Snowmen...It Must be January

Brambly Pines Cardinals



Dining Room snowmen



Kitchen



New hunky snowman I got on sale the day after Christmas.



As I was taking down all the Christmas decorations, I was digging out my snowmen.  It never made sense to me to decorate with snowmen when I lived in Florida.  Now it's fun!  If we are lucky, we will get snow sometime during the month of January.  Here's hoping anyways.  It will be Spring before we know it .  The daffodils are already coming up. So, I'm going to enjoy all my snowmen decorations and dream of all the snow we had last winter.  After all, that was the most snow northern Alabama has seen in about 40 years.   

Christmas comes and goes.



My 12 Days of Christmas!



Birdhouse from BNOE
and
Hummingbird feeder from Ryan & Nic's family



Chuck's present from Ryan/Nicole and girls.



Pretty "nest" picture from Shell



1988 German Plate on bottom right.



New corner in living room

We had a very nice Christmas even though it's not what it used to be.  Let's just say it's "different" now from all the presents under the tree and all the special foods that I used to cook.  Having two children and then a grand daughter to celebrate with on Christmas day.  Families grow and change and so do the Holidays when children make their own traditions.  Then, we moved to make our dreams come true and our Holidays even changed more.  We have made new traditions and remember all of the fun Christmas memories we have from the past.  One of the new tradition is, Shell and I do 12 days of Christmas.  Starting on Dec. 14th, we each get to open a present from each other for the 12 days.  They don't have to be "big presents" every day...maybe a package of fun paper napkins, a $5 gift card to Star Bucks or some scrap booking stickers.  Then in the middle of them all is a special present, like a pretty scarf or a framed picture.  On Christmas morning, you get to open your " real Christmas present".  Mine was three more printed books of my "Brambly Pines Blog".  Shell was the "Christmas Elf" this year and brought our presents from Ryan, Nicole and the girls, plus presents from the Blomberg's,when she came up at Thanksgiving.  We got to talk to Ryan's family Christmas morning as we opened the presents from them.That made it even more fun.  Chuck got tools and a nice tote to carry them in and mine was a pretty hummingbird feeder made from a bottle with pretty beads on the wire to hang it.  (I think a little birdie told Nic what would be a great present for me) Oh! what a special present from the Blomberg's!  It was a pretty blue German plate with the date 1988 on it, to hang on the wall.  That was the year we were soooooo lucky to be able to visit Christina and George over in Germany for 17 wonderful, fun days.  George was over there for work, for two years and we all took turns going over to see them.  Mom, us, Marina, Derek.  What a great chapter in our lives.  There was another special present under our tree and it was from Gene Johnson (Gene's Mom).  A very pretty little powder sugar sifter that you put on the table to sift your powdered sugar onto your french toast or what have you.  We had used one just like it at Gene and George's the last time we were down there and I fell in love with it.  I think I have a little birdie working for me down in Cecil too.  A few days before Christmas, we had gone over to the BNOE to take a little Christmas to them.  We came home with some great presents for each of us.  Chuck an Alabama, Roll Tide snuggie...lol and me, some nice blackberry soap with a pretty embroidered Christmas dish towel.  Then, for both of us was the wonderful cedar birdhouse!  All in all, we had a really nice Christmas but I was ready for all the decorations to all come down for another year.  It took me a couple of days to get them down, but I made it before New Years.  Yes, it is "bad luck" not to get down before New Years.  It has been proven and I have Paula Deen to back me up.  When I took the tree out of the living room, my mind starting in on the " decorating mode" and I decided to take the two wooden chairs on each side of Mom's little round table out and I had Chuck bring up the wing chair, recliner that was still in the barn.(I'm still barn shopping after two years) It fit prefect in the corner.  I know!  the fabric on it isn't perfect but that is going to be taken care of down the road.  Mom's little table makes for a great little library table.  I filled all the cubbies with books.  Now, we have a great corner for putting our feet up and reading our books or my "kindle".  I forgot to tell ya!  Chuck got me a kindle for Christmas and I LOVE IT!  I'm glad to have Christmas over with but we did have a nice one!

Who's Who Wine Glasses

Remember my chalk board paint?  I still have almost a whole can of it sooooo, I put it to use again.  I had seen in Pier One, some wine glasses where they had painted a square on them so people could write their names or what have you on their glass they were using at the time.  Of course anything that comes from Pier One costs an arm and a leg, so I set out to find some nice glasses that I could paint on.  Found some! Also a nice black tray that they would look nice on.  By the way, this was the BNOE Christmas present that we already gave them.  Chuck taped off the area on each glass for me and I started painting coat, after coat, after coat of paint on each of them.  I finally got enough paint on the glass that I thought would cover the glass and also stay on the glass when washed.  There are tons of instructions on the Internet on how to dip the stems of glasses in the paint and then you have the area on the bottom of the stem to write on.  That doesn't give you very much room to write, so I decided to do them like the ones I had seen in the store.  All in all, I think they turned out nicely and just might be painting some more one of these days.

More Christmas

The tree is so much prettier in person!



One of six of the baby peeps on the tree representing " The girls".



Glass based card holder

I thought I was done with all the decorating, present buying and what have you that goes with Christmas...BUT! Chuck read in the Moulton weekly paper that everything in Roden's was 50% off!  Of course I had to go out and make sure there wasn't anything that I HAD to have at that price.  Ha! should I say I ended up with a cart full!  Well, some of it was Shell's because I called her to see if she wanted anything.  I ended up buying six little peeps to hang on the tree, along with some spikey uppie things to put on the top of our tree.  Then, there was this pretty glass based card holder and rolls of mesh that Shell used to make our wreath.  I grabbed another bag of chopped pecans ( they weren't on sale) to put in the freezer for all my cookies I make through out the year.  Any ways....I THINK I'm done with Christmas...at least for this year.  

Bottle Tree

We FINALLY got it!  We ordered the 34 bottle, bottle tree from Dave ( our iron man) in September and it was suppose to be done by the end of October.  Well, with all his work that he has to do for all the Fall Craft shows, it wasn't done.  We kept checking with him ....and last week, he reported that it was DONE!  Charlotte and her Mom, each had ordered one also.  ( they are the rage up here) I had been collecting my wine bottles and have been looking for different colored ones.  Mostly I had the cobalt blue ones.  I decided that I was going to make my tree ALL blue!  When I was talking to Gene on the phone the other day, she told me that the cobalt blue bottles are suppose to ward off " evil spirits"...ha.  I'm not too sure about how many evil spirits we have on Brambly Pines but maybe they will ward off evil coyotes!

Cranberries and Pop Corn



Our first Christmas tree we had in the TT

After lunch, yesterday Chuck and I sat and strung cranberries and pop corn for the little live tree we had for our first Alabama Christmas in the TT.  We planted it in our back yard and we can see it from the screen porch. It has grown but I think it's going to take more years than we have for it to grow into a huge pretty tree. It will always have a special place in our hearts.  I'm hoping that the birds will enjoy Christmas goodies on the special little tree.  

Decorating for Christmas



Wreath that Shell made while she was here.

 

The Blomberg Christmas bowl and St. Nick goodies.





Bed room tree





Real cedar swag.



Other than finding a few more red cardinal birds to put on the vines in the dining room, I think I'm done decorating.  Good thing, because it will be time to take it all down before I know it.  I'm the one that takes it down the day after Christmas.  As I have said before, Paula Deen and I say it's bad luck if you don't have it all down before New Years.  Besides, by then it's been up for so long, I'm ready for my house to be clean and back to normal.  After all, the house has been decorated for the past four months, starting with Fall, Halloween and Thanksgiving.  The story about our Christmas tree is, I wanted a table top tree so we didn't have to move any of the furniture out of the living room.  That's always such a pain in the butt, plus finding a place to put it.  Soooooo, we set out to find a table top tree.  Well, the only two places we found them were Krogers and Home Depot.  They were $25 and they were only about two feet tall....no kidding! Waaaay to small!  So, we ended up buying a 6/7 ft tall tree for $30.  When we got it home, Chuck cut the bottom third of it off...yep now it was only about 4 ft tall ...BUT! I had all the left over branches that were cut off to decorate with.  I ended up covering both china cabinets with it and I made six arrangements that I shared with my dear friend Andrea.  I think we got our money's worth out of our tree this year, plus got the perfect size table top tree. :-)

Moulton's Christmas Parade

I think Chuck and I have a new Christmas tradition.  The Moulton Christmas Parade!  We put on warm clothes, grab our chairs in a bag and head to the square in Moulton.  Since, we have no interest in collecting all the candy that the floats, kids and everyone else in the parade throw out, we park our chairs up on the hill of the court house yard.  Ya just never know what you are going to see come down the street...from decorated sparkling white garbage trucks, tractors pulling homemade floats, dune buggies to every horse that lives in Lawrence county. Even the horses have lights on them.   The high school bands are the BEST!  It makes you want to get up and march down the street with them.  ( yes, I was in the band, majorette and all) It might not be a fancy parade like big cities have but our little town's parade can't be any more fun. 

Another Good Bye

Telling her Daddy Good Bye.

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. Another Holiday of memories with pictures to go with them.  Shell says it's not Thanksgiving unless she spends it in Alabama.  All of our Thanksgivings when the kids were little, were spent in Alabama at Gene and George's.  We would pick the kids up from school and head north for eight hours.  We would get there around midnight, with Gene and George always waiting up for us.  Oh! the fun memories we have from those days!  Our ways of making Thanksgiving memories have changed...from freezing our butts off in tents, then the no-electric or water in the TT, fixing our Thanksgiving dinner on the camp stove in the barn, to a nice heated house with a pretty dining room and a real stove to cook on.  I wouldn't give up any of those memories for anything.  We even have a couple of Thanksgiving traditions that we look forward too.  One is after putting all the food away from our Thanksgiving dinner, Shell and I jump in the explorer and go out to Roden's to shop.  We've been doing that since our days of camping out in the tents.  Then of course, the day after Thanksgiving is our hiking day in the forest.  I can see why it's not Thanksgiving for Shell unless she's in Alabama.  It wouldn't be Thanksgiving for us, without Shell here. 

Winter Garden Goodies

We've had perfect Fall weather for the winter garden.  I've been picking fresh lettuce for my salads for a couple of months now.  Of course I had to cover the lettuce plants up with cut off Ginger Ale bottles, a couple of times when we were predicted to get frost over night.  It worked though!  We've picked collards a couple of times and it's ready to be picked again.  My cabbage is just starting to " head" so not sure if it will make it in time before " true winter" is here or not.  Same with the broccoli.  The leaves look pretty but there is no broccoli to pick.  We'll see what happens with that.  While Shell was here, she picked enough collards for us to have for dinner one night, along with ham and black eyed peas.  A true southern dinner!

Our Black Friday



Shell's pic of the heart in the tree





Putting rocks down in the water for stepping stones



Piggy back Mama!

Our annual tradition of Black Friday isn't spent like most people.  We pack up turkey sandwiches and head to the forest. The day is spent hiking for hours, looking for a pretty waterfall to eat our lunch by.  We try and take Shell to a new place in the forest, every year.  This year, it was new to us too.  After hiking for a while, we came to the waterfall that was suppose to be, but it was dry as a bone.  I usually wear my rubber boots when we hike so I don't have to worry about getting my shoes wet, but this time I thought I would try hiking in my tennis shoes.  They worked great, until it came time to cross the river.  Shell was smart and wore a pair of my boots.  Good thing!  Crossing the first part of the river was fine because Shell made a rock path through the shallow water.  BUT! the next part was too deep!  That's when she decided to " piggy back" Mama.  Let's say, Shell is strong and we all had a good laugh over it. Shell came across a unique tree with a small leave growing in the middle of it.  It sure made a really neat picture.  Even without pretty waterfalls, we still have a fun time in the forest!

First Turkey!

What's in here?....you're kidding...right?

Shell had never had the chance to cook a Thanksgiving dinner so I thought it was a good time for her to learn....from sticking your hand down the butt of the turkey to pull out the bag of " stuff" along with the long skinny neck and trying to get everything to the table at the same time so it would all be hot.  That includes the day before when you make the pie and the cranberry jello mold.  She did it all .  It turned out so good, I think I'm giving the cooking job over to Shell every year and enjoying this great dinner without all the work...ha.