It's Christmas time.

I have to include a hasty shot of some of the incredible gifts I got this year. This crappy picture does not do the paintings any justice, but how could I contain my enthusiasm?
Starting from the left is some fancy coffee I got from Jim, then on eof the best gifts EVER chocolate prayer hands from Laura in Texas! She is not even kidding about Texas being the bible belt; I have always thought of the Deep South as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, not including Texas. Laura assures me she is indeed deep down in the Dirty South and the tales she tells of local legend...she needs to write a book! Anyhow, next is a painting my Dad did of a gorgeous barn with a Gothic window, jaw dropping, just stunning. How lucky am I? Below that some more fancy coffee and some cool bracelets from "the hot for real black girl store" from Bran, thanks!
And everyone probably recognizes a most enchanting silver Man in the Moon lantern from my uber talented sister. Last but not least another painting, this is Whiskey at the farm painted by Connie. I can't believe it but she continues to keep getting better and better and better! She is a master, and I am the lucky recipient of many of her paintings through the years. I have quite an impressive private collection of Snipes; maybe someday I will generously loan it to the Mint Museum? Ha! Not a chance, mine mine mine.
I haven't been to my sisters house in forever and I must say, I'm feeling much better after getting a good shot of "Vitamin 'B'" as Brandi says! She always gives me a great pep-talk and I walk away feeling motivated, sometimes accompanied by an urge to take a nap...
I had to get a quick shot of works in progress in her kitchen; where she and Jim both work their different magic. He is an artist with food, and she's an artist in...most everything else!
Here she stands displaying some of her wares after dinner. Doesn't she look peppy and ready to crack the whip?
When we started opening presents it was kind of madness, just the usual present opening frenzy of Christmas day. Everything was wrapped so pretty I had to get a quick shot before ripping everything open.
Dad is a fantastic gift wrapper, an odd trait to find in someone so manly some might say; but Dennis is truly a Renaissance Man and he is really good at everything he does. He uses the horse feed bags as wrapping paper, hay string for the ribbon and embellishes with natural objet d'art like this magnolia leaf. These materials give the gifts a wonderful farm smell. I really do hate opening them and usually save the materials for months.
I feel like I'm leaving Mom out but it's only because all my presents from her are still at her house! She got me way too much, but I'm not complaining. She got me some awesome sweaters and all kinds of cool stuff, she is a great gift buyer.
Truly though, my favorite part of Christmas is giving people cool gifts. It's just so much fun picking things out and making things for somebody else, isn't it? I do lots of baking as gifts, and as I've whined about previously being sick the week before Christmas put a cramp in my style this year, but I managed to pull everything together more or less.
My friend Dee has a saying about people who lay around and just expect fame and fortune to come to them with no effort on their part. "You can't just lay around and expect to open the door and find a basket of success waiting for you"! I swear, when she said that to me I died laughing and never forgot it. I have wanted to make a basket of success for her for years and finally made a stab at it!

This is an old basket from the thrift store that I painted a crown on one side and made a paper banner reading "Success" on the other side to cover up the pink & blue flowers. It was so fun deciding what to put in it, a little of this , a little bit of that and viola-basket of success! I used one piece of green tissue paper together with tissue from an old 1960's dress pattern. I like the way it looks with all the black lines and instructions. Pluss I have a butt load of the stuff waiting to be used as gift wrapping or whatever. I also put in some really yummy navel oranges, globe grapes, various hot teas, candy canes, a skeleton, vintage wooden toy ornaments, a Madame Alexander wicked witch doll, home made cookies in a skull covered bag and individually wrapped chocolate fudge skulls! The hang tag has her name and the names of everyone in her family and a tiny sketch of a skull with holly sprigs behind it and my trademark heart with wings. Cute cute cute if I may say so myself. I can't wait to leave it on her doorstep, 'cause that's where i have to leave it, I can't ring the doorbell and hand it to her. A basket of success must be left waiting to be found by whoever opens the door next. So I have that to look forward to tomorrow!
Also I have to go out and buy a bra tomorrow thanks to Roxi and her famous scissor teeth, God help me! I should really read the literature that came with the chocolate praying hands.
But that is still hours away...For now I am going to get off of this Devil's Etch-A-Sketch and enjoy the last few hours in this day.

Merry Christmas to all
and to all
a good night!

Christmas Eve!

Well here we are, Christmas Eve! I had lots of make-up-baking to do after my badly timed sickness, but that's okay, I got better just in time. I wanted to make oatmeal cranberry cookies, chocolate chip cookies, fudge and pralines. They pralines were a bust, I blame it on humidity.
It was a beautiful day here and started off sunny, but turned a beautiful Christmasy cloudy gray sky after lunch. My favorite kind of winter sky! But not good for candy making.
Still my cookies did great. Here are a few dozen going into my perfectly clean oven.
The fudge came out right too. Here are all tiny tart tins after a coat of oil awaiting hot fudge. I love these tins, they have a gorgeous patina. I love cute tiny treat things, they make the prettiest individual fudges.
More Christmasy stuff...
Here are some of the finished product, yum!

I am packing everything up for the fam tomorrow. I got very cool cap guns loaded with hundreds of rounds of ammo for the kids. I'm sure Bran & Jim will be cursing my name for a while. On second thought, they will fire through a thousand rounds in two minutes...
According to NORAD Santa is in South America right now. SO exciting! I loved watching the local news report on Santa's progress on Christmas Eve when I was little, and I still do! Part of me will always believe in Santa Clause...there's probably some way you could prove it with quantum physics or something. Or you can just have a little childish faith...It is more fun.
When we were little, my sister and I would sleep in her big bed every Christmas Eve. Dad would read us The Night Before Christmas, a pink and white striped copy permanently checked out from the Church library. God, what heathens! Then we would wiggle and giggle and squirm in bed after lights out in gleeful anticipation of the arrival of the Jolly Old Elf! What was so exciting to me was not the mere miraculous appearance of Santa's gifts in the morning, but the idea that THE Santa Claus was going to come to MY house! Miraculous! And I loved picturing his sleigh and all eight reindeer (plus Rudolph) tapping around on our roof.
I better get myself to bed, you know he doesn't come to houses where little girls haven't gone to sleep...

I have been sick for almost a week exactly. The first few days I lived off NyQuil and gingerale. First I thought it was the flu but it was just strep throat. Anyhow, I have been hemmed up inside since last Wednesday and have felt too crappy to even write anything. The only thought that ran through my head was "put me out of my misery"!
Why is it that like so many other things in life, sickness and pain can not be remembered, you only know abstractly how you would quantify its level?
You remember The stinkiest thing you've ever smelled in your life? Of course you do, but you can't remember how it smelled, only how to try to express its level of nastiness. By the way, the stinkiest thing I've ever smelled in my life was some rotten chicken forgotten in the microwave back in '94. But that's a whole other story...
But as I was saying, illness is like that. I always think of it when I'm sick, but I think I'm glad I forget it; I don't want to remember anything as bad as being racked with a high fever. It's a good thing you can't remember it. It's like my sister has said about childbirth; if you could really could remember how bad it hurt you'd only do it once. She said to herself after natural childbirth of her first born "Well, I'm glad I did that because I'll never do it again!" But the body thankfully forgets.
I spent hours and hours of lying around in a fevered haze, so of course this picture of Scrub curled up with me is from weeks ago. I really did enjoy all my familiars during this illness. Mixie, Scrub and Roxi would all pile up around me like little heaters when I had the chills.
This is the first time I've been sick in a year which is great! It was a first since I got Roxi, and I kind of anticipated it would be torture taking care of her while I was in this condition. I have to say she was a perfect angel. The first time I took her out I told her we would not be doing this our usual twelve times a day and she needed to make the most of it. I looked into her brown eyes and I swear she understood me! I think I took her out twice that first day. Then we'd get back in bed and she would snuggle up close to me and take care of me. She was a doll.


I wish I had felt up to taking a picture of her at the time, but I was miserable and my bed was all balled up tissues and the vaporizer and medicine and crap all over the place; not my bedroom's finest moment.
So now I need to stretch out my sore neck, take a shot of NyQuil and climb into bed. Tomorrow when I wake up I will feel even better than I did this morning and who knows? I may even venture out of the house!

sick

I have strep throat. I just woke up at 3 A.M. with a burning need to gargle hot salt water and now I'm waiting for the Nyquil to work its magic.
I'm proud to say I made it a year with no illness though! Apparently it just wouldn't be Christmas without me getting sick. I started antibiotics today and should be feeling much better tomorrow.
I will post something good real soon.
But for now...ouch! The glands in my neck look like golf balls under my skin and my throat feels like a hot, dry, cracked desert.