Back Again

Happy New Year to everyone!  I hope you've enjoyed your holidays and ready to go full swing into this new year.

I had taken a break from blogging over the holidays just to enjoy time with family.  Although our winter storms seem to have been running back to back (with another one coming in on Sunday), I did get around to see some, but not all of my family and a few friends.  Yesterday was my last visiting and I was so happy to see three of my really good friends again.  The four of us have all been friends since our young days in a little country elementary school.  We don't see each other nearly enough, and after spending a horrendous drive through snowy driving conditions yesterday, we were all quick to agree that our annual Christmas get together needs to be changed to summertime instead.  So my friends (and you know who you are!), if you do get a chance to take a peek at my blog, I look forward to seeing you this summer ;)

Now before I go any further with my catching up, I must thank Lisa of New Zealand who was my swap partner for the Christmas ornament swap organized by Marianne at Ladybird Diaries.   Lisa has a lovely blog which I encourage all of you to visit at Wallace Craft Cupboard.   My parcel from Lisa arrived just two short days after Christmas, which was amazing timing, and I was so happy to open up this cute little box.

 

Inside were three adorable crocheted Christmas trees made by Lisa.  Three different sizes, and each one decorated differently.

 

 

I really like the middle-sized tree with tiny beads that twinkle in the sunshine.  Aren't they sweet?  Also with the trees Lisa included a set of beautiful gift tags with some ink drawings of birds & bees decorating them.  These are so nice!!  I love watching birds, so these were perfect!

 

 

I think I might not use them for actual gifts, but perhaps set them in a small frame to display at Christmas.  I've kept them aside to decide what to do there.  Thank you very much again Lisa, it was a real pleasure to receive your gifts from so very far away.  My parents travelled to New Zealand many years ago, and they were both impressed with your beautiful country.  My mother's favourite event was an evening's entertainment of Maori traditional singers and dancers.

 

Today I have finally boxed up the last of Christmas ...

 

 

... and tomorrow I will do the dreaded task of pushing it all back into the crawlspace under our stairs until next year.  It really is a "crawl" space and there are a lot of spider webs and apparently a chipmunk run amok in there now?!  I found hoards of sunflower seeds tucked away in between all our Christmas totes ... now how did he get inside our little hidey hole under our front step?  I still have to get the garland down from around the front door, but with our frigid temperatures today I decided to wait till it warms up a bit (fingers get too cold).

 

I woke up to this temperature ...

windchill brings it to -32C or something ridiculous!

... and then realized I had to put the garbage out at the curb for collection ... brrrrrr!! 

 

On Christmas morning we all were woken up by a terrific crash.  We all got up and checked in the garage and outside.  I thought some tree limbs must've come down on the roof from the ice storm.  We couldn't find anything out of place however, and it wasn't until today that we learned of something called "frost quakes".  Apparently, when the ground goes through a period of severely cold temperatures, the ground water freezes and cracks making a huge noise ... much like when thick ice on a lake cracks.  We weren't the only ones who heard this crashing sound.  I've never heard of this before, but I'm not surprised to hear it this winter as we've had some really cold days & nights.  Learn something new every day ;)

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Wendy