Sunday Freezing

 A shelf that I made a couple of years ago is mounted on the wall on the way to the basement. It is nice to use for changing art shows. I had a taller painting on it and it kept getting into my shots of the chest of drawers displays. I decided to find three of the same size smaller in height rather than two feet high. My wife's first painting is one of Oscar's barn. It is now gone as the entire farmstead of my step grandfather has been totally leveled. The middle painting is one of my wife's of the Atlantic shoreline out on the Maine coastline. We visited our son out there a couple of years and the view is so wonderful. The last painting is mine of a Nebraska farm scene with an age old barn, smaller on a old farmstead where the house doesn't not stand anymore.

 The mantel has been stipped of the Christmas things and the birds have returned. It is fun to change displays there also.

 My wife has a porcelain collection and these are three of them. The light from the window glares onto the first  piece causing it to be too pale in the photo.

We are at -1 degree F. this Sunday morning. There is not traffic out there as people find it too cold to be out there. We did get an inch of snow yesterday early morning but it wasn't anything that causes us to need to shovel. I saw man shoe prints yesterday along with their small dog paw prints on my sidewalk when I was out for the mail yesterday afternoon. We dodged that storm that is just south of us but we will have that below zero temps for a couple of days. I am glad I made a grocery run a day ago and we will stay in for the next few days. I have my first appointment on Tuesday and another on Thursday. Those things always break up a day and distrupt normal life. 

Thanks for checking in today. 

 

Frozen for Sure

 Santa gets to be photographed before he is taken down stairs and put into a box. He is a special guy with his rich red embroidered robe and all his gold trimmings. The teddy bear is on his shoulder  and all the fur and beard are so very white. 

 The detail on this figure is over the top as he has an acorn and ribbons at the base of his staff along with berries of different colors. We aren big on the Santa theme but this doll is one that just a traditon that we enjoy because of its great design. 

Christmas things come with good memories and now sad connections. The brother and sister-in-law of my wife's are both passed now. They gifted this to my wife years ago when we were first married. Her brother passed on Thanksgiving day and the sister-in-law a year and a half before that. The music box is worn out now as one could twist its plastic base and it would turn to the tune. The angel is still beautiful and it the box says in was made it Taiwan, the Republic of China. K-Mart was the store in which it was purchased. She is boxed now and on her way to storage until next November. 

 We were down to -14 degrees F. during the night. We will warm up to -1 or 0 degrees F.  I looked it up and it is -25.5 C. and -18.3 C. for my Canadian friends. Our new furnace has a humidifier that is doing a great job. The windows will clear after the shades have been drawn in a few hours. 

 

I am sharing another illustration from the children's book again today. Sometimes one just has to smile at people's creativity. There will be not walking of dogs today in our neighborhood. All schools are closed and everyone is inside. I don't know how the mail people will deliver mail with theses temps. Sitting with an open door and sticky the arm out at each stop would be horrid. 

Thanks for stopping by today. 
 

Thursday

The morning was cold and it started off with a suny day. We wind from the west was cold. Our next two days are to be so much colder with 0 degrees F. being the high on or two days. We did not get any snow as those north of us did. 

 

As I returned from taking a shot of the sunrise on the deck I noticed my wife's village being lighted up from it. The village continues to thrive as we are enjoying it way past the Christmas season.

 The church was the new addition from last season. It is remarkable in how it was designed with so much detail. The snow on the roof fits right in with all the other building with most of them also having snow on them. 

 

The village seems to be busy with people going to and fro and vendors out and about selling their cookies and popcorn. 

 

I call it managing my fish farm as I work to move the females around into different tanks. I have removed the females from the tank in which the angel fish will eat its offspring. The male fish continue to bother the pregnant fish as you see here. The males are smaller that their mates. 

 I photographed this illustration from a children's book to show a person putting away the Christmas lights. We are still putting things away. Each day we find the next item to take down and today it was the mantel decorations and wreath. 

Thanks for stopping by today. 

Middle of the Week

 A partridge not in a pear tree. One has to compare them in the set to know which one is which. The hens and calling bird can be confused with the partridge. 

 This is an ornament that I bought at a craft store. It is an amazing one with all the fake stones and detailed decoration. It looks like it is sitting on the head of the partridge but it is not. It is a medium sized ornament and probably is one of the most decorated that I own. I have another in a different shape that I bought at the same time in a bargain sale. 

 

This is a Seth Thomas clock box that was converted into shelves. The clock insides were probably tossed when it stopped working. I store all sorts of nothings inside of it that seem to collect as I lived my life. I would pick up things as I would wander through the land. 

My father-in-law was good at picking up boxes of junk at auctions. He would take out of the box what he wanted and give us the rest. The ceramic birds were in the box and they are old. The Velveteen Rabbit is actually my wife's that she had as a young girl. The elephant was shared in the earlier blog. 

 Old bottles become a collection as I pick them up from a burn pile on a farm. A third bird is on the shelf with a cat that was made in China. The small slab of polished rock was my dad's handiwork. The glass stagecoach is from an Avon collection of fifty years ago. I tossed a lot of them but kept this one. The lid to the bottle is under the plastic seat part of the coach. 

 The things on top are a variety of finds from different areas of the country. The bottle was found underneath my porch of my old house which I found while working on it. The house has an unknown origin. 

Our promised wind has started and the future temps are looking to be very cold. We had snow melting today and then the cold will come in to the area. I bought a lot of groceries yesterday and the price tag should prove we have enough for a long time.  

Thanks for checking in today.  

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Tuesday

 I have two antique canning jars that I display older shiny brite ornaments. Some of them are not of that company but were duplicating them at the time. I display some of them like this on my one tree but these are pretty beat up and I just store them in the jars. 

 Jerusalem is divided in four sections and one of them is the Armenian quarter. They artists of this group create decorated items with lots of hand painting. This plaque is created from an original design and is mass produced. Their items sometimes have significant items depicted in them but I don't see anything here but flower designs. Fruits, olives, doves, grapes and pomegranates are seen in a lot of their work. 

 

Another shot of my trucks. I just had piled them together to get them out of the way to make room for a  project. The place mat that is under the trucks is an Armenian work and the designs are created with cross stitched designs. I bet it s a machine created product. 

 

 

There is blue on the markings of some of my guppies. I really had never noticed before until I saw this image. I promise to clean the outside of my tank the next time I am downstairs. It doesn't show up  u ntil you snap it. I see I have two females in there that are going be birthing. 

 I saw one of these on a cable mystery movie last night and they used it as a jade stolen item. I am sure it was really a white onyx one that never was made from jade. Mine is called a natural white onyx, as I did look it up to see what items like this were for sale. I bought this so many years ago and I have it sitting in a what not shelf. 

We were a few degrees warmer this morning but it is still very cold. The wind makes it more tolerable and we have had sunshine for most of the day. Our high today will be 19 degrees F. after starting out at 1 degree F.  

Thanks for stopping by today.  

Monday's Mentions

 It is nothing like the signs of spring when we see the oxalis blooming. We woke up to -1 degree F. and our high today will be 14 degrees F.  We won't talk about wind chills numbers. I had to go out to deliver the garbage to the curb and then later in the day to return it to the house. It was cold at both times. 

 While inside I keep finding things that I like to photograph. The French hen from my one collection stood out to me today as the sun shone on it. The one French hen is a token representative for the three French hens in the song.

 An angel on my wife's tree seemed to be one that I needed to photograph. It has the look of a wooden carved ornament even though it is actually made from resin. 

 In the basement where it is warm, the decoy mallard duck and the two wall shapes of goose and horse are sitting on the top of my new storage cupboard. My neighbor threw the mallard decoy in to my garbage bin back when I was doing remodeling at the old place. It was his sons and he was throwing away his stuff from the garage. I have never tried to float it on water but I am sure it will. 

 My large nutcracker is undergoing a repair in the basement. The belt buckle fell off and I have it glued down with wood glue. I am waiting for it to dry solid. The view of my garbage is an extra for you to see today.

 

The teddy bear tree is down and all are sitting in a plastic bin. They will come out again next year. I am trying to get my storage shelves arrange better and I did see the bin that all the stuffed critters are in looking out at me. 

Thanks for stopping by..... today. 

 

Winter on the Plains

 We have a little snow on our house roofs but the wind does scatter it a bit. We have been very cold and we had a warmup this afternoon to 24 degrees F.  It is just going to be worse tomorrow. It is winter. We could go to the store but we have a lot of things stored up that we can eat so we will stay inside. 

 

I have two larger house ornaments but really never took time to enjoy them. I thought of them yesterday and looked for the two. They were hanging on lower sections so they were sort of out of sight. 

The two are jot harmonious in design but they both serve a purpose. The indent is a replica of ones we had when I was a kid on the farm. They would look pretty magical hanging on a cedar tree cut from the timber. The new ornaments are done well as the salmon one has such great decorations and glitter too.  I didn't buy new ones this year as I thought the store didn't offer much in traditional designs. All plastic is the hot item now and I just like the glass blown one better. 

 I had earlier shared a few milk glass pieces on my chest of drawers. Afterwards I went down to the cupboard and dug out most all of rest of the ones of my wife's collection. These all belonged to my wife's mom. I found a couple of lamp globes also but they seemed to be too much for the display. Obe looks like it is a different white glass variety. 

 I had difficulty getting the shot of this. The grape vine and leaves don't show up very well even with strong light. It is a box piece with lid and everywhere it is decorated. The bead decoration is good. 

 I didn't loose a fish with all the water changing going on. I learned years ago how not to do it. I have killed fish with rapid temperature changing and also from chemicals in the water, I am going to be watching to see if I get any more birthing from the guppy mothers as things settle down. 

It is snowing again. Thanks for checking in today.