Exceedingly Mundane

Our out of town company (Round 1) is still here, and the guys went hunting yesterday. They didn’t get a deer, which doesn’t surprise me, since it’s so warm here. It’s not really hunting weather, not when it gets up to around 75º during the day 🙄 I think they had a good time though, and then we all watched Monday Night Football when they got back.

Before they got back, though, I had a chance to pop in a Christmas movie and have a little girl time. Believe it or not, I had never seen “White Christmas”. It’s my sister Gail‘s favorite Christmas movie, I think, so I thought I would buy it and watch it. Well. It was a good movie, but it really wasn’t very Christmas-y! I think that’s the case with a lot of the older Christmas movies that they might have come out at Christmas or maybe had one Christmas scene in them, but they aren’t really all that Christmas-y. Tim will never watch “White Christmas” with me, that’s for sure. Too much singing and dancing in it for him!

I also own “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Bishop’s Wife” on DVD and I must say, I think I like those movies better as Christmas movies. Those still are my two favorites. I also really like Holiday Inn (but I don’t own that one on DVD, maybe next year!) and I like to catch “Christmas in Connecticut” on TV when it comes on. We also saw “The Polar Express” on TV a week or so ago and it was good.

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you have a favorite Christmas movie? One that you watch every year? One that really says “Christmas” to you, for whatever reason. Leave me a comment and let me know!

There’s no room at our Inn. We have an old friend from out of town who’s here for a visit. He and Tim are going to play golf and go hunting for the next couple of days, and we’ll all get to hang out and visit. We haven’t seen him in a while (he lives out of state), so we’re really looking forward to seeing him again. After he heads back home, our niece (who is also out of state, in graduate school) is going to come stay with us for a couple of days. Her boyfriend is here, and a bunch of friends, so we are glad to offer her a bed and a shower. We won’t see her much, but we’re still glad she’s coming to visit! After that, it will nearly be Christmas weekend.

This weekend has been busy. Yesterday morning (Saturday), Tim went shopping for a while. I thought that was very brave of him!!! He said it was “crazy out there” and the traffic was really bad. He usually puts off my Christmas shopping till really close to Christmas, so he was actually early this year, getting presents a full week before Christmas. 🙂 I stayed home and finished my wrapping, so YEAH, I’m done! I still have some mixes and baking to do, but at least the presents are all bought and wrapped.

After Tim finished his shopping for me, he called and offered to take me out to lunch. We went to a new favorite place of ours that opened recently just a couple of miles from our house, a sports place that has a “bar-type” menu (lots of appetizers, burgers, sandwiches and salads). It was really really good. We each got a burger (bacon cheeseburger for Tim, mushroom swiss for me, but at $9 a pop for the burger with fries… still, they really are good!) and had a nice lunch. We had put Beau out in the back yard (it’s fenced) for the whole 50 minutes that we were gone. When we got back, he had nearly dug out a huge hole under the fence, not to mention two other giant holes in two different flower beds. I think that I’ve lost a few shrubs and several of my perennial flowers now. He dug up a huge area where I have some purple verbena (perennial and I love it) and a big patch of my rudbeckias (sunflowers). Argh. I’m not happy about it. I hate to chain him since we have a fenced yard, but I guess we’re going to have to start doing that to protect what little is left of our backyard. Tim got a shovel and tried to scoop most of the dirt back in the holes and commented “he looked like he was digging all the way to China”, the holes were that deep! Like I told Tim, expect to help me at least one full day in the spring, going to buy new, BIGGER shrubs, and more perennials and reworking all of these flower beds he is tearing up. Argh.

We had a surprise birthday party for Tim’s grandmother late yesterday, which was out of town, that we went to. She thought she was coming to a scrapbook party, and I think she was surprised! It was a lot of fun – lots of family there and lots of good food too. I think I’m going to gain several more pounds before the holidays are over! 🙂

Hope everyone is having a great day!

I decided this morning to go ahead and participate in BooMama‘s Christmas Tour of Homes. She very graciously sponsored a tour of homes earlier this year, in the fall, but I didn’t get a chance to play along.

I’ve been trying to take some pictures of a few things around here for the last week or so, and the pictures have not been turning out like I want. I have been trying to take pictures of our new tree and all of our outdoor lights at night, and even using a tripod, they are coming out blurry. It bugs me 🙂 But, I thought I would play along anyway, and post a few pictures of our little home at Christmas. Welcome, and I hope you enjoy your stay!

Here’s our front door with garland, lights, our wreath, and you can even see the icicle lights that are on the roof peeking down (yep, sorry, this is one of those blurry ones!):

I love snowmen and have them scattered around, even one at the front door, to greet everyone:

We got a new tree this year, artificial but prelit:

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care (on my snowflake holders from Crate and Barrel, I love these, they were a surprise a couple of years ago from my husband!):

I put out my Snow Village pieces, but broke them up into two areas this year. We got a new entertainment center when we got our new TV earlier this year, and it has a wide area at the top, so we decided to put a few of the houses up there:

We also put out garland with lights and red bows on our deck railing, out back. I can see the deck from the kitchen, and I love being in there in the evenings, cooking or washing dishes, and seeing my deck all lit up:

I had already blogged about my snowmen here, but here’s a couple of them that I love:

And just yesterday, I blogged about my nativity that I love, as it has very special meaning for us:

I didn’t take a picture of our kitchen table, which has a metal tree decoration with tea lights and a nice red and green plaid tablecloth on it right now. It’s full of bags and mail and I just didn’t take the time to clean it off! 🙄 I want to post some pictures of some of my favorite ornaments, but I’ll save that for another day.

Hope you enjoyed the visit, thanks for stopping by and … Merry Christmas! 😆

I’ve been trying to take a few pictures of our decorations and tree, and some of my favorite ornaments and things, to post here. I wanted to make a separate entry about our nativity set, since it has such special meaning for us.

Here it is, it’s not very big, but we love it:

This nativity has a very special meaning for us – my husband’s mother brought it back for us from Bethlehem. She went on a tour of the Holy Land, which has always been her lifelong dream, several years ago. Thankfully, it was before 9/11 because I don’t think any of us would let her go now. 🙂 She loved it, and brought back several nativities, including this one for us. It is all hand made, out of olive wood, and the designer even wrote Bethlehem on the side of the stable roof:

We love nativities, and love what they represent. I would love to have this one by Willow Tree/Demdaco, but I don’t think I would ever want to spend that kind of money on it. 🙂 I would also like to get a larger ceramic one, with some color, but I simply don’t have room to display anything else! I do love my little nativity though, and put it out every year.

Merry Christmas!

Beau has had two baths already this week. He seems to be wanting to dig in the mud, run down into the ditch near our house, and worst of all – find dead things like birds behind our house and either eat them or maybe roll in them. 😥 He was smelling really bad yesterday afternoon, so Tim gave him another bath. He got one on Monday because he was a bad dog and got down in the ditch to play in the mud. 🙁

Beau does NOT like to get a bath. It’s nice weather here, in the upper 60’s and 70’s, so it’s not that he’s cold. He just doesn’t like to have the water from the water hose streaming down on him. I didn’t get any pictures of the bath this time. Instead, we dried him off as best we could with towels, and then brought him in the kitchen and wrapped him up in an old sheet, to finish drying off. He didn’t like it very much!

I don’t have anything all that interesting to blog about, so I thought I would do some bullets of some of the random and mundane things going on with us:

It’s been really, really cold here the last couple of nights. I think we might have even broken a record, or come really close to it, one night. We don’t normally get to around 20º at night, but we have several times here lately.

Tim usually lets Beau out for his nighttime bathroom break before he goes to sleep. He told me that he’d started “tucking him in” when he gets on his bed to go to sleep, after coming in out of the cold. So, you know me, that sounded like a Kodak moment if there ever was one, so I had to get a picture of Beau, all wrapped up 😀

Oh, and I’d like to add that I’ve tried this before, tucking a towel over him to wrap him up. He gets up and shakes it off, or pulls it off with his mouth. He seems to only tolerate it from Tim. He loves and adores Tim and will do anything he asks of him. Me, not so much. Beau is definitely Tim’s dog! 😆

We’ve seen a few movies lately that have been on my want-to-watch list. Granted, they are older movies that we never got around to seeing or renting, but still… they were movies on my list that I wanted to see. You know, we haven’t rented a single movie from the rental store (and no, we haven’t signed up for Netflix yet either!) since we got our new TV! We got digital cable at the same time, along with our cable company’s offer of free HBO. So, we have like 15 HBO channels at the moment and have just been watching movies there, or on our cable system’s “On Demand” feature. One day, we’re going to go wild and do a Pay-Per-View movie! Woot! 🙄

Anyway, we love to watch movies. I’m perfectly happy to watch them at home. I like to rent them or have them where I can stop for bathroom breaks, to answer the phone, let the dog out to go to the bathroom, stop and fix popcorn, etc. Tim is the polar opposite of me. He likes to go to the theater, spend lots of money to sit there and eat expensive popcorn and diet Coke, and not be interrupted in the big dark theater. I guess that’s why we’re such a good pair, we like different things and are both fairly willing to compromise. I go with him (we saw Casino Royale at the theater on his birthday, two thumbs up, good movie!) and he stays home and watches movies on HBO or DVD with me.

I was in Target the other day and saw this microwave popcorn popper. I have been wanting to buy one of those electric, air-machine popcorn poppers, but I just honestly don’t have room in any cabinet or pantry shelf for it. So, I compromised and thought I would give this thing a try. We really like it! I put some plain popcorn (Orville Redenbacher brand, thank you!) in it, no oil or salt, and pop it in the microwave. I wanted to start doing this because I thought this would be healthier for us than the microwave bags. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I feel like it’s better for us 🙄 We do spray some fat-free butter on it, and then sprinkle on some toppings, but still, I think it’s probably a little better for us 🙂

So, in summary, the purpose of this post was to say that I have been trying to have “popcorn and movie” night lately. We’ve watched some movies I have had on my list for ages, and I’ve popped us a big bowl of popcorn. We’ve seen “The Perfect Man” with Hillary Duff and Heather Locklear (cute and sweet and pretty clean), then “Transporter 2” (just like the first one, mindless action, but we like it!), and then a couple of nights ago, we finally saw “Cheaper by the Dozen 2” on HBO. I am planning on us watching “Polar Express” on ABCFamily Saturday night, but we’ll see if I can get us to stick to that plan. Tim is not big on planning stuff to do at home on the weekends.

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you like popcorn with your movies? Do you pop it at home, and if so, do you do microwave popcorn or something else? Also, what was the last movie you saw that you liked?

Have a great day!

I don’t suppose anyone missed me or our main site (Hambones.org), but we were down for a while. Tim came back into the computer room last night to work on something and came back immediately to the kitchen (I was making bread) and said “Hambones is Dead.” I walked into the computer room and could smell stuff burning. Ack! Anyway, a few parts and several dollars later, we are back online.

I’ll try to blog a little something else later, and also try to check on some other blogs. With the holidays and everything going on, I’m a ways behind on reading all of your lovely blogs and leaving comments. 🙂

Have a great day!

Happy 13th Birthday to our niece Brittany! We saw her last weekend for a surprise birthday party and won’t be able to see her today. But we wish her all the happiness in the world, and I think she knows just how much her Uncle Tim and Aunt Stacy love her. Or I hope she does 🙂

Here’s the birthday girl, blowing out the candles on her cake:

Happy Birthday Brittany!!!

I’ve blogged before that my favorite fast food type place is Sonic. Tim and I both love their food, plus we love how convenient their food is packaged. It makes it a lot easier to travel with their food the way they wrap it up and the containers they use. We often pick up their food on the road when we are traveling around or going back and forth to visit family. Which we did this past weekend, and I decided to splurge and try their new cheesecake bites:

They were good! Nice and gooey and the strawberry dipping sauce was nice to have with them. We usually like to try most of the new monthly or seasonal offerings that Sonic has. We’re usually not disappointed. I will say though, that I was hoping to see something like they had last year or the year before – a gingerbread shake or blast. I LOVED those things and got several of them the last time they had them. Sigh, I guess I’ll just have to hit Starbucks instead!

I’ve got that song from “The Sound of Music” in my head… raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. I heard a Christmas version of it yesterday (by Rod Stewart) on one of my Christmas CD’s:

[audio:http://www.hambones.org/blogs/stacy/mp3/MyFavoriteThings.mp3]
My Favorite Things by Rod Stewart (From the NBC Collection Christmas CD)

Anyway, it got me to thinking about some of my favorite things at Christmas time.

I absolutely love pulling out all of my Christmas decorations. I love to open up the ornament boxes and go through my ornaments. We get one every time we go somewhere on vacation, and of course, we have some that are very sentimental for different reasons. Sometimes I buy one in the summer (on vacation) or I buy one after Christmas and then put it up. So, each year when I open up my Christmas boxes, I get all excited to find a new ornament or decoration, or remember one that has special meaning to me. I really am just like a kid at Christmas when I open up the boxes and start to pull everything out! 😀

I have several Dept 56 Snow Village pieces as well, that I put out during the holiday season. I guess you could say that I was “collecting” them for a while, but then I ran out of room to display them, so that put an end to my “collecting” of Snow Village. 🙄

One thing I decided I really like a few years ago are snowmen. So, I started “collecting” some of those. Now, I use the word “collecting” very loosely – I don’t acquire massive collections of anything. I just find some that I like or have room for (which is always the overriding factor) and then once I reach my limit, that’s it. But, over the years I have collected Snow Village pieces, carolers and now snowmen. The snowmen are currently my favorite and these little guys make me smile every time I see them:

Then, there’s some others on my tree and scattered around the house:

So, that’s my Question of the Day: What are some of your favorite things at Christmas? Do you have a certain theme or decoration that has special meaning for you? Do you have a favorite decoration or stocking or angel on your tree that is a favorite you love to put out every year? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Slowly, over the years, I have been buying Christmas CD’s. I absolutely love Christmas music, but I sort of hate to spend the money on a CD that I really only listen to for a month or so out of the year. I don’t spend a lot of money on music to begin with, and before I got my iPod, I mostly listened to the radio. But, I do love Christmas music and so I would splurge and buy myself one CD every year or two.

Then, a few years ago, I discovered the CD’s that Target marketed at the holiday season. They are called “Sounds of the Season” and they usually run them at really good prices, like 5.99 or 6.99. They used to do them by genre, and I would almost always buy the country music one. I have several of those, probably 5 or 6. I bought the NBC one last year that has a mix of music by artists like Rob Thomas, Amy Grant, Michael Buble, Gavin DeGraw, Chris Botti, etc, and I do love that one. I also have some other Christmas CD’s by artist, like Harry Connick, Clay Aiken, Celine Dion, and I have one of Billboard classics from years ago that has the original versions of White Christmas, etc on them (and it’s a great CD!) Anyway, I got excited about looking for the new music in Target this year, only to be disappointed that they’ve changed their format. Now, they have them by artist, which is great, but I really miss them doing them by genre (like country or jazz or the NBC collection). This year, the featured artists seem to be Enya, John Legend and Lionel Richie. I might want to get the John Legend one, but I looked at it, and there’s only 6 tracks on there (for 5.99, so a buck a song, which is the same as iTunes). Sigh. I always hate it when I find something I really like and then they go and change it on me 😆

Anyway, here’s some of the older “Sounds of the Season” CD’s that I have bought at Target…

Last year, I started uploading some of my Christmas CD’s to my iPod and I made a Christmas playlist. This year, I have uploaded a few more, and there are probably 2-3 more that I want to get on there. Now that I have my iHome iPod/clock radio (check it out here), I can pop my iPod in and listen to my Christmas music while I’m in our bedroom or bathroom. I also load up our CD changer in the living room with all Christmas music, so that I can listen in there.

So, that brings us to today’s Question of the Day: Do you have a lot of Christmas music? Do you listen to your CD’s in the car, on the computer, on your iPod or just around the house? Do you have a favorite Christmas CD or maybe a favorite artist that you love to hear sing Christmas music?

Happy Birthday today to the most wonderful man I know, my husband Tim! I could go on and on and talk about how special he is, but he wouldn’t be all that happy that I put all that “mushy” stuff in my blog. 🙂 Suffice it to say that he is a great guy, and obviously a very patient one to be married to me.

Tim is quite possibly the most honorable and loyal man that I have ever met and I am constantly amazed at the fact that he loves me and married me. I’m so lucky to have him, and for him to treat me as he does -with love, honor, respect, and kindness. He treats everyone like that though, so I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised. Tim is a wonderful son, son-in-law, brother, brother-in-law, uncle, husband, and friend.

Happy Birthday Sweetheart, I hope you have a great day today!! I thank God for every day I have with you. You make my life complete and fill it with joy and happiness. You are the most wonderful man I have ever known and I will love you all the days of my life. Happy Birthday!

We spent all day Friday at my in-laws, and Tim went hunting with his dad and my dad. No deer, though. My mother-in-law and I put out most of her Christmas decorations, which was fun. So, on Saturday, I hood-winked Tim into staying away from the golf course (he was not happy about that), and helping me get out all of our Christmas tree, lights and decorations.

He started unpacking the tree (yes, we have an artificial tree) and the first branch he pulled down, broke and fell off the tree. Well. He said he could try to fix it. Since it was a plastic piece that broke and not a metal one that was welded, he said the only thing he could do was *duct tape* it back to the frame. Um, how about we go shopping for a new tree ?! Actually, it was his idea, and even though I hated to spend the money, I agreed. What I realized later on was that he had an ulterior motive – he wanted to buy a pre-lit tree so that he could get out of his yearly duty of stringing the lights on the Christmas tree!!! See, I have always thought it would be “fun” and “sweet” and “memorable” for both of us to decorate our tree together. Tim, on the other hand, thinks it is not any of those things and has absolutely no interest in it. So, shortly after we got married, we arrived at a compromise – he’d put the tree together and put on the lights and I would do the ornaments and decorations. Now, with the pre-lit tree, he has just shirked all of his Christmas duties.

We looked at a couple of stores and finally found one we both liked at Target – a 7 1/2 foot prelit tree with white lights and a fragrance module. The fragrance thing is scented oil that really does smell just like a fresh cut tree. I love it but it is strong and Tim says it is too overpowering. So, right now, I plug it in for about an hour a day, then he makes me unplug it and put it in the garage! 🙄

Tim and Beau put up the outdoor lights yesterday, then we got the tree up last night, and also watched our alma mater win their final regular-season game on TV. They will now play for the conference championship, and if they win, they’ll go to the Liberty Bowl. Woot-Woot!

I’m finishing the rest of the decorations this afternoon, including my Snow Village. In the mean time, here’s the tree:

Regular “Auto” mode on my camera:

And one in “Candlelight” mode on my camera:

Lastly, how about a Question of the Day:

Do you have a real or artificial tree at your house? Is it already up or when will you put it up?

P.S. I seem to be having trouble figuring out the best way to take a photo of this thing lit up! Leave me a comment and let me know what settings you put your camera on to take the best picture of a lit Christmas tree. What mode or settings or … whatever! Thanks!!!!