It's that time again!

Another Christmas.....where does the time go??? This is our tree in the living room. We usually open gifts here with the family on Christmas morning. But this year we'll spend Christmas day with Rob and family in Virginia along with Deni and Dennis. Lisa and her family can't make it this year. They were here for Thanksgiving and usually come on New Year's for a second Christmas with us. But they have so much going on now with Gill in college and the girls going up to New York for Christmas, it just gets too difficult to juggle everything. I hope they'll come later.
Meantime I've packed up all their gifts to ship tomorrow. They may not get there in time for Christmas but they'll be there by the time the girls get back from NY hopefully. I'm really going to miss having them all here at sometime during the holidays.
Sooooo, no one will be here to see my trees....I have a smaller one in the sunroom that holds my pin dolls and some other favorite ornaments. I put my favorites in there because I see that tree all day long, whereas the one in the living room stands all by itself in the other part of the house and I only see it passing through on the way to my studio or something. I've done some other decorating too, and had planned to go cut greens to embellish with, but since no one will be here to see them, I think I'll just let that go.
I wish you the merriest Christmas ever, and hope the New Year brings you many blessings!

Thanksgiving!

I did most of my Thanksgiving cooking a day or two ahead. Started with Roy's mom's recipe for Frozen Cherry Salad, which can be either salad or dessert...got that in the freezer on Tuesday afternoon. Then on Wednesday I spent most of the day in the kitchen steaming green beans, simmering brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes, making a marinated vegetable dish, and cooking giblets for gravy and stock. Also made biscuit tortoni, which I plan to do every year at holiday time, but seldom get around to doing.
Lisa and her family came Wednesday evening and she had pastry dough made for apple and pumpkin pies, so we stayed up while she made the apple pie, but she was just too tired to do the pumpkin too. So we decided we didn't really need it anyway and went to bed.
Roy and I got up at the usual time and I discovered the turkey really didn't need to go into the oven til around 11:00, so I made the pumpkin pies after all. And while the turkey cooked I made sauce for the sprouts, got the marshmallow topping on the sweet potatoes and caramalized the onions for the green beans. Ken did the mashed potatoes and as soon as everything got put together and reheated if necessary, we were ready to eat. By that time Rob and his family arrived as did Deni and Dennis, so we had a full house. Dennis had made his cheese bread and that got baked while the turkey was waiting to be carved.
We had a lovely dinner and everyone (all 12 of us) seemed to enjoy it. Old turkey got beautifully done this time....as opposed to some years, when it seems that no matter what the directions say, I still have to put it back in the oven to cook longer!
Deni and Dennis had to leave Thursday evening....oh! I forgot to mention that Deni brought her five...count 'em, five...Bedlington terriers who stayed in their pen in the sun room most of the time except when the grandchildren took them all out on leashes to play in the yard. What fun!!!
Rob and Vicki and Lisa and Ken and children all stayed over til Saturday, so we really had a good visit with all of them. Grandchildren Gillian, Devon, Alex, and Kenny all seemed to have a good time playing video games, playing catch in the yard, watching DVDs, playing with the dogs, and generally enjoying each other's company. We're so fortunate that they really seem to love being together.
Now everyone has gone home. Lisa and Ken have to drop Gillian off at Drexel in Philadelphia where she is a freshman this year. Rob just called to say they were home safely. So it's just the old folks here again.....soooooooooo quiet!!!!!
Hope everyone had a lovely holiday....we did.

New project

An online friend offered a short class in egg decorating and I couldn't resist signing up. He provided the eggs and trims and I had great fun working on this one. This is a duck egg, surprisingly strong. Egg number two is a goose egg and I can't wait to have time to work on that one!

More sculpting

I recently took an online class with Jean Bernard, a very fine artist who works primarily in Apoxie Sculpt. This is my handmade journal I did under her tutelage. The covers are done in Apoxie Sculpt...the face is polymer. Other than a slight change in the binding and a different treatment of the beading along the spine, this is essentially what the finished book looks like. The inside pages are handmade papers, but so far they're all blank!

Working in clay

I joined with a small group of doll artists online to learn more about sculpting together, and our first project was to do Santa gourds. These are my first two attempts The far left is done in ProSculpt painted with acrylics and the right one is done in Apoxie Clay, also painted with acrylics. I've had gourds hanging in my garage for a number of years waiting for just the right project in which to use them, and this was just perfect!

Beginnings

This is a test, only a test. I'm watching three goldfinches on my thistle feeders looking for an early late afternoon snack. Perhaps they are the year round residents. It seems a little late in the season for the transients. I should go out and refill the feeders for them.
I'll write more later.