Christmas 2010

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First day of Winter

Wow, are the stars aligned or what?? There's a full moon and there will be an eclipse tonight and.....drum roll, winter begins tomorrow. Begins you say??? Crazy, but we've been in the throes of winter for a several weeks now!

This is what I see when I look out our front window. It is really lovely to be inside looking out on such a day. Unfortunately, life does require that you brave the weather and step outdoors now and again.

I've been absent from the blogging world of late. It has been an incredibly busy couple of weeks. My brother Dave came and helped us with some drywall work and was here most of week. We loved having him here and sharing meals together with Tom and Jo while work progressed on their house. The guys worked hard. With Dave's help they accomplished what could have taken several weeks. Then we had workers come and special meetings and the meals and visiting that go along with those special times. Then there's shopping for groceries and Christmas and sewing projects....and bingo, we're down to our last week before Christmas! Ah well, Christmas comes and goes....ready or not. I hope you all are keeping happy, safe and warm!

It's lookin' a lot like Christmas

Joellyn and her girls and I braved the cold and ventured into Fort Benton on Saturday to see what the Chouteau County Country Christmas had to offer. We visited the Bridgeport Station which is a craft sale and bazaar held each year at the Montana Ag Museum. The women's club sells lunch to the shoppers and Santa Claus comes to visit. He came to visit table where we were eating lunch, and my somewhat reluctant grand daughters posed for a picture with him. We enjoyed looking at all the wares and enjoyed our soup and taco soup lunch.

We visited a couple of the business open houses and then went to our historic Grand Union where there was live music and goodies and more wares for sale. Santa made another appearance and posed for pictures with kids in the beautiful old sleigh on display in the lobby of our famous old hotel. Sarah wasn't quite so afraid of Santa this time and climbed right in the sleigh for a picture.

This little angel rode around in her carrier looking much like this the whole time. Funny thing, she sleeps so well here, but still hates to sleep all night in her bed.

It doesn't take too much imagination to dream of a white Christmas this year when it looks like this outdoors. We had some fog on Saturday night, and everything was covered with a thick coat of frost yesterday. I didn't get a picture yesterday when it was really thick on all the trees, but there's still a pretty good frosting coat on things today. Well, I gotta run now....there are Holiday Cards to make and prepare and letters to write and goodies to bake. I hope you are all enjoying lovely winter days!

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More wall decor

As promised, here's more photos of some wall vinyl that I have used to decorate our home.
I like the sentiment "hang your troubles at the door" That's not always possible, but I like to feel that our home is a safe and comfortable haven. The insert in the frame is galvanized metal, and you can hang things there with a magnet or on the hooks on the bottom of the frame.





This is posted in my kitchen near the pantry door. I hope this it what you will experience when you visit our home!



I've had the pictures above of our three children and all their school pictures taken through the years, hanging in our master bedroom. I thought the quote "together may we give our children roots to grow and wings to fly" was appropriate to go with pictures of our kids growing up through the years. I believe they all did learn to 'fly' but still appreciate their 'roots'.



This is what you will see just inside our front foyer. The welcome is on another plate from Peir 1. The H O M E blocks were a fun little project. They are done on wood blocks cut in squares from and old 2 x 4. I used a belt sander to smooth them down and round the corners slightly. Then I brushed on some wood sealer. Next, I painted them with left over paint from our walls and let that dry. The next step was to glue on scrapbook papers to the front surface and I used a little antique stamp ink on the edges to give it an aged look. When that had all dried I brushed on a coat of Mod Podge to seal the surface. Again, I allowed it to dry well and then applied the vinyl letters. One friend applied scrapbook paper to both the front and back. You can then apply different letters. L O V E would be quite nice, I think. I've seen a picture with enough blocks done to spell out H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S. There are endless ideas, and it is a fun and inexpensive way to use vinyl cutouts.



Here is a grouping of several more things I put together and can use to beautify my table for Thanksgiving. For the center plaque, I used real wheat stems and tied it with wired ribbon from Michaels. I had received another bonus "Gather Here". I bought the glass vase and candle at WalMart and added some sparkle from Pier 1. On the right is my trifle bowl from Pampered Chef, filled to the brim with this recipe from Paula Deen. A couple little changes I made to the recipe, which worked out just fine: I made my gingerbread from scratch as I could not find the mixes and I used real whipping cream instead of frozen whipped topping. You would have to agree, that makes anything better, right?

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

I almost forgot about these etched glass look vinyl medallions that I have on my glass buffet doors. Comments from my sister and niece reminded me to get a picture of them too. This is not used as a china closet except for table cloths stored in the bottom drawer. The baskets inside are used to store and hide misc. paraphernalia. One basket holds all my appliance information booklets. The rest, well, don't ask, I'm not telling.....that's why they are hidden in baskets :)

Aerial photos of our farm

Every few years, an aerial photographer flies over the area, takes some pictures, and then returns with the print and tries to sell them to the farmers. I have these three photos of our farm homestead. The above was the first one we acquired. The fun thing about getting these over the years, is seeing some of the changes made to our place. Can you spot some of the differences?

This is a few years later. Our trees have grown, a shed has been moved and equipment removed.

This is our most recent aerial photo if our home place. I wasn't happy that it was taken from a different angle into our back yard, but still, I decided to buy a copy as it showed even more changes to our homestead, namely, our house has been added on to and there are a few landscaping changes, that don't really show in this 'backyard view'. We also bought the picture taken of Roger's parents home. The really cool thing about that photo is that it was taken the very day that Tom and Joellyn were beginning to settle into that house, but I'll leave that for Joellyn to blog about.

We have been in our home here for over 30 years (since 1978) Many memories have been made here!

Friendly Rivalry

Would you say this was a match made in heaven or.....

A big squabble in the making?

Someone posted this link to a cute story on Annie's face book wall.

There's likely quite a few Montana couples with this dilemma.

(all pictures: taken by their friend and posted on Annie's Facebook page)

Is it going to be this way this year.....

or this way??

We're wishing you two many happily ever after's as you agree to disagree on some things but agree on all of the really important matters in life.

Love you Lots,

Wall Decor

Awhile ago I promised to show some of my decor using vinyl cut outs applied to my walls and other decorative items. All of my vinyl decals came from Uppercase Living or Stampinup. If you have been to my house in the last few years, likely you have seen the quote above our patio door. I ordered it from our nephew's wife who was an Uppercase Living demonstrator at the time. At the same time I ordered and put up the next two items next to our dining room table.

More recently, I have been in contact with a great demonstrator from Great Falls and attended several parties at her wonderfully decorated house, and had a party at my home. At the time of my party, another very good friend decided that she would like to become a demonstrator, and I attended her first party. So, I have had lots of opportunity to acquire more home decor.

The "Our Family" piece was a freebie that came along with my first order. I bought three frames from Michael's that have a double layer of glass in them. I inserted the last complete family picture that we have from both Roger's and my families and applied the vinyl to the third glass insert. I like these frames that allow my wall color to be the mat around the pictures and the quote.

More recently, I put together the following arrangement on my dining room wall over my buffet hutch. The scroll on top, is not vinyl. It is metal finished in an antique bronze. However, I have seen something similar done in vinyl if you want a similar look. I acquired the scroll piece at a little shop in SLC several years ago. Below that, are two 12 inch square frames acquired from Michael's. One holds a piece of masonite that I painted with blackboard paint from Home Depot. The second frame has a 12" x 12" square piece of cork to which I applied a B monogram purchased from Stampinup. The two decorative plates resting on the hutch were purchased from Pier 1. The gold tray in the middle was one from Roger's parents home. I applied the "Gather Here" which was another freebie from Uppercase Living.

I put up the "Music gives life harmony" over our piano The other items have been in this arrangement over my piano for years. They were mostly acquired from the home decor parties that were popular a number of years ago. Do you remember 'Home Interior's' parties?

This "create definition" is from Stampinup and is applied in the closet where I have all my paper crafting supplies and work desk.

Stay tuned, in another post coming up, I'll show you some of my more recent acquisitions.

Family pictures

Our Family in late 1982...

....Or maybe it was in 1983. I'm not really sure old Brad is in this picture. If it was still in '82 he was less than 3 months old, and I think he looks a tad older than that. Anyway, the point is, that our family has changed just a bit from then, eh? We had a family photographer in the family then. Grandma Florence was always happy to use her camera's and lights and pose her family for a picture, and now we are very glad for all the pictures we have from those times. We might not have had so many good pictures if it had been up to us to get everyone dressed up haul us to town for a session with a photo studio.

Some one posted on facebook, bemoaning the fact that one of her kids was gone to college and she didn't have a family picture yet for her Christmas cards. I had just been thinking about that same dilemma for ourselves. It isn't always so easy to get all your family together now for one big family photo. But maybe we should be sending out a picture of just Roger and I. After all, our kids our grown and have their own families and are likely sending out their own photos of their families. But a picture of just Roger and I doesn't seem seem like it would be quite so interesting for others to receive.

We now have a resident photographer again. Here is a picture Joellyn took of Roger and I recently. What do you think? Should I use this as our family picture for our holiday cards?

Pets we've loved and lost

This is Hunter. My sister posted this picture on facebook of the beautiful dog she just lost. He came up missing. The next day, they went searching, and led by their other dog, they found him...dead from a gunshot. My heart still lurches just thinking of them finding him and learning the awful truth, and wondering WHY????

Also, very recently, our daughter-in-law's parents just lost their dog, Chester. He was hit on the road. (I also lifted this photo from their facebook post) We felt connected to this dog too, as it is a brother to our dog Polly. They both had the same parents, although from different litters. When Bradley was courting Amy, he asked Amy's parents if it would be O.K. if he brought Amy a puppy and they agreed. Brad traveled with the little puppy, from Bozeman to the other side of ND with the little creature and handed the wiggly bundle of love over to his future wife. Amy had to leave Chester behind with her parents when she left for college, so he remained in her parents home. Chester was a bit of a handful at first, but by the time he died, he had become quite mellow, and we were all saddened when his life was cut short in untimely fashion.

The picture above is of our beloved dogs, Goldie and Polly, sitting together in the sunshine one cold winter morning. Only Polly is still with us. We understand the loss of a pet as we have loved and lost a few. Pets do become a real part of your life. They are so loyal and love you without question. When you acquire a pet, you understand that you will likely outlive your pet. The accepted equation is that one dog year is equal to about seven human years, but still, it is hard when you lose one prematurely. I witnessed Goldie's untimely demise, but was helpless to stop it. One summer day, I was mowing grass when Roger drove up the driveway with the spray truck and stopped by the gas tank to fuel up. Goldie spied the shady spot in front of the truck and went and plopped down right there. Roger didn't see him there, and when he was done fueling, started up the truck and ran right over Goldie. He couldn't here me yell "Stop, Stop, Goldie is in front of you!" He didn't die instantly. We took him into the vet to see if there was anything that could be done, but he had to be put out of his misery. This was the same vets office where we had gone to pick up Goldie about ten years earlier where he was being taken care of for our animal shelter. Goldie, who was part golden retriever, was a gentle sweetheart of a dog. Thankfully, we still have our loyal faithful dog Polly.

This was Fudgie, our family pet when our kids were all at home. He was a Shitzhu, though quite a bit larger than most standards for Shitzhu's. He lived in the house, but loved the outdoors too, so grooming was a bit of a chore. He needed frequent haircuts and baths, but we all adored him. One summer day when Fudgie was about eight years old, Bradley found him wandering dazed out in our shelter belt. We had deer that liked the shade of the shelter belt and Fudgie would go bark at them, but of course they were not afraid of our little dog. We didn't see it happen, but deer kick out with their front feet, and apparently Fudgie took a few blows to the head when he got too close to them. These blows were not fatal, but very disabling as he was blinded by the blows and lost control of his bladder. After agonizing over the decision for a few days we did what we felt we had to and had him put to sleep. We decided then, that we needed bigger dogs here on the farm.

This was one of our first pets. We acquired Tyke before we had kids. He was Roger's constant companion on the ranch at Wibaux. When we moved to Fort Benton, he came with us. He lived to quite a ripe old age. He maybe became less mellow as he aged as he became little cranky with our kids, and he also was deathly afraid of thunder and lightening. Normally, he would not set foot in the house, but when a thunder storm was coming, he begged to be inside. One day when we were away from home there was a thunder storm and we came home to find that he had seriously damaged our front door by scratching and chewing it as he was frantically trying to get inside. Ah, the memories....I'm sure you have a few too, if you've been 'owned' by a pet.

Happy Birthday Larry!

Dear Brother Larry is 60 today!

The above picture was taken while he was home last year.

The picture below was taken about the time he first went in the work, I believe.

The next picture was taken in the airport when he was leaving to return to Finland.

I love this four generation picture!

Larry with cousin Beth Arlene at a Pierce reunion a few years ago.

And I love this picture of Larry with Dad and Mom in front of their home on Montclair Drive

Send him a happy birthday wish today if you get a chance!