Category Archives: Our Country Bungalow

Adorning

Our Christmas tree was finally adorned with ornaments old and new. We do not do ‘designer’ Christmas here. We do a more traditional look, using old and new touches, vintage and modern. As you can see, the presents under the tree are a mish mosh of bags and boxes and wrapping paper. Not much matching going on.

The angel topper has been with us for many years and I’m sorry to say I’m not sure who made it for us and the first year it became our topper.

The ornaments on the tree have no overall theme. Some are from travels to Great Britain.

Beatrix Potter’s characters are represented.

The first Christmas ornament we were gifted as a wedding gift and some early family ornaments represent these special times in our history.

Josh and Dan’s sport photo ornaments have gone to live at their homes.

I’m not sure which one of our 3 kids created this walnut half ornament in Sunday School years ago.

This one above has been around for many of our 51 years of Christmases. The one below is newer but has still been around for years!

Our ‘Grands’ have a representation on the tree, too.

This was our very first Christmas tree at our apartment in West Los Angeles. That is our niece Jenna. We had only been married for 20 days. The fern next to our tree was from our wedding. We had two ferns at the altar for our wedding flowers. After finding these old photos it dawned on me that in our first month of marriage we had both sides of our family over to our apartment for a meal/gathering, including Greg’s paternal grandmother and my maternal grandmother!

This was our Christmas tree in the first home we purchased in 1975 and our second Christmas as a married couple.

Has your tree been adorned?

Embracing the Days…

Catching up with some events from the last week. The super moon lit up the sky and our acres. So bright, it was almost as if we had street lights.

Addy’s last basketball game of the short season was on Saturday morning, the 6th of December.

As usual she played hard and well.

After the game all the ladies and JJ took in the Lady Lion’s craft fair in Kettle Falls. When we saw all we wanted to see we met up for lunch at TJ’s in Kettle Falls. Addy and JJ sat across the table from me and I took this shot of them.

Before the rains came and while the snow was still good enough for sledding, our Colville kids searched out their Christmas tree for 2025.

On Sunday while on greeting duty, I took this photo of the entry at our church. The Joy is real.

Our son planned a very special weekend in Nashville to celebrate Laura’s birthday. When they arrived an unexpected surprise for Laura was that cousins David and Kristin joined them for the celebration. It was an epic weekend for the four of them.

This is Nashville, not Iceland. Ice at Gaylord Opryland Resort.

All four of them described this weekend as unforgettable.

Monday was cheesecake baking day here at our country bungalow. I made two for our annual Staff/Deacon Christmas dinner which will be on Tuesday the 9th. While I mixed and baked our Christmas CDs were playing. While I was finishing up we got these two photos of our grands helping their Great Grandmother decorate her little corner tree.

This was our comp dessert at our anniversary getaway last week that I wanted to remember. It is a cotton candy sundae and it was delicious and unique.

In other news, I’m happy to report that our Christmas cards were mailed on Monday. This always comes with a sigh of relief and a smile of satisfaction.

Hopefully, I’ll remember to take photos at our dinner party tonight along with the finished cheesecakes.

Everyday Images #76

November/December Prompts – Everyday Images #76
I’ll be linking up with Kym at A Fresh Cup of Coffee for the latest photo prompts.
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Here are the prompts this time around.

Current season (quarterly)

We’ve had our first and our second snowfall.

Together

Together around the table to enjoy Greg’s Swedish pancakes. This is a family favorite!

Lights

We enjoyed some Christmas lights at the Coeur d’Alene Lake Resort

Silver

Our silver and gold Christmas wreath.

Vintage

Christmas Angels from Greg’s mother Verna’s Christmas stash.

Neighborhood spot (quarterly)

Barmans on Main Street in Colville all decorated for Christmas with a Santa Sleigh, too.
I’m in the process of decorating for Christmas here at our Country Bungalow. Trying to get inspired to write our Christmas letter and get going on our Christmas cards!
How are you getting along with Christmas readiness?

Thanksgiving 2025

Hello December! Before we go full speed ahead we’ll catch up with our long Thanksgiving weekend festivities!

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we had a quiet start to the day as we waited for Andrew and Katie to arrive. Our Thanksgiving meal was slated for 5pm at our Colville kids’ home. Our only responsibility was making sweet potatoes with marshmallows toasted on top. Katie and Andrew arrived safely mid afternoon. We drove together to Bayles Mountain for our Thanksgiving meal.

What fun to get photos from both sides of the mountain and see that both of our sons decided to try to spatchcock a turkey this year. On this side of the mountains besides the spatchcock, Dan and Jamie cooked a traditional turkey with stuffing. Spatchcock was a huge success. Another favorite this year was Jamie’s homemade cranberry sauce with added raspberry, so delicious!

Addy and JJ both enjoyed having Andrew and Katie to help them with some projects while we waited for our meal.

Friday morning dawned beautifully as we waited to hear that Josh and Laura were on the road to our home.

We got the ‘on the road selfie’ and we counted down the hours for their arrival.

JJ was  pleased to see they brought the vintage G.I. Joe sleeping bag from the 80’s!

Very few photos were taken on Friday. Gramps made his tomato rice soup for us to enjoy and we added BLT’s to the menu.

After dinner we enjoyed some rounds of Skyjo.

Saturday morning found us eating together again!

Greg was on cooking duty again for his Swedish Pancakes and we all love to gather to eat them!

The agenda for Saturday included shopping ‘small business’ for the girls and for the guys chopping wood and preparing for Saturday meals including a birthday celebration for Auntie Lolo!

More about Saturday will come in a separate post.

Our Westside kids made it home safely on Sunday and we are thankful always for traveling mercies!

December is coming in hot with something on the calendar for each day this week! Whew!  I’m going to have to be intentional about pausing in the midst of this busy schedule to enjoy this Advent season.

 

Blue Room Upgrade

We are in the midst of our Thanksgiving family time here in Colville. This post was prepared ahead of time to publish until I gather the current family photos from activities we are enjoying in real time.

A ‘before’ photo of the queen size bed and accessories in the ‘Blue Room’. We sold this bed complete to my cousin who lives here in Colville.

We have two guest bedrooms in our Country Bungalow. We call this room the ‘Blue Room’. The other guest room we call the ‘Play Room’ because that is where any toys and books are stored for our Grands.

The Blue room was ready for an upgrade with a new king bed set-up. It was fun to pick wall art and linens for a new look. Most of the wall art came from Hobby Lobby on a week when they were all 50% off. It wasn’t as much fun for Greg to assemble the platform for the mattress. It also was a complete clown-show for Greg and me when we took off the wrapping on the mattress that came in a box, rolled up tight. It pretty much explodes into it’s flat king size shape. We were tossed about until we gained control of it and slid it on to it’s platform! Whew!

Andrew and Katie arrived here on Thanksgiving and got to enjoy the ‘new look’.

Here’s a recent photo of Katie with her latest hair coloring. By now we have taken many family photos while celebrating the Thanksgiving extended weekend together. I’ll be sharing those soon.

And in other news we had our first wee snowfall of the season.

We hired a couple of young men from our church to come and clear our planters for winter. Little did we know when we scheduled that we’d have snow to deal with. Thankfully it was just an inch of snow that melted quickly. The guys persevered with freezing fingers and did a great job for us. I’m so thankful to have this task behind us in time for Winter.

Everyday Images ~ November

It’s time to link up again with Kym at A Fresh Cup of Coffee for some photo prompts.

 

November Prompts – Everyday Images #75

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layers

We enjoy the layers of mountains here in Colville and beyond.

remember

This is a fun time to remember when all three of these guys laughed till they cried.

texture

Lots of textures in this photo op at our Mother’s Day event at church.

at home (monthly)

At home in November with our Thanksgiving and Fall decor.

prepare

Preparing to toast slices of baguette to go with a salad.

Time to start thinking of all the traditional dishes we are going to prepare for our Thanksgiving meal.

cozy

A flashback to our daughter Katie sitting cozy with her Dzeda (Grandfather) many years ago.

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We were in Spokane yesterday for most of the day so I’m a little behind in visiting. We made 8 stops and managed to find everything on our lists! Woohoo.

Hope your Thursday is spectacular!

Fun Monday

Here is my first Fall puzzle and it was a doozey! I bought it at Union Gospel Mission Thrift store in Spokane for $5.

I’ve been working on it for a couple weeks.

Hooray! No missing pieces. I finished this up on Monday before JJ arrived for his afternoon at Baba and Gramps.

JJ lost his first tooth on Monday morning so we had to document that! It’s a little harder to bite into his snacks. This boy loves snacks.

Out for a trek to the mailbox with Gramps.

G.I. Joe with Gramps. The same G.I. Joe show his dad and uncle watched when they were boys. I remembered and mentioned to JJ that I thought his dad or uncle had their old G.I. Joe sleeping bag. JJ wanted me to call Uncle Joshie to see if he still had it. I said I would text instead. Then JJ added that if he still had it he could maybe bring it at Thanksgiving. Later that evening we got this photo with Uncle Joshie’s answer.

Yes! He will bring it at Thanksgiving!

Before we knew it, Jamie and Addy got back from Irish Dance to collect JJ. Addy always wants a rundown of all the snacks JJ had while she was at Dance.

Thankful in this season of thankfulness for the opportunity to spend time with our grandchildren and that we live in the same town.

Looking Up and Back

On Tuesday November 11th I was able to capture some of the colorful night sky with my phone camera.

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” Psalm 19:1-2

During this past week we got some photos of our loved ones via text. I am so grateful this kind of communication is available at our fingertips.

Addy getting a kick out of herself and her Skyjo skills! She was “getting ready for her victory dance”.

Katie and Laura on the other side of the mountains at ‘nail time’ that they enjoy together. Our westside beauties!

Woohoo! Look at who is Clubber of the month. Great job, Addy, memorizing all your verses! Baba and Gramps are thankful you enjoy learning about our God and Savior and storing up Scripture for your heart and mind.

Leaving off with a beautiful sunset viewed through the window at Addy’s Irish Dance studio on Thursday the 13th.

What are some of your ‘thankfuls’ this time of year?

A Day in the Life

Joyce From This Side of the Pond made this announcement; “ I’m hosting a link up here for anyone interested in sharing a Day In The Life post. These are always fun to read and help us remember all the ways we’re connected as we go about the everyday ordinary business of living. Hope you’ll join us! 

Joyce’s plan going forward is to do these seasonally, so maybe four a year.  Watch for the next date sometime in the early part of 2026.

This is the first she’s hosting and my first endeavor. I chose to share the events of my day on Veterans Day, November 11, 2025 which was Tuesday. I took a couple of the morning photos on Wednesday which show accurately what happened on Tuesday, too.

Up at 5am and my dear hubby makes my coffee when he sees my groggy face walk in.

Our Bunn coffee maker excels at a fast brew time.

Coffee in hand this is my morning first stop. Yep it’s still o’dark’thirty outside.

The rest of these photos were taken on Tuesday, A Day in the Life. 🙂

I had an early eye appointment in Spokane and we set out from our home at 7am. It was a foggy drive. It takes roughly 1-1/2 hours for us to get to Spokane. We arrived a little early for my appointment and since Trader Joe’s is across the street from the office we did a little shopping.

Check in and wait times were over the top on this day because the offices are introducing a new computer system, ugh. We did have a nice chat with a man who was waiting with us. Come to find out he had a connection to a couple who are part of our church.

With eyes dilated we stopped at Hobby Lobby (no purchase), Home Goods (2 small items purchased), and Costco for gas and to order new glasses (big purchase$$). We also bought a King comforter and some real maple syrup that were both on sale.

This is Master’s Brewery in Deer Park. We usually stop here on our way home from Spokane for a meal. Deer Park is about 20 miles north of Spokane and on our route home.

Stroganoff Soup was the soup of the day and we enjoyed it with a salad and bread stick. The daily soups at this spot are always excellent!

I’m adding many views from the road home from our lunch stop. We had about 55 miles more to go to get home.

These shots are from us coming down into Chewelah.

Chewelah is about 20 miles from Colville and it has the only stoplight we encounter once we are on Highway 395 from Spokane and  before we reach Colville.

Coming into Colville. We love seeing the big C on the mountain along with the Cross.

Stopping to pick up mail even though it is Veterans Day and there is no mail delivery. LOL!  That’s our home in the distance. We made it home at about 3pm.

We had a delivery to our front door while we were gone. It was a very heavy box. We drug it in and then emptied the contents in our entry and brought all the parts into one of our spare rooms. Assemblie will commence on Wednesday. Mystery will be revealed soon.

Greg had a meeting at church that started at 4:30. While he was gone, I worked on this tough puzzle. I’m a glutton for punishment.

Time to put my feet up and enjoy a little ‘Escape to the Country’ until Greg came home. I noticed that people all across the states were posting photos of an ‘Aurora’ event in the night sky. When Greg got home at 8ish, we went on the deck to try to capture some of the images.

This is one of my favorites. What an end to the day!

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” Psalm 19:1-2

Thank you for coming along for this day in my life.

One Weekend Later

Our friend’s flights from Southern California came through without a hitch and we enjoyed a few days together. They arrived on Saturday afternoon and we were treated to dinner at our Colville kids’ home. It was a delicious gyro meal (all homemade) and homemade ice cream and huckleberry topping for dessert. Our kids grew up with Ken and Heidi’s kids in Southern California until we moved to Washington State in 1988.

On Sunday we all attended church together and split off after church for varied destinations. We spent a quiet evening at home on Sunday. I’ll share our full day of adventures on Monday in a separate posts. We drove around Colville and then up into Canada for lunch.

Heidi and I had many adventures together before we met our husbands and we’ve had some fun adventures since married, too. We can now add a Colville and Canadian adventure to our memories.

More to come, soon.

Thank you for stopping by.