Category Archives: Winter

Adirondack Birds Jigsaw Puzzle

Adirondack Birds was a fun puzzle to complete. I enjoyed all the birds to focus on. There always comes a point in completing a puzzle where you can become totally taken in forgetting other things you could be doing. A slushy winter day with a meal cooking away in the crockpot made it easy to obsess and finish up this beauty.

I bought the puzzle before Christmas at Hobby Lobby for 50% off.

Happy Friday everyone. We are meeting up with sister and her hubby in Deer Park for an early dinner today as they travel on to Idaho. It will be fun to catch up with them. Otherwise we are having a quiet weekend again. What are your plans?

Give Me Freedom to Roam Hodgepodge

It’s Wednesday so here are the Hodgepodge questions for this week. Thank you to Jo From This Side of the Pond!

1. What do you wish you’d done more of last year?

More meditating on God’s Word, the Bible. Remembering what the Lord has done for us.

Less of? 

Less watching of mindless TV.

2. What’s the tallest building you’ve ever been in?
~chihuly-065
The Sears Tower was the tallest. The photo at the top of this post is of some of the Chicago skyline.
The Sears Tower is now the Willis Tower. Other tall buildings I’ve been in: Empire State Building, The Space Needle, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Statue of Liberty.
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Do you have a fear of heights
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No but I do have a fear of edges. Edges of cliffs, open edges on winding mountain roads.  A nice handrail or some sort of barrier between me and the edge is always comforting to me.
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3. Do you have a word for the year? Elaborate if you’d like to elaborate. 
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No word for the year as of yet and don’t know if I’ll choose one. I was considering Perseverance.
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4. January 11 is National Milk Day…are you a milk drinker? What kind? Your favorite recipe that calls for milk (cereal doesn’t count)? 

I like milk but milk doesn’t like me. I can enjoy it in moderation. Give me whole or 2% please. Our family favorite, Swedish Pancakes, calls for milk.

5. What excites you most about the future?

That the Lord will return to gather us up to be with Him.

Seeing our grandchildren grow.

What do you miss about the past? 

Freedom to travel without masks and restrictions and having all the resources of travel available like open restaurants and attractions.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Speaking of watching our grandchildren grow. I will cherish all the moments like this one.

Thank you for visiting, fellow hodgpodgers and friends, you make me smile.

Icicles

They just keep getting longer and longer here on our Country Bungalow.

Look at the downspout!

We are supposed to have several days of above freezing temperatures so our icicle artwork should melt soon. We all have to be very careful walking in parking lots and on sidewalks that are not deiced. We have to walk a short distance to our garage and we are very careful doing that, too. Everything turns into solid ice and we do not want to fall on ice. Falling on snow is softer for sure.

When snow is cleared in parking lots, etc. it ends up being piled in one section of the area. As you drive around town you’ll see mini mountains of snow in most large parking lots. Those mini mountains will take a very long time to melt.

Hope all is well where you are…

 

First Winter Puzzle

Our daughter helped with this puzzle on Christmas Day before everyone arrived for dinner and we put it away. We don’t keep the puzzles out when our dear Grands come over.

When the puzzle is complete I’ll share again.

I’m also working on a Turkey post as they are entertaining us daily here at our Country Bungalow! Coincidence…we had Turkey Chili on Friday, too.

After shoveling, and clearing snow off our roof and snowshoeing I’ve come down with a bit of a Tennis Elbow, ouch. Friday I took the day off from doing anything that involved tension on my right elbow. I’m using some Biofreeze which is helpful.

My kitchen Elf aka Dear filled the dishwasher for me and washed the dishes that don’t go in the dishwasher from the early birthday party we had for Dan and Jamie here on Thursday evening. I won’t be shoveling snow in the near future for sure.

Thankful for a quiet weekend here. What’s happening in your corner?

Blazing the Trails

I’ve enjoyed a couple days of snowshoeing in our back acreage. On the first day it was overcast and snowing lightly.

Tuesday the 4th of January.

After I blazed some good trails the turkeys flew in and appreciated my path.

On the next day (Wednesday Jan 5th) the sun was out and I worked on compacting the trails.

A rear view of our country bungalow.

We had 5-6 more inches of snow since I made these trails. After shoveling the front walk on Thursday I did a little more snowshoeing to make a path to our variegated willow to throw out some bird seed since with the snow cover the birds have a harder time finding food.

Joseph is now completely buried along with Mary and the Manger.

Time to shovel off the deck again. This will be a record year of snow accumulation for us here.

How are things in your corner?

The Color of Our World

We are in that time of year where our world is predominately brown and green with a little white here and there. We live in the evergreen state so we expect to see green all year round.

We call it our muddy season.

Our grands are blessed to have parents that aren’t afraid of a little mud.

Soon enough lots of pretty color will be added to our world.

Adieu to February. Looking forward to March.

The Little Things

I bought a couple of these pillows to add to our couch. Good reminder.

It’s been freeze your face cold here. The Quail are huddling.

And with the wind comes an added chill!

Do Not Be Anxious

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

…“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Matthew 6: 25-27, 34

These bunnies are looking forward to Spring but are taking the Winter in stride enjoying whatever the weather hits them with.

We had a nice time with my sister and her hubby on Friday evening and Saturday morning. We had a good time at our dinner out. On Saturday morning our kids came over to see aunt and uncle before they took off to Idaho for a couple of nights. On Saturday evening we babysat the grands so their mommy and daddy could have a quiet dinner out by themselves. Our kids on the Coast are digging out from a major snowfall for that side of the mountains. Snow photos popping up all day Saturday in texts and on social media. It continued snowing on Sunday there, too. We didn’t get any snow just temperatures in the single digits and the teens. No outside work. My sister and her hubby will be driving back to the Seattle side of the mountains from Idaho and it sounds like they will have snow all the way home. Praying for their journey. We are supposed to  get 3-6 inches of snow on Monday.

Hope you all have a good President’s Day here in the USA and a good Family Day to our neighbors to the North!

Feed the Birds…

Gambel’s Quail?

This looks like the Black Capped Chickadee.

This one I couldn’t find in my bird book with the full black head.

These photos were all taken on Monday February 8th. We had a fine dusting of snow overnight.

Well our HVAC guy came yesterday and it looks like they’ll need to order a new part to correct the problem so we’ll be on emergency heat for a while longer. We want it fixed right so we are happy to wait instead of having a patch up job.

The Snowball Effect Hodgepodge

A new month of Wednesday Hodgepodge. Thank you to Jo From This Side of the Pond for coming up with the questions for us to answer.
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1. Feb 2nd is Groundhog Day in the US of A. Tell us about one day you wouldn’t mind living over again, and why you chose that day. 
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 I’ll pick July 9th, 2014.  This was a day Dear and I spent in Oxford, England. I chose this day because it’s impossible for us to visit Oxford at this time in virus history and it is something we dream to be able to do again. Here’s a link to part of our day in Oxford in 2014.
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 2. Something you know beyond a ‘shadow of a doubt’?
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God created me a woman and he created my husband (Dear) a man. Those are the only two genders that God has created. 
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3. Give us an example of history repeating itself in some way, in your own life or the lives of your children.
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It’s fun to see our little grandson doing some of the things our son did when he was little. 
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4. Snowed under, snow job, not a snowball’s chance, snowbird, on thin ice, snug as a bug in a rug, tip of the iceberg, snowball effect, run hot and cold….choose a wintry idiom and tell us how it best applies to your life right now. 
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I’ll choose snowball effect. Building a shop on our property has had it’s own snowball effect. Once I think the hard part is over and done with another hard part presents itself. One thing leads to another. I think I should plan a huge completion party to celebrate once it is all done and all our stuff from our son’s shop finds it’s way into Dear’s shop. 
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5. Your favorite sign of spring? 
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It’s hard to choose just one. 
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There is Easter and all that it means. Easter is my favorite holiday to celebrate. So much promise, so much hope because of Jesus’ resurrection. He is Risen, He is Risen Indeed! 
Our very first grandchild was born on the first day of Spring four years ago. We get to celebrate her at the beginning of Spring every year!
Our grandson was born in Spring, too, in April of 2019. We have so much to celebrate in Spring! 
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6. Insert your own random thought here.
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All this talk of Spring makes me want to go out and find a bunch of daffodils to bring in for cheer and the good promise that Spring is on it’s way!

Wildlife

I wanted to add the rest of the animals we enjoyed during our zoo and aquarium experience while we were in Arizona in the middle of January.

We did see a very majestic Lion but it’s hard to get a good photo through a fence.

We all had a good time at the zoo. The fact that it was a short ten minute ride from the house we were staying in was a plus. This was our first full day in Arizona and while the kids napped some of us made a trip to Costco to buy food for dinner and to stock up the fridge. We enjoyed Costco Rotisserie Chickens, their macaroni and cheese, Caesar saIads and fresh bread. We had enough chicken leftover to enjoy chicken Caesar salads for lunch the next day. I still have some catch-up posts from Arizona that I’ll add soon.