MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!!

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GREEN CHRISTMAS!?

                      
DID you see the news last night? Most of the country will be considered in an  area for a GREEN CHRISTMAS this year, weatherwise. Should that be a bad thing? Well for retailers selling winter gear or for ski resorts YES! The rest of us..well it could be worse.. I do remember some Christmas mornings digging out of a foot of snow, so GREEN is okay by me, just fine!

GREEN..can mean other things too..like buying products that are environmentally safe. Every little bit helps. Those LED lights are really neat..never get hot and last for years.  I really like them.  They are easy to care for and make the trees and homes just glow because you can use so many of them. Green can mean so many things including MONEY..Yes the almighty dollar and what people are spending could really make an impact this year too. If the weather is not bad then more people can shop.

More shopping means, more economy for the country. Me.. I wait until the sales AFTER the holidays. One can really make your GREEN go far. I am on the bandwagon this year to spend your GREEN  on all AMERICAN made products. I have been following those reports from ABC about putting American companies and workers back in business. I think it is a wonderful plan and hope it really takes off in 2012.

Keeping the GREEN in our own communities sure will help us all in the long run.

Hope you all have a great day today..make it a GREEN one!!  

TWO ANGELS FLEW

Two very dear bloggers are suffering today over the loss of their dear furry companions. Some cannot understand the loss that it is to have a companion who
only is there to love and be with them.. leave them. Having experienced it myself I know all too well the empty and heartache it is.

 So to MO and Carole I place this poem I found here and hope you know that all of us here in blogger family feel your loss too.
  
God Asked the Feline Spirit

And God asked the feline spirit

"Are you ready to come home?"

"Oh, yes, quite so," replied the precious soul.

"And as a cat, you know I am most able

To decide anything for myself."

"Are you coming then?" asked God

"Soon," replied the whiskered angel.

"But I must come slowly

My human friends are troubled

For You see, they need me, quite certainly."

"But don't they understand?" asked God,

"That you will never leave them?

That your souls are intertwined, for all eternity,

That nothing is created or destroyed,

It just is... forever and ever and ever?"

"Eventually they will understand," replied the cat,

"For I will whisper in their hearts - that I am always with them

I just am... forever and ever and ever."



— Author Unknown

LITTLE TREE

My little tree this year. I used some of our old ornaments from our tree we had last year,talk about recycling. The angel has been on every tree we ever had..it's been re-wired so that the lights will glow. They didn't work for years. Oh the power of 

a Christmas tree. Memories last a lifetime,if you take their picture.

                                    

NEXT BLOG PLEASE!

Blogger has had this feature on the top of it's page for as long as I can remember. I never had time to bother clicking it though. WHAT a surprise I got. I clicked it over and over last night traveling throughout the world to other people's blogs. RANDOM blogs of all kinds. I found the number one thing was that people are NOT blogging like they used to. Some had not been updated since 2009. Some only had ONE entry, some were about families and some were only about photos. Some were about the universe, politics or crafts and cooking.  I liked this kind of BLOG surfing, just to see "what's out there." Sad though that not many kept up the good writing, poems and thoughts that they should have. LIFE got in the way. I understand that all too well. We just don't take the time we used to to talk to one another using the blog format like we did in the past.

http://collageoflife-henrqs.blogspot.com/

Photo courtesy of this blog

 Facebook has kind of taken away a whole lot of that. It is a quicker way to keep up. I think that helped the downfall of blogs.  I ran across some nice blogs that are pretty interesting. I wish that some of them had the translator embedded in them also. Some you have to look at the photos and figure out what it is all about.
Here is the link to one from Hungary that clearly is creative and the work is very nice.
Not sure what this country is.. but the jewelry they make  is really nice HERE too..

I haven't run across one person that I know by hitting the NEXT BLOG button. There are thousands and thousands of blogs out there and the chances are pretty slim.
IF I DID I sure would be surprised. There is one I miss though most. It's HERE and well worth reading again..  When you get a minute try NEXT BLOG..you might just be surprised like I was and when you comment they might visit you and check your blog out too.

CHANGES!

WELL bear with me I am making changes here and have tried to get things back to normal some. In the past when I changed the theme here my music playlist went with me. This time I have had a lot of trouble getting it just the way I want it. I can't seem to delete the playlist that is displayed on there and hope the songs don't offend anyone. I deleted it completely and started one over again hoping it would reset itself.. for the record..
it supposed to be playing CHRISTMAS SONGS.. LOL

                               
Reminds me some of putting up a Christmas tree and then moving all the ornaments around on it until it is just right. I have been known to change them for weeks after the darn thing is up. This year the tree we used is in storage, and I have a tiny one I brought with me. Not much changing I can do with that.  Thought I would put up my tree here on the ole blog though.. it's a real nice one from last year. I can still see mom sitting in her chair just staring at it. How she loved a tree and all the lights at Christmas time. I must say the one we had looked great for it's size. 
No snow here yet but they say some is coming..all I am hoping for is that it isn't the kind that piles up and makes moving around miserable.
Hope where you are things are all decorated up in holiday style! 

LIFE IN HER YET!!

There is life in the old house again. Seems someone moved into our old home before the first snowflakes fell. Neighbors reported that curtains went up and the mailbox

was being used again. Seems weird after 56 years to have another person or family roaming around our old house. She's a real handful I must say. Sis and I both thought we should leave notes for any new owner. We told the realtor about the quirky way
the furnace works and how the oven is so old there are no longer parts for it. 
Guess they will just find out on their own. Gave the old neighborhood joy to see
the walks shoveled after this past weeks storm. The new owner is keeping it up
well. I hope it serves them as long and as well as it did our family.

Here, a Christmas Cactus that Dad bought mom years ago. It is still surviving despite being  moved,  and even trying to bloom. It may not make it for Christmas itself, but might get a bloom soon.  There's a story about that cactus. Seems Dad never was one for giving flowers or plants much. He went to visit someone and saw one in their house with so many blooms on it. So the checked out the local florist and they only had a few. None of them had a lot of blooms on it, but they offered to give him a discount if he bought one. Well Dad, loving the discount, bought the cactus and brought it home. Mom loved the surprise and fed it and cared for it and it eventually bloomed lovely dark pink blossoms. Over the years it got damaged and almost died. Mom repotted it at least 2 times and was nursing it still, right up until the time she passed. The plant was then passed to me to keep it going. I carried it to my apartment and it started to get a bloom in March.  The bloom promptly fell off  when I moved it one day. I was crushed. I was sure that moving it in the car would shock it, but apparently not. It seems to like where it is now.  Guess where I go maybe the plant will follow me. I can always try to keep it alive as long as possible. 

HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!! 

WINTER UPDATE

Updating here as winter rears it's head a little bit and says hello..I'm back..

Just a dusting, less than an inch and melted right away as the sun came out. I love that. Kinda like a preview of coming attractions. I have been through some rough Thanksgiving holidays before where we could not even get out of our driveway so this was just nothing but pretty. I am trying to keep up in the blogosphere with both of my blogs. Had some trouble with the wordpress one posting to Facebook. They finally sent me a message telling me it was a Facebook problem not a Wordpress one. I seem to like Blogger a whole lot more now that it has not had the difficulty that Wordpress has. I am not cancelling it though as there is over 5 years worth of entries there.

I have been really busy here trying to get things in some kind of order so I can put my hands on things when I need it. Since the many moves I have made in the last 6 months things are just so hard to track down. I  think a full inventory is called for, just haven't gotten around to it. I'm no Martha Stewart who labels things and has a place for everything, but sometimes I wish I did. Did turn up some items I thought were totally lost though and that gave me some joy over the Thanksgiving break. These were mom's she bought them in a dollar store awhile back.. I liked them and put them in storage, I thought.  Guess not.. they ended up on my table for myThanksgiving dinner. 

Guess I better keep track of them from now on! ;-) 

Hope you all have a great week!! 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

             HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

SIGNS

Having moved to another place recently I keep looking for signs ofthe season changing. Back at home I looked for the wooly worm or the behavior of the wildlife I knew so well. Here..it's all new. There are seagulls and I still don't know their habits. They seem to congregate on the ground in all sorts of parking lots and open spaces.
I ask around about how long they stick around. The  people here tell me they are sometimes here all winter long sticking close to the places where they know they can get food. If it is a really bad winter they will leave and go farther south and sometimes inland. YIKES... if I see them all leaving I think we are in for big trouble.

We are pretty much done with fall leaves turning here now..trees are somewhat bare in places. I noticed a lot of people remove leaves and can be fined if they leave them in the street. Snowplows cannot plow with leaves stuck to the curbs. BIG NO NO! With the amount of snow they get here, I guess it would be quite a problem in the dead of winter.

 Being pretty much a city girl I sure am getting a taste of how it is out in the wild. Not a very far ride from where I am is the middle of a state forest for miles and miles. It amazed me that some people were actually living in homes in the middle of the forest. The land was sold years ago and so they got it at a great price.

 Little did they know that years later, their would be a big road in the middle of it and traffic night and day. Talk about snowed in. I bet they keep an ample supply of wood and food in the winter, because some of the little side roads are not paved and are wayyyy back in the woods. Hope they have a plow handy. Up here, the local lodges like ELKS and MOOSE really do look like lodges. I see I have a lot to learn yet.

"DOWNSTATERS" is a word I heard I had never even thought of before. Imagine that we "downstaters" had a nickname. Going to be a lot of  getting used to living differently. YES, the stores here have much more winter clothing than "downstate", who knew?

HALLOWEEN FUN!

If you haven't seen this photo it is quite something.. I had to look twice as I thought it was a baby but it wasn't. It was a mom having one!  So creative and from what I see it must have been done in a hospital by some ingenius workers there. Cute!!
The next one, well what a waste of good candy..LOL..you decide.. it is different

for sure and must have taken a long time to do. This one is pretty elaborate in the carving but neat design. MEOW!!  Well whatever you do this halloween, I hope you have fun doing it.  Here there are parties and trick or treats by going to the local shops downtown and it all starts on Saturday and runs all the way until Monday. Three days of fun. Kids love it!  I am sure I will have some neat pictures to include here by Tuesday, weather permitting.

 
                                

FALL PLEASURE

On my walk I passed a giant oak tree surrounded by a white picket fence. Inside the yard was a garden oasis and a swing waiting for it's next passenger. The tree was so large it took up one whole area in the backyard.

Tall and strong grows the mighty oak