Reindeer dog and the beautiful necklace........

On Christmas Day we went to my niece's for dinner. Lots of great food, got to see her newly finished basement, very nice! Zek the dog was entertaining with his reindeer antlers on. Couldn't get the green pet eyes to be normal so here he is with green eyes. Actually they don't look bad; colors are fitting for Christmas, don't you think? He was in their church play and was supposed to be a wild cow running across the stage, from one side to the other. He did great, my niece was on the other side with a doggie treat so he raced across to get it almost loosing his antlers in the process!
Mike gave me this necklace Christmas Eve; I was blown away!!! First off we weren't supposed to get each other a gift, we stopped doing that years ago. Instead we always buy something we want for the house; besides he is way too hard to buy for anyway!
This beauty was made by an artist from Isreal named Ayala Bar (you can see it on the oval metal peice at the end of the chain) I must say she does gorgeous work and Mike out did himself with this purchase, just beautiful! I am sure you can find out more about Ayala Bar by typing her name into Google or another search engine.
I am still having a lot of trouble with my internet provider so tomorrow I am changing to another one and will have to change my email address and go to a gizillion sites to change things, oh, fun! I am hoping that by doing this I will be able to upload and download things much faster, what I have now isn't a lot better then slow dial up; very aggraviting to say the least! That is one thing about living out in the country, sometimes you don't have a lot of choices about your TV or internet connections. We have no cable, high speed phone lines, nor can we get cell phone service down in the hollow..........but then the advantages of living out far outweigh the negitives! It's quiet, hardly any traffic on our road, save the people that live out here and the mailman; so I'll take that any day! :-)
Have a Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas!

I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!
I hope to be posting more after Christmas, satellite has been having a lot of problems and I need to have a service call on it, somehow it has gotten knocked out of alignment and it's SLOW as molasses! I am lucky that it uploaded my pictures just now (sigh) oh, well!!! Next Monday someone is suppose to be here to fix it, then it will be fast again, yippee!!!

If a Tree Falls in the Woods???

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to see it does it still make a sound when it hits the ground?
Damned right it does; especially if it's at 5:40 in the morning and you are fast asleep in your warm fleece sheets! The sound was so loud and the vibration from it hitting the ground shook the house! Then there was the big orange fire ball that lite the place up as the top branches hit the power lines causing the top one to hit the bottom one; the sound of the electrical appliences in the house screeching as the electric blinked off and on several times before dieing completely! Then everything went dark, thank goodness for the full moon outside! Just the day before I looked out the front upstairs window to a tree just on the edge of the creek wondering when it was going to fall. It is in the process of dieing and has some sort of fungus growing at it's base; but that's not the tree that fell and I'm glad for that. It would probably hit the front porch and take both power lines with it on the way to the ground! The tree that fell, must have been dead because there were no small top branches (see picture)

For some strange reason the pieces of the tree didn't cover the road? It looks like it bounced and rolled to the edges. We didn't see this until the sun was coming up, couldn't really see it in the moon light. I haven't gone out yet to see what is in the creek. The pictures of it were taken from the upstairs bathroom window.

I had to get up and find a flashlight and locate the old rotary phone, remember those???, for all the fancy technology having a rotary phone coming in handy when the electric is off! I called the electric company and finally after what seemed like 20 minutes got a LIVE person. Before getting her though the automated answering machine went through a list of three options, then said press 1, 2 or 3 on your phone....NO.....I can't use my push button phone because the electric is OFF!!!! So finally after it didn't get a response it said for those using a rotary phone speak the number one, two or three. OK, this is good, so I said "one", we are sorry we couldn't understand your response! GRRRRR, so I did this 4 times before they could hear me..........glad this wasn't an emergency!!!!! So finally when the "person" gets on the phone I was able to tell her our address and that a tree had fallen but didn't know if the lines were down. She would send the repair truck out. I thought OK it's gonna be awhile; but no! Within 45 minutes the truck was coming down our road, stopped for a minute then went on down the road to the sub station. A few minutes later the electric was back on and there was a knock at the door. A service man from the power company was there on the porch, thanking me or reporting the location of the downed tree, said it saved them hours of searching for it along the lines! Yippee for the power company!! You don't realize just how important to you power is until you don't have it.

I am sure it scared the heck out of Gilly and Pokey; but when I was taking the pictures out the window they were by the back of the house sunning themselves. They came to attention when I opened the window and thought surly it must be time to eat breakfast, right??? Not yet, boys, you will survive a few more hours....go back to sleep! I will be there shortly.

Baking Cookies

I have been out of commission for about a week, had a sick husband after Thanksgiving.....bronchitis. Then he was so kind and gave it to me! He went to the doctor and got antibiotics, I went a few days later and both of us ended up taking antibiotics; which neither of us has been on for years and years. No need to haven't been sick. Whatever this was it hasn't wanted to give up; finally though, tomorrow is my last dose of the stuff, it has let up. Thank goodness!!!!

While I was on the mend I decided to clean house???? What possessed me to do that I have no idea but anyway.......after working for two days many things have moved out of this house and went to live at Good Will............yippee! I also burned boxes, papers and other junk that would ignite........gone, all gone! Maybe all that work burned out the sick bug too.

After receiving a letter from a friend telling me how many cookies she had baked for Christmas gifts..........I thought, ahhh, yes it is time for Christmas baking and sugar cookies sounded just too good! YUM! So out came all the things needed to whip up a batch of home made sugar cookies, and yes with real butter too! So I get the butter, eggs, sugar and vanilla all beat up, start adding the flour and what do you know??? I don't have enough FLOUR!!!! To make matter worse neither of my two close neighbors are home; oh, bother, now what???? Well, I do have some oats
I though wonder what would happen if.................I put them in the Vita Mix and turned them into oat flour??? Good idea, right? Well, yes and no..........some of the oats didn't pulverize so there are some whole oats floating around and I didn't beat up enough so the cookie dough is so sticky I can't roll it out. So much for the sugar cookies last night.

Today was grocery shopping day so I got more flour beat another cup of flour into the dough; this dough has been in the refrig over night so it's good and cold. Try to stir in another cup of flour into that; I should have weight lifters arms by now!!! Somehow I think the recipe was a little off on the amount of flour. It said 3 3/4 cups of flour and I added another cup and a half before it would roll without sticking to the rolling pen.

So after supper I got the cookie cutters out and started on the sugar cookies! Rolled the dough out cut mostly crimped edged circles out but just had to do a few horse cookies............yes, I do have a horse head cookie cutter but then...............I got a little creative with it....
A Pokey cookie!!!
OK, you are probably right, I need to get a life...............I think it's the drugs or the illness I'm getting over!
P.S. the oat flour added a very different and good flavor to the cookies. No, not horse oats either!!!
That's my story and I'm sticking to it!! :-)

The Water Bowl

The Water Bowl

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.
After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight. When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side. When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"
"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered. "Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked. Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up." The man gestured, and the gate began to open. "Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the traveler asked.
"I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets." The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.
After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence. As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book. "Excuse me!" he called to the man. "Do you have any water?"
"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in." "How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog. "There should be a bowl by the pump." They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it. The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog. When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree. "What do you call this place?" the traveler asked."This is Heaven," he answered.
"Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was Heaven, too." "Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell." "Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"
"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind."


My brother sent this story to me and I thought it was wonderful and have kept it on the computer ever since. He was obviously thinking of his best friend, Bob the Beagle. Bob's real name is Champer but I started calling him Bob because of his bobbed off tail, he was born with a short tale and the name stuck. My brother thought it more humorous to call him, Backyard Bob the Bobbed-Tailed Beagle!
Bob now lived at my sisters hill top farm, he is now 11 years old. He didn't like coming to visit my farm, we live down in a hollow and Bob likes to see over the hills;besides my sister has more rabbits for him to chase!