Buzz is One Year Old

Last Christmas holiday we (Hub, Flip, and I) dogsat with my youngest brother's new dog for about 8 days until the cutie (the dog) could be revealed on Christmas Eve.

My dear sister-in-law trusted us enough to leave the young pup with us, and we had an eventful week keeping the little critter from watering our brick floors. Actually, I am pretty sure that we house-broke Buzz in that time, but today he is a BIG outside dog.

I have a wonderful video of Buzz howling, but while I look for that, here is a baby picture.
Happy Birthday, Buzz!

Where oh where is that howling video?

Moving Blankets

It is that time of year again. Time to look for blankets. Our beagle Flip has always known that to keep his tush warm, he needs to sit on something warm. In this picture made last winter, he found a moving blanket draped over my rosemary plant. Protects the plant and the doggy bottom from the cold.
This morning there were no blankets (except of frost), so he came right back inside when I let him outside to do his thing. Later the sun was so warm that he forgot the chill and went out willingly. Funny dog.

A New Museum at Wetcreek

Having a lot of photos of brocante and antiques was not my goal for this blog, so this morning I officially opened the Wetcreek Museum blog at wetcreek-museum.blogspot.com/. We have so many old treasures that I wanted to document as much as I could with photos and provenance. I do this for no one else but me (I think).

 If you are remotely interested, the last of our shipments of family goods arrives tomorrow morning. Then the real fun begins. What goes where?

You Are Gifted

It is that time of year. Gift searching and gift giving.

I remember back in the early 70's when my annual salary was less than $5,000 and my Christmas gift limit per family member was $7.50. Why that strange amount? It was probably what the first purchased gift costed, so I kept that amount for the rest.

Back then we had only seven immediate family members (Mom, Dad, my two brothers, one sister-in-law, one grandchild, and me), so I had only six presents to whip up at Christmas. And whip up I sometimes did. Back then I sewed housecoats as Christmas presents. For friends I filled pretty glass jars with layers of dried beans or punched and studded oranges with cloves to make pomanders.

I never seemed to have a special boyfriend at Christmas, so that made gift giving easy. And there are no old "boyfriend" gifts stashed in the cupboards around here. No regrets about that either!

One of the best gifts I have ever received is this iPad. This fall it was a lifesaver when our laptop did not function properly while we were in Europe. Although my hub still thinks the touch stuff is annoying, I love my iPad!

Just wish my gift receivers will think the same about my homemade gifts this year. ;)

Testing These Image Possibilities

Waiting on customs to release this container of our recent shipment.

Filling up the container.

This reminded me of a Laurel and Hardy movie where they dropped a piano out of a window in a tall building.

Finally Sold!

My Dutch sister-in-law and her hub just recently sold their lovely old city farmhouse after having it on the market for over three years. The beautiful blue hydrangeas shown above out in the backyard were surely the pride and joy of the "gardener." My hydrangeas in my front flowerbed will never look like that! :( Our heat in the summer is much too intense.

Dutch city farmhouse

We are extremely happy for A and P, and wish them all the best with their packing, storing, and moving to Ceintuurbaan. Hope all of the stress of changing homes will be gone in time to have a Merry Christmas.

Exactly Four Years Ago!

Four years ago this was the way our pond drainage pipe looked.

Guess what, Folks, the pipe looks exactly the same (sans waterfall) today.  Only now there is a barbed wire fence about where I am standing in the photo above.   A fence that separates us from OUR pipe.

To the left of the pipe can now be found an elaborate display of riprap.  The riprap is what we requested that the neighboring landowners would allow over four years ago.

Now they have the riprap, OUR pipe, no natural drainage, AND a barbed wire fence to keep someone off their land.

And what did we get? A new levee (and all the headaches that involved), a smaller and new pond, erosion along the banks of our new pond, and a huge "airstrip" of rutted, eroded land that separates our pond levee from the neighboring landowners' property and barbed wire fence!

Bah Humbug! (Thanks, taxpayers, for paying over $50,000 for this debacle!)