Living Life Beautifully

It's only a few days until Christmas and then, a week later we start a new year.  Every year you hear people say, "I'm ready for this year to be over so I can start over". It was a tough year and yet our family is safe, we have a roof over our head, food, and our strong faith.  I keep trying to remind myself that that's enough.  All of us know someone who is going through a more difficult time than we are.  Trying to live up to our expectations during the Christmas season is probably the hardest thing about Christmas.  We think of the perfect meal, the perfect gifts, the perfect Christmas card, the perfect decorations, etc, etc, etc......  The build up to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is full of all kinds of pressure.  We spend money on gifts and then try to figure out how to pay our taxes a month or so later.   I was watching a show yesterday that was talking about stress causing your heart to fail.  We hear about stress causing ...

 This is the last Santa of the season.  He's a cutie patootie. I won't be making any more of them this year.  And since Bruce and I missed the Farmers Market this morning.  Sigh.... Oh well.  He is available and is $65.00. Bruce rented a wood splitter for the weekend.  Bring on the cold weather.  I'm ready to sit by the wood stove with a good book. We still have a huge pile to split and cut up.  This stack will only last us about a week of cold weather. As a kid I used to love when dad started up a fire.  He didn't do it often.  It was it's own little holiday for me. I didn't do as much decorating as I usually do for Christmas.  I put up the most important things.  It's funny, when I was a kid, I couldn't wait to decorate for Christmas.  We would get all excited and the tree was a mess of ornaments. (until we went to bed and my mother totally redecorated the tree) My boys don't help with the tree ...

Bruce and I will be at the NB Farmers Market this Saturday Dec 3rd with our own little booth.  He's excited and I'm nervous.  I worked on a few things this last couple of days. All will be at the booth this weekend, along with a bunch of the things I've posted pictures of in the last few months.  Bruce will have a bunch of rustic benches, tables and corner shelves that he made. Unfortunately, I will not have any large Santa dolls there, because the three I had are sold. Although I have another started and, if I have time, I might finish him.                                                                 This is a tree top angel. These little guys are m...