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I’m giving my scanner a rest today to share some of my Journal Your Christmas pages. I only have 6 done so far and sort of at random but I am hoping to get caught up through the 10th at least this weekend   If you are doing a Christmas project, how are you doing?

I’m a bit slack when it comes to keeping the food in the house organized and rotated. I do, every few months or so, empty out the pantry, reorganize the shelves, donate the cans & boxes that will be expiring soon and put everything back with the nearest expire date toward the front. Then I go buy whatever we are out of or running low on and put it all away in it’s precise place. From that point on the pantry goods get shoved in and piled up willy nilly wherever they fit until months later I can’t find the jar of pesto sauce I know darn well I bought when I first restocked the pantry. Repeat. I clean the fridge a couple times a month, though the jars of mayo, salad dressing and assorted sauces may wait awhile before I go through them, usually when someone reaches for the little used mayo and discovers it was ‘best by’ a month ago. The freezer though… Maybe twice a year I clean out the freezer. It’s cold in the freezer. Pulling all that stuff out chills my fingers. Trying...

I love Christmas trees. They are the symbol of the holiday season to me.  They are the first thing that comes to mind when anyone mentions Christmas. Childhood Christmas? We had a fake white tree with red decorations almost every year. Except that one time we had a real tree & spent a month stepping on dried needles. Memorable Christmas? Taking a tour of the Oglebay Mansion Museum. They had about a half dozen trees decorated in the Victorian style with live candles. Perfect Christmas decor? A 9 foot fir covered in lights and a hodgepodge of ornaments & a big bow & streamers on it. I want a big tree. A big fake pre-lit tree. Live trees are a PITA to care for & if I touch them I break out in a rash. I want one of those 9 foot ones that are 4.5 feet across at the bottom. They are spendy but the real expense comes with the accessories, all the ornaments to cover it, the ribbons, the garland – mostly the new larger house with the high ceiling and huge room needed...

I take back what I have said about the uselessness of a crock pot & how I can never get anything to come out tasting like anything other than food that has been on a steam table too long.  I made a very delicious cranberry pot roast yesterday. Though it could have benefited from having the liquid cooked down into a more concentrated gravy before serving. I have to go stand in line with all the other procrastinators in the area and pay my property taxes which are due today. They don’t accept Visa check/debit cards anymore on site. It is cash or check only. I don’t have a checkbook. I can’t remember the PIN number to the account with the tax money in it & it’s unconnected to the other accounts & I can’t transfer it over to an account with a PIN I can remember. So I have to wait until the bank opens & stand in line there first to get some cash. Santa sent us some ornaments for our new tree. Elvin brought them this morning. More on that in another post. We no long...

  Some photos from our Thanksgiving vacation. Sunset the first day on the road Early morning in Walterboro, South Carolina Our in car navigation system (only got us lost once each way) We went swimming   Road bikes Went fishing with Pa Played Wii with friends Argued about what to do next And greeted the dawn at the Waffle House in Santee on our trip home as usual For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by.

This is my Great Grandfather William Wetzel. I don’t have an exact date for this photo but he was born in 1882 & looks less than 2 years old in the photo. I love the dress and lace collar. This was taken back when little boys & girls both wore the same style clothing until they were age 3 or so. I suspect it had something to do with ease of changing diapers and being potty trained. I also love the boots & tiny cane he has been given as a prop. But what I love best is his resemblance to Mayhem

Not the vacation so much as the 2 day drive home. 2 long long days, including the first day when it seemed we would never get out of Florida. It always seems like we will never get out of Florida, we have taken every known route from interstate to highway to back roads to get from Naples to Jacksonville and ALWAYS it takes 2.5 hours more to get to Jacksonville from Naples than it did to get to Naples from Jacksonville. ALWAYS. None of these cars are moving and the stand still continues all the way up the road vanishing into the distance That is the problem with travelling on a Saturday on a holiday weekend during football season around a popular vacation spot. Orlando or Tampa, one or the other will bring all forward progress to a grinding halt. We averaged about 40 MPH through the whole state. It was a mix of going 55-60MPH in spots and going 5MPH in spots. I must admit for all my problems with directions from Google Maps, their ‘show traffic’ options on the map app, was v...