Christmas Parties - 3 Down, 3 To Go

Three down:

1.  Gateway Quilter's Guild

The guild members made some beautiful ornaments for the Christmas tree they sponsored at the Merced County Courthouse Museum. I also loved the spool garland. I cannot claim any of it, but I did enjoy looking at it.

2. Turlock Amateur Radio Club - no pictures




3.  Daughters of Utah Pioneers - Turlock Camp

We had our usual December meeting and pot luck luncheon. Joan brought her nativity collection for decoration. Marsha brought the Mr. & Mrs. Santa Claus that she made for our speaker's table.

Three to go: Merced County Genealogical Society, Atwater First Ward & Merced Family History Center.

Thanksgiving Day -- So Far

My day started with waking to the sound of the washing machine going and Buck grumbling and shuffling around in the laundry room. He came in the room and asked, "Well, you want to go to Home Depot with me? I am tired to dealing with the water leak." I looked at the clock. It was 7:00a.m.

The floor was flooded this morning which required him to haul the cat food, laundry soap boxes, etc., out in the hallway (where it currently still is).  I opted out, due to pie baking duties. He returned over an hour later. Tried three stores, none were open. Hmmmm.....must be a holiday today. 

We are going to #1 daughter's friend's house for dinner, which is where she is having Thanksgiving dinner, and my food assignment was pies. (Per my Maxine calendar: "All it takes is one undercooked turkey and you are the dinner rolls and soda person for life.") Unless I am having dinner here, I am the pie person for life. #1 daughter bought this Pampered Chef apple corer-peeler which she keeps at my house. She's not so dumb. With it at my house, she has a reason to beg off making apple pies, whereas I do not. I started putting this thing together. Next thing I knew, the "equipment operator" honed in on what I was doing and decided to show me how it was done. Eleven apples later, I had enough slices for pie.

Then the "equipment operator" went to the back yard to work on the project he had planned on for the morning: splitting firewood. That homemade yellow monster is affectionately known as "No Problem". Because, when it comes to splitting wood, it is, as the name implies, no problem.

Shower Cat

Not everyone has a cat who keeps them company while they are taking a shower and drying off....

Finicky Cats!

I stopped buying canned cat food by the case years ago because my cats stopped eating it. Turned up their collective noses. I offered dry food until Precious, our kitty that we believe was accidentally poisoned several years ago, could not keep dry food down. So, we went back to canned for her, but bought the one and only flavor that "stunk" right and that she would eat.

A few months ago, she refused to eat that. So, we switched to shredded in gravy, not pate.

A friend who no longer has a cat gifted us with a case and a half of cat food. Precious still won't eat it. Bootsie and Archie, our other two kittys who eat indoors won't touch it, either.

Not ones to let good cat food go to waste, Buck and I decided we were smarter than the cats. We started mixing the juice from one can of people tuna with three cans of cat food. The cats like it just fine.

And, Buck and I have tuna salad every day or so for lunch. It is a high protein, nutritious meal.

Only problem is, we still have about two-thirds of a case of cat food to get through before we go back to buying the stuff our finicky cats like straight out of the can. Buck and I are sure getting burned out on tuna salad for lunch.

Gorilla Garbaging

I know, "garbaging" is not a real word. But, I needed something to go with "gorilla", as in, "gorilla warfare." That is what I felt like I was doing in my studio yesterday when I got into a cleaning mode -- warfare on the garbage.

 I had storage containers out there filled with piles of office supplies, memorabilia, obsolete papers and plain junk. They could be more useful to me now if they were available. So, I went into "gorilla garbaging" mode and started throwing things out. I consolidated usable office supplies, organized what I want to keep to remind me of past rural letter carrier state and national conventions, and went through my old 3.5" floppy diskettes to choose the ones with information I want to save onto a CD. All our newer computers are sans a 3.5" drive, so I better do it quick before those floppies are totally useless.

I found a program cover with a sharp image of the artwork from CaRLCA Unit 15 when we sponsored the state convention in 2006. I hope to use it next year to create blocks for a quilting project to sell or raffle off at a state meeting to raise money for our political action committee. That alone made my gorilla garbaging effort worthwhile.

Anyway, my project that took me about two hours freed up a cardboard office box and a four-drawer Rubbermaid unit that is now mostly filled with over-sized paper supplies and "cost of goods sold" supplies for my quilting and craft projects. That freed up a large tote for my fabric projects.

The generous donation I made to our garbage can means that discarded stuff is not coming back.

Buck's Fitness Center

Buck’s idea of weight-lifting. We used “Old Blue”, my dad’s old pick-up, which is currently our hunting, firewood and go-to-the-dump truck.

Buck decided he did not need to have all the fun by himself.  He invited me to help.

Buck says along with getting fit, we can get warm five times with this firewood:   

• 1) When cut [It was raining when he started, over 90° when he finished – I missed out on that one – oh, darn!]   
• 2) Loaded [hot]   
• 3) Unloaded [still hot]   
• 4) Stacked [I will wait for cooler days for that chore, thank you very much.] and   
• 5) Burned [Oh, yeah! This saves big-time on the heating bill…]

Photo Templates

I got tired of fighting to get my images placed in my blog posts where I wanted them. I often want two or three photos side-by-side. I decided to solve the problem by making my own plain color paper templates (and creating some using my own photos manipulated by my photo-editing software). I can add my photos and sub-titles on top of my templates using my photo-editing software, then save it as a new image that I can upload in one fell swoop.

I know there are fancy template software packages out there with images that take up A LOT of space on the ol' hard drive. For now, I will play with my own templates. After all, I have taken so many photos over the years, why not show off my own creations before I get excited about ones developed by others?