Making it my own!

My sister, mother, niece and I all went shopping to this wonderful place -- Old Town Spring -- on one of my recent visits to my sister's house. There was a shop there that I totally fell in love with. Thad's had all kinds of unique items and lots and lots of fantastic Christmas things. There was a beautiful, unusual wreath that I wanted so badly! It was large and full of vintage ornaments! You could hardly see the green of the foliage for all the great little do-dads. If money was no concern, I would have left with it that day, but I live in the real world where people get laid off right before the holidays, so I didn't.

The wreath at Thad's had a vintage Santa cup (I put a new one on my wreath, it only cost $1 at Michael's!), a vintage white plastic reindeer (we had some when I was a child, but I'm looking for some now), vintage glass ornaments (I put a few on mine) and several small wrapped packages (momma has some that she's bringing to me).

My wreath isn't quite as wonderful as the one at Thad's, but I do love it. Even though I don't consider it finished yet, it is finished for this year. I used ornaments I had already. Ornaments that looked vintage to me, although most of them aren't that old. In the next year, I will continue to look for vintage Christmas things and ornaments to add to my wreath. I want it to end up being just as spectacular as the wreath at Thad's.

Thank You, Charmaine!

I've shown you the photo I took of my son and father before. Now, you get to see it with the painting my wonderful, talented sister-in-law Charmaine painted for me. I'm just in awe over her talent! You should see her quilts. Her applique is amazing. Now, she's taken up painting and after just a very few lessons, I think she's ready to teach. I hope to have her paint our Elly next year. Elly escaped our fenced yard and was hit by a car that ended her life last April, in the prime of her life. She was only six and a black German Shepherd dog. I miss her so much.

Charmaine has been such a blessing in my life. I met her when my mother-in-law (her mother) had had a heart attack and she, my hubby (her brother) and I were going to drive to Mississippi together to see her. As it turned out, we didn't make it in time, so we went there to plan and attend her funeral. That was in 1983, I think. Since then, she's always been there when I've needed her. She's a true friend. A sister. I'm blessed to have a sister by birth, a sister by marriage and a soul sister. I have an extremely good friend too and a mother that I love and get along with. Who could ask for more?

Thank you, Charmaine. One more thing -- I did have trouble deciding where to hang the painting. I knew it deserved to be in the living room where everyone who visited could see it, but I wanted it in my bedroom. That way, if there was ever a fire in the middle of the night, I could save it. Now, I just hope that if we're ever unfortunate enough to have a fire, that I'm wide awake and I can get it and the watercolor of our home that is upstairs.

Now and This Week

I'm going to be out of town at the end of the week so I'll be posting my photo of the week early. I'm going to the Houston Quilt Festival!



I've got a lot of things to do before I leave early Wednesday morning to meet my momma and sister for my dear momma's 70th birthday celebration. We're going to lunch at a restaurant that has a reputation for being haunted! Mom and I love stuff like that.



It's also my hubby's birthday. He totally understands me not being home to celebrate with him so that I can be there to celebrate with momma. He and I will celebrate his birthday when I return. We were going to celebrate his birthday before I left, but our water is funky tasting and smelling right now and I think it would ruin the chicken for frying, so the celebration has been put on hold. That is one of the occasional drawbacks to living in a rural area. Our water gets nasty at times.



It would have also been my dad's birthday. He would have been 71 this year. Yes, you read that right, all of them -- my husband and both parents share the same birthday.



As for other updates on my life, I'm doing really good now. After a lot of work, with a counselor and alone, I've been able to forgive both friends who had hurt me so badly at the end of August. I've told the friend in person who lives locally and mailed a letter to the friend who lives out of state. I have decided that even though I've forgiven the person that is out of state, I no longer want that person in my life, so they are actually a former friend. I'm happy again! So happy in fact that I'm having trouble figuring out how to finish the miniature quilt that I had started to work out some of my Rage on. I had started to embroider the word rage, but now I think I'll take that out and just do the quilting I had planned to. I'll still title it Rage though.

Photo of the Week 26 of 39 -- Still Life

I took this photo at my sister's house last month. She and her family have just moved back to Texas. Hurray! I get to see them now more than once a year now. This photo was taken during some of the unpacking. My sister has a lot of really wonderful old things. I used to have a lot of wonderful old things too, but never as many or as wonderful as my sister has. I've gotten rid of most of mine because I've finally realized that I really hate to dust them and wonderful old things can make your house look really horrible if you don't dust them.

The next theme is "spiral".

Funny!

I accidentally posted on my nephew's blog earlier. I don't know exactly how I did it. I had logged onto my blog to post on one of my sister's laptops. I wrote my post and then clicked "publish post". It popped up on my nephew's blog at that point and not on mine. Confusing to someone like me. My sister was surprised to see that her son had a blog. He'll be eleven on Wednesday.

I told him about the accidental posting later, so that he could go in and delete it. Unfortunately, he doesn't remember his password, so not only can he not delete it, he can't even post on it. Anyway, my nephew was telling his mom that he had asked her if he could start the blog and that she had told him that it was fine with her "as long as it didn't cost any damn money". I thought that was a hoot!

Photo of the week 13 of 39 -- Nostalgia

I had a lot of ideas for the theme this week. I was leaning toward taking a photo of board games. I miss playing board games and whenever I happen to see them in the toy isles of some store, it always reminds me of my childhood. Boardgames, coloring books, Crayola Crayons, blowing bubbles, playing go fish or some other card game and even dominoes all remind me of childhood. I don't think my son has memories of these things and I'm pretty sure my grand kids won't either.

I picked the photo of watermelons for a totally different reason. I was born in January and usually got to have my favorite chocolate cake to celebrate. My sister was born on June 16th. One year, for whatever reason, my father asked her if she would like a birthday cake or watermelon! She said watermelon and a new tradition was born! She was thrilled and I was jealous. There was no way to get a watermelon in January. Dad took both us girls to a local fruit stand that happened to have refrigerated watermelons, so we could pick out one that was already cold! My dad never picked out a bad watermelon either. We were able to celebrate as soon as we got home. We put candles in it, sang "Happy Birthday" and everything, just as if it were a cake. It was the best. To this day, when June 16th hits, I start craving watermelon. To this day, I still have a hard time picking a good one out. The only time I could pick out good watermelon was when I was pregnant with my son. Of course, that could have been because I truly craved them then and it didn't matter if it was a good melon or not, I was going to eat it (after all in February of that year, I craved peaches and the only ones that could be found were three green ones -- to this day, they were the best peaches I've ever had). I would eat a 20 pound melon in 2 days by myself during that time. Watermelon is very nostalgic for me.

Next weeks theme is "adolescence".