Tag: Houndstooth

Tiny Tuesday!

After hearing some other people’s nightmarish travel stories, I’m very glad we were all safe and sound at Houndstooth Hall yesterday. We had a quiet dinner, a frenzy of gift opening, and some fun surprises all around.

Here are a couple of small things that will make for good times and convenience.

Tom got me a Barbie coloring book. This will be a lot of fun.

I have a portable pencil carrier given to me by Lindsey and Rhonda a few years back. It has often been a lifesaver when I have long wait times for appointments–my own and those of other people I’ve driven places.

Debby found me an additional pencil case, this one with a capacity for more pencils.

I was able to empty several unopened boxes of pencils that have been waiting in the wings for empty slots to come open. You’ll also see a lot of very used pencils here that I replaced in the other portable case.

Lots of room for more!

In the last section, I’ve put some neons, some flesh colors, some white/gray/black, and a set of glowy pencils. Those white sticks are extra erasers that can be used in the red eraser holder pictured.

Great creativity comes in small packages. =)

Mood: Monday

This painting is in the public domain.

The End of Dinner
oil on canvas, 1913
Jules Alexandre Grün, France

This painting appealed to me, because I never went to the beginning of a party that looked this alluring, and this is the end of one. We can all magically imagine ourselves into better places, better times, better company. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, whether this is one of the good years or one of the hard ones, I hope you know you’re an essential and loved part of someone’s world, even when it doesn’t seem that way. Be gentle to yourself.

Our Christmas dinner and opening of gifts happens tonight. It’s also Tom’s birthday. Here are a couple of shots of the tables, ready for the festivities.

Button Sunday

If you have any or even all of the following traits, the BatPack wishes you the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of your dreams!

  • A love of naps
  • Big ears
  • Sweet eyes
  • Eagerness for a meal or a snack
  • A tendency to worry out loud at the sound of a doorbell, a delivery, or a car’s beep
  • A love/hate relationship with a crate
  • Toes that smell like Fritos
  • A committed relationship with a tennis ball
  • A talent for burrowing under blankets, sheets, and pillows
  • A wagging tail
  • An aversion to the sound of a smoke detector
  • The ability to stretch to cover an entire chair, couch, or bed many times your size
  • The keen sense to hear any food container (dish, bag, wrapper, lid) opening several rooms away while simultaneously not hearing “no,” “this isn’t for you,” “drop it,” and “shutupshutupshutupshutup”
  • A belief that next time, you’ll get that squirrel
  • Certainty that an ear rub is a peak experience
  • Equal certainty that a bath is not a peak experience

Any of these makes them feel they are one with you.

King of the Acorns

We’ve had an abundance of acorns this autumn, and no matter how many times we’ve swept or raked them and disposed of them, they’ve been replenished. Folklore has it that excessive acorns mean a hard winter* (an indicator that animals will be well fed during unusually long or intense cold seasons). Folklore is rarely dependable in today’s climate studies.

Still, I dubbed Rocky “King of the Acorns” today at his annual wreathing.

*I used this factoid in one of the novels in the Neverending Saga after a conversation with Lynne.

ETA: Later, after Tom and Debby returned from running errands, Tom took me outside to see what Timothy had done earlier in the day. He’s been working on cleaning and pruning the front yard, and he wanted to try some plants/herbs in Rocky’s flower bed, where they can get more light. Thanks, Tim!

And Tom has put the Christmas wreaths in the windows, including two in the windows of Lynne’s room.

And four in the living room windows. They now have little plaid reindeer on them.

random hump day post

Managing a day when Mercury goes into retrograde…

When I woke up and was about to take a shower, I noticed for who-knows-how-many times that a button was missing off my pajama pants. (I have a tendency to call procrastination “don’t sweat the small stuff.”) This time, I did something about it before my shower.

I found this coloring book recently, and as it was within my sight, I looked through it.

Most of the pages are pretty detailed, and this one appealed to me. It makes me think of my fictional Texas town, Coventry.

Then I was all NO! You need to get ready to write. So I grabbed the yellow book that has all the notes for the first chapters of the seventh book. And that’s the CD I ordered and will be listening to next of various artists performing John Prine’s songs.

I had to make a decision. Start writing, in which I would get lost for the day and into the night, or do some of the holiday things that need to be done soon (mostly mailing things out).

I spent a few hours in the kitchen pre-cooking tonight’s dinner and prepping the dough for cheese straws, some of which will be shipped.

Little dough balls for the cheese straws for Tom later to season with pepper and form into larger dough balls for pressing through the cookie presser.

They look like this pre-baked.

And then like this.

Sometime during the day I ran a shopping errand and an impulse item I grabbed was this little metal tray.

So that I could make the dining room table more festive and NOT a catchall place for the stuff I’m trying to get done.

I filled the tray with unshelled pecans, and I usually put those with Hersheys Miniatures as a snack for anyone who’ll sit with me and shell pecans. Since I had no Miniatures, I dropped in Kisses. (Shelling pecans is a zen activity in that it relaxes me and makes me reminisce about good times when I was growing up.)

There are picks and nutcrackers in that cup. That beautiful maple bowl is one made by Tom’s father and gifted to us. The table runner is a gift from Lynne (the reverse side has a fall theme).


Added an older dish to the other end of the table.

For the time being, it has the favorite candies of Tom, Tim, and Debby in it. This will change at Christmas.

Throughout the day, I worked on addressing Christmas cards. I’ve been sending them out in groups every other day. Now I have a few more and a package ready to go out, as well as contents for seven packages that I’ll box and ship tomorrow.

And…no writing got done, but a lot of other things did, and we had a good home-cooked meal, so it was time well spent.