Monday, December 17th - winter has arrived for a short time

This morning it's a milder -2' and we should reach a high of +2' later on. The weekend certainly seemed a bit more seasonal. It snowed off and on all day Saturday and was fairly blustery on Sunday as well but it looks like we'll loose the little bit of snow we currently have. Not to worry, I'm sure more will replace sooner rather than later. On the other hand, we are little more than a week away from Christmas and every year that the kids have come down for the holidays it's been mild and rainy and totally messes up any chances of outdoor fun. Hopefully that won't be the case this year. But it would be nice if it waited till we get back to the island.

It was a pretty productive weekend. Friday night we enjoyed some supper with the Van Gaals. A delicious new soup recipe and homemade biscuits followed by an apple rhubarb crumble with ice cream. Comfort foods at their very best! Of course the company, as always, was the best part. With the holidays coming we won't get many of those nice quiet evenings for a while.

Saturday I worked and watched the ever changing weather. One minute it was like a blizzard outside and 20 minutes later, the sun was shining. The another 20 minutes or so would pass and it would be heavy snow once more. Strange day.  Lloyd called me when I was there to advise that he'd been invited to join some local fellows for a few drinks around the pot belly stove in a friend's garage.  I remember this particular party from last year and it started out innocently enough at 3:00 pm and stretched out quite late. I knew this year was likely to be the same. So I called Brenda and we planned to get together to bake some cookies and have nachos and wine.   And that's precisely what we did. After she left I headed off to bed around 10:30 and was wakened by the "Honey, come and get me" phone call a little after 11:00. So everyone was finally home safe and sound.

 Sunday was a work day. I spent the day getting all the beds ready for company, and doing some little last minute chores. One of those was to wrap the Christmas presents. I thought the kids might find it fun that I went with a green wrapping. I had earlier stamped some Christmas characters onto sheets of newspaper with water based poster paint and let it dry. Once the presents are unwrapped we can use the  paper for starting fires. The essence of reduce, reuse and recycle. I know their school does a lot of green initiatives with the kids and I thought they would like the idea. Then I recently saw an article somewhere on how to make a bow out of paper so I used more newspaper to make bows. They actually turned out not too badly.  Some day they will either remember this grandma as the forward thinking one or the absolutely crazy one! 

One of the other jobs I completed on the weekend was a Christmas stocking someone at work commissioned me to sew. She did supply me with a black and white photo of what she was looking for and my job was to recreate it. I think it turned out okay. It's meant to look like a boot but the toe seems a bit elf-like, but that's how it looked in the photo so hopefully it will be acceptable. Of course, now that it's done I've come up with some ideas to improve it so I'll get her to give it back to me after the holidays and I'll make some adjustments to it. Check back in the new year for the new and improved 'boot'.