Christmas at our Home

Each year I'm adding to my lights and hoping to live up to the Griswolds' Christmas. :-) I found some things after Christmas that I'm going to add next year.

Here is why pets hate their owners!

Santa Banzai (lasted about 8 seconds)

Santa Rusty, so excited! :-) This lasted about as long as Banzai's. :-)

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care.

Our first fake Christmas tree. I think the cats were missing their pine water that they loved to drink. Our tree is loaded with ornaments that used to be on my mom's, grandma's, great grandma's and stepmother's trees. It's always fun to pull them out each year. I also collect them when I travel places and of course have to get a new cute one or two each year. Andy's favorites were the Packer's ones.

The cats loved hiding under the tree and jumping all over the gifts.

Rusty and Banzai checking out their new toys.

Chickens and Snow...

We had our first snowfall before Christmas. After the snow fell, we had a nice layer of sleet to go on top. I went out the following day to let the chickens out and they lived up to their name "chickens"!!

They looked at the snow as if to say "we're not going out there"!!

They stayed in their coop the whole day. :-) I shut their door early, since they didn't want to come out and play in the snow. I even tried to lure them out with water and bread.

The next day I tried again to lure them out and was successful with one...

We call her "sick chickie" because she has a runny nose and seemingly sick with the same disease that has killed many of our chickens this year. She has spunk though! When you go in their fenced in yard, she'll jump up and bite your hand in hopes that you are holding bread. She loves bread and gets a little too excited. She'll steal bread from the rooster's beaks and take off running. :-)

Here's the chickens playing when the snow started to fall. The pretty blue hen in front of the two roosters was killed this week by a hawk. She was my runt who started out small and then grew to be bigger than hens who were several weeks older than her.

The neighbor's flag shows just how much wind we've had this fall with our storms. The snow came down fast!

Last time smelling the flowers...

For those of you who do not know, the previous homeowners left their cat behind when they moved. This fall he has started losing weight and his belly has filled with fluid. I took him to the vet about two weeks ago and she said he has a large tumor and tons of fluid. She only gave him about a month to live. He was purring and very happy, so we assumed he was not in pain and she advised against putting him down at that time. He is growing more and more fragile, he is pretty much skin and bones. I just hope he's not in too much pain. I think we will have to put him down soon. He came out to "smell" the flowers with me while I was taking pictures. I'll miss him following me around the yard and I work on my flower beds.

You can see how big his belly is in this picture.

Here is Goose last spring before he started losing weight. He always crossed his legs when laying down. :-)

The Last Rose

I love the long growing season down here in NC. It is so much different than the weather I was used to growing up in Wisconsin. I still have flowers blooming in my yard. I'm quite sure that will change following the past few days turn to much colder weather. We have had some hard frosts. I went out this morning just before 9 to take some pictures of my flowers with frost on them. Some of them turned out pretty.

The Last Rose

The frost almost looks like glitter on the petals.

I'm sure the flowers are pretty much done after this frost. I guess only time will tell. I can't wait for next spring! The weekend before Thanksgiving, I planted thousands of daffodils in my front yard, along the roadside. It should be quite the show for many years to come! I planted well over 100 varieties of daffodils. :-)

Starting to Decorate

Here's a few more pics of the living room. Banzai loves the view from the mantle!

Some of my favorite finds from Hobby Lobby. I almost couldn't find a second set when I went to look for them!

This is a picture of our house from 1965. It was a blown up black and white photo that was oil painted. It turned out very nice.

The cats love the new rug. Banzai almost blends in with it.

Pretty sure this will be Banzai's favorite place this entire winter! He likes to lay so close to the fire that his fur gets hot to the touch.

The First Egg!!

The first of many eggs! What an exciting day following months of waiting for eggs. The Monday before Thanksgiving Mark went out to see why the chickens were making so much noise and he found this surprise! Unfortunately it was cracked.

Now we have been getting 1-2 eggs/day. We have 12 hens, one of which is quite sick, so I'm sure it won't be long before we start getting many more eggs.

Our First Pig Pickin'

We decided it would be fun to have a big pig pickin' with Jason and Anna next door. Since we've done so much to our house and wanted to show it off, we had it at our house. It was a perfect day in November, following over a week of 10 or more inches of rain! We were so happy the rain stopped in time! We had a crowd of about 120 people. It was fun to see how well some things turned out and what we need to do differently next time...like make a lot more beans and devilled eggs. They sure do go fast! :-) Here's some pics...

Mark and Jason...a late night and early morning!

We had 150 pound pig!

Before the crowd got big and while the sun was still out. Jason had the idea of putting up a big pole with several spot lights on them in the middle of the main gathering area. It worked great!

I made corn on the cob cupcakes. They turned out pretty cute. Anna helped me decorate them.