Housewife, 54

 December has been an interesting month so far. We got more outdoor decorations up than we have done previously here. along the front walkway And I re-strung the lights for the star over the garage. Both of these outdoor projects took extra work as the old lights had outages and we had to get new lights and re-work the star as well as the Tree outline.  The deer are new, but after a heavy snow and some fierce winds, we have had to re-set them a couple of times! Indoor decorations have been set up in stages.  Wth my birthday on the 10th, we have had a tradition of not getting into Christmas until after then.  So on the 11th, I got things going! I am loving small table-top trees!  My heavy Georg Jensen ornaments look nice hanging from the curtain rail! For the Nativity this year I decided to forego the stable. It is huge and we can't see out the window when it is up here!  I tried to find a lightbulb for the star, but they are sold out...and ones I ordered from Amazon did not fit.  I

 ALL RIGHT! I don't usually rant, but I am totally annoyed with all those people who do ornrey things and make life difficult for the rest of us! Today's case in point is the travails of ONE half of a married couple trying to do things with accounts held by both in joint.... but you can't really do that anymore, can you (the plural 'you' here)?  SomeONE has to be the account holder, and anyone else is just an "added user", and ONLY that main account holder can make any changes to the account.  That is because so many back-biting couples have done nasty things to accounts held in the old-fashioned "joint" fashion during divorce processes.  My first experience with this was when I was traveling alone (with kids, but sans husband) and tried to use our old "joint" credit card that had HIS name on it to buy clothing for the boys.  The store would not take the card because it did not have MY name on it!  Today's issue is similar... we nee

 Well, we had a lovely day, but I did not get my camera out much.... I did a lot of the prep work and made up things that I could do ahead.  On Tuesday I made bread (for dressing) and dinner rolls, then put together a birthday dinner for hubby.  Did not get a photo....  He was 65 and got his favorite beef and noodles with German Chocolate cake for his birthday meal. On Wednesday Grandson did not have school so he helped me to make the cranberry relish. Using MY Grandma's food grinder to crush the cranberries and orange. Then we added sugar and tasted... sugar needs time to dissolve and mix in! Then I came up with the idea to make place cards.  We did stamping and also a bit of coloring in... Later that evening I made the pies, Pumpkin from my own garden, but store-bought apples. Photo taken after one piece was taken..... And then The Big Day.  I made my last contribution, the dressing, at home. Then we went over to my son's where he and d-i-l like to entertain and have the big

Well, we have finally had a 'killing frost" so the garden is done for the year. At the last moment I got a few more onions, a handfull of broccoli, very few small carrots, and we picked quite a few dried bean pods from the pole beans, so I can save them for using the beans in my no-meat meals. So not too bad for a gardening year. It seems you never get a year that is perfect for every plant - last year we had great carrots and no squash, and this year was the opposite! Me, picking bean pods Hubby, helping with the clean-up Empty beds and trellis - except for perennial flowers   Last week we have even had our first snow!  WHAT a horrible day!  The wind blew like crazy, it started with rain, getting colder by the minute, and finally the hard, icy snow.  Thankfully not much snow and it all melted off in a couple of days.  Now it has warmed up again and a couple of days have been lovely.  We even got out to to some transplanting.  DH dug up the currant bushes that were taking ov