What Abbie Saw During English Class

 Remember during English class when you would stare out the window instead of pay attention?

This is what Abbie saw ...

Can you see it?

It's a Barred Owl ...

His is the traditional "Whoo Whoo" call.

He's in a tree about 100 yards from the house.

It took some serious and dedicated gazing out the widow to spot him :o)

I ran downstairs to grab the binoculars and my camera,

and got just a couple seconds to try to make my hands be still 

and snap a few pictures through the window and then ...

gone.

Perhaps this is why National Geographic has not called.

Fortunately, he swooped across the field to another tree, where he had a better view of the sun going down,
and we had a better view of him.

He didn't stay there long before he was ready to fly again.

We named him Merlin.

This was much better than English class.

We hope he comes back.

Perhaps during Algebra.

Don't Judge

We had our quarterly pest control treatment last week.

Cody, our friendly pest control technician, made a point to tell me 

he'd be careful not to get the treatment on the Christmas decorations.  

He was totally judging.

Now it's true there's a tree on the front porch ...

but it isn't decorated for Christmas ... it's decorated for winter. 

Mr. Pest Control Cody doesn't understand how much I love the four seasons.

All four, and especially fall ...although I may have been swayed this year

by all the winter-time hot chocolate and fires in the fireplace.

Anyway, Cody doesn't know I decorate for each season ... 

December thru February: winter,

March thru May: spring

June thru August: summer

September thru November: fall.

Each season gets a quarter of the year ... three months to shine.

If you looked in our window, it being January - winter, if you will - you'd see this:

because every time I catch sparkly twinkly reflections like so ...

or come into the family room and see this ... 

it makes me happy.  

I've removed all the overtly Christmas things, and the tree just has a few red accents and lots of white lights,

like sparkly stars in the cold winter sky.

(image source)

It helps me pretend that it looks like this outside:

(image source)

Cody the Friendly Pest Control Technician won't be by again until spring.

He only shows up every three months.  

But I try not to judge him for it.

Friends by Mail

When I was a teenager, I had a subscription to Seventeen magazine. 

 I poured over each issue for weeks and anticipated the next delivery to our mailbox.  

Remember that?  

Waiting for things in the mail?  

When my kids were little, my mom gave me a subscription to Better Homes and Gardens. 

In those years, there wasn't a lot of time or budget for home decorating, 

so my BHG magazines were a wonderful outlet ... 

 I could look at beautiful homes and dream.

I kept those magazines until there were too many to have out all at the same time, 

so I grouped them and rotated the groups throughout the year.  

Later, Mom gave me her collection of Southern Living magazines
and occasionally I run across notes in them that she made to herself

about things she wanted to do with her house ... those are always sweet encounters.  

Eventually, I separated all my magazines into months so I can rotate them monthly (or thereabout). 

It's part of enjoying and celebrating the pleasures of each season.

These magazines have been around for so long, they're like old friends ...
the kind you can sit with for a long time, never say a word,
and walk away feeling like you had a great conversation. 

I don't subscribe to magazines anymore,
but I do kind of miss looking forward to opening the mailbox and finding a new issue.
But I've got plenty of these old friends to keep me company.

Acres of Diamonds

Do you ever get stuck,

 because you were going to do something,

but you haven't done it yet, and then you can't do the next thing,

 because you haven't done that one thing you meant to do?  

( image source )

That would be me :o)

Before Christmas, we had a spectacular ice storm here ... it rained all night and all day and 

everything was covered with inches of ice.

It was cold.  It was inconvenient.

But it was beautiful ...

The trees were so laden with ice, 

they made me think of girls in long gowns with heavy skirts ...

(dress image source )

It was perfect winter pleasure ... 

And when the sun came out ...

... diamonds, everywhere.

Since then, of course - this is Texas - we've had glorious days 

with daily high temps anywhere from 50 to 70 degrees.

But for a little while, there ... we were diamond farmers :o)

Shelf Life

We were late comers to the Elf on the Shelf movement.  

It was a great epiphany for me to realize that even though my kids are grown, 

it's not too late to get in on the fun.  

After reading }this{ post from Barb at Second Chance to Dream,
I was inspired to get an elf and do it anyway, 

and my family agreed to play along.  

We took turns and everyone had their assigned days to decide what the elf would do. 

I will say that having six people to spread the responsibility among was a great thing ... 

I'm not sure we'd have made it to Christmas if it was all up to me and LtDan every single day.  

Even so, there were a few mornings when oops, someone forgot :o)  

Moms and Dads of young kids and doing all things Christmas and Elf on the Shelf, we salute you!

We named our elf Keebler, 

and his arrival was celebrated by the stick people on top of the entertainment center ...

After his big welcome party, Keebler was hanging from the ceiling fan ... 

He got stuck inside the postbox ...

Spent a night in the pantry ...

and considered changing his hat ...

We think he liked the new wreath ( click }here{ to see how I made it ... it was super easy!)

This is where the fact that we have teenagers participating becomes clear ...

and again ...

and yet again, naughty elf ...

We used Barb's cute free printables ...

There were the obligatory antics in powdered sugar...

And of course galavanting with reindeer ...

One night Keebler managed to get himself locked outside ...

He had a great view of all the fun from the light over the kitchen bar ... 

And finished up his tour just so ...

At first, everyone was clearly just indulging mom and I know my kids thought it was dorky, 

but as the month progressed, they caught the vision and in the end admitted it was fun.

We had a great time adding this new layer to family Christmas tradition ...

I think it's going to have a long shelf life!