Happy December 26

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. I hope if you celebrated Christmas  (and aren't celebrating today) you had a lovely holiday. And whether you celebrate or not, I hope it was a great week. Today I'm linking up to Nicole's Friday Face Off and Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

  I had a lovely and enjoyable holiday with my husband, daughter and son--in-law. They arrived Tuesday, and we had our family celebration on Christmas Eve Day.  We started out our holiday by  all climbing into the hubby's truck Tuesday night after dinner and driving through a bit of a snowstorm to go to see some holiday lights at a place in Maine called Sandy Hill Farm. The hubby and I have been there before, but not my daughter and son-in-law so this year we were able to share it with them. I've posted photos from our previous visits before also, but this year the snow made it even more magical.

   Here are a few festive views.

   Although these photos don't look like it, it was actually fairly crowded. The farm does a great job of spacing out people since you have to reserve a time online before you go. They don't sell tickets at the gate. With the snow it took us a bit longer to get there than usual, but  at the gate the girl told me that everyone was late with snow and it was better to be a little late and safe, especially since we seem to drive there when the snow was at its worse. The drive home was not even half as tricky.

    When he left the house there was barely a half an inch (like 1 cm) of snow on the ground, and when we got home 3.5 hours later we had 5 inches (almost 13 cm) of snow on the ground. The farm with the lights is close to the ocean and they did not get that much snow, maybe just a couple of inches, so it wasn't  bad walking around.

 And here's some faces for Friday Face Off. First of all a family portrait.

And then a great photo of everyone but me (because I was taking the photo).

   I have one more face to share today. My son-in-law is a pretty talented guy, and he made me a mini-Sasquatch out of a big chunk of log for Christmas. Big Cheeks also known as Wilbur stands about 24 inches (61 cm) tall.

And if you wonder why he's known as Big Cheeks just look at the back view.  😏

Grin!  I'll end with that view, so have a super weekend ahead! 

T Stands for The Post Christmas Post

 Hi everyone. It's s time for T once again over at 

If you celebrated Christmas, I hope yours was merry and bright. Our family celebration was on the 23rd and 24th since my daughter was spending Christmas Day with her in-laws.  We had our Christmas dinner on the night of the 23rd, and then we played Monopoly. I  was the first one out 😡, but it was a fun evening. If you're familiar with monopoly you can know the game can go on forever, but my son-in-law was a real land tycoon and ran everyone out of the game after a couple of hours. 

 On Christmas day we had a big breakfast with our traditional prosecco and orange juice mimosas.

This is my ticket to T this week over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's.

I wasn't very good at getting photos this year, but I did remember to get a photo of the traditional British fruit cake I baked back in November and have been feeding with some whiskey weekly. This type of cake has been on my baking bucket list for a few years, and I always forgot about having to make it early so I never made one. Last year I put it on my calendar for early November of this year, and here it is after I decorated it. .

The son-in-law and I enjoyed it. It was much better than American style fruitcake with all the bright colored preserved fruit. The one I made had raisins, dried currants, orange peel and walnuts in it. I frosted it to make it  more festive and added some lemon extract to the frosting.

I'll also share a few holiday cards I received. Thank you everyone who sent one along.

I put cards up on my dining room hutch, and I photographed them hanging so they may not be 100% straight.

Elle, your card did arrived on time as it was here on the 23rd.

And this beauty was from Jeanie at the Marmalade Gypsy

This lovely card was from Carola

And finally this card is from Dorothy at the Frog and the Penguin.

Thank you again my friends. I should also mention I received a great on-line card from Valerie too. I'm not sure how to show that here however. ︖ 😄

I thought I would also share the card I received from one of my cousins. He always makes it own linoprints each year, and this year his card was gorgeous. (Actually they are always very special, but this year his print was way more complex than they often are.)

And wow, this is our last T for 2023. I hope everyone's year ends with bright days. 

"See" you all for T next year.

T Stands for Dinner by Lantern Light

 Hi everyone.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, if you celebrate any of these holidays. And this is already our last T Day for 2022. It's time to share your drinks and maybe chat a bit about life.

The horrible storm that blasted across the US hit us on Friday the 23rd. We had strong winds which knocked out our power on the morning of the 23rd and it stayed out until afternoon on Christmas Day. I know none of them will probably see my blog, but thanks to the power crews who worked through the holiday weekend to restore so many outages.  I hope everyone who was out of power has it back.

And then it got cold. For us a low of 10 degrees (-12 degrees C) with  an added wind chill seems to happen at least once every winter, but it's still very cold. I know many of you  had even colder temperatures or even lots of snow, so I hope everyone is keeping warm and safe until temperatures return to normal.

When the power went out my husband hooked up the generator so we could have water (as we get ours through  a well on our property), some of our lights,  the refrigerator, and the TV. However, our generator isn't powerful enough to run the stove, dishwasher and microwave, so on the 24th, when we had our family Christmas  celebration, we did some cooking on the woodstove.

For breakfast we had bacon, pancakes and French toast. In the above photo is my husband as I put him in charge of the bacon.

And the lack of power didn't stop us from having breakfast mimosas. Here's my link to this week's T day over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

And our Christmas dinner was by lantern light. The table isn't exactly beautifully laid out, but it was the best it was going to be. You can also see the leftover Prosecco from breakfast as well as a bottle of red wine we had with dinner for more drink related items for T.

Luckily I had some foresight and made a beef stew the previous Thursday night when we had power, as well as a batch of popovers. The stew heated well on the woodstove, as did the popovers, so we had a  nice meal with some lantern light. Even though we can run lights with our generator, for some reason the  light over the  table didn't work well on generator power, and the bulbs kept flashing. That meant  lanterns it would be, and they worked well.

We had a very nice holiday though. It was just my husband and myself on Christmas, and luckily the power came back on after our woodstove cooked brunch. I was able to use the oven and stove top to make us a  little Christmas dinner. We also watched the first 4 Die Hard movies in our movie marathon and had a relaxing low key weekend. 

And look at what my son-in-law made me for Christmas. It's a beautiful wood sign for my bees.

 Back in the' autumn we'd been discussing names about what I should call my bees, and I'd suggested Two Pups. He did a fantastic job catching the likeness of my 2 dogs on the sign.

He even put a hook on the back of my new sign so I can hang it on my screen porch come spring when we open it back up.

 I also wanted to share some fun cards I have received for the holiday from some blogger friends. I know there's been some mail issues because I've been told there 's another card in the mail somewhere in the process of crossing the pond. Hopefully it will be here soon, but I know the spirit of the card has reached me even if the card has not yet gotten here. Thanks in advance Elle.

And also thanks to Valerie for the very lovely digital card.

This beautiful candle photograph on this first card is from the Carola.

And Jeanie at the Marmalade Gypsy sent this fun Santa gnome.

And last but definitely not least is this fabulous fun holiday tree from our hostess Elizabeth. And Bleubeard too of course.

Thank you all for your lovely  holiday mail. It is always appreciated. 

As also thanks for all the wonderful holiday wishes I receive digitally. 

That's all for me this week. I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe T day and the rest of 2022 also.

Holiday Cheer

 Hi everyone.  I am here with a short post today as it is day 29 over at Art Everyday Month. It's a photo post, so probably better said that is short on words, not on photos.

 This past weekend we visited our local Christmas tree farm and chopped our tree.

The farm is on the opposite side of my town. Once we parked, we grabbed a sled to help pull out the tree, as well as a saw to cut it down with. We also sanitized them and then headed off.

I only saw 1 person without a mask during the whole tree chopping adventure. Of course we do have a mask mandate in my state now.

This is my daughter. It really wasn't that cold out, but  she didn't bring a whole lot of jackets home with her.

We had little rain last summer and late spring and are in a mild drought in my area.  I thought the trees might be a little on the small side because of it. One day I drove home in this direction,  and I spotted some taller trees off to the side along the road. That's where we headed to go find our tree.

Once I snapped my photo to make it look like my husband did all the work (ha-ha-ha), the three of us pulled out the tree. 

And then we used the tree wrapper which puts string around the tree to make it easier to get it home.

I'm glad we went early as it was quite crowded by the time we left.

As my daughter was heading home later that day, we decided to put up the tree when we got home. 

For once my husband was in a Christmas spirit to put up the tree. Not that he is usually grumpy about it, but this year he was really having fun.

And there it is. The tree is a beauty. I still needed to put my tree skirt around the base, so that isn't quite done in this photo, but the lights and all the ornaments are on. 

It is fun to put up all the ornaments as they are items we have collected over the years, including some from trips, bits my daughter made when she was younger, and even a couple of ornaments I made at 5 years old.  It's a hodgepodge of memories that are always fun to see again. 

I'm hoping to put up my other decorations in the next few days also.  

It’s that time of the year.  Hope your weekend is going or has gone well! Thanks for stopping by!