Booooooo!!!!

Son sent me this photo of Emmy taken at Halloween. I think the one on the left is Emmy, but I am not sure. Doesn't it look like it was just made for this frame?

I haven't gotten far in cleaning up my junk. I haven't even gotten all the presents wrapped.

Today was the end...

Of my Christmas shopping. I had not bought anything except this second hand jewelry box and the second hand golden butterfly pin for Hannah and a big remote control truck for Robert. (and and expensive camera for myself) I took off at noon today and went to Harrison, thinking I would go to Branson tomorrow and finish. The traffic was already terrible at noon in Harrison. After having a few Helen moments in traffic, I decided I was not going anywhere tomorrow. I went to Walmart and got all the kids presents.

I had decided I had made a mistake in not buying Hannah a remote control truck like Roberts. She has lots of dolls and when I thought about it, I knew she would want something that moved like the truck. She would not be happy with a simple doll when brother had a truck that roared. Robert's was only $19 at Thanksgiving and it came with a battery charger. The only comparable ones they had today were $50. I found her a smaller red remote control car made for toddlers (2+ years). It is big enough to compete with Roberts truck and simple enough that I don't think she will break it.

The jewelry box has an angel on top and plays Hark the Harold Angles sing. I added the red and green felt hearts and the butterfly and bug pins. I already had that little doll. It has always made me think of Hannah. It all looks really cute and is inexpensive so no one will have to feel bad if she loses all the accessories.

Tomorrow, I have to move my junk out of the computer room come living room so George can start putting in the plywood for the floor. I will not be going shopping till after Dec. 25.

Recipe

Progress. The walls are down. Now to take up the carpet and put in the floor. Then, George has to take out the door and that used to go into this room and fill it in. We are leaving about 6 feet of wall along the hallway but we want the door out as it would now be a door to nowhere. After the floor is in, I think we will paint the living room area and then take the kitchen cabinets out and do the floor and paint in there. Right now it is a mess, but George is cleaning up as I type.



George's sister Wanda sent me these chocolate chips that she bought at hobby lobby along with a recipe to make these chocolate covered cookies that she says are like the Girl Scout cookies. She sent a sample and they are really good. You use a bag of these chips and a box of vanilla wafers. Melt the chips in a large bowl in the microwave, 30 seconds at a time watching closely. She says it takes about 90 seconds to melt them. Do not over heat. Then dip the wafers in the chocolate completely covering them. Take them out with two butter knives. Slide one knife under the cookie to lift it and use the other knife to knock of the excess chocolate. Lay the cookies to dry on wax paper. They are good and it sounds easy. I plan on trying it this week end.

Working on the railroad

Or something like that. Today, George took down the wall between the living room and the computer room. The short wall down the hallway still has to go, and he has to get the studs off the wall and the ceiling, but at least it is started. I can see it is really going to open up the space.

My plan is to put the TV on that wall next to where the computer is now and ring the couch and chairs around the TV with their backs towards the kitchen. After we get the floors and kitchen done, I will get new living room furniture, but until it is all done, we will use this. That way the new furniture will not get dirty while we work on the house.

This is the extra bedroom with the painted walls and the mis matched furniture painted black. The little window seat was a cabinet that was between the living room and kitchen that we took out years ago. I painted it black and made the cushion for the top. I painted all the furniture black. It was differing shades of brown. The bed is the maroon one I already had with Betty's rails. I even painted the lamp shade black.

This is son's family picture that I had lost. George found it somewhere today while he was taking out walls. It was very dirty, so it was under a couch or behind something. I missed it about 6 months ago. I did not know what I had done with it and thought about asking Laura if she had an extra, but hated to admit I had lost the one they already gave me.

This is in my bedroom. I was seeing if my camera would take good photos of pictures and photos. The first digital camera I had did a good job of taking pictures of pictures, but the last one did not do well with this.

New Camera

I got a new camera. This is the water tower over across the hill on the old Peden place. I took the picture from the top of the Morris hill.



This is brother's house from the top of Morris Hill.




This is a bird.

Now, the whole story. Saturday morning, we have deer down in our pasture, on our side, closer than they usually are. I went looking for my camera and could not find it. I looked for over an hour. I could not get George interested in looking for the camera. He kept talking about the deer. I had decided I would just get a new camera. The flash is broken on my old camera and I do not think it takes as good a photo as it used to. I found the camera in the bedroom where I had put it after looking for an hour or more. By t hat time I was excited about getting a new camera so I did.

It is a Canon sx20 with a 20x zoom. I think I will like it. If you enlarge the pictures, you can see more about how they actually are.

While I was on the Morris hill, I saw a wild turkey, a new pond and cattle on Lois' hill side, and that the Morris house has a new green metal roof. The gate is still across the road and this time I only walked to where the hill started breaking off, not all the way down.