Ice Jam And Chipmunks

Friday afternoon, I decided I better do something about the ice on our slab that runs from the edge of the driveway to the house. It was really icy. Louie and I rarely use it, because we drive out of our garage when we go to work, we drive up to the mailbox on our way back into the garage, which is connected to our house, and we just don't use our sidewalk, so it doesn't always get cleaned right away. Last week, with the ice storm we had, it just didn't get done. The weather forcast was calling for several inches of snow, and the temperature was up to 'semi-melting', so I took my shovel out and started chopping. I have to tell you...........I AM OUT OF SHAPE! I got the job done, but it about KILLED me. I stopped at the edge of the driveway. Next, I tromped through the snow to the side of the house, brushed the snow off of our air conditioning unit, and covered it up with it's LENNOX 'bankey'.

Louie decided it was time to tackle the driveway before the snow came. He went to Theisen's and bought 'Buster'. That's what it is called. It looks like a big putty knife on a long handle. I bet is was a putty knife for the Jolly Green Giant. He made great progress! I went to have coffee with my friend Christie this morning, and when I came home, it looked it we had an ice jam in our driveway! Yay! Louie found the driveway!
Many hours later, though, it started raining and freezing, but quickly turned to snow, so hopefully, we won't have the ice problem again for awhile.

After the driveway was finished, Louie and I thought about heading out of town for something to do, but it only took us to the edge of town to decide that 'home sweet home' was where we wanted to be. I told him, 'Honey, this is just stupid and craziness. Why are we putting ourselves out in harm's way when we really do not have a real purpose for going? Let's go home where it is warm, safe, and free from crazy lunatic drivers who are talking on their cellphones with no headlights on in this fog!!!!!' So we came home, and Louie worked on building a pool cue, and I spent the afternoon downstairs watching Christmas movies and cutting up some of my fabric scraps into specific sizes for 'stash'. (Wow, that takes a long time!) I have enough scraps to cut for a month straight if I didn't do anything else! About 6:30, we put on our jackets, and went downtown to the theater. We RARELY go to a movie, but decided to go see Alvin and the Chipmunks. It was a cute movie. Louie and I both gave it a 'thumbs up'. When we came out of the movie theater, the sidewalks were already glazed with ice, and we walked like a couple 90 year old people back to our van around the corner from the theater. THANK GOD FOR Rain-X! We didn't have to scrape our windshield or side windows at all! We just jumped in, SHIVERED, and drove straight home and back into our warm garage.THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME, THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME, THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME!!!!

Pin Cushion

I was reading the Wendy's blog ('Snippets Of A Quilter') a week or so ago, and I saw the cutest pincushions that she had made.( http://snippetsofaquilter.blogspot.com/2007/11/basket-of-pincushions.html ) I just had to try one. I think they are so cute! They really are easy to make. I have never made a yo yo in my life, and I have all of the new yo yo makers, but have never opened the packages. I just made one by sewing around the outside by hand and doing it the old way. I think adding the yo yo really 'makes' it on how it looks so cute!

Thanks Wendy for posting about them! Wendy has a link that tells you how to make these cuties!

This is what the bottom looks like. I suppose you could use it either way, but I like the yo yo on the top.

SEW, not much sewing today, but at least it was 'something'!

Christmas Decorating

Ok, I don't have a tree. I haven't had one for many years. No space, really. I did have, a few years ago, one of those ceramic ones with the colored lights glued to the tree, and when you put a light bulb inside it, and turn it on, it lights up. Problem is, I can't find it. It really troubled me last year, and I had to go without it, and it bothers me slightly less this year, but is still bothers me, because I am more organized than that. The difference this year is, I am just not going to let it consume me. If it wants to hide, so be it. When they take me to the old folks home and start clearing out this mess, they will find it probably, and then they can bring it to the old folk's home for me to enjoy! So, instead of my tree, I have decorated my electric fireplace. I really love my fireplace. It adds so much atmosphere! Now, you can see Louie and I peeking out from behind the doily, but that is only because I used the flash to take this picture. Otherwise, you can't see us. Can you see the little gold colored thing on my forehead? That is a brass hand pounded star, made by my sweetie, Louie, to go with the nativity I got at Goodwill! The nativity was handmade by someone, and if they knew what I paid for it, they would cry. The nativity is only the four pieces in front of the picture frame. The figurine kneeling next to Mary is an angel. The rest of the pieces are either Willow Tree, or Isabel Bloom figurines.

Oh, I don't know how well you can see them, but see the pictures of the little girl and little boy in the oval frames above my fireplace? Well, the girl is ME when I was 4 years old. I had blonde hair until I was about 5. The little boy is Louie when he was 6 years old. Isn't he cute???

See my Crackling 'electric' fire? I love it!

Ta ta for now, and Happy Holidays!

Iowa Ice Pictures

These are the pictures from Tuesday's (December 11, 2007) ice storm. It rained and rained all day long, and then froze. I took these pictures on Friday morning about 10:00. We got snow yesterday, so now we have snow and ice both on the trees. I feel sorry for the trees, and little bushes, but I think the ice is just beautiful. Usually, when we get frozen fog, or ice on trees, I see them on my way to work, but by the time I get done working, the sun and temperatures have melted them, and I have missed an opportunity to take some pictures. I wonder how long these will be iced up. Well, I'm going to enjoy them while I can. I just hope the trees survive. There are so many broken branches and tree limbs. The power lines really have taken a beating too. Lots of power outages. I'm glad this doesn't happen often.

The first two pictures are of a tree in my neighbor's yard, which appears above my roof.

This bush is on the right hand side of my driveway. You also see the side of my opposite neighbor's house.

I took this picture after I drove through the drive up bank to deposit a check. I stopped halfway down the driveway and snapped the following two photos.

Stay warm, everyone, and enjoy the holidays! Remember, Jesus is the Reason for the Season!

Without HIM, there would be no Christmas!

Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful And Inside We Had No Electricity

I woke up about 8 am this morning, and of course, I went right to where I usually go...........to my computer. I read all my email, replied to some, read blogs, checked ebay, etc, etc, and I started hearing what sounded like sleet on the office windows. By this time, it is 10:20am, and I got up, looked outside, and the ground was just about completely white! It was sleeting, and freezing to the outside of my windows.

I had not put away my outdoor rocking chairs, or decorations, so I asked Louie to help me, and here we are, carrying rocking chairs, garden hoses, and cement figures to the back of the house so Louie could put the stuff away in my shed, and get out the two sleds I put on the porch during the winter time. It was COLD!!!

We came back inside, and I took a shower, and just kind of got lazy after that. I did decide to make something for lunch, so I pulled a Broccoli and Cheese soup mix out of the cupboard and mixed that up, then added some corn, yellow beans, stewed tomatoes, and carrots to the soup. I was going to make some corn bread from a mix, and the one I pulled out of the cupboard was for apple muffins. I looked at the package, and it had a recipe for an apple cake. It called for cut up apples, and I had some that were not bad enough to throw out, but they wouldn't have been very pleasant eating since they were getting soft (I only like crisp apples, and then the peels have to be removed). While the soup was simmering, I cut up the apples, then put the rest of the mix together. I popped it in the oven, and Louie and I had some soup. It was really good! We didn't have our apple cake then, but waited til later. It turned out to not really be a cake, but more of an apple crisp. That was really good too! While I was cleaning up the kitchen, I added another can of stewed tomatoes to the soup, and I found an au graten potato mix in the cupboard, so I added that to the soup, about 3 cups of water, and I had a full pot of soup again. I guess you know what we're having for lunch tomorrow!

After lunch, we watched some tv, and I ended up watching the inside of my eyelids for awhile, then I got up and went back to my computer to see what my blogger friends were doing. I also checked my email. Mrs. D had asked me to make up a sheet with a Christmas poem on it several times, so she could print it, cut the individual poems out and put them in Christmas cards. I was doing that, and the lights went out! It didn't take long before they were back on, so I restarted my computer, and was doing the task Mrs. D asked of me, and the lights went out again! This happened about three more times, then they were out for good. We got out some flashlights, and I lit about three candles. The whole neighborhood was out, and there was a lot of ice on the trees. We figured that was why we lost electricity. I called Mrs. D to tell her that I coudln't send her poems back until the electricity came back on. I talked to her for about 45 minutes, and then Louie and I decided we might as well go for a ride and see what was going on. We rode around town, but we found out that a whole big section of town was without power. We also found out why. We saw the city crew working on cutting down some branches that were so full of ice, that they must have snapped a power line. While driving around town, we also saw lots of limbs down. Some were small limbs, but there were some rather large ones too.

Since we hadn't had supper, we thought we'd just drive through and pick up a burger. Not so. Even though our section of town was the only one out of electricity, several business had closed early due to the ice. We stopped at Casey's and found out that they had been VERY busy with food orders. They didn't have any warm sandwiches anymore, but Louie got some cold ones out of the cooler and asked them to toast them for us. They were pretty tasty!

After that, we rode around for awhile longer, then I stopped at the post office to check on Nancy's mail. The steps were in very bad shape. They had not been scraped at all. I got up to the door ok, and inside, but I was having a heck of a time getting back down the steps. The railings were icy, and my shoes had absolutely no treads on them. My sweet husband got out of the car, and let me hold his hand while I got down the steps. What a guy!!!!

We made a couple more laps around town, and decided to head home. By then, we could see that previously dark houses now had lights. When we got home, we did too. Our lights ended up being out for about two hours.

When the lights did come back on, we didn't have any cable tv, or cable internet, so I went downstairs to mend some shirts that I wear over my work shirts. My job involves working with oil and mineral spirits, so I wear a work shirt over my regular work shirt to keep from getting myself oily. I also rub my belly up against the machines, so I wear my shirts thin. I have one for every day of the week I work, so four shirts. They all were worn, so I fixed and patched four shirts. I was having trouble with my thread breaking, so I changed to a different cone of thread, and didn't have much better luck. I decided to see if I had some broken threads inside the machine, or to find out what the problem really was. I found quite a bit of lint, so I cleaned that out, and gave it some oil while I was at it too. Between the mending, and the lint cleaning, that job took me about three hours. I then had laundry to fold, so I did that, and now, here it is, 3am.

I think it's time for bed. Night night!