Worth 4 Minutes of Your Time

Hope you enjoyed the message here as much as I did.

As for anything else today there's not much. We watched a couple Christmas movies last night on Netflix. Loved "Christmas with You" and "Father Christmas is Back". Tonight, we'll be watching the Thursday Night Football Game on Amazon Prime. 

I think I am going to fix salmon for dinner with a salad and roasted potatoes. 

It may rain this evening and tomorrow. Here in Arizona rain is something to be feared for the problems it can cause and celebrated because every drop of water is precious.

Image created by Bing's Image Creator from my search phrase.

What are you looking forward to today? Would love to hear all about it!

Back with more again soon. 

Take care and stay cozy! 

 

A New Wreath

My house will have a new wreath to show off this year and I made it. The beginning of it was a round metal wreath frame. This came from a wreath Jim bought from a Boy Scout fundraiser when we lived in Jackson. It was a big beautiful pine and pinecone wreath. When the season was over, I took off the greenery and saved the frame meaning to do something with it for a long time.

I gathered up some old garlands of poinsettias and holly to wrap the frame in. I used twist ties to keep things in place. I thought the twist ties worked very well and would recommend them highly to anyone wanting to try the same idea. They of course were found on Amazon. 

The angel, I really don't remember where she came from or when I got her. She has just been in my Christmas decor boxes for years. I usually find a place on a wall to hang her, so she watches over us.

As I was putting it all together, figuring how to attach things, twisting the old garlands trying to show off the flowers to look their best I was so pleased with the outcome. Don't you just love it when the idea in your head works out the way you imagined it?

The final touch was to wrap a set of battery-operated lights around the wreath for a bit more Christmas sparkle. The lights came from Amazon too. They have 8 different lighting patterns and a 6 hour timer to save on battery life. We'll see how that goes between now and Christmas. I plan on timing the lights from about 6 pm to midnight. Jim's job today is to figure out how to hang this in our front window. That is his part of the project now that I am done with mine.

I currently have an ear worm. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas". If you have it now, I'm sorry.

Back with more again soon. 

Take care and stay cozy! 

 

Red Planet Day

It's Red Planet Day! Do you have a mild interest in outer space like I do? I can sometimes imagine humans like me living someplace like the moon. We are not ready for that, but NASA keeps chipping away at solving all the problems for us. I like that.

Back to Mars. On this day, November 28, 1964, the Spacecraft Mariner 4 was launched. When it did a flyby of Mars, we got our first close looks at the red planet in the 22 images it sent back. I tried to find those images on NASA.gov with no luck. The image you see with this post was made for me by Bing's image creator. I was hoping to find the real thing to put here.

So, are you a space fan? Would you consider living somewhere besides Earth? Did you ever have astronaut dreams? If so, I am wishing you a happy red planet day!

Back with more again soon. 

Take care and stay cozy! 

 

~~~~~~~~

A Sister's Gift

My sister Karen always keeps an eye out for great products that make living day to day easier or better. She brought Kristi and I each a couple of these paperless paper towels to try and see if we like them. The image you see is of the ones she bought on Amazon and she has been very happy with how well they work in her home. I do love the idea of these. Paper towels are something I have wanted to ban from the kitchen for a long time. Jim however always wants a roll of them around.

While I do really like the idea of these, I may not buy any just yet. Why? Well, I have a cotton flannel stash in my fabric bins. The flannels I have are baby prints that I used to make receiving blankets long ago. Those prints will work great as I experiment with the sizes I find most useful. Seems very simple, 2 layers of flannel, serge the edges and for mine I may stitch and X through the middle to keep the layers together nice and neat. If I like the ones I make I will watch for Joann's sale on flannel that happens a couple times a year and make some prettier ones that I would like to see every day.

I know that many of you may not have a secret flannel stash and some of you may not sew either. Because of this I am leaving an embedded Amazon affiliate link to the product my sister shared with me. If you are in a RSS reader you may not see the ad below unless you come to the website.

Are you ready to ban paper towels from your kitchen?

Back with more again soon. 

Take care and stay cozy! 

 

Decorating Downstairs

Yesterday we put up a Christmas tree for the first time in a few years. In other years we have been traveling, and I didn't think we were home enough to bother. This year is different. I told Jim I wanted to be home in December and he agreed. This tree is a prelit one so set up is easy. Because it is a slimmer tree, I didn't need a lot of ornaments. I have about 4 large storage boxes filled with dividers in layers to hold ornaments. For this tree I just used one box and I like the way it turned out. Each year I get a tree scented candle because I have to have the Christmas tree smell too. The candle is sitting on a table runner that Jim bought years ago. 

Next you can see my new Christmas quilt on the back of the couch. The colors look really nice on my green couch. This quilt is one that I found in Pennsylvania when we were there earlier this year. It looks even nicer there than I hoped it would and I may just keep it out through the winter such as it is here in the Valley of the Sun.

We have 2 eating areas in this house. They are not really what I would call dining rooms. What you see below is maybe what would be a breakfast nook in the kitchen. It is a sunny place at the front of the house. Anyway, the red and white stuffed fabric tree is one I made decades ago and gave to my mother. In clearing her house, I took back the things I had made and given her over the years, and this was one of those things. The runner is is sitting on came from Guatemala. When we took our Panama Canal cruise, we took a tour of a coffee farm in Guatemala. There were local crafters set up to sell their goods and the weaving caught my eye, so I got this red and green runner for a Christmas time table decoration.

I do have one more decoration planned for the front window of the house but I am waiting for supplies to finish the project. I'll share that here when I get it done, if it comes together like I hope it will.

Back with more again soon. 

Take care and stay cozy! 

Nice Thanksgiving in Good Company

We got back yesterday from spending a couple days at my sister's house or rather trailer since they are full time RV folks. Another sister came with her husband and fur babies. I think this was the first time we were together for Thanksgiving in more that 30 years. We were all busy raising families and living far apart. For each of us if we went to see family at all it meant going to Mom's house and not to see each other. We are all 3, us girls, living in Arizona now so we are much closer than we have been in a very long time. It feels good to have extended family close. 

Kristi, hosting us, created a wonderful meal. She had also invited a couple that lives in the park that they do so we had 8 around an outdoor table. We had turkey and ham. For sides there were mashed and sweet potatoes, dressing, asparagus, creamed spinach, rolls, gravy and homemade cranberry sauce. It was a lot of food even for 8 people and she will be busy planning uses for the leftovers now that we have all gone home.

My small addition, besides helping with cooking, was to make the bread you see here and make a cranberry salad that Jim loves. I saved this bread recipe a long time ago and this week seemed to be the perfect time to make it. You can find the recipe at Simply So Good No Knead Pumpkin Harvest Bread.

This bread has canned pumpkin, not pie filling, in it. You also put in sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and dried fruit. The recipe recommends the Golden Berry Blend from Trader Joe's. This is not a light fluffy bread, but it is so good. We set out a bread tray at dinner with this bread and the more traditional dinner rolls surrounding it. If you do not have a Trader Joe's near you this fruit blend of golden raisins, cherries, cranberries and blueberries can be found on Amazon.

In other random news about me, I made it to the 2nd skein in my knitting. That happened last night when we were watching the first Christmas movies after dinner. That accomplishment felt so good. There really is hope that I can get this done and blocked in time to travel with it.

Hope all of you readers in the US had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend!

Back with more again soon. 

Take care and stay cozy! 

 

Great TV Knitting

This project is working out to be great for TV knitting. I can follow along with a movie or football game and not mess it up. I do think that this is going to be one of those projects that seem to last forever with no apparent progress being made on any given day. According to the pattern this will end up about 26 inches wide and 80 inches long so you understand why that would be so. It will take 3 skeins to make this, and I am still knitting from the first one. I am going to persevere on this because I can imagine snuggling under it to nap on the plane ride from San Francisco to Tokyo.

This is a lot of plain stockinette with a couple features designed to keep it from rolling. At each of the ends is a few rows of 2x2 ribbing. On both edges is a 5 stitch wide pattern with slipped stitches. This wrap will still need to be blocked to make it pretty even with those features but that is okay. The fabric created with the Cascade Heritage yarn feels nice to the touch and the needle size it perfect for having a nice drape. Now if I could just get past the first skein and into the second so I can feel a sense of accomplishment!

Back with more again soon. 

Take care and stay cozy!