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Current Photo Friday theme: Rustic, the second week for this theme.
Bench, East Downtown, Houston, photographed 2017
For my site’s theme of snow this week, here’s a winter snowfall at the oldest, and most rustic, home we ever lived in (a house I used for the veterinarian in A Coventry Christmas).
We had a great Christmas today! The company we keep:
Debby, Timothy, Tom, and me.
Today’s menu:
Roast beef cooked with potatoes and carrots (and gravy), along with fresh green beans, fresh broccoli, and rolls.
Dessert was Tom’s German chocolate birthday cake, which Anime (lower left) got absolutely none of.
Then came the frenzy of gift giving which I think left everyone happy. Of course, some of my gifts will show up here sooner or later. In the meantime, I owe a photo for the “snow” theme.
Since it isn’t snowing here (though we did get a lot of rain today), here’s a throwback photo of me bundled up in thermal underwear, jeans, a shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, and a jacket, in what is probably my favorite snow day memory with friends–except for later having that red VW surgically removed from my head. College was hard.
I asked in comments if someone wanted another color theme this week and offered a suggestion. Though Blue Sky Boy did agree with red and suggested other options, I laughed when one of his suggestions was “snow.” You may get a coloring page with a snow theme this week, though it’s hard to color anything white on white paper. But you may just get snow photos I’ve taken in the past because I don’t think it’s likely to snow in Houston this week. Then again, it is Texas.
For now, I robbed my Christmas tree and added a special decoration.
This is my Snowman from nephews Aaron and Alex. He’s looking over: a small snowflake made by my mother. I have several of these but didn’t hang them this year. Now this one will make it to the tree since I unpacked it.
A big ceramic snowflake I picked up one year (there’s a matching one in red).
A tree-shaped glass ornament with a tree decal on it, filled with “snow,” that may have come from Lynne.
The two rainbow snowmen ornament was given to us by Rhonda and Lindsey many years ago for The Compound Christmas tree.
A Snowbaby ornament that I think came from Tom’s mother or someone in his family. It also could have come from Big Hair Lisa.
A clear glass ornament with Santa painted on it and “snow” inside. This is another that could have come from Lynne (or someone in her family).
Today, The Brides joined Tom, Debby, Timothy, and me for a fun brunch of pancakes (some plain; some with blueberries), fresh fruits, bacon, scrambled eggs, and coffee. This gave us the opportunity to hand Lindsey my camera so she could shoot a lot of photos in hopes that one will go out with our Christmas and holiday cards this year. I’m way behind on that task, but now that I have photos to choose from, I can take care of it.
We had so much fun talking and eating. Jack always sequesters at Debby’s to keep him away from Tim, and this time Delta decided to hang out with Jack (she loves Debby’s guest chair and thinks it belongs to her). That worked out, because sometimes Delta gets testy with Pollock, and since Pepper couldn’t come with Rhonda and Lindsey this time (she recently had some surgery–all is well!–but she’s on crate rest still), Pollock could join us with Tim (like Jack and Tim, Pollock and Pepper are a pair best kept separated, in their case because they amp up each other’s energy too much with the possibility of things ending in tears).
The second Rhonda and Lindsey came through the door, I was all, “YAY! You just gave me my Saturday purple-themed photo!” It’s Rhonda’s usual hair color shade, but this time, Lindsey’s was also purple, in a slightly more muted shade.
We hope we’ll all be together again soon. =)
Happy birthday to Mark, far away in England. I had an extra cake layer in the freezer, so I defrosted and gave it purple candles so everyone at the Hall can have a slice to celebrate you this evening.
Today is the day our nephew Aaron was born in 1993. Because he often came to see us, he had his own napkin ring among those I painted for family and friends who visited The Compound and shared meals with us. Every wooden ring was painted a different color, and Aaron’s is purple. It’s kept in one of the display cabinets in the Houndstooth Hall living room. We will love and miss Aaron always.
Aaron and Tom in February 2011 celebrating Debby’s birthday along with her, David, Geri, and Timothy.
Je n’ai jamais vu de vache violette
Je n’espère jamais en voir un
Mais je peux te le dire, de toute façon
Je préfère voir que d’en être un
My mother used to recite this Gelett Burgess poem to me (in English). I have it in this book, first publication date after I left the right age group, but this edition was also before the time of my nephews and nieces. Who knows how or where I acquired it. The lines around the poem are part of the way the publisher decorated the page. No child scribbled those.
Since this was the first of my coloring books in which I could find a page with a cow, I decided I must do a little more to make her très chic to match the week’s purple theme. She’s definitely outstanding… out standing in her field, as my Uncle Dwight might have said.
Some random things that are purple:
A Christmas angel. A perfume bottle. An inner self manifestation bowl. An amethyst crystal point. Tiny medicine sachets with herbs and spices. And the 3000 Would You Rather Questions book, from which I chose…
No. 409. WYR take a photo with Santa or the Easter Bunny?
Santa!
Mother, Debby, and me with Santa in Salt Lake City, 1990.
Before I write another word of this post: I FINISHED CHAPTER freaking 16 15 (I somehow skipped a number, so all these times I’ve called it 16, I was wrong) in book seven of the Neverending Saga. It’s a Christmas miracle.
Meanwhile, this holiday-themed book was only released in 2023, so I don’t think I’ve colored out of it before. I really like its drawings, but yesterday, I was confused about some ornaments.
I texted Lynne, hoping for clues to the questions, What the heck are these; how do I color them?
She texted back: Pine cone or artichoke or pomegranate or all had a baby. Deferring to that botanical wisdom, here is my finished page.
And a couple of close-ups so you can see most are shiny in some way.
Also, this happened today.
This is my yearly reminder that I was lucky enough to know Liz, who helped me love Christmas again many decades ago and painted and gave me Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus and some of their workshop accessories. Lynne has a matching set (in different colors) painted by their mother. One day, Lynne’s set will be given to her granddaughter, and my set will be given to Lynne’s grandson. This is one tradition I hope will continue long after I’m gone.
Even before Santa’s Workshop opened for business this season, Tom’s Workshop was busy repairing several broken ornaments that I found when I unpacked decoration bins in late November. News flash! TOM IS SANTA’S HELPER. Did anyone ever doubt it?
*ETA: If you doubted me. Tom says the elf is whittling a doll. Sure, Tom. That elf chose violence.
Taking a suggestion from Mark for coloring that might include history and England…
C.S. Lewis was a British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian. You might know him best because of The Chronicles of Narnia, which begins with the first novel, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When the four Pevensie children are evacuated from London during the Blitz*, they live with a professor in his house in the countryside. There, they discover a wardrobe that’s a portal to a magical land named Narnia.
The coloring pages I did below, of the wardrobe, can be found on the copyright page and last page of this lovely coloring book.
I didn’t read the Narnia series as a child. I was introduced to it by my college roommate Debbie, who I think gave me a paperback set for a birthday or Christmas. I then told Lynne about the series because both of us read fantasy as teens and young adults, specifically The Lord of the Rings novels (J.R.R. Tolkien) and The Sword of Shannara trilogy (Terry Brooks).
Years later, when I worked at a bookstore, badly damaged books were often marked 50% off, and that’s how I was able to afford my hardcover collection on my meager salary. While they may not be the prettiest, they came to me gently loved and remain loved.
Debbie’s recommendation also began my fascination with lions thanks to Narnia’s Aslan. Aslan is the reason my father did this for me in pen and ink:
And Lynne’s sister Liz did this ceramic piece for me:
And Debby gave me this canvas print by artist Leonid Afremov as a recent Christmas gift.
*The whole lion fascination was a detour. Back to British history. Long before I read C.S. Lewis, I’d read books about children who were evacuated to the English countryside as well as to the United States to stay with host families during World War Two. The Blitz is the term for Germany’s bombing raids of cities and towns in England from September 1940 to May 1941. In London during that period, there were 57 consecutive nights of bombing. People wore gas masks and used blackout curtains. They were on food and petrol rations, and volunteers patrolled the streets at night to sound warnings and make sure people got safely inside shelters during air raids. Civilians, including women, drove ambulances, helped rescue people trapped in bombed houses, and tended to wounds as they could. Mark, in a comment you left on Mindful Monday’s post, you pinpointed some of the qualities that explain why I have so much love and admiration for your country and its people.
Because of my interest in that period of history, there’s a backstory for a brother and sister in the Neverending Saga that includes being sent to live with relatives in rural England during the war. Though their parents were killed in a London bombing after the Blitz, just in London alone, 30,000 residents lost their lives during the Blitz.
Yesterday brought good mail. One of the first things that showed up was my 2024 sleigh bell. Tom and I still haven’t decided exactly which decorations we’ll put out this year (at least the tree is already up), but seeing the new bell made me look forward to all of them hanging on their garland again.
Back in December 2022, I put a couple of photos on Instagram showing most of the many paper angels that I’ve colored or have been colored and given to me through the years.
Coloring angels dates back to when Steve R was alive (early 90s) and introduced me to Catherine Stock’s A Christmas Angel Collection coloring books. A friend commented on my Instagram post that she really liked them, and I offered to send her a few if she wanted to choose one to color.
I’ll share this in the most privacy-respecting way possible, but my friend had some big life changes coming her way, and it turned out coloring an angel added to the stress. A lot of people find coloring stressful. In fact, several years ago, at the fundraiser Debby and I went to that reignited my interest in coloring, one of the other people attending got so stressed out that she had to stop. What’s calming for some of us is the exact opposite for others.
My friend’s angel was the other thing that arrived with the mail, along with her explanation for why she never finished it. There’s nothing wrong with stopping a project that doesn’t bring you happiness. I was excited to see the angel and the colors my friend used to start her.
All of the angels in Stock’s book are based on great works of art, and this one is derivative of the artwork St. Macarius of Alexandria, from the School of Rublev, Russia, late 16th century. Angel colors are completely up to the person coloring (i.e., it’s not important to try to imitate the art, because it would be so boring if all my angels looked alike).
I finished my friend’s angel using her colors and my additions, and now this angel can join the others when I unpack them and put them out this year.