My Advent Calendar

 December 17th

Not an ornament or decoration around the house but a milestone.

How did this little girl go from this ....

... to this?

75 is a big birthday and I'm open to advice from those of you who have passed this mark on how you're coping with being more than 3/4 of a century old.

My Advent Calendar

 December 16th

My newest ornament.  I purchased this at the Telephone Museum in Warner, NH this fall.  We stopped there after picking up friends from the Manchester Airport.

Here are some photos of the museum.  A fascinating spot!

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Today is homeschooling day as will be Friday this week.  Granddaughter working on her writing assignment right now. She's so easily distracted.  It's a job to keep her on task.  

One of her assignments today will be storytime on FaceTime with granddaughter #4 in Buffalo.  

My Advent Calendar

December 15th 

A small ceramic Christmas tree, purchased in the 80s or 90s at a church holiday bazaar.  The granddaughters like to rearrange the lights.

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Just updated my Books Read 2025 listing.  I'm up to 84 books this year.  I still have three weeks of reading left so will beat last year's count of 85 for sure.

If you look at the list you'll see a lot by Archer Mayor.  He's a mystery writer based in Brattleboro Vermont.  I really enjoy he's writing and though I imagine you can start reading any of them I'm reading in order. The first one is Open Season if you want to look for them in your library.

My Advent Calendar

December 14th

 

 This was likely a teacher gift to me.  I don't recall much more than that.  Over the years its glasses have become askew.  I've never really checked to see if it really is a light bulb under that decoration.

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Light snow here this morning. Dan says there is rain in our forecast for this week.

My Advent Calendar

December 13th

 

This ornament was purchased at a Native American craft stand in Arizona, probably Navajo potters made it but I don't recall.  We were visiting by brother and sister in law in 2013 I believe and took a road trip to Sedona than the long way back to Anthem where they live.

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Busy day today.

More cookies plus other stuff to do.

Molasses this time.  They smell so good. For me it's one of the fragrances of Christmas. I've made double batch.

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David, I'd love to do a comparison cook off of lemon meringue pies with Miriam.  How in the world can we pull that off?

The one I made yesterday was delicious.  Ed, who was one of our hosts for dinner, said it's his birthday pie of choice.  A June birthday, this was his half birthday pie.  I have vague memories of having one of these for a birthday when I was in my single digits 70 years ago?

My Advent Calendar

 December 12th

Christmas bird, one of two, made for me by daughter Emily years ago.

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It's been a baking day so far.

Lemon meringue pie to take to dinner at friends' house this evening.

Two kinds of cookies.

First these are Oatmeal Almond with golden raisins and coconut.

This recipe is based upon a oatmeal chocolate chip recipe I got from a colleague when I worked in DC 50 years ago.  It's a delicious chocolate chip cookie but I have used it to make Oatmeal Almond cookies - leave out chocolate chips and change the 2 tsp of vanilla to almond extract.  This time instead of chocolate chips I used shredded coconut and golden raisins and of course the almond extract.  My taste tester, Dan, proclaimed them delicious.

The other batch made was peanut butter cookies, a recipe from a neighbor almost 40 years ago.

Funny how most of my cookie recipes are ancient!

I'm planning to make two or three more kinds tomorrow and then with granddaughters #1 & #2 over in the afternoon while Emily and Matt go Christmas shopping, I hope to package some up for the neighbors. I figure I need 6 plates of cookies.  3 of those are for singles, 2 for couples and one for a family of 7!

My Advent Calendar

December 11th

 Another ornament from a trip. This time it was a Roads Scholar trip to St. Louis. It included a ride on the Mississippi on a paddler wheeler in Hannibal, MO. We also had a tour of the Mark Twain Museum and Tom Sawyer’s house. 

Before this trip I asked Dan “Are we going to learn too much?”  He’s teased me about that ever since. What I meant was whether the trip would involve too many long winded lectures. As it turned out there was only one!

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Today is homeschooling day. Granddaughter #1 is here for her once weekly day with me while Emily is at the office. She’s working on her writing assignment now, nope she’s back at the puzzle. She claims she finished her paragraph. Must check it out. 

My Advent Calendar

December 10th

My smallest nativity.  It's in a shell of some sort.  My mother gave this to me when we lived in The Lodge.  I had taken her shopping to a store that stocked items made by crafts men and women from over seas.  All items sold at fair market value.  I didn't realize she'd made this purchase as a gift for me.

To see how tiny it is, I put a dime in the shell.

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I'm later than usual posting today because I've been busy making birthday cards - 4 of them - and an anniversary card for youngest daughter and her husband.

I also made gift certificates for oldest two granddaughters.  The certificates entitle them to a shopping trip and lunch out.

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Yesterday I finished up this task.  I had purchased two 4x6 photo albums which had these pressed flower arrangements in the cover picture spot. I took them out of those spots and put them into these frames with mats with the right size opening.

Though don't have the original coloring anymore but I thought they were still lovely.

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To end this post let me share the Chinese noodle soup dish I created last night.

I'd purchased these rice noodles sometime this past Fall. I finally did some looking in a Chinese cookbook I have and on line for how to use them in soup.

I used half the bag for the soup.

 Here's a bowl of it.

And here's enough for seconds last night and lunch today.

Dan said it was the best Chinese soup he'd had.  I figured I'd better write out what I did so I can replicate it again.  It would be good with chicken too.

Sorry.  Not exactly a recipe you can follow easily. If you try it let me know.

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One more thing: we are having snow.  Prediction of 1-3 inches has been surpassed already.  I know because Dan just had a fire call - downed wire in the road - and I had to go shut the barn doors after he took car out.  I swept the porch too and it's 3 inches and climbing.  Since I was out, I took the compost to the outdoor compost bin.

View from my desk.  Porch is getting covered again.

The Cookbook Supper gathering that was to be tonight has been postponed until January because of this weather system.

My Advent Calendar

December 9th

I saved this birthday card from two years ago and include it with my window displays for winter. My youngest sister sent it to me for my 73rd birthday.  75 is creeping very close.

Here's the view out the kitchen windows this morning.  We woke to -9º temperatures.  It's warmed now to single positive digits.

Love the looks of those icicles.  This is the south facing roof and it hasn't been warm enough to melt the snow off.  It's only be sliding slowly but this morning frozen in place.

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I got the Christmas cards done and in the mail yesterday.

Here's something I have to admit about myself: I'm not very good about maintaining long distance friendships that once were based upon proximity or work or common interests. There are four Christmas cards I decided to hold off sending because I have had no contact with any of these since last Christmas.  Here's my reasoning: if they don't send me one then there's no need to send them one.

Is that so terrible?

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I've been ambivalent about making cookies this holiday but after sleeping on it I have decided to bake on Saturday.  Dan said he'd like some peanut butter cookies and I do like to make the almond decorated cookies.  There's also molasses that I only make at this time of year. 

For a number of years since we moved here I've been delivering cookies at Christmas to my neighbors.  In order to keep up that tradition I'll have to bake!  I even bought plates to stack them on when I was out at Michael's yesterday. 

Decision made: Look for cookie photos in the near future.

 

My Advent Calendar

December 8th

One of my ten Father Christmas statues.  This one I purchased from a Christmas shop in France while we were on a river cruise on the Rhine one spring. 

It sits in one of the windows with this one whose provenance I don't remember. It may have been a thrift shop find.

You can see our snow is sticking around.  Temperatures are staying below freezing here.

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My goal for today is to complete the Christmas cards and deliver them to the post office. Envelopes are addressed, cards are made except for an insert which I need to paste in each one.

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If you're interested in reading more about that cruise start with this post and move forward in time.

 

My Advent Calendar

December 7th 

I used Shutterfly to make this ornament after our two week vacation in Scotland in the Fall of 2017. The apartment we had through UnTours was in Dunblane and this was the cathedral there.

Here's a link to my blog post about this cathedral. 

Lots of good memories from that trip.  It was our first with UnTours.

We especially enjoyed shopping for dinners at the butcher shop which had these meat pies for sale.

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Today would have been my Mother's 107th birthday.  She managed to live to almost 95.  Miss her every day.  I'm sorry that none of my granddaughters never met her but I've made a point of telling them about her.

Here she is surrounded by her art work in the last months of her life.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

My Advent Calendar

 December 6th

This is an old ornament.  Likely someone gave it to us when Dan was the principal tuba player in the Baltimore Symphony.

[Technically this guy is playing a sousaphone not a tuba.]

My Advent Calendar

 December 5th

An ornament from Alaska. We visited there in 2007.

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Yesterday 5 trees were removed and totally shredded  chipped.  Quite an operation with one guy in the bucket trimming the trees then cutting off sections from the top down. Two others on the ground gathered the cut pieces and put them in the shredder  chipper.

Before

After view this morning.

See the bucket?

Cutting off the stumps.

That whole trunk will go in the shredder chipper.

After - view this morning.

Vicki asked if we'd be planting anything else there.  The trees were on our neighbors property and an threat for both our houses.  I don't believe our neighbor will replant.  There are some small hemlocks that she should keep topped to make a hedge.

I plan to plant shade plants on my side of the line along our driveway to try to keep the weeds out.

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The thermometer is reading 0º this morning.

I'm off this morning on errands, a bit of Christmas shopping and an over due haircut.