Christmas

It sure didn't feel much like Christmas outside (78 degrees!) but it felt like it in our hearts.  Larry and I exchanged our gifts yesterday and had Santa for Tabbie Hoffman and Banjo this morning before we went and had Christmas with my family in Oglethorpe.  Lots of love and laughter and babies and presents.  Oh my goodness, the presents!  

This is what Santa brought our boys.  Banjo got a Dremel nail trimmer and Tabbie got a feeding maze toy.  They each got a toy (Tabbie's is a catnip-filled banana!) and treats and new vanilla-flavored toothpaste in their stockings.  And Larry loved his Notre Dame plush blanket and lounge pants that Santa brought him!

Larry got me the Farm Vet Barbie set (with the itty bitty chicken squeeeee!), a rare 1960 promotional Golden Grapes Pyrex chip and dip set, a vintage Petunia Pig drinking glass, a new cereal bowl, some Optical Illusion cards and a sweet, sweet coffee mug that he wrote on with permanent marker.  He wrote, "When I was young and dreamed of love, I saw a shadow of you.  When I grew up and experienced love, I realized the shadow was you."  Yep, he's a keeper!  He also got me a Pyrex Old Orchard casserole dish (with the lid!), a pair of Pikachu bedroom slippers, a Pokemon Monopoly game, a selfie stick, a beautiful Christmas bracelet and I know I'm forgetting something...anyway, I racked up!  I got a new FryDaddy from Mama and Daddy (along with a cute top, socks and my old stocking slap FULL of stuff) and a gorgeous tapestry from Ami and Brian that I think I'm going to use as a tablecloth.  I also got some soft slippers, a new coffee mug and some bath stuff.


 
Santa came to see our backyard birds, too.  They got a bird seed bell that I smeared peanut butter on and hung from our magnolia tree on Christmas Eve.

We went to Christmas Eve service at Southside Baptist yesterday afternoon (and even though it was 70 degrees when we got out, it was snowing in the lobby!  They had a snow machine going and it was so fun!) and then we went to see the new animated musical, Sing, and we enjoyed it so much.  Such a cute story and some really amazing talent.  We loved it!

Another Christmas has come and gone.  It's always so sad to me to see it go.  After weeks (months!) of planning and shopping and picking up this and that for this person and that person and then it's all over in a flash.  A big, wonderful, chaotic, wrapping paper flying, flash.

And we'll do it all again next year. 

The Christmas Music Box

Last Friday, after my Christmas breakfast at Cracker Barrel with some coworkers, I took off to Macon to an estate sale that we had heard about.  It was at the home of a 99-year-old lady who just recently passed away.  I picked up a few things, a vintage Santa face plate and some Santa taper candles.  I got a music box there, too, for $5.  It was broken, had an angel and musical instruments missing and something was missing from the center (I wasn't sure what) but it still played.  It played "Silver Bells" so beautifully that I got it, regardless of its condition.  

I got out to my car and looked it up, trying to find out something about it, how old it was, where it came from, that kind of thing.

I found one, in perfect condition on eBay, so I got it, too.  It arrived today!  Now I'm able to see what it looks like and that, in the center, is a Christmas tree that was missing from the first one.

It's so pretty!  And plays so sweetly.

 It's my favorite thing so far this Christmas. 

It's the middle of December...

 ...already!  Eeeeeeek!

We've been busy around here!  We started the month off with another little heart scare with Larry.  We spent three days going back and forth to the VA hospital in Dublin, where they ran tests and we saw doctors and then he spent 24 hours in a Holter monitor for a suspected blockage in his carotid artery.  He's been lightheaded a lot lately and they told us it's actually atrial fibrillation he's suffering from and not a blockage at all.  He's had AFib all of his life but since it gets worse as you age, we're going to take some extra precautions with medication to prevent him from having a stroke or worse.  Thank you, Lord, for that blessing!

Once we got past that, we decorated the yard and put our lights up!

Oh, they turned out so pretty and it looked beautiful!! 

And then we had some much-needed heavy rain and the lights all bit the dust.  We got out there and fixed it today but we lost a strand of lights to a short. 

Banjo loves the new loveseat we got a couple of weeks ago.  I kinda love it, too.

He also loves the heart smiley emoji pillow I got for Larry's stocking...  He's so used to me bringing toys home to him and he thought that was just another one of those days.  I didn't have the heart to tell him.  Would you??

We also treated ourselves to new bedding for Christmas!  600 TC sheets and king comforter and shams.  Larry's first reaction was that it looked like a hippie threw up on it.  Perfect.  Just our style!  :D

 

I've mentioned a few times that I would love to know exactly where my family came from.  I've always been told England or Ireland but unless we actually trace our family tree back that far, we'll never know for sure.  So Larry surprised me with an early Christmas present of an Ancestry DNA test!  I was so excited!  Spitting in the vial was a little gross, though.  You have to fill the vial with spit up to the little mark on the side and then combine it with an activating solution in the cap.  Yuck.  I got through it, though, and we sent it off.  I'll be able to track the whole process online and today, they updated the status to "Arrived" so it's there!  I can't wait to find out what it says about me and my family.

I picked up these vintage Santa taper candles for my tea cart yesterday for a dollar at an estate sale in Macon.  I could not believe the condition they were in.  They are adorable!

At that same sale, I got this vintage Josef Originals Santa face plate.  It was also a dollar and is selling for $18 on eBay right now.  I actually squealed out loud when I saw it and I grabbed it up quick before anybody else saw it!

And today, Larry and I made Christmas cookies.  We made chocolate chip pecan and turtle cookies as well as sugar cookie cutouts.  We had so much fun!  And they turned out great.

We even made one for the Birthday Boy.  

Visions of sugar plums and flamingos!

I took an extra day off today to get some stuff done and one of them was the porch!

I wanted a little pink tree with sugar plums and flamingos and I've been collecting things for weeks.

I will tweak it a thousand times before Christmas but this is how it looks today!

 

 

 

Christmastime's a'coming!

We did a little Christmas decorating this weekend.  Got the tree up and I got my tea cart done today.  

I love how it turned out!

The ceramic Christmas tree in our bedroom...

And here's the treeeeee!!

We got all of our shopping done and we'll do the lights outside and the porch next week.  I'm gettin' excited!!!

Not so mean muggin'

Sixteen years ago, I gave Larry a Bugs Bunny 3D coffee mug.  He still has it.  He has enjoyed a million cups of coffee from it.  A couple of months ago, we found a Yosemite Sam mug at a flea market and we've been collecting others ever since.

We've found quite a few!!  Larry made a shelf to hold them all.

Daffy, Pooh, Yosemite, Dalmation puppy, Sylvester, Tigger, Marvin, Tweety and Mickey!

And Ernie, Wyle, Eeyore, Snoopy, Popeye, Pluto, Taz, Minnie and Bugs!

 

If you want to get Larry something for Christmas, he'd love another one to add to his collection.  They're all plastic and were released in the 90's by the Applause Company.  

We're gonna need a bigger shelf.  

Banjo is THREE!

Yesterday, we celebrated Thanksgiving AND Banjo's birthday!  He went with us to Mama and Daddy's for the day and had lots of turkey and ham and love and cuddles from everybody.  He was worn out and passed OUT as soon as we got home.

We got him a puppy dog cake from Wilson's Bakery and yesterday morning, we helped him eat it.

He had a little taste off my fingers.

Ham bones are MUCH better than cake anyway!

Tabbie Hoffman was watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and didn't partake of the birthday festivities. 
 

Happy Third Birthday, our sweet Banjo!!  You have brought us so much joy and laughter and we love you so much!!

I'm with the activists, the peacemakers, the healers and the hopeful

Like millions, I've struggled with the results of last week's election.  And I've lost "friends" on Facebook over it.  It's not that Trump won, that's not the point.  The point is and what disgusts me (and that's the word that got 'em!) is that when they cast their vote for that guy, they were telling him that they're okay with everything that he is.  The ugly, racist, bigoted, sexual predator, homophobe that he is.  And that I cannot condone.  He is everything that I loathe in a human being.  And I'm not alone.

You can share a life experience with someone, work side by side with someone, even be related to someone and still not be "friends".  I found that out the hard way.  So instead of unfriending some 300 people, I decided to unfriend myself.  I'm taking a little break from Facebook.  I'll enjoy the holidays, read some books, fill my home with more vintage goodness, love on my husband and family.

I read this article that I thought was perfect and I'm going to share it here.

To my ex-friends on Facebook:

I can’t do it anymore.

As much as I love you, as many good and bad times as we’ve been through together, even though I know there’s decency in you somewhere, I just can’t do it anymore. 

I can’t read your Facebook posts, the ones where you laugh about voting for a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women or your gleeful posts about welfare recipients losing their benefits and reconcile that with my own definition of a good person. I can’t accept your casual cruelty. I can’t live with your veiled, dog-whistle racism.

This isn’t because I “didn’t get my way.” It isn’t because I feel “entitled.” That you would invalidate my feelings that way hurts most of all.

See, I have other Facebook friends besides you. Some of them are gay, or Muslim, or Latina, or undocumented. They fear for their lives today. They fear for their children’s safety. They are hurt and they’re grieving.

I have many, many friends who have survived domestic violence and sexual assault, so very many of them, more than you can imagine. Those friends woke up on Wednesday morning to the realization that a man who said his accusers were too ugly to assault was endorsed by nearly half the country as a leader. They woke up to newspapers splashed with pictures of a man who said that he could “grab women by the p*ssy” without their consent because he’s a big, big star. They saw the interviews with his supporters, telling them to “grow a set” and “get over it.” They woke up in a world that dismissed their pain because the world doesn’t get it.

Neither do you.

My friends of color saw a man elected as their president who was willing to hire as his campaign CEO one of the most vile racists that exists. They watched him begin his campaign by calling them, their friends, and their family members who face racial violence every day “rapists” and “drug dealers.” They’ve watched as Donald Trump actively sought out the hatred and paranoia of the most deplorable people in the world. They watched a man become president who called the first black president “evil” and illegitimate. They heard him, who has more than likely never visited one of the actual neighborhoods he says he’s going to fix, tell them they were “living in hell,” accuse them of having been so stupid as to have been duped into voting Democrat for several decades now, and demonize the only movement working toward ending the murders of their sons, mothers, brothers, fathers, and friends at the hands of police.

You helped elect that man.

Call me what you like. Send me ranting Facebook messages telling me that I’m closed-minded, that I’m unwilling to accept you for who you are, and that I’m a hypocrite for asking that all people be accepted for who they are. That’s fine. You may not understand that accepting a person for who they love is not the same as accepting a person for everyone they hate, but that’s okay.

Please don’t tell me you don’t hate them, either. You can’t continue to ignore the human rights abuses that have been perpetrated against them because of the policies you support and tell me you don’t hate.

Thanks to the magic of the “unfriend” button on Facebook, I don’t have to listen to you anymore. I can stop seeing the comment where you laughed when I was upset about Donald Trump tweeting false and racist memes to inflame the racism and violence his supporters inflicted on protesters. I can remove from my everyday experience your refusal to acknowledge your own privilege while you judge and stereotype others. I can refuse to condone by my silence the bigotry that you condoned when you cast your vote.

I can choose to surround myself with kind people, people who don’t selfishly lash out because of their own struggles but use those struggles to extend empathy to others. Right now, I need to be with the activists, the peacemakers, the healers, and the hopeful.

Let me know when you’re ready to join us.

Blessings -- one shoebox at a time

Larry and I had so much fun putting together our Operation Christmas Child shoebox this weekend.  We look forward to doing this every year.  We'll turn it in this week and then wait and see where it ends up!

We selected things for a little boy, aged 5-9, and this is what we got him!  Toothpaste, Snoopy toothbrushes, a wash cloth, two bars of soap, a comb, a flashlight with batteries, marbles, toy cars, pens, a notebook, candy, a game, a pair of gloves, a little LED light-up bracelet, a stuffed Ty doggie, ChapStick, a little tube of sunscreen, a flip story/coloring book about Jesus' birth and death, crayons and a pack of God Loves You stickers.

 

 

 

I love this time of year!  It's a lot of fun to shop and put these boxes together but what comes out of them is what really counts.  We will pray for the little boy who receives this box and hope that his life is changed forever by accepting Jesus as his savior and sharing the Good News with everyone around him!

Road Trip(s)!

Larry and I have been on the road the past two days!  Yesterday, he spoke, along with a group of Braille folks, to the guys in the Braille program down at Alamo.  Banjo and I went with him, dropped him off and then went to the park and enjoyed a beautiful, sunny, cool morning.  After they were done, we all had lunch at the best little hole-in-the-wall country restaurant, Sharkey's.  We had the lunch buffet, spaghetti with butter beans, fried squash, biscuits, banana pudding and we got some ham for Banjo.  

We left Alamo in search of some thrift or vintage stores.  We had asked and got directions to a good one called the "red barn" in Vidalia so we headed there.  On the way, we ran smack dab into Mount Vernon and Brewton-Parker College.  Larry graduated and got his degree from BP in 1985 so we had to stop!  We walked around their beautiful campus and Larry got himself a shirt and a pennant to hang on the wall in his office.

Here's a picture I took of him under the Brewton-Parker arch.

Back on the road toward Vidalia and once we got there, we never saw a "red barn" vintage store so we stopped and asked.  I have to hand it to Larry.  He is NOT like other men who will just drive and drive aimlessly.  He'll stop and talk to somebody!  Come to find out, it's the Little Red WAGON and it's in Lyons.  So off we went, down the road some more headed to Lyons.  It was so worth the drive!

We saw an estate sale sign on the side of the road so we turned off and went to find it!  We got a cherry quilt rack and a few other things.  I found a couple of very old books, Gregg Shorthand and a book of American poetry.

We found lots of good stuff at the Little Red Wagon!  A lot of vendors sell there and there's tons of vintage and antique but there's lots of good old Southern things, too, and boutique clothes.  I got the cutest tank tunic that I hope to wear with leggings Thanksgiving, IF it's warm enough.  You can't ever tell with fall in Georgia.  It was 32 this morning and freezing, 78 this afternoon.

Here's our pretty quilt rack.  I put my granny square afghan on it and an afghan that belonged to my own granny, Maw. 

 I found this potholder at the estate sale yesterday.  It's right at home here.  :D

We found these adorable little Christmas signs at the Little Red Wagon.  They'll go in our beachy bathroom next month.

I cracked all the way up when I saw this Seven Willows soap!  That's so Southern.  I got a bar of sea salt soap to go in our bathroom, too.  Savannah's Salt soap.  Yummmm.  I used to make my own soap.  It's so much more cost-effective to buy somebody else's now.  And saves time, too!

Who remembers learning shorthand?  I never did but I remember my sweet Aunt Carol using it and writing up a storm when she worked as a legal secretary.

 

Larry found this 1960's Bobo The Clown inflatable punching bag for $3!  Ricky and I had one very similar when we were kids, probably the 70's version.  I love it! 

We wore Banjo OUT yesterday!  But he had his blankey and pillow in the back seat so he didn't mind much.  He was with us, he ran at the park and he got ham!  He was a happy boy.

Today, we hit an estate sale first thing and then drove down to Montezuma and went to one there, too, in a beautiful old 116-year-old house.  We went by the flea market in Oglethorpe and then went and visited with Mama and Daddy for a little while. 

I found this amazing 1967 Syroco atomic starburst clock at the flea market for FIVE DOLLARS!  I've wanted one forever to go over the TV.  I just love it.  One just like it is listed on eBay RIGHT NOW for $150!!  I knew it was special the second I saw it.  It was just stuck on a shelf waaaaaay in the back, covered in dust.  But I knew.  I knew. 

I found this little sweetie at the first estate sale this morning.  A 1960's Enesco praying child head vase.  He's right in front on the shelf with my lady heads, with lots of mamas to look after him.

The second estate sale, down in Montezuma, was fabulous!!  That kitchen...swooooon.  It was HUGE, with an island in the middle AND a little sitting area off to the side.  The whole thing was decorated in roosters and chickens.  Baskets and pots hung all over and five (yes, FIVE!) pie safes held beautiful baking dishes and chicken figurines.  I coulda stayed in there all day.  Until I saw the dressing room!  They had turned a small bedroom (the whole house had been renovated and was just gorgeous!) into an area for the lady of the house to dress and do her makeup.  There were full-length mirrors and bureaus and chifferobes and the best lighting I've ever seen.  I walked in and my mouth fell open.  Then I went and found Larry to show him!  I found bags of Clinique stuff in a bureau drawer.  I got all this for $8!  Squeeeeeee!!!

We found quite a few treasures there and got a little Christmas shopping done, too!

I got these cute little bottles for the kitchen windowsill (that I'm constantly changing!).

And this pretty vase that I found on a window shelf in that beautiful rooster-y kitchen.

We stopped by a cotton field on the way home and took a few pictures.  

Georgia snow.  :)

I'm pouting because the wind was blowing my hair.  I hate the wind blowing my hair.  :)

We've had a great couple of days on the road!  We stayin' our hinies HOME the rest of the weekend!