Day by Day--December

The Last One

I love these day by days but, it is taking an increasing amount of time to sort and crop these photos, and I don't want to take it.  

I also want to do some other things with the blog next year.  The most important being doing it.  

I've really spent the last year self-medicating with knitting and it is time to be doing some other things.  

This month some of the photos are taken for their story value and remembrances from other years.

December

7. Pearl Harbor Day--Lest we forget.

8. I've worn out these slippers, my toes are nearly poking through.  I love these little ballerina slippers, the best thing for wearing in the house, year round.

9. New baby afghan

10. My baby is a college student!  Of course, she has been one for several months.  I was really digging for a photo.

11. Kindergarten/Preschool Christmas Concert. Zane is in the lavender shirt

12 Mousetrap.  I loved this game as a kid.  It was all green plastic back then. I used to set it up in the upstairs bathroom.  I seem to remember playing a lot of games and reading comics in that bathroom. Some of those things I probably wasn't supposed to be doing.  

13. Home is where the story begins.  A gift from a very good friend.
14. Soap in wool.  Interesting. It scrubs well, but the jury is still out on this one.
15.This is a mini meat grinder.  I remember my mom often getting hers (full size) out, clamping it to the bread board and grinding meat for sandwiches, she used it for other things, too.
16. Who wouldn't want a mug with grandchildren on it!
17. Hole reinforcers.  These are really old, from when I kept lots of stuff in binders.  I just used them to help my 27 year old cookbook, and to make cute tags.
18. This says "Auntie Shelley".  Tiny thank you cards are cuter than any other kind.
19.  New scarf pinned with a pin I made from old family buttons.
20. A frosty morning.
21. With our humongous potato crop this year, I have rediscovered hashbrowns.  I have also discovered that cooking them in an old electric skillet with a broken handle is difficult so I am retiring this very useful wedding gift, and bought a new one.
22. A sunrise is the most beautiful when there are a few clouds.
23. Lynette is home again. Complete with personal coffee pot.  I think going to college has corrupted her.
24. Venison pot pie, homemade by said daughter.
25. This really isn't a very good photo.  But, what was in the skillet was very good.  Fried potatoes and eggs was a common Sunday evening meal, one that went back a generation.
26. This was a pinterest try.  Cinnamon roll pancakes, not easy, but doable and pretty good.
27. SPAM, I know people scorn this stuff.  I remember eating and enjoying it as a kid.  Mom would slice it, spread it with pineapple and broil it. My sister-in-law says the only kind to by the spam brand.
28. Snow again.  But the colors that morning were wonderful. It was nice to see the sun after many gray weeks.
29. This is a new sudoku game with colored balls.  The warning label says, "Toy contains a small ball, Not for children under 3 years of age."
30. I've got a daughter ready for world travel.
31. Hot cocoa mix makes a great gift.  It's the way I sog up most of my treats.  Thank you SIL.

January
1. Chocolate frosted cookies.  They are little mini fudge frosted cakes.  They were also my favorite cookies of all time.  I ate more chocolate chip cookies, but they aren't as time consuming.  Sadly, they don't taste the same, but they are my dad's favorite, so I made a batch when my folks were here for a visit.
2. Lynette was getting bored--therefore lemon meringue pie.
3. Aunt Inez's doll has found her way to us.  (I made the dress long ago to match a little girl's dress)
4. Celebrating birthdays, Lorene and Zane. This present was useful and loved, albeit non-traditional.  Taco dip, complete with chips.
5. Another sunrise, but such beautiful colors!
6. These cold days I have been glad for wool slippers,  Holey ballerina slippers have been retired until spring or a new pair is found.
7. This violin has hung on the wall about my piano for about 20 years.  After my sister-in-law painted on her visit over Christmas vacation, I gave it a new home. Outside my house.
8. Crocheted kitchen towel holder.  It works, the towel doesn't fall off the stove handle.  Otherwise, it is kind of an "meh" project.  Needs refined somehow,.
9. Jim has cut a hole through the garage wall to the outside.  It's a project he's wanted to do for a long time.  The door was put in the same day.
10. The yellow mirror used to be white.  I painted it in honor of the freshly painted walls.  The doll has a story. A very long time ago, when a little girl was about 5 years old, she wanted her daddy to take her to Hobby Lobby to get a gift for mommy's birthday. They looked all over the store for a "glass doll".  She had seen one another time in that store.  They asked for help, and finally after much fruitless looking they were getting ready to take their disappointment home when they passed this doll on display.  "There it is!", my daughter yelled. It was the last one left and they took it home and gave it to me for my birthday.  I love it for all those reasons, and especially since it is a blonde, green-eyed doll.  Just like the dolly that picked it out for me.  Her name is Ivy Lynette.  Lynette chose the Lynette part, and Nathan chose the Ivy part.  I just wish I knew where his head was at that time.  It seemed such an unexpected choice.

Another Year Older

I was reading the other day how important it is to sort your digital photos often. Presumably so they don't start multiplying in the hard drive like rabbits.  

 The article gave sorting options and advice and reminded us to delete the fuzzy ones and those that are "seriously, just how many pictures do you need of that one person?"

I really do try to every month or so, to download the photos off my cameras, sort them into folders by date, rename them something besides DSC546941641321, and delete the ones that are out-of-focus and too much like the other 43 I have of that event.  

Sadly, I usually keep about 40 of them.  

Zane turned six on the last day of the year and his mama turned another year older on the 3rd.  

So, we had a party.  He asked for angel food cake long ago for his birthday and Lorene was all for it too,  unfrosted.  There was a problem, however, how should I stick birthday candles onto an nfrosted cake.  I mean, Mamas can get by without needing to blow out a great many candles, but 6-year olds just have to, for the photo opportunities if nothing else.

So, I made a layer cake.  I used my old easy bake oven pan, (I only have one, so I had to do the layers one at a time.), frosted it, decorated it with a skate boarding Lego man and stuck in the candles.  Voila!

(In a later photo you will see an unfrosted angel food cake in the background.)

Here is where the saving of too many photos comes in.  

I don't have a very good camera.  I have one that takes pretty good still photos and has a great zoom and I have another that can be depended on to take fairly good photos of real life,  Perhaps if I left the pretty good camera on 'action' all the time the boys are around I would have better luck, but then half the time the color is off.  Even though I used my better camera in these shots, there is often a fuzzy spot, but the rest of the photo is good.  

 Zane is "reading" his card.  I like this one because he looks like such a big kid.

 Look at Zane grab the tissue out with exuberance.

I like this one because Barry is talking to his Mama. 

And this one because of the smile on Zane's face. 

And the smile on Christian's face. 

And the two boys together.  

And Zane looking over to see what Mom has, (of course, with Zane whatever he has is fuzzy.) 

And Zane's smile in this one, too. 

And Lorene's pleasure with her plate of taco dip... 

...even though her smile is better in this one. 

Watch the balloon.

It's bigger. 

We have to have the candle blowing ceremony. 

Playing games, together, 

and alone. 

That boys loves his Legos, and I love my photos.

A New Year

I like to look at a new year as a new beginning.  I'm always wanting to make resolutions and be a better person or do better things.  

Resolutions seem to be made to be broken.  I don't like making resolutions in January anyway.  In January you're still trying to figure out what happened to the last year and to remember to write the new year's date on your checks. It makes more sense to make them in February.  

I made no resolutions this year, but I thought about a few goals I would like to achieve.  

Like these: playing the piano; less knitting and more work; writing more letters and emails; and more blogging.  

I want to blog to record my life, It's a necessary thing to me, but the perfectionist in me seems to hold me back and I get anxious and then I don't want to blog at all and then I get anxious because I'm not blogging.  

I need to find a balance here. 

That would be a good goal, too.

That being said, let us start the blog.

 A new year with new things and loved traditions.

New

 I took a photo of the first sunrise of the year.

One of the things I love about our place is the east facing kitchen windows.  Every morning I look out to see the day and watch the sunrise.  It is different every morning, if not where the clouds are, then where the sun is. 

Tradition

My folks came to visit soon after the new year.  They always come to celebrate Lorene and Zane's birthdays which happen at this time.  

I didn't do any goal fulfilling things at this time, I was on vacation, and a very good one it was I enjoyed the whole time. 

We played games, we put puzzles together, We sat around visiting and reading.  We ate lemon meringue pie and chocolate frosted cookies.  It was too cold to want to go outside that week so we stayed in.  

New

 Lynette got her passport that week.  She is going to Vancouver over spring break because she worked really hard writing an essay on why she wants to study overseas and won a place for the trip.  

New

 Spaghetti squash needs to become a staple for our meals.  Not for me, but for Jim.  

New

A daughter made lemon meringue pie with no help (except advice) from mom. 

New

A photo of me for a change with a Barry-boy that will never be this age again. 

So, here is my first blog post of the new year.  Will anyone really care that Jim's loves spaghetti squash and we put together a puzzle?

Maybe they won't, but I think I will.