Angelic Sounds

 It had been a busy day. It’s not fun shopping but I was out there. It was a lot of chaos but I am glad to be home. Thanks for stopping in today.

Christmas is Coming....

 

 

It was so bone chilling cold outside this morning as I walked to the mail box. The temp is 24 degrees F. but the wind makes it feel like 7 degrees F. It hurts the skin that is exposed to the air. I snapped photos of the sled this morning to send to my brothers but I guess I will share them here too. I have so many memories of sledding with sleds down the steep hill behind our house. All four of us would be out there and the snow would get so icy and slick from so many of us making a good trail. My brothers are in their 80s now and live in warm states but here I am still living in Iowa, freezing.

  

I am really pleased with the blue that I painted the front door last year. I also upgraded the wreath with extra balls of color to make it more festive.  The bells hanging there are an extra that we hang there for the sound effects. The ribbon on the bells are sure messed up as I view the photo. I may get it straightened out soon.

I wrote out Christmas cards to those that I have received and also to those I think I will probably get soon. I  had to dig through old cards to find a couple of addresses. It was quite satisfying to get it done and I can send late ones if there are some that I didn't remember and come in later. We both are waiting for packages to arrive for our Christmas presents.  I am not sure if the strike will mess with arrival times but a lot of mine will get here today or tomorrow. 

Thanks for checking in today.

Rows....

 

 

 It is a very windy day. The warmer temperatures are good at getting rid of the snow but it doesn't feel so warm. Wind chill keeps us humble. With all of our packages mailed we have had a quiet day. I put up a garland around our front door which I wasn't going to do. A change in mind just happened.  I think that is the last for me to decorate. More coffee and hot tea breaks for me for the season. I did have an Amazon mess up with an order already. They sent a different color than I had ordered. Maybe the worker who filled the order is color blind. I get to take it back to a station and they reordered it for me. It will come late for sure.  Thanks for checking in today.

Middle of the Week....

 

The past few days have been busy. A couple of days were spent buying and wrapping Christmas presents. There is a huge sigh of relief that two people in our house has made as everything is now in the mail. The sled dogs in Maine will be busy and the mail persons will be delivering many boxes. 

If I were better organized we could send packages back at Thanksgiving to the Chicago area family but I am not organized at that time. I ended up sorting presents and stowed everything into five different boxes. With every present marked, they can all be mixed and matched to fit into the containers. My wife and I got handy with the packing tape to get it all done.

The snow that we now have on the ground makes the cold weather feel colder. It was a day where the winter coat has to be zipped up and the hood being used.  The trip to the mail box this afternoon was a quick one as I didn['t want to linger out there. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

Tuesday.....

 

The morning sky was glowing for a short time  and I took a shot out in the cold. The sun comes up behind my neighbor's house but I still can see the effects from it. 

Joy is a gift of banana bread from a guest who arrives at our house for afternoon tea. It is filled with raisins and walnuts and that takes it further than just banana bread. It isvery large so we are going to freeze half of it.

My wife's village is a big hit for visitors to see when they come to our house. People ask as to how it gets to be a big collection. I say that she gets gifted a piece a year and in the past forty years of marriage she does get to have a big city. She didn't really start collecting them until the past 15 or 20 years. 

We got our first batch of Christmas gifts mailed out today. It won't arrive until after the special day but it is fun whenever they receive it.  Our other batch is one of many presents needing to be wrapped and then me finding boxes for the items to use for shipping. Our weather is better which makes going to do shopping more pleasant. I was out the past two mornings and it was almost tolerable. The crowd on Monday was insane as everyone looked like they wear doing panic buying. This early morning I didn't have any crowd to fight with and I finished shopping for our kids. I have some to shop for yet for my wife but that will be easy when you live in a big city with lots of stores that are less than five miles away from where I live. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

Sunday's Greeting....

 

 

Random Visuals.....

 

 

 

We were iced in this day. I went to get the mail late afternoon and the sidewalks were still ice covered. Our temps just didn't get warm enough to melt it off. I will have to salt the sidewalks tomorrow as I am sure more people will be out and about. Thanks for checking in today.

Friday is a Freezing Hard Day

 It was too cold to go outside but I did rush out and snap this. It could have been more dramatic if I walked down the street but that wasn't going to happen.

 

 

It is warm inside and the crowd around the tree still are wearing their coats. The tree in the sun room is warm only when I turn on the heater out there.  

 

 

Another view of my wife's view shows people ice skating and sledding. It is a busy city with people practicing in the choir while a man is standing on the bridge yelling greetings. 

 

My last tree is up. I got frustrated with it but I do like it now. It is the excessive amount of wires that show that bothers me during the day but then when it gets dark at night it is fantastic. 

I made a last minute run to get groceries before the ice storm that is predicted to hit. We are stocked for quite a few days and I hope we just don't get the storm. Unfortunately all the weather casters have our state targeted for a hit this evening. We will stay in and wait for it all to pass.

Thanks for checking in today..

Chilly Cold.....

 The village is all set up. My wife will tweek it every once in a while as that is the fun of having it.  She has ordered lights for her big Christmas tree. 

The town square is a busy place and the kids are busy riding the horses. This is a day time shot but I will work at shooting some night shots. I am still short a few lights for the houses but that will be happening when I can get to the store. 

The wiring on the old fashioned bubble lights was scary. It had electric cords wrapped in a cloth-like material that poorly covered the wires. My dad finally threw away the set and fifty years later I can now buy them. I first saw them at a country school Christmas party where my brothers were attending. That had to be in 1953.

This tree is in front of the window next to the street in our spare bedroom.  I put lights on the one side just to make an impression for people looking inside. I put the bubble lights on the back side for us to enjoy.  They are a fascination for me from history and really aren't that practical.  I still enjoy them. I did not get to display them last season. Again I will try to take some more low light shots of them this evening. We  both are done with our projects. I don't like how many wires that are on the tree but at night it is stunning. 

Our lowest temp was at 5 degrees F. and our high was 17 degree F. It was cold out there to bring in the recycle bin. I will be glad when we get through the next day and warm up a little.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Again.....Middle of the Week!

 

The morning shot was done through the screen wire grid today. There was snow on the deck and it was too cold to go out there. I was too lazy to get shoes anyway.

The morning shot also shows we had a light snow. It isn't outstanding and our view isn't great either. We look out at the junky yards of our neighbors, looking down makes it easier for us to see it all. 

It also has snowed on the tables for my wife to start her village project. It starts with the merry go round and the one big town square tree. 

It is in progress in this photo but since then she has now added trees and people and horse drawn carriages. I guess she is ready for the electrician to come in and install the lights in all of her buildings. Future photos will be shared once everything is completed. My wife is quite a city planner with her placements of churches, buildings and houses. 

 

 Yes, they are bad soldiers because they can not stand in formation with uniform spacing. I guess I was in a hurry getting them set up. I am working on one more tree that lights up in a window for the neighbors to see.  We are getting closer to being done with the ornaments. It means I can sit and eat banana bread and drink coffee.

Tuesday is Today....

 The temperatures are dropping as is par for winter weather. The clouds in the morning sky are casting reflections from the sun making a great pink color. 

Some more ornaments were added but more are yet to come. I don't have the shot for the complete tree but it is done now being decorated. 

Our oldest son turns 49 years this day. Having three kids and a busy job he probably won't get to celebrate much. His birthday card is on its way but the reliable mail service wasn't yesterday. They didn't pick up the mail until about six o"clock in the evening. lHe knows he is getting a card so it will just be a day late. 

One last tree has been assembled. It is the one I put up so the lights in the front window can be seen from the outside. I did tell my wife that next year she gets the tree I assembled now for her angel tree next year as she is running out of room on her tree. I have bubble lights to put on this tree as well as antique larger glass blown ornaments. I won't get to that until tomorrow.

Thanks for checking in today.

Sunny Day....

 The corner of the sun room gives us an extra special effect of two more trees when view at night. The tree show is in the lights only stage as it took a half day assembling of the tree. I then took another hour or more to put on all the lights. 

 

. We started putting on ornaments this morning. We still have two boxes of ornaments yet to put on the tree. We do it in stages as the collection of things that go onto the tree is large. In the daytime we  had sunshine outside as we put up the Christmas balls. 

A living room shot shows that things are in progress. Geese that haven't been placed in the room and batteries are needed to get the lights to shine. It looks like I just chose to drink coffee and ignore the tasks at hand. 

There seems to be so much that we do but we like to decorate. I have one more tree that may or may not go up for this season. The room that it use to be displayed in has had a furniture arrangement change. I will have to do some problem solving to get it done. I did not display it last year. 

The warm weather is great to have. I can see we won't stay warm for long but it is nice to have it. I heard someone out there in the neighborhood was mowing their yard. Winter really is here and the days keep getting shorter. Thanks for checking in today.

Friday.....End of the Week.

 

My wife's tree is up now. The angel tree is full of ornaments that have been collected to the theme.  Lots of figurines and angel dolls are also a part of the collection. 

 

 

The glow of shiny angels both metallic and white make it a showy tree. The first tree of angels was a small one but the collection did grow for the need of a six foot tree. 

While digging through the boxes of things I found my Snoopy figure. He is a cute bell ringer with race track flag ears. I don't understand that design treatment but he is stiill a fun little guy to have sitting on the shelf. 

 Our main tree is yet to be assembled. I brought up the stand and pole today and the boxes of branches are also in the sun room ready for me to move. It seems that I have started later than usual but I should have that tree up tomorrow. 

We warmed up to 40 degrees F. today. It is still cold but it seems warm after the past cold days. Thanks for checking in today.

 

Teddy Bear Tree....

 

 

 The teddy bear tree was originally kept just bears. My wife's tree evolved into a stuffed animal tree as you can see there are more than just bears on it now. My wife is not a Ty collector and I don't quite know why the tag is still on that one stuffed item. I bet I  can cut it off now the photo has been taken.

I put out my lawn ornament reindeer today. It was extremely cold out there but once put in place it is done. I got the lights all working so I can't wait to see them in the dark. We are working on getting the angel tree set up and there are a lot of items that sit around that tree.  I do have the boxes carried up but not much has been done yet. Thanks for stopping by today.

Middle of the Week....

 

It is a year od proving that gingerbread is a good material to use for building. The grandkids and my wife and I got to do this last  year during their visit. 

Our son and his wife from Maine sent us a Christmas wreath. It is made up of fresh greens and smells so great. There are tiny lights on the thing but I have to find some batteries to get them going. We keep it on the sun room door so it last years lasted for months before it dries out. The star fish are a great way to decorate them. The company is from Maine so thr real starfish are from the ocean. 

I set up my wife's tree for angels and she has started the task to cover the tree with angel themed ornaments.  I moved things around in the living room to find room for it in the living room corner.

The plants got moved out of the way and placed under the Capernaum photo. They don't look bad there but they will be in low light for a month. The Capernaum view is from the ancient city in Israel and is overlooking the Sea of Galilee. 

We are having a very windy day today. It is noisy and sounds like trucks going by the house continually. I had to remove my dead battery from my Buick this morning and go buy a new one. I got to take the truck out on the road and blow off its dust. I had to go on youtube to figure out how to get things taken apart and then put back together.  It isn't as easy as it use to be as they design the battery with covers to avoid any spark explosions between the positive and negative posts. The battery just barely fits into the plastic case and I at first thought I had the wrong new battery.  With a lot of wiggling a very heavy object it did finally slip into its space.  The car started turning on lights and the radio when I put the final negative connection to the post.  It is a good thing I didn't have to call a tow truck and have someone else do it. I didn['t mention that I have some new aches and pains now.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Winter Wonder World.....

 It is our very first measurable snow fall. The day didn't warm up but the sidewalks did clear themselves somewhat. It is still very cold out there and we have to adjust to that now.

The hard freeze eliminated the red from the burning bush leaves. It turned out to be a nice orange color instead of red. 

I brought up the stuffed animal tree this afternoon and my wife has started to place the different characters onto the tree.  Putting up a tree every few days makes it actually fun to do. The angel tree will be the next one to be assembled. 

Thanks for stopping by today.