My aunt and uncle brought my grandmother some organic tulips from California (they were out visiting my cousin).

They are gorgeous flowers.

One of the nice things about taking two weeks off over the holidays, is that towards the end of my vacation I’ve realized what a mess the house is, and am rested up enough to actually do something about it.

About Friday afternoon reached that point, so Saturday was spent not just putting away Christmas ornaments, but also organizing the disaster area that the living room had become.

One of the things I am hoping will be a huge help is I got a bin into which Michael can put his stuff. He tends to leave things all over the end tables, which in turn makes them useless as end tables. So he got a bin.

The second thing, which you probably noticed from Saturday’s posts, is that I went through the book shelves. Not only could I no longer put pictures and elephants and other things on most shelves, but most shelves were double stacked so you couldn’t even see what books where there.

Since the whole point of having the mystery shelves in the living room was so grandmom could peruse the shelves and find something to read, this was no good.

Hence the book cull.
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Although it’s earlier than I like, Christmas must come to an end in hour house.

I want to spend some time this weekend going through the upstairs book cases, which are beyond overflowing, and go through the pictures and elephants that grace those bookshelves throughout the year, to decide what should stay and what should go.

This means that I need to get the Christmas decorations that are currently sitting on those shelves out of the way. And as much as I love having a Christmas tree in the house, our living room is just too small (much like the house) so it’s time for the tree to go.

So that’s what we’re going to be doing today: dismantling Christmas.

And recovering the living room.

Erin posted an adorable picture of Lana.

Quick go look!

Cute cute cute!

Filled the bird feeders.

Brought the tree inside. (It won’t be decorated until Christmas Eve day, but smells wonderful.)

Went looking for a wreath. Changed our minds.

Bread pudding with vanilla ice cream and whiskey sauce.

It came! It came!

The process was, of course, far more painful than expected. Primarily because we have a corner armoire cabinet entertainment center. If there is anything more difficult to deal with, I can’t say what it is.

View the insanity behind the cut. (more…)

For lack of anything better, here’s my favorite tree, covered in snow, in a picture taken Tuesday morning.

So today was spent in warm endeavors.

I made vegetable stock, and cooked down our pumpkins. (Tuesday’s post will probably be about this.)

But even hotter–it was finally cold enough to crank up the wood stove! The first fire in our brand new wood stove!

I really like the fact it can be filled from the front or the top.

Hey look! Fire!

More fire! The directions said to start it up slow, and keep it at a relatively low temperature. So only a couple logs at a time, and I’ve been trying to keep the temperature low.

What are the cats excited about? The wood.

This stove is going to be a lot hotter on the outside than the old (jacketed) stove. Hopefully they’ll remember enough to stay away from it when it’s putting out a lot of heat. Because I figure that griddle on top is most likely warm enough to do some damage to kitty paws.

So how is the new wood stove? Pretty awesome so far. It barely smokes–the old stove would inevitable fill the basement with smoke on regular basis. And it puts out a fair amount of heat rather quickly. The only current drawback is that like a cast iron pan that needs seasoned, this is a new cast iron stove that needs seasoned. So the house smells… odd. But it’ll eventually disappear.

And it’s not like the house hasn’t smelled like baked pumpkin and vegetable stock all day.

So, no more flower pr0n until the spring. In fact, as I type, Michael is outside raking dead leaves over my flower beds (and also bagging any remaining dead leaves. I have to say that this is one chore I don’t mind getting out of, being as I’m sick. I’m sure it’s good exercise and all, as well as good preparation for shoveling snow, but I don’t particularly like it. So I’m more than delighted to do the laundry and then take a nap.)

And as far as the leaves, it hardly seems fair that two trees could generate so many leaves.

Here is Michael raking the leaves from the silver maple over the flower beds at the bottom of the hill. There is a distinct, visible difference between the silver maple and sugar maple leaves. The silver maple leaves are crunched up, brown, and pathetic looking. The sugar maple’s leaves are yellowish brown and slightly curled.

Can you guess which tree I prefer?

Here is our side yard, which is dominated by the sugar maple. It dropped a lot of leaves. I’m guessing that after covering my flower beds Michael will probably have around ten bags to put out. (No, our area doesn’t have a special leaf pick up.)

And now for something completely different…

We had a beautiful sunset Tuesday night. Twas the start of a beautiful evening I must say.

Temperatures are in the 50s, it’s raining, and there’s no football game.

I hope to spend the day napping and reading.

Wish me luck!

Sorry. Nothing of interest in my yard, other than dead leaves, and they’re just not inspiring me to go outside and take pictures.

On the bright side, my Christmas Halloween Cacti are budding already.

Between loads of laundry, we went for a walk at the Core Arboretum, to see any color changes in the leaves, and generally enjoy the gorgeous weather.

We walked all the way down to the river, which wasn’t as far as I remembered it being, but it was every bit as steep as I remembered.

There’s still quite a lot of green, but there were some beautiful reds and yellows.

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Here is some more flower pr0n from San Antonio. It was once again weird to be somewhere warm in October. When we left Morgantown (at 4 freaking AM) it was in the 40s. Temperatures in San Antonio were in the 80s and 90s.

To be honest, that’s way too warm for me, but it was nice to see so many flowers in bloom, and I did my best to take pictures of the ones I thought interesting–especially the ones that I never see in West Virginia.

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Here’s something to brighten your week.

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