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?