we are expected to get another one this weekend that will actually be starting tomorrow. This is great for Christmas cheer but bad for Christmas tree cutting. We had planned to cut our tree down last weekend but the storm stopped us, then we said we would do it this weekend but it looks as though the storm is stopping us again… We will see how the weather pans out, if it’s not too bad we may still go chop our tree down on Sunday.

Some of you already know that one of our finch eggs hatched this week, well I have more to report in that area! We now have two baby finches in the nest; daddy finch appears to be keeping them warm and fed so we may have some finches to give away for the holidays! It’s pretty cool to be able to witness the whole procreating process here in our home! We are so excited about the babies!

Our car drama has also worked its self out nicely. The woman who hit us was very nice and she explained the whole situation to her insurance company. They are taking care of the damage and our car rental while the damage is being repaired. We had an estimate done today on the damage and it came out to $2800! The shop will have our car for 10 business days (from Dec 17th – Dec 27th) and we will have a rental car for that time. We are thankful that the insurance clam has been easy and hassle free but we feel bad for the lady because of how costly the incident has turned out to be. At least it was just a parking lot fender bender and nobody was hurt!

Well, that is all I have to report here! I hope everyone stays warm and safe this week!

 

 

Have you put up your holiday decorations yet?

Several of our neighbors have really gone all out with holiday decorations. I am amazed at how many people have started and completed putting up their holiday decorations, it is only November 27th! We haven’t even retrieved our holiday decorations from the storage unit yet and some of our neighbors have all their decorations up and proudly gleaming at night. We are either really behind in decorating or other are just jumping the gun.

We are planning to dig out our decorations this week and this weekend we will go cut down our own Christmas tree. We are slowly preparing to do the holiday decorations and we have been eying the energy efficient Christmas lights that are for sale in the stores. We plan to buy some, it’s cool how many sizes and style are available. The choices can be confusing and misleading though.

There are several types of holiday lights available I am told that “The LED Christmas lights offered in most big box stores use a 2-piece construction. This configuration limits the life of an otherwise long lasting LED bulb because it is not moisture proof.” It is best to choose LED Christmas lights that utilize a 1-piece construction because these are weatherproof, moisture proof and have a longer life thus saving your more money.

An interesting tidbit of information that I just learned is that LED Christmas lights are stronger than the other alternatives! This is a great news for me because our cats make it a mission to knock all the pretty things off our tree and onto the hardwood floor thus shattering and breaking them. I am hoping that these more efficient LED Christmas lights will be able to with stain the destructive forces of my kitties this holiday season.

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