2012

Happy 2012!

Don’t Forget to:

Avoiding the Seven Deadly Sins

I found this little graph on Pinterest… I figure if I just avoid the seven deadly sins I have no need to worry about resolutions this year!

And to all my blog friends….

Many thanks to Beverly at How Sweet The Sound for faithfully hosting Pink Saturday each and every week.

Spa Day

 

Beverly, at How Sweet the Sound, is hosting Pink Saturday.  Nancy at My Crafty Little Page doesn’t have her Pink Saturday Christmas post ready but it will be up tomorrow.  She also wants you to know that she is aware talking in the third person is annoying to everyone.  She apologizes and wishes everyone the happiest of Christmases!

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With all the stress of decorating and packages and trees going up we figured it's time for a spa day to get all relaxed and pretty for Christmas.  My husband and I do this together – he's in charge of the bubble bath and I get the massage table ready….light some candles….and pretty soon…

Iris is ready for a massage and blow dry. Hey – you didn't think I meant – nah…like that's gonna happen – hahaha.

  

She get's so relaxed and absolutely would lie there all day getting pampered and brushed.

I put a dog bed on the rolling ottoman, add some fluffy towels and rotate the table instead of the pooch! 

And then I start all over again when her highness Lillie Louise  get's finished with her bath.

They were such good little doggies this year – I hope Santa brings them a big bone for Christmas! 

On another note – I did a little porch decorating.  It really needs a good cleaning but it sure didn't get it today.

 

Have you ever used this polymesh? Wow – it's so easy to work with.  I found a big bag of garland I bought last summer so I just wired in the mesh ribbon.

No lights at all. :( but everyone uses the backdoor anyway.  Can you believe it's only 4 days until Christmas!  Hope you've all been good little bloggers!

Silent Starlight Fell

After church last Sunday I decided that this was going to be a more spiritual Christmas.  I'm not obsessing about gifts, not decorating much at all.  My husband is painting the guest room upstairs which is the best present in the whole world for me! Therefore I have nowhere to drag my stuff out so since I'm on a spiritual path this year I put all my Mary's where I usually put Santas and such.

My little shrine is taking the place of a Nativity.  And there's so much pink to it.  Soothing, right?  We went to Vespers at St. Martin's in Austin last Sunday evening where Texas Lutheran University Choir comes  to perform and it was so beautiful.

Of course I forgot my camera…story of my life this year…but I found this on Flickr .  I'm for sure going to get sued for this since they're not my pictures.

 

An actress narrated the story…told from Mary's mother-in-law to be point of view.

So excited about her son's marriage to the lovely Mary and then finding out about an expected baby – how could her son and his bride to be have done this?  It all turned out good as you know!  At the end the choir encircles the church and it is just so ethereal – the voices coming from every direction.

Anyway – I thought I'd just display all together this year. 

Along with all the easy to find trees!

    Have a wonderful, calm and spiritual week…and may all your Christmases be PinK!

I'm joining Beverly at How Sweet The Sound for Pink Saturday.  And now I have to get ready for my annual Christmas Bunco party.  

Sick Week

I have nothing of note to write about today but not posting anything on Pink Saturday makes me feel like  I left the oven on when I left the house or did I or did I not leave the camera on the seat of my unlocked car.  It keeps nagging at me that I haven't done anything.  On Sunday I talked to my bff Barbara and oh good gosh she sounded horrible – she was so sick.  When I said – "you know – I haven't even had a cold the past few years" I might as well have shared a meal with the infectious disease isolation wing at the county hospital.  I sooo jinxed myself.  It wasn't but two days and I came down with a horrible cold, then bronchitis and coughing and I have been sooo sick.  And when you're sick you just don't have much pink or Christmas in your life much less pictures of your no pink and no Christmas life. 
Last Sunday my grandson came over and helped bring our 15 year old Christmas tree downstairs.  It's one of those with the "lettered" branches…H's on the bottom…then G's and so on.

Have I ever mentioned we are a family of idiots? We don't know our alphabet?
Of course they had to do a little Christmas treebowing!  Well, one full on tebow and one geriatric half tebow.  Google "tebowing" if you've never heard of it!

I hear Tim Tebow is okay with the tebowing pics on the internet!  Anyway the tree finally shaped up right and we got it decorated -

and that's as far as I got before I was stricken with this deadly virus.  Apparently I caught it from a phone call and I'm hoping I'm not infecting you guys Through. The. Computer.  Go warn all the Pink Saturday folks to stay away!  Merry– cough, cough, cough, Pink Saturday.   xoxo Nancy

"Gold" Shrine

I've been wanting to share this and just today got some good pictures.  My husband made this shrine from all vintage elements so I'm posting this for him.  This beautiful old chalk ware statue of Our Lady of Lourdes stands atop a silver bowl.  The gold cabinet is a clock cabinet transformed with Krylon spray paint.
    
He did such a wonderful job on this with the intention of listing it on Etsy but as you can see it's not there or in our antique store – The Roost.

I'm really attached to it and love the candles around it.  There is lightly tinted rose colored French water glass behind the statue and it casts a pink glow on the wall.

He used an antique perfume bottle with tiny dried roses.  I keep adding little things, too.  The tree made of pearls and gold wire.

The little white crosses and gold angels are from my collection of vintage religious articles. 

She's a comforting presence in our living room and welcome to stay forever.
I'm reposting this and joining Holly at 504 Main for the color "Gold" 12 Days Party.
xoxo Nancy –

Tag You're It!

Happy December - only 24 days until Christmas and what have I done? Well - the church is decorated.

Our store is sort of decorated - at least it's cleaned and shined and spiffed up.

I ironed about 15 Christmas aprons for the store.

 

I made a wreath out of the crochet pieces that I bought at auction with the aprons.

And my tags for December are done. 

Yea – I actually made 2 tags for each month this past year. 

I finished 20 different tags for Elizabeth at  Creative Breathing  Christmas tag swap.

and decorated a box to put them all in!

and I finished my Itty Bitty Book Club New Years Tags!

And it's only December FIRST! So even though my house isn't decorated I've got plenty of time.  I've ignored Pinterest , however – hahaha.  Looking at all the stuff there is inspiring if nothing else!  We have a month of Christmas Pink Saturday's to look forward to this month.  Thanks to Beverly looking at everyone's Christmas decorations is as much fun as Pinterest!

xoxo Nancy

And after four years on Windows Live Writer I just figured out how to make pictures "clickable" to original size!

Thanksgiving Recap

 

Happy day after Thanksgiving.  Did you all fill up on turkey and fixins'? I gave all my food a grade yesterday – only the ice tea got an A.  Nothing tasted right to me. The turkey got a B- or high C – it was sort of tough even though it was cooked beautifully.

We forgot the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes so  a low C and my cranberry salad didn't taste right so…B on it.  Today however the all the leftovers get an A.  Everything tasted superb!  Oh yes – I forgot – I made a banana pudding for my son and it got an A+ both days.  Gosh – I have no pictures and therefore you are getting this fascinating recap of my food!

The best part of yesterday? The Longhorns won the last Thanksgiving Day game against the Aggies as a parting gift as they whine their way to the SEC.  It was so sweet – they have to live with the loss for the next hundred years with NO chance of a rematch! Crybabies.  Once again the University of Texas tower glows burnt orange!

Let's see – oh yes – my Black Friday shopping consisted of window shopping online and going to Black Friday garage sales. I bought two lamps, two pottery barn tables and two turquoise slipper chairs.  So I spent the afternoon shampooing upholstery. 

I was on a decorating strike this fall. Totally depressing but I refused to go upstairs because after the wildfires we had a rat – maybe it was a mouse.  In any case we put out 4966 traps and caught one and only one so it looks like that was it but my phobia took hold and I wouldn't go upstairs to the storeroom alone.  The upside of being a chicken phobic insane person is that I have NO fall undecorating to do. Yea! 

Since I am linking up to Beverly's Pink Saturday today, here's a picture of  a tag I made. It need's a little more work but hey – it's Christmasy and it's pink!

 

That's an oatmeal container next to it I use for a little waste basket for paper scraps so you can see it's pretty large. 

If I don't get over this not going upstairs business it just may be my only Christmas decoration.  Won't it be so sad on Christmas morning when we're all gathered around this singing Oh Christmas Tag, Oh Christmas Tag.  Aren't you glad I post pictures most of the time for Pink Saturday instead of this drivel? 

Happy Black Friday! Now go visit Beverly! xoxo Nancy

You Can Go Home Again

Once there was a way…to get back home again.

Last week I took a trip to my hometown and the town where I raised my kids.  It was a great girlfriend trip to a bed and breakfast, El Rocio,  and a workshop we did there getting in touch with our left brain, right brain.

We did an exercise where we smelled an unknown scent and then illustrated that on paper…no scissors…we had to tear the paper.  There were about 12 of us – all from the Valley and apparently we all identified it as a citrus smell which indicated a  collective memory.

This is my memory. (I know – such a masterpiece!)

An orange tree by my driveway. Parents out of town. Why not have a partaaaaaay? My yellow ford and someone jumping out of the car as someone else was backing out and a wrecked door that I somehow had to explain away. Obviously the truth never occurred to me so I said I was driving and didn't realize that the door was ajar. The big eye?  That was the neighbor who saw what happened and related the whole thing to the folks. Busted!   We got a little whiff of smell # 2 and this time we had to work with fabric and scissors.  At our lunch break we discussed the smell and the general consensus was it was an unpleasant smell – I didn't get the poop smell as some did but it did remind me of medicine from when I was little. Castoria – yuk.  Anyway it was fun and I was thrilled to learn that I had a brain. hahaha

The five of us who live up here in the hill country  had to go by our old houses.  I have two – the one where I grew up and the one where we lived raising our kids.  I didn't want to go by my childhood home – I thought it might be too run down and that would be depressing and my last few years there are lonely memories.  I did see my dad's old wrought iron shop or where it was – there's a What A Burger there now.  Barbara and Judy's house is also gone – the new Our Lady of Sorrows Church stands in its place.  Both of Patty's young and old houses looked fabulous, LaVerne's old neighborhood is being revitalized and I almost didn't go by my Wisteria house but the girls insisted and I'm glad they did.  The trees that we planted, oaks, mesquites and olive,  are enormous.

The red tile roof was torn off and a new metal roof being installed –

new windows going in and paint samples on the brick and oh my gosh the courtyard gone but my little churches I put there almost 30 years ago  were still on the wall all these years later.

 

Hanging askew under roof debris but still there.   On an impulse I went up to the open door and this is what I saw.

The doctor who bought our house for his parents still owned it and since then his dad had died and his mother moved into a nursing home so he was updating everything and moving in.  As I was getting all this info from the designer Judy came in and said "Can she have the churches?" What?!!! I would never have asked but the next thing I knew they were all loaded in the car and the lady give me a hug and said "God Bless".  And I cried.  I loved that house and the memories of our years there. I'm happy for it – happy it's being renewed. Happy the Amalguers had good times there and happy their son loves the house.

So my little churches that I left for Mrs. A are back with me – sort of my way of getting back home again. 

"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." Robert Brault

xoxo Nancy

I'm joining Beverly at How Sweet The Sound  for Pink Saturday. Ya'll have a great Thanksgiving – fill up on memories!