Sunday...........

A kitten ornament I picked up at an after Christmas sale many years ago.   I bought it to represent our then Yellow Kitty.  It is nice to have it to helps us to remember her.

Another view of my wife's village.  The carriage is going past the church while people are inside singing songs around the church organ.

Not many of these houses have things like this on the inside of them.  We had visitors Friday evening and they asked if my wife has specific kinds of village pieces.  We told them that most all of them are after Christmas sale items and were collected through many years.  Once in a while I would buy one for a present, full price.  We do try to compare the ones on sale to be sure we are keeping the scales of them similar, but they are a lot of different brands.

Two buddies under the tree.  I have blogged about the dog who has big eyes a couple of times.  The trend is to put large eyes on them. I guess it is suppose to make them cute.  I quit buying them and won't buy again until I find ones with traditional sized stuff animal sizes.  They even have human dolls that have very large eyes.

We got the family group photo printed off a couple of days ago to send to a cousin and then the printer bombed.  It is dead to the world.  It adds to the list of things that keep breaking down.  I got the furnace all fixed and then the thermal couple broke or quit working.  We woke up to a very cold house and we had to go to Ace to get a new one.  I think that the not having the right kind of fan on the furnace for a few days caused a lot of wear and tear on it. Anyway I am ready for the next thing to break down.  It does rain when it starts.  I remember other bloggers telling of times with trails of destruction with everything they own going bad automatically for weeks at a time.

Today is a good day of rest in which I hope to have.  We have a couple of Christmas presents to get today and will come home to get ready to ship off a box to the Winterset area.  Things seem to stay complicated as I gave up a half day for my brother in law on Saturday.  It was an immediate project to do on the farm and it did get done.   I hope all is going well for you my friends and that peace settles in around Christmas day or at least by the day after of Christmas.  Thank you for stopping by today.

Saturday with no Satire..........

This squirrel is getting dual billing as I posted a similar photo of him on the Photo a Day blog. He looked like he was getting a seed from the birch tree but I think he was thinking I should put a bird feeder in this tree.   I did have a feeder there a few years ago but I think he is too young to have known about it. I took it down because of the squirrels draining it continually. Imagine that.

In the past I would take shots of this ornament and think it would be blurry.  I now realize that it was just painted very badly. It looks like a beginner on the conveyer belt was learning how it was to be done but didn't have it mastered. At a distance it looks ok but now I see there is something wrong with this train.

I have a couple shots of this female goldfinch.  She kept turning to the back and never allowed me to get a good shot of her.

The new fan was installed Friday morning by me.  I had to do some custom work to adapt the smaller fan to the very old squirrel cage opening. 

It is a smaller fan but works really well.  It has to run a little longer but the heat seems more even.  The big fan would turn on and blow heat out of the vents so quickly that you felt you were having a heat wave.  Then when it shut down, it was cold.

The quiet little blower barely makes a noise and it is so smooth at putting out the air.  Less air but continuous air.  I like it.  It can work for a long time until we replace the whole works in the spring. 

We seem to be busy with so many things.  We tried to plan yesterday going to see the last Hobbit movie but it got to be too hectic.  Furnace repaired, plans changed, company was stopping by, and we both were getting stress headaches.  We snuck away to Des Moines in the midst of all this chaos and bought presents for our Chicago family.  Our Maine family had their presents mailed on Friday morning. The more things that we get off the list the more chances to relax.  By Tuesday we should be done with everything and life will be better.  I hope everyone enjoys this Saturday and thanks........for stopping by again.

Friday's Finality........

Another special effects tree photo to share.  I try not to do the repeat sharing of them so I have to go back and check each time.

My wife received a gift from a friend last week.  It didn't mean anything to the person giving it away so we have it for now.

Maynard Reese started out as a painter of fish and I remember the paintings being printed on calendars.  It had to be in the middle 60's.   Through marketing strategies this Iowa painter has done well in the art business.  The Millpond Press company sold prints of his paintings for many years.  Printed, glazed works by him were sold as collector items in the early 70's.  Most of his work after the fish calenders were paintings of ducks and loons in beautiful landscapes.

We have been to his gallery on Ingersoll Avenue in downtown Des Moines area and we have followed his work all those years.  I doubt that he is still painting but his gallery probably still selling his printed work. We have two or three other famous wildlife artists in Iowa.  One was a former art teacher, not me, and he has done very well in the print business. Larry Zach is his name.

Here is another indent replica that I bought a few years ago.  There is a lot of glued glitter on it to represent snow.  I don't think the snow decoration is authentic for a true indent ornament.

I will finish off with furry friends on my wife's bear tree.  It is cold out there again and it is taking my body a while to adjust to it.  We are shipping out a package to Maine today and will need to ship one other out to another part of Iowa.  It is good to get them out and on their way.

I had a half day yesterday to work so I am gearing up today to get caught up on the chores.  I have one frame job to finish this morning and the other three are now done.  Furnace fan goes in this morning and the rest will be fun and frolic.  Yesterday was my last day to work at school this year and that is a great feeling to be done with that.

A Set of Three for Thursday.........

Thanks for stopping by today.

Wednesday's Wandering.........

While the red bellied is savoring a seed from the suet, a  Junco looks on maybe in amazement.  It has been busy out at the feeders with the weather turning to be so cold.

The female goldfinch turns browner in the winter.  She is checking out this webbing that is holding the seed and she pokes her beak trough one of the holes to pull one out.  

Another village view of a Victorian house with its Queen Anne tower. This photo reveals the behind to scene shot of all the wires that are required to light the houses. 

I am saving back the photo of the manger scenes until we get closer to Christmas.  The donkey and sheep are resting though in this picture.

While looking things over on the tree today I realized that there must be one more box of ornaments somewhere.  I know that I had a box of small balls and some really small ones of different colors.  I will look tomorrow for something that has been put aside.  I was going to swipe some of the smaller ones and put them on a new wreath and I could only find one gold one.  Something is amiss. My mind probably is the problem.

Our furnace is not repaired but it is working order.  I ended up ordering the fan that I needed on the internet.  I have a temporary fix with a fan that will run continually, blowing air through the entire vent system.  It actually is doing a great job as the heat remains a more even heat.  My new blower was shipped this morning and I should have it by Thursday afternoon.  It will be great to put it in to replace that very old set up. I drug the old squirrel fan out from its area this morning and only two rusty screws were holding it in place. It will go to the recycle place this spring.

Various circumstances were preventing me from buying a new furnace this summer.  A new furnace will be in our future as those things change. If the new fan succeeds, it will be in early spring that a new system can be installed. It is nice that we are staying warm with such cold windy weather.

I thank you all for stopping by today. 

Tuesday's Things..............

The downy woodpecker is the most loyal of all my wild birds to come to the feeder.  This one seems to think there might be bugs in my wooden feeder but he she didn't peck on the wood.  She may have been working on a seed to get it open with her beak while holding steady on the side. The cold has come back to  Iowa so I would expect to see more birds back to the feeder.  The chickadee likes the seeds that is inside the suet and it will come once in a while get to them.

The only snow we see right now is the snow under my wife's village.  We have never named the town but it is a nice set up this year and it should get a name.  The people seem to be so nice to each other and the firemen sit outside the front of their firehouse waiting for the next fire call. The choir in the background do sing and the little boy is selling evergreen trees for Christmas.

A not so good looking cardinal seems a little sad.  He is a one of the birds a calling in the Days of Christmas song.

I messed with the camera a couple of days ago to see if I could imitate two different bloggers who were showing this kind of thing on their posts. I had to take the camera off of the automatic setting and find a setting that would stay open for a while in order to get enough light for the snap.  It did work and I have too many of these tree design to share.

The little dog is looking up to see where his other three dog friends are on the tree.  He has strange spots on him but he looks like he is always smiling.  The red dot for a tongue is a nice touch for him.

By nine o'clock this morning I successfully removed my antique squirrel cage fan from my furnace.  The timing is not great but we are safe and warm.  We don't want to get out today but the place to buy a new fan sits in the Des Moines airport area.  I have never been there but we will have to make the journey, cold weather or not.  The original heating system was a coal burning system and the heat rose naturally.  It isn't ideal but it does do that pretty much on it's own.  It just isn't as immediate as one wants it to be.  The furnace is built to shut down when the heat box gets to a certain temperature and then that heat has to move up and out. When it cools down then, the thermostat start it all up again turning on the heat.  I actually have some fans on a couple of vents upstairs to get it moving until I get the squirrel fan replaced.  A blowing fan on the intake vent does have to make air come out on the other end.

I hope all are doing well.  With winter returning, we are all not happy with that but it was a nice break from the extreme cold.  Thanks for stopping by today. 

Sing it Bing.........

A gift given to me many years ago was a singing Bing Crosby.  His  arm moved the microphone back and forth as he sang Christmas songs.  His mouth moved up and down and his head did swing back a forth when it was new.  Time has taken a toll on my crooner as I have the mouth taped on with clear tape and he doesn't sing nor move anymore.  His insides sort of wore out in time and he is just an image of is old self now.  Blogger friend, Cattails, did find him on ebay and you can see him singing on the youtube.

I bought a set of ornaments once that had all the manger characters in the set and along with it they had Santa Claus people who probably were suppose to be the wise men.  The more I look at that set the more I think they were made in a Russian country or a former satellite country.  The manufacturer did not really know much about the story of Jesus as they turned the group into a foreign creation. They used colors that would common in their country and not what we would traditional use.  I still like the ornaments even though they are strange interpretations.  The creators liked putting dots on all the depicted cloth materials of the character. I posted an angel on an earlier posting of one of my blogs and she too had white polka dots on her dress.

 I found a box in the basement last week that had some rejected shiny brites. One is a larger ball that came from my wife's family and others seem to have lost their finish.  I may go ahead and incorporate them into the bottom of my container of brites.  The silver one in there seems different colored than the ones that I have and some don't have their hook any more.  I can solve that if I ever need to hang them but probably never will.

 The village has been assembled and it looks better than usual.  We used books and boxes to elevate some of them to represent hills with snow on them.  It is quite a process to get these all out of their boxes and things set up with lights.  We haven't added to the collection for a while but our oldest son gave us a barn and house from a garage sale find last year.

I am in the Special Education room today.  It is kind of a tough day to be here as one of the students in this room lost her father in a house fire this morning.  She of course is not here but the rest of her friends and the staff that worked with Lauren and her older sister are here reflecting on what happen.  The father was wheel chair bound and the two daughters and the dog dig make it out of the burning house. The father was found at the front door dead as he didn't have his legs to walk out of the house to escape the fire. 

The other sad thing is a student of this school died over the weekend.  He and his family lived here at the time when he was in fifth grade.  He developed a severe headache and had an aneurysm putting him into a coma.  Nine years late he died and the age of 19,  leaving a family of mom with many brothers and sisters. His father passed away a couple of years ago from cancer. It was unusual for Bill to have developed the problem so young and has been very difficult for the mom these many years.  He lived in a special facility.

I work today but I am betting this is my last day to work this week.  School gets out on Friday and it will be the last chances for work this year.  Believe me we have a lot of things to get done before Christmas so a few straight days of free time will be used wisely.  

On a side note, if you hear of a house blowing up because the owner has dynamited his furnace fan, that would be near my home or actually my house.  It is needing to be replaced and I see I can actually buy what I need on the internet from Amazon.  It is a strange world.  Don't worry, people, we have heat, we just have an irritating bearing problem on the fan the just comes and go. What a big nuisance factor it is!!!!!!

Thank you for stopping by today.