HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Well.... just a day early -

WE         are going to a New Year's Eve Party tonight!   I'm so excited!   We haven't been out to a New Year's Eve Party in years!  

Only  THIS  party is going to be a      COSTUME   PARTY !!!!!

And I promise.....  to show pictures whether we are DA BOMB   or  we are  DA BUST!

It should be so fun!  Plus, we don't know WHO is going to be there - should be an eclectic mix of folks because our hosts are SO MUCH FUN!

Will I see  YOU  there????

Our Christmases 2011

I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas as much as we did!  Are your decorations and tree put away for another year?  Mine are still up, but they're driving me crazy!  Unfortunately, it'll be a few more days before I can get 'round to cleaning up all the Christmas stuff.  There's something about a bare tree, no presents, wrapping paper, bits and pieces of tape , gift bags and tissue paper that just screams at me to CLEAN IT UP! Plus, with having 4-5 people staying here in our little farmhouse, nerves were beginning to fray... I heard my 30 year old son and 23 year old daughter fussing over what to watch on TV.  Haven't heard THAT in quite awhile! haha! 

A few shots of Christmas at my Mom & Dad's house on Friday....  I won't make them big so they won't take too long to upload...

Hayley and my niece, Erin...

Half of us... Mom took the other half, I don't have that shot yet...

My other nieces, Jaci and Taylor...

Daddy

I've been wantin' one of these stick blenders for a while now!

Mom and her leopard houseshoes! She was tickled speckled!

Adam's new guitar - Gibson - VERY nice...

Here's the other half...

We sure missed our son Josh and his wife, Lindsey, but I know they are happy and safe in Wellington, New Zealand, and the Lord is surely providing a family for them there.  Think I told you that they were spending Christmas with two different families there from the church.  The folks there have really taken them in and treated them like family!  I can't wait to meet these sweet families when/if we go over next spring sometime!

Here's a few pics from us 4 on Christmas day afternoon.  We had a small little quiet day after morning worship services, went to see Tony's mom at the nursing home, and later that evening, went to see "War Horse".  We had a fun day!

Working on lunch...

Hayley is hungry!

our little farmhouse Christmas table.

Hayley and her pooch, Remi...

Adam, Hayley, Bug and Remi

                                                      Tony's new vest - looking good!

Hayley got the guys a bucket tool carrier - they all loved it!

The rest of us. 

Well, that's all for today. We had a very nice Christmas, made lotsa new memories - kept it kinda low-key this year.  I hope Josh and Lindsey are with us next year.  I sure missed them.  First time in all these years that all my kids have not been here for the holidays.  First time I've had a married kid, too.  But you'd expect one to be gone to the in-laws - NOT ALL THE WAY AROUND THE WORLD!

Take care - keep your dress down! Be back soon!

Blogger Problems AGAIN!

UPDATE:   It appears that I'm having a problem with my own computer, so thank you very much to those of you who commented.  Now, go on and Merry Christmas!  I'm going to, and I guess I'll have to take this thang into the shop and let the computer nerds work on it - where would we be without our computer nerds!!!

Hey friends, sorry to burden you with silly questions on Christmas Eve, but for those of you that are blog hopping today, can you answer me?

Is my blog page scrolling slowly or quickly?

I am having problems.  I know I've got a bug on my computer, BUT everyone else's blog is scrolling quickly, but my own page is scrolling SO slowly.  I shortened the number of posts on each page, I deleted some widgets, and I deleted some big, busy blogs/websites that I had linked to.  I don't know what's making it so slow.

Please let me know - and if you think of something genius, I'd genuinely appreciate it!!!

Merry Christmas from Sand Flat Farm!!!

Christmas At Our Little Farmhouse...

I'm beginning to see a light at the end of the holiday tunnel.  All but a smidgeon of shopping is done and wrapped, all parties have been attended including church parties, visits have been made to friends, and now we're in count-down mode.  Our big family get-together is next weekend on Friday.  The sister and her family and my two available kids and their "others" are going to be here. Well, actually at Mom & Dad's.

I've been looking at all your Christmas decorations and wish that I had room for some more...but we're doing good to have space for our tree!  Also, I just don't have space to store Christmas decorations at this little place.  So we are pretty sparse on decor right now. I opted for my artificial tree this year instead of a real one. It's pretty slim and I needed slim.

I've been reading some of your blogs about getting sparkles on your Christmas lights. I got a few on my tree in the photos but I have no idea how I did it, and I couldn't find my strainer... Vee explains it all...

Our ornaments are a combination of the kids' homemade ones, and my mom and me both got a new ornament for each of them every year and they're all dated with their names on them.  I cannot throw out those fragile frayed little ornaments made from cork and milk bottle lids and pipe cleaners. They are precious!

And my little fireplace and my old painting print...

And my cute little Putz house, rather church, that I got at Marshall's - it's a pale green, it's hard to tell, but it is SO cute!  I love it.  I was going to make one or some, but I think I'm running out of time now... This one even lights up.

They had some white ones, too, but they weren't near as cute - maybe I'll run across another one someplace if I don't get to make one.  I need some fluffy snow and stuff around it...

Here is my pie safe in my little bitty kitchen.  I've got some of my candles from Becky at Hospitality Lane - they are great soy candles and they've been burning since I got 'em before Thanksgiving. It smells like I've been preparing holiday yummies for the last month!

I got a box of goodies off to the Kiwi Kids this week.  Think I paid close to $60 to ship a small box of gift items to Josh and Lindsey in New Zealand.  By the way, on my sidebar, there's a picture and a link to the kids' blog, Adventures in New Zealand.  Please go over and check them out.  Lindsey is doing a great job of writing - I feel like I'm right there with them!  And they are taking such wonderful pictures of the beauty there. I hope Tony and I are able to go for a visit next spring sometime.  They need some followers, guys!  They hope to keep up the blog with pictures and then have it printed when they get back to have a record of their adventure. That would be a great keepsake.

Well, peace out!  

Keep your holiday dress down!

Ok, It's Fixed Now...

I think Blogger had its panties in a big ole wad for a couple of days there.  Tonight, it was easy as pie to fix.  Hopefully, it pulled that "wedgie" out of its crack and will smooth those wrinkles out so I won't be frustrated.  Be back soon...

Pictures 2

OK, so what's going on?  I tried all your suggestions, unclicked "shrink to fit", used a same size pixel picture, used a big one, a smaller one, clicked and unclicked the "shrink" thing.  I can't figure it out.  I've never had this problem!!!!  I've always managed to get my pictures in there just like I wanted them!!    ARRRGGGHHH!   Totally frustrated!!!!

I've also checked the template and went to a standard template - default settings on it.

No, this is not current snow, this is from last year....  but thanks for your help!!!   Guess I'll keep trying!!!  This is the first REAL problem I've had with blogger that I couldn't figure out!!!  Went to Blogger help and I'm still not having any luck...

Pictures

Why did Blogger change the size of my header photo all by itself?  Does it look like it shrank to you guys?  I'm perturbed.  Am I doing something wrong?  I've never had this to happen before!!!!  I even changed the picture and it still is messed up!!!

Dang.

What Do We Have Here?????

Be glad you were not at my house Thursday and Friday...  I was SOME put out...

Thursday, I had a nice lady call me and offer to adopt Lucy, my son's calico cat I told you about.  She was coming on Friday to look at her and possibly take her.  I had put Lucy on Craigsl*st to see if I could find her a good home.  Well, I went to take Lucy's collar off  because it seemed to be bugging her (which I had bought her a couple of weeks ago - it had a bell on it - I like to know where she is...) and it had irritated her neck  and she'd been scratching and her neck was all red and angry-looking.  So I thought I'd put a little  N*eosporin on it just for good measure.  I also tore off a clean piece of towel and safety pinned it around her neck so she'd not be able to scratch and put her in the laundry room in her basket to go to bed.  Ok, everything seemed to be fine.

We went out to eat at our favorite Mexican food place Thursday evening and when we got home, of course, it was dark.  I saw Gypsy out in the front yard playing with something and having the biggest time.  Altho the house porch lights were on I couldn't tell what it was that she was playing with.  We got out of the car and walked up to the house, and what do we have here!  There was a rooster laying in the yard that immediately hopped up and jumped on the porch with great difficulty and hid under the wicker settee.  There were tail feathers laying in the yard. Oh great.  We have a chicken ketchin' dog.

I jumped all over Gypsy and yelled at her - she knew I was mad.  She was very cowed down and submissive.  I clipped her leash on and  tied her where she couldn't get to the rooster.  I'm sure she thought I was going to be so proud of the cool play-purty that she brought home - you could just tell by her happy bouncy smile when we drove up.  The rooster was injured and looked like it definitely had a broken wing, so Tony went in and got one of his pistols and shot the roo and put it in a sack in a  box in the back of his truck.

Not sure where the rooster came from, but I know sometimes our neighbor's free-range chickens come on to our 80 acres on the north end.  Whadaya do?  Yes, I need my dog to stay on my property.  But there's dogs everywhere around here and they all run loose in the country, as well as the chickens and coyotes.  Got any good advice out there?  I'm going to get some chickens, too, and I don't want Gypsy playing with or killing them. Perhaps I'm being too optomistic here, but usually I can tell her or show her something that I want her to do or don't want her to do and she seems to understand.  She picks up things real quick and she really wants to please me.   I THINK I might could teach her not to mess with the chickens, but I can't teach her that if I don't have any right now.  Any and all advice would be appreciated.  I sure don't want to have to give Gypsy away and I can't keep her tied up all the time either, but I don't want my neighbors mad at me either.  'Course, they ARE letting their chickens run on our place...

Later in the evening, I went out and took Bug to potty (the chihuahua) and I was sitting on the settee waiting.  Gypsy came over, creeping up submissively and apologized so sweetly and I pet her a little bit.  Then she started barking at something we heard out in the darkness.  We could hear something moving about and didn't know if it was a varmint or what. She's such a good watch dog!  We eased over in the direction of the noise and it seemed to be coming from the back of the truck.  What do we have here? That dad-gum rooster was having post-mortem spasms or something!  It was moving around in the sack!  And it was deader'na doornail!  Is that possible?????  Scared the pee-diddle out both of us!  I told Tony and he said he was NOT going to shoot the rooster again.  He shot it 3 times.  And it was already dead.

Friday morning, I got up early (I always do) and made my way to the laundry room to let Lucy out.  Well, what do we have here?  CAT PO*P and CAT THROW-UP all over the the laundry room floor and the rug, too!!!  Evidently, she had gotten under that towel I'd put around her neck and licked all the Neosp*rin off and it made her sick to her stomach and she was going both ways!  Poor Lucy!  POORER ME!  Guess who gets to clean it all up?  Tony looks at me and says, "She's your cat, don't look at me!"  So I cleaned it up.  So, a lesson - if your cat gets clogged with hairballs, Neosp*rin works great!  (disclaimer - I don't recommend it - try some oil of some kind...)

Then I walked outside to let Bug out.  What do we have here?  I'd been putting Christmas items out on Thursday, and had some boxes sitting on the porch.  Gypsy had helped herself to one of the boxes FILLED with newspapers, and she had shredded both the box AND the newspapers and they were strewn all over the front yard!  I thought when I went to bed the night before that I really needed to move those boxes.  Thank goodness newspapers were all that were in the box! 

SOOOOO, as I'm cleaning up the mess in the front yard and as the morning work traffic is whizzing down our little country  road and all eyes are panning RIGHT to see our beautifully decorated (with cardboard & newspaper) yard with me in my flannel plaid sleepin' pants and jacket and no make-up and bed-head scraping up and picking and chasing down in the wind little slivers of newspapers and trying to keep them in the garbage bag!  TALK ABOUT WHITE TRASH!  And Tony says, "you're the one that wanted animals".  And smiles real big.

AND what ELSE do we have here?  My wonderful, thoughtful, kind and generous husband, dressed and ready for work and he's standing on the front porch enjoying my frustration.  Not only that, he's singing, "Welcome to my world! won't you come on in????"  waving his arms like an opera singer with an audience and making up silly verses about living on the farm and the animals and all the crap and inconvenience and mess they make!  Did he offer to help??? NO way!  He's thoroughly enjoying my dilemna.  I was so perturbed but he was having such a great time and singing at the top of his lungs - I'm sure anyone with their car window down could hear him.  I just had to bust out laughing - he was so funny and I couldn't help myself.  I had to laugh cuz I was too mad to be mad.  I'm still keeping my critters and I'm gonna get me some more.

How was YOUR weekend?