Decorations Installment #3

Things are changing, never staying exactly the same. Keep reading for more.


There are six of these white ceramic doves on our tree. I took my daughter and her best friend, Stacy to a local ceramic place to do arts and crafts. They chose these ceramic doves to paint with a shimmery white paint, and then the eyes and beaks. I think they had to be fired in the oven again and then I think a final coat of glaze was applied. It took us several trips to the ceramics place to do these and the girls, around 10 years old or so seemed to have had fun. Stacy's family also has an identical set of doves on their tree.
Now for the changes. I read in our local paper that the city recreation department, who ran the ceramics house, has decided to close down the ceramics place. And this year both my daughter, Elise (6/24/06) got married and now Stacy, this week-end will be married (12/02/06).
So this year, these ornaments became much more valuable. From what I know they are irreplaceable. There is no ceramice house to go to and I doubt I could get these two very busy young ladies to make anymore. Lets just hope they don't get broken!

Decorations Installment #2

Some of the oldest decorations on the tree are the ones that I made myself. When Don and I first got married we had the plain glass balls and tinsel type garland, but after a few years I made this set of decorations.

These are only three out of the total set. Each one is for a name or adjective for Jesus. There are actually many more names, but I think I only made twelve. They are counted cross stitch and then inserted into very cheap plastic frames. Each one is only about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. I love using them because it reminds us what the Christmas season is all about.

Post Thanksgiving Festivities

The Thanksgiving holiday continues on with my brother Jonathan and his wife Beth stopping by to visit on Saturday. This was a very special treat because for several years they have been living in various areas of the country as travel nurses and it was always just too far to come home for the holidays. But this year they are only about 3 1/2 hours away so they were able to make it over!

Jonathan brought a quilt that he had been working on. It's actually an old comforter that belonged to his wife that was being given a second life as a quilt. It was suppose to be for their two cats to sleep on, but I think it's too nice for that. Jonathan wanted advice on the border and after I showed him the ins and outs of the use of my "old" sewing machine he had the quilt complete by the end of the night.

The Cat Quilt is almost King Size with extra thick batting.
I told Jonathan to smile like a man who had just finished making a quilt. He should be very proud.

Oh and we have to note that Beth Brinton, his wife contributed about 3% in the making of the appliques so this was a team effort.

Most of the appliques were either ready made patterns or from coloring books. (You'd think they'd been quilting for a long time to know to use the coloring books!)
But this close up of one of the cats was actually designed and an original of Jonathan's.

It's hard to believe that this was Jonathan's first quilt. I think he may be hooked and after I showed him my hand dyed fabric he's promised to come play with me some day soon with that as well. After that who knows where this quilting will all lead to!

While Jonathan worked on his quilt, Beth and I used the computer and picture editing software to work on gifts for her sister. Not wanting to be the one to spoil that surprise I won't reveal what the gift is and I forgot to take a picture. I can say that it involved extensive picture editing to get things just right and Beth was awed by what can be done with manipulating photos these days.

So this brings our Thanksgiving holiday officially to an end. Food and Family that's what we had and it was all great! We just hope that next year will be just as great!

Decorations Installment #1

This is the first installment of the Christmas Tree Decoration Explanations.

The Red Rope Garland -purchased at a local Fabric Store

The first decorations to go on our tree are the lights and the red rope garland. The lights really don’t have a specific story. The garland was added a couple of years ago just after I did a Bible study on the book of Ruth. The Bible study is from Precept Ministries and it’s a great 4 week study about how God provided a “kinsman redeemer” for Ruth and she was then included in the lineage of Jesus who is our “kinsman redeemer.” The red rope represents the blood lineage of Jesus who came to redeem us to His and now Our Father. It also represents the blood of Jesus that was shed for the atonement of our sins to redeem us from sins. Jesus is my Redeemer and My Redeemer Lives!

Christmas Tree Shopping Trip

Each year for the last 2 years and this year as well we have all gone up to the mountains to get our Christmas trees. We go to a Christmas Tree farm since North Carolina is one of the leading producers of Christmas trees. The northwestern corner of our state has hills covered with Christmas trees and plenty of choose and cut farms. We've made it a tradition now in it's 4th year to drive up there which is about an hour drive to pick out our fresh trees. It began with the first year when Elise, Don and Debby went up to get a tree. We can't remember where that tree farm was exactly, but it was a bare bones outfit (meaning no extras.) The following year, which was Jason and Rachel's first Christmas as one, we went up and found a very nice place which we've been going to ever since. That year Jason and Rachel picked out the nicest tree that turned out to be way too big for their little house. The next year they measured, but again the tree needed to be cut off a bit to make it fit. They thought for sure the tree would fit fine this year, but it still needed a little cut off the bottom. They almost got it right. Next year they will be in their new house for Christmas and size won't be so much of an effort.

Here is Jason and Rachel with baby Faith's first Christmas Tree. (Rachel has about 2 weeks left to go, but you can barely tell in this picture that she's pregnant at all.)

This is Elise and Josh's first Christmas together and they live in a tiny little place behind Elise's uncle's house. Their tree needed to be small, and they were very excited about picking out just the right one.

Christmas Tree Shopping Part 2

So both kids had their trees, but Don and I still hadn't found what we wanted. We like to get tall skinny trees. Since we have a high ceiling a tall tree looks nice, but we don't like to give up too much floor space to a tree that is tall. Also I don't like to give up the money for the tall trees. This is why going to a tree farm in North Carolina can be a good opportunity to save some money. There are trees that are specially tagged as less than market grade or in the real world, are seconds. That just means even though they are tall, there is something wrong with them. They usually are not as full as the "perfect" full market grade trees. We've been getting this type of trees for the last 3 years and it means getting a $100+ tree for $60. We've always been very pleased with this type of tree, but this year it meant being taken up to a section of the farm that wasn't yet open for sale. They open up different sections of the farm as the week-ends pass toward Christmas. This keeps the buyers in certain areas and helps to plan how they will harvest the trees. So we were driven up to a hill that would come open in a couple of days and there we had a huge choice of trees. Since the fellow with the chain saw was waiting on us to make up our minds, I didn't have a chance to take a picture of our tree before it was cut down.
But here it is in our house, lights and garland already on and ready for the decorations.

And here is the best ever use for the old floppy disks that we use to use before the CD and DVD's came around.

They make great shims for leveling up the Christmas tree. Just add or remove as needed to get things all level. (Fay, you would have loved this recycling for sure!)

So now the tree is all decorated and I'm going to post a closeup view of the various decorations that hang on the tree. Most (not all) of the decorations have a story attached or are meaningful in some way or another. I'll try to post one every couple of days between now and Christmas and then the full tree on Christmas Day.

Thanksgiving Festivities

Thanksgiving was a great time! Don is the head chef here and he knows how to keep things running smoothly. The problem is that we end up with huge quantities of food, but no one complains too much while they are eating it. It's afterwards that we hear the moans and groans ...

He got up at 4am to begin his cooking. His assistant (me) got down to help at about 8am and by that time he had things well under control.

We roasted a 24 pound turkey in our oven. Meanwhile, outside in the smokers Don had an additional 3 turkeys smoking. One for us, and the other two for the children's in-laws. He also had the ham, venison (deer) and for a friend two ducks and a goose. All of the meat came out beautiful! Golden brown and very good.

In addition to our Thanksgiving festivities, we also added in early Christmas gifts. Since Jason and Rachel are expecting our first grandchild around December 10th, these Christmas presents needed to be opened up now.

Can you guess what there are?

Elise and Josh are trying to figure out how to work their present.

Rachel finds reading the manual the best way to learn how to operate theirs. (My personal favorite, always works for me.)

Each family got the exact same things, even wrapped identically.

Have you figured out what was all wrapped up? Video Camcorders. They are super small, and fit in the palm of your hand. These have Hard Disk, so there are no tapes or disks. So now we can capture all the special moments of our grandchildren and as Rachel said, now baby Faith can come. They have everything they need for her arrival.

So we ate, and laughed, and ate, and talked, and ate and well ate some more. But when it was all said and done, everyone was full and had a great time.

Last Barbeque Contest for this Season

The first week-end of November is usually our last Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) contest of the season. There isn't a specific season for barbecue, but for us who don't want to compete in the snow, this was the last contest of the year. At home, cooking barbeque happens all year long regardless of the weather.
So our last contest was the Hog Happnin' in Shelby, NC (Matt Brinton's home town and where Mom Brinton lives). The contest is for a great charity and is truly a great southern cultural experience complete with lawn mower races and car show. Although we didn't win any awards our ribs placed 12th out of 64 teams. And the best fun is having family and friends there to share in all the fun (work).

Every BBQ Contest begins days before in our kitchen.
Sauces, Rubs and various other things have to be prepared before we ever even leave our house.

File folders folded and used to hold ziploc bags for dyeing fabric also came in handy for holding up the ziploc bags to pour our marinade into. (Thanks to Carol Soderlund's ingenuity from one of her dye classes. She's awesome and Fay was very nice to share this tidbit with me.)

Then when we arrive there is lots and lots of set up of equipment and preparations. This time we were graced with the help of my brother, Jonathan and his wife. We gave Beth the camera and asked her to take lots of pictures. We usually are much too busy to get very many photos so her work was very much appreciated!

Jonathan was in his element! Here he is rigging up makeshift wind breakers to keep the cookers warm during the record below freezing temperatures during the night. He is great with improvising and anticipating the need. Great team player!

More Barbeque Pictures

The sides are all up on our awning and Don has a heater running to keep the chill off. The temperatures set new record lows for that night that were well below freezing.

Elise loves to go through our gift bag of treats to see what was given to her and her husband, Josh is just hoping there's nothing there to take home to their small bungalow.

The contest is actually two days long with the real action happening on Saturday when the turn in of entries takes place beginning at 12noon.

Here we are busy preparing our box for turn in.

The rest of the team looks on with encouragement and hopes of being called into action to taste the product to help determine which entry that's the best for turning in.

Grandma always willing to do her part for the team!

And my niece, Natalie, is a Barbecue Judge in the making. She says she'd be a great judge because she knows what she likes and she doesn't mind telling people. (I'm sure her parents would agree.) Is she busy texting her opinions of our cooking to her friends?

And as the judge in training sits and waits, (what all great judges practice doing!) the work continues.

Jonathan is surprised to see how serious and meticulous all of the preparations are.

There's a bonus sauce competition so we leave that to our other team members, Beth and Elise. What will they concoct on the spot?

So even though we didn't win any awards for this contest we did end up with some very fine barbeque to eat which is a great reward in itself!

Happy Me!

This may not be big news to everyone, but to me it's as Barney Fife would say - "It's Big, It's Real Big!"
I don't have a picture to go along with this news - but I do have visuals! Look to the right and hopefully you're seeing my links now working! It's taken me several weeks and several tries, but finally I've learned how to edit my links and we don't have the "Edit Me" links there anymore! I've broken them up into two categories so far: Family and Art - you should know the difference, and if not then hey just click on them and see where they take you. I'm so thrilled and I actually figured this out all by myself. Now I'll have to go back and cancel a few request for help!