Here Comes Santa Claus!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Annabelle

Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

Well, y’all…I had visions of my blog having a Christmas theme & that I’d be posting pretty pictures but I don’t know when that’s going to happen! I use(d) Paint Shop for all my graphic design/photo editing & it has decided it doesn’t want to play with Windows 7. Because of this problem added to the other problems I’ve had with Paint Shop & less than the best customer service from Corel (other than them recommending other products of theirs!), I’ve decided to make the switch to Photoshop. I’m presently taking a crash course in Photoshop.

In other news, we are under a blizzard warning for the rest of today. It’s a balmy 19 degrees here with a wind chill of 1 (ONE) degree. The wind chill is supposed to be somewhere around –20 tonight! I don’t know exactly how much snow is on the ground because I haven’t turned on the television today.

It’s a good day to stay in and play computer, drink coffee & stay warm. Tomorrow I’ll maybe go outside & take some snow pictures.

Christmas is in 15 days & I have not decorated at all! Well, other than my computer desktop. My Christmas Spirit is nowhere to be found. I thought the snow would help, but no such luck. Gosh, I’m usually decorating everything that stands still long enough. It seems like Christmas got here so fast this year. Wasn’t it just Christmas a few months ago? It sorta feels like “Christmas With The Kranks” around here!

Anyway, while I’m learning Photoshop, I’ll be taking breaks to read all of your blogs & looking for my Christmas Spirit. 

Thanks for the comments & welcome to my new Followers! (And now you’re probably wondering what kind of dull blog you signed up for!! I promise it will get better.)

Pray that we don’t lose power today…I don’t want to be found in the dark gone nearly crazy because of  the lack of coffee & the internet, with my knitting needles frozen in my hands! At least I’m not alone…my husband is off work until Friday.

Stay warm!

Annabelle

Happy Thanksgiving From Our House To Yours

Before I go any further, I just want to say thank you to everyone who takes time out to visit here, leave comments & become followers. (I’m sorry I didn’t get to answer all the comments on my last post.) I hope that all of y’all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

So, are y’all ready for Thanksgiving? It’s just going to be my husband & myself this year but you couldn’t tell it by looking at the stuffed full dishwasher earlier today! We got everything ready today so tomorrow all we have to do is pop everything in the oven & do the last minute stuff. Here is our menu:

Roasted Whole Chicken with Rosemary & Thyme

Green Bean Casserole

Sweet Potato Casserole

Dressing

Gravy

Homemade Rolls

Cheesecake

A lot of food for two people but Thanksgiving only comes once a year.  And the leftovers will be just as yummy.

It’s supposed to snow tonight & tomorrow…but, we’ll probably only end up with about an inch which will be gone on Friday. It didn’t seem that cold when I went out in the backyard earlier with a flashlight to cut some rosemary for the chicken…it was just rainy & really chilly!

I’m going to go rest up now for a full day tomorrow…cooking, eating and hauling all the Christmas decorations out of the basement…YAY!!

Sleep tight, y’all!

Annabelle

Happy Birthday, Louis!

Approximately 5 years ago today one of our kitties, Louis, was born. We brought him home when he was about 6 months old. We don’t know where he was born or what his life was like before he came to live with us. One day, my husband’s mother called us from the school where she used to teach 2nd grade and told us about this cute little orange kitten that she & her co-workers had been taking care of for a couple of days. They were trying to find a home for him. Someone had just stopped their car in front of the school, put Louis out & just left him there. Maybe they were trying to recreate the scene from “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” where Audrey Hepburn/Holly Golightly puts Cat out of the taxi in the pouring rain….which always makes me sob. Audrey/Holly does go back & rescues him but she never should have done that to begin with. But, I digress.  Just look at this face…

So we drove over to the school and, of course, fell in love and knew he had to live with us. Off to the vet for a checkup, shots & neutering. Then we brought him home to meet his brothers…Elvis & Rufus. (Harry came to live with us later.) They were less than thrilled. 

Louis really is one of the sweetest cats ever. He never claws or bites and purrs all the time. If any of y’all ever come to our house, though, you’ll probably never see him. He takes off to hide as soon as someone other than us comes through the door. We have no idea why. Actually, he used to hide if someone knocked on the door. It’s just recently that he’ll hang around to see if they’re going to come in or not.

What a sweetie…also known as Cupcake. OK, my husband does not call him Cupcake! Louis was actually named after Louis Armstrong. All the kitties are named after  musicians. Elvis (Presley not Costello, although I do like Elvis Costello), Harry Connick, Jr and Rufus Thomas.

So, for his birthday, he’ll have a little tuna…

then play in a box for a while…

then probably have a little catnap…

Life is good when you’re a spoiled kitty!

Have a good day, y’all!

Annabelle

My Monday

Hey, y’all! I hope Your Monday is going good. Mine didn’t start out too well. I woke up dizzy as a rat because of my sinuses. If the weather would settle down, I’d be good to go. Today the high was in the low 40s with gusty wind & rain. (I sound like a meteorologist!) After a few hours, I felt better so I got a few things done around the house. Should have done laundry…but didn’t. I do have some yummy Sticky Chicken in the crockpot for supper…which won’t be until around 8:30 when my husband gets home. I don’t know how I’m going to wait that long with that aroma wafting through the house!

How many of y’all have upgraded to Windows 7? I got a free upgrade from Dell and installed it on Friday. I will say that it was the easiest upgrade I’ve ever done. It only took about 2 hours. Knock on wood, I haven’t had any major troubles, just a few minor glitches. It sure is a lot less fussy than Vista.

I got some knitting done while babysitting the upgrade. Check out the huge mistake! I did that last night while I was trying to knit & watch a movie at the same time. I’m not so good at that. I’m not going to rip it out either…something else I’m not good at. We’ll call this my humility block even though that really applies to quilting.

This is an ice bucket that I found at the Salvation Army a few weeks ago. Don’t you think it will be cute all decorated up for winter? I don’t really care for the handle but it’s attached with screws so it will come right off.

I had a terrible time taking pictures today because it was so cloudy. I kinda like all the light reflections here, though.

This is a Santa from Goodwill…$5.oo! Notice the 1998 tag on his sack. Someone took good care of this Santa because he’s in perfect condition.

I hear a rustling behind the scenes! Is it Santa’s reindeer?

Peek-a-boo…it’s Louis! So much for me trying to hide stuff with the white board. Couldn’t resist posting this picture. Louis is so photogenic and he loves having his picture taken. Louis’ birthday…his 5th…is on Wednesday. I plan to do a post of his story. Life could have gone badly for him but, thank God, he ended up with us.

Well, Monday may have not started out on a high note but it sure has improved a lot! And since my husband is off tomorrow, Wednesday & Thursday…it’s TGIF here! (The 3 days off is great…but it’s due to a cut in hours. Everyone…including the bosses…took a cut in hours so nobody would have to be laid off during this recession.)

Hope y’all have a terrific Tuesday!

Annabelle

Pride And Projects

Hey, y’all! First of all I’d like to express my appreciation and thankfulness to all VETERANS past & present for serving our country. Thank you for standing in the way of danger defending a vast number of people you have never met and probably never will meet. Thank you to the ones in my family who have served…my Uncle, a Major General in the Civil War.. down the line to my Chief Petty Officer Dad, who was a member of the United States Navy for twenty years.

Shoot, now I’m all teary-eyed…

Remember the little table from this post? Here’s another picture in case you don’t feel like clicking that link…

It was just a few inches too short to comfortably use for “dining” so my husband added some wooden blocks to the legs to make it taller. There was a problem in the end. Some kind of stains showed up on the top after sanding & using 2 coats of Kilz. The weather was not warm enough to take it back to the garage for more sanding, sealing or whatever. What to do? I have to drive miles to get to a Hobby Lobby or JoAnn so I ran to Hancock in search of oilcloth. They didn’t have any. I ended up with tablecloth vinyl which I stapled underneath the top. Not the look I was going for…but it will have to do until next spring.

The bench was being used on the back porch as a coffee table but now here it is as seating. It’s just the perfect size for this tiny corner in the kitchen. This corner is a work in progress. I think I need to paint the poster frame and definitely add something beside that. I’m still not sure what to do with the little niche the in the wall. I’m guessing it had a shelf & was used for a telephone in the past. We found the little niche when the paneling was taken down during the remodel a few years ago. I kinda sorta wish we’d sheetrocked over it but I thought I could do something with it at the time.

I’ve started knitting again. Thanks to Abbie who crocheted the scarf & wristwarmers here…aren’t they gorgeous? Ever since I saw those pictures, I’ve been wanting to knit again. Some of you may remember that I stupidly generously gave away all my knitting stash (among other things) a while back. Yesterday I stopped at Ben Franklin and picked up some new needles & some Sugar ‘n Cream to start a project. The plan is to knit strips of different patterns and join them all together so they become a blanket.

As you can see, I already messed up! And I’m not ripping it out! I started with this rather than the wristwarmers that I really want because I haven’t knitted in probably close to a year. Just getting warmed up again.

My knitting stash…all in one picture!

So small compared to what I had. But, that’s okay. What I had completely overwhelmed me. This time I’m going to keep things to a minimum. Y’all are going to help me stick to that, right?

Well, enough rambling from me. My wonderful husband is doing the cooking tonight and it’s almost time to eat!

Have a good night, y’all!

Gorgeous Blogger Award

Kathleen at Rural Maine Life passed this award on to me! Thank you very much, Kathleen. Y’all should stop by her blog and read about the cool stuff  she finds at the auctions she attends every week!

I’m supposed to tell you six things about myself that you may not know:

1. My favorite TV channel is TCM because I love old movies the best…even some silent movies like Harold Lloyd’s.
2. I have met many (and still know some) famous people…mostly musicians. I’m not a name dropper, though, and will not be talking about them here.
3. My great, great, great uncle was Lew Wallace, who among other things wrote Ben Hur.

Edited: My uncle wrote the book Ben Hur...actually the complete title is "Ben-Hur: A Tale of The Christ". There were 3 movies adapted from this book...the best known being the 1959 version with Charlton Heston which won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

4. I’m very interested in the paranormal because I’ve had several “experiences”. Check out Ghost Hunters on SyFy.
5. I hate to drive.
6. I LOVE the beach…especially the Gulf Coast area. Someday when we win the lottery we may live there. I’ll take my chances with a hurricane. It would be heaven on earth to step out my back door and be on the beach!

Now I’m supposed to pass this award on to 6 other bloggers.
1. The Pumpkin Seed
2. House of Whimsy
3. Montrealaise en Californie
4. Daisy Cottage
5. Cheap Frills
6. Vintage Be Joyful

OK, I’m off to play a computer game for a little while. Sleep tight y’all!
Annabelle

This & That

Hey, y’all! Did you notice I changed my blog theme AGAIN? I absolutely love playing with Paint Shop and making new themes…in case you haven’t noticed!

I haven’t been posting because I’ve been in sort of a blogging funk or something. I’ve had stuff to post about but either the pictures didn’t turn out or what I had to say sounded dumb. Sometimes I look at all the beautiful blogs out there and just start feeling “not as good”…pictures aren’t as good…my home doesn’t look as good…can’t write as good…do you know what I mean? Well, if it turns out that only a few people or even only me reads this blog it’ll be okay. It doesn’t matter if I only ever have 6 followers or 600. This blog will still be a sort of journal of what I’ve accomplished or thought or felt…and in the end that’s all that matters!!

This is a picture of my house. I love this picture. I especially love all the leaf shadows.

I painted some old frames I had, printed some images of seahorses & ended up with these cute pictures for my bathroom. Our main bathroom is teeny tiny and it’s narrower where you come into the bathroom because of a chimney. It’s really hard to get a good picture in this area but here they are.

This is a new wall arrangement in my kitchen. Just an old frame I had that I spray painted white, a wreath that was in my studio, and a sign made from an old board. By the way, thanks to Nichole for telling me about the trigger for spray paint cans. How did I not ever hear about this? I need to beat up the sign a little bit…I just haven’t felt like taking it down!

And last, here is a cute table I found at Goodwill a couple of weeks ago for $15.00. It’s been redone and as soon as there’s a sunny day, I’ll have a picture of it to post.

One more thing, the people that live across the street from us have had their Christmas tree up & lit in their front window since 2 weeks before Halloween!

Annabelle

I Am A Terrible Blogger!

Hey, y’all! Remember those thrifting goodies I posted about on August 31st…a looong time ago? Well, here are the before & after pictures!

Tomorrow I’ll be painting the cutest little table I found at the Salvation Army last Friday. Hopefully it will not be next month before I post pictures of it!

Annabelle

Bedroom: Before & After

Better late than never…here are the before & after pictures of our bedroom. Laying the floor was not really hard after we got the hang of it. It just took some time. The railing wouldn’t have been so bad either if we hadn’t had tool trouble. After we figured out what the heck we were supposed to be doing & got the tools working the job went pretty fast.

We still need to actually paint the railing. That’s going to have to wait because we’ve just reached our limit with house projects at this point in time. I still need to do some decor tweaking, too. I need more stuff! But, oh my gosh, I still can’t believe the difference!

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Like I said, I still need to do some tweaking…it’s a little bare in spots. But what a difference! We love it! Hope y’all enjoyed seeing the pictures.

Annabelle

BOO!

Hey, y’all! I scared y’all by posting, didn’t I? I can’t believe I haven’t posted since September 8!! Where did the time go? We just had so many little projects to do around here & we just decided to go ahead and get them finished. I’ve got lots of things to tell y’all about & lots of pictures to share. So, I’ll be back tomorrow. Nite!

Annabelle