My 5th birthday....

My birthday is this week so I am going to show you a picture of my 5th birthday party. Don't all us little girls look so cute in our pretty dresses?
I'm not sure why those boys are there though, probably for the cake.
My brothers are the 1st and 3rd boys. The last boy is named Scooter. The second boy is Chuck and he is now a pastor at Methodist Church in Mt Pleasant TX. My mom sent me a link to a great talk he recently gave on angels. So if you are interested in angels, you might like to read what Rev.Chuck had to say here

and see that big braided wool rug we are sitting on? my mom made it!

Winter Bulbs

I am not a gardening expert but I do like winter bulbs.
I really like amaryllis bulbs. They grow so fast and when they bloom, have big showy red flowers.
This year, I got 2 bulb kits at Lowes.
One is amaryllis and the other is paper whites or narcissus.

The paper white kit had 4 bulbs in it. One of the bulbs started growing right away and is already blooming. But the other 3 waited awhile before they decided to grow. Frankly, the paper white is very pretty but it has a very strong sweet scent that I just don't care for at all.
Next year, I will just buy amaryllis bulbs, not a kit, and use my own pots and soil.

Vintage Amaryllis
Nina - I think she is about 4 in this picture , posing with an amaryllis and several other doo-dads. She has always been a big smiler!

We were at Lowes yesterday and they have their bulb kits on clearance 25% off. I expect after Christmas they will be 50% or more off. So if you are looking for bargain flowers, this might be the way to go.

Christmas cookies now and then

I baked our first batch of cookies for Christmas 2009 yesterday - one batch of Mexican Wedding Cookies - you might call them Russian Tea Cakes or Sand Tarts.
But whatever you call them, they are really good!

I also mixed up 3 other batches of cookie dough to chill for baking later.
One is sugar cookie dough to make cut outs with, the others are oatmeal and chocolate chip. Those last 2 are really just everyday recipes for a big tray of cookies that will go to Jeff's work. Those guys can really eat cookies and they would just as soon have the everyday ones as the fancy ones.

This is after a cookie baking session - 1989 I think, judging by the deployment countdown calendar on the wall behind Nina. We were living aboard Camp Pendleton and Jeff left for an unaccompanied tour to Okinawa right after Christmas that year.
Those gingerbread cookies look pretty and tasty, don't they?

PIe Fixes Everything.....

Well, that is what a sign says in the Sugar Pie Farmhouse, I thought it was so cute, I made one for my kitchen too.

The rest of our Christmas decorating

Nativity set
lots of stockings - anyone want to help "Santa" fill them all :)

I ended up making 15 pinecone elves. They are having fun climbing a tree and playing on the tractors.