Happy Brrrrrr Year!

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Oh it has been cold!!! Cold enough that wood that should have lasted us another two weeks is gone. Brrr! And… three people, Morgan, Dan and I in one small main room was… Crowded! We were all snuggling up to the wood stove. Add in texting, videos, dinners, and phone calls for three and chaos reigned. While I was sad for Morgan to go back to school and Dan back to work, I have been glad for the silence. I might even get some sewing done!

I have a number of projects on the back burner so to speak. A coat, SCA garb, woodworking, knitting, and um.. oh yeah.. Writing! Biggest issue is keeping warm enough.

Dan and I had a nice New Year’s Eve. Smoked salmon and salmon paste in little pastries with fresh spinach salad, rye crackers, etc. We did stay up until midnight, and then curled up under the heavy quilt. 🙂

We did finish one major project before the new year. Lighting! We installed 4 lights and one ceiling fan. The difference is amazing! Next up on the Wendy House agenda is a ‘dog house’ for the plumbing connections that are outside, flooring in the living room and then closets.

Here are the lights. The pendulum lights are in the ‘living room’ area. The round ones are in the kitchen area and the ceiling fan is above our bed.

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Before I forget…

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We did have a white Christmas. It was lovely. I spent the day with my parents, Daniel and his SO Angela and Morgan. We had a lovely dinner, but missed Dan. He of course is still in Cheyenne.

A few days later, once the snow had melted, I had a young buck in my front yard eating berries. I stood next to our truck and tried to take pictures, as our tomcat, Redtom, was stalking the deer. I startled the deer, which in turn saw the cat. They startled each other and both ran. A few minutes later, the buck came back to eat berries and Redtom kept his back to the buck with the “That was NOT a mouse!” look on his face.

New Year’s was interesting. I spent most of the time trying to calm down Brandy, our dog, who did not care for the fireworks. She was upset until at least 4am. Yawwwwn… I ate dinner with my parents and Mom sent Brandy a bag full of ham scraps and bones. It helped. 🙂

I am hoping that 2013 will be a good year.

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Happy New Year!

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    Wow! Every time I thought I’d have ten minutes to sit and write a post, it disappeared. Now it’s a whole new year! (ok, you can stop groaning now.)

As it is, On Sunday John and I were suppose to go to Pueblo to do the shopping. However, while I was finally over my headache from the snow glare, John was feeling poorly. His back was really giving him pain. So, I grabbed Little Morgan and Dan to go do the shopping. We drove to Pueblo and hit the main stores. Vitamin Cottage, Sam’s Club, Petsmart, Target and Walmart. We also took a side trip to Barnes and Noble. Dan got a magazine on woodworking, I got the latest Patricia Briggs novel and Morgan got two books on French. She is learning it in school and we wanted to give her a bit of help. We went to Chili’s for dinner. It was so funny as Morgan was looking through the appetizer menu and didn’t realize that there was a whole dinner menu behind that! Oh the glutenous glee when she found out. She opted for a huge burger while Dan had a steak and I had ribs. Yummm!

We got home around 10:30pm and by the time we unloaded all of the groceries, I was exhausted. John was still in a lot of pain, so we went straight to bed. Even slept in the next morning.

I got a roast out to thaw on Monday for New Year’s dinner and made up a bit of soy sour cream dip so that I could have something while the rest had ranch dip and caviar. It tasted pretty good. I have found a pesto that doesn’t have cheese in it and I used that as a flavour. We all relaxed and sorted out movies while watching TV. We finally started a film, and then the next thing we knew it was midnight. Kisses all round and sips of scotch. Then John popped out the back door and came round the front to First Foot the house. It’s a custom we picked up in England. You send a tall dark and handsome man to go to the front door and be the First Foot across the threshold. They traditionally bring gifts and say a little statement as they come in. “I bring food for the house, food for the soul, fuel for the house and money for the household.” The food is often some sort of cake or bread. The food for the soul is whiskey, and fuel for the house being coal or wood. The last item is usually coinage.

We slept in and the next morning we all worked on cleaning house. John tackled various flat surfaces that had gotten piled high with his stuff. I cleaned part of my room, the living room, took down all of the holiday decorations, put the Winter altars up, supervised the kitchen and breakfast nook cleaning and did laundry. Oh, and I put the roast in the oven for dinner.

Dan was feeling rather off because his knee was giving him grief, so I took dinner over to him after we had eaten. Of course, I first footed the house! A bit of a laugh as I am short, gray and female, but…. it worked.

Today I cleaned up the office and tried to keep Dan in bed. (ha!) He’s feeling ill. I also thawed the pipes which have been frozen for the last four days. After we got water flowing, I filled in the ditch and covered the pipes better than they had been. Our restoration on the office is at a standstill due to the weather. So,… the pipes were uncovered and froze. We will see if they stayed thawed in the morning. Meanwhile, my hands feel like hamburger from moving all of that dirt. It has taken me forever to type this!

Ciao!