Happy New Year

Happy New Year my bloggy friends.  Our Christmas has been kind of quiet, I'm okay with that.  Our youngest and her new hubby have come home a few days after Christmas and we've been having our celebration a few days late.  Our present opening happened the 28th with a fantastic vegan soup dinner that Af cooked, lasagna soup.  Oh my it was so good.  

The guys then headed out to the firepit with a glass of wine and a good cigar.  

Back inside they gathered around the piano for a few good songs and... 

and then on to a jigsaw puzzle that B got from Af for Christmas.

You know what, we finished that thing in just a couple of hours.

The next day was a trip to The Gathering Place (I did not go) and experience a lot of cold. 

Happy New Year friends!

Merry Christmas

I canNOT believe it is December 19 and I have not written here.  The month of December has been a whirlwind and I've just not had time or known what to write.

Thanksgiving was done and I immediately got busy setting up the Christmas tree.  This year it is entirely decorated with my counted cross stitch ornaments that I've been making for years, am still making... 

The past few years I've had family over to set up Christmas but this year I was on a time crunch and just got it done by myself.  The week AFTER Thanksgiving we were having our huge party and I had a lot to get done in a weeks time.   

I even got a few things wrapped and under the tree before the party and this week I wrapped the rest of my haul. 

The party was a huge success and I'm glad it's over.  Here we are with my sweet 91 year old mother-in-law and Snicklefritz, her great granddaughter, my precious granddaughter.  The represented the oldest and youngest attendees of our party!  

Life is so short.  The past few weeks my dear best friend from high school lost her sweet father.  He had been struggling for some time with dementia and that is so trying on family.  I also lost a darling  lake and neighborhood friend.  She and her husband live in our neighborhood in town and have a place at the lake where we have a place.  I also encouraged her to come to art classes once a week and enjoyed bringing art back into her life as she was an art major at one time.  Sadly she lost her battle to a very rare form of leukemia a few weeks ago.  Shelley kept putting off retiring and finally did to help with her daughter-in-law and their new little granddaughter.  Then she found out that she had the leukemia.  Her DIL had developed breast cancer while pregnant with her first child but beat it and Steve and Shelley got to spend some wonderful, short time with the baby.  Life is so short.

Painting has been put on the back burner lately.  I've just not had time to spend quality time at the easel lately.  I have been working on "Matt" but not much else.  

Not sure if I will post again this year so enjoy.  

Thanksgiving Before and After

I've sat down to try and write this blog post a few times but life has been so busy, that has not happened.  Of course some of my time has been spent with Snicklefritz and that's ALWAYS a joy.

May have to paint this little princess!

Ever on the hunt for the next painting...

This is a guy I went to high school with, Matt.  He was Mr. Football in high school (45 years ago) but now is a rancher/cowboy, living his life's dream.  It has been a hard life for him but he got to fulfill that dream.  The last time he was in town I snapped this wonderful photo of him with the plan to paint.  Since I'm wanting to step off more into the portrait world, well, here we go.

Today, I plan on adding to it, especially his mustache!

In the meantime we had a bit of snow a few weeks ago and Mrs. Robin was huddled outside the bathroom window trying to keep warm.

I think this might be a nice painting...

Thanksgiving was wonderful with a houseful of about 26 family and friends.  I cooked 33 pounds of turkey and it was quite yummy but I knew that the next day was looming.  Yes, it was prep time for our HUGE Christmas party.  

Every few years we host a gigantic Christmas party and The Hubby wanted to do it this year.  Okay.  Anyway, with Thanksgiving so quick and December right there too, I just flat forgot to order the invitations and had to do a Facebook invite.  I did order the invites but stupid me reordered from a place that I had not used in 12 years, a house ago and good grief, the invites went to our old house.  I wasn't able to get hold of the people there until THEY contacted me this week.  I had to reorder them.  All's good, and we will have about 75 people here on Saturday night.

Food is ordered and will be delivered.  We hire wait staff, which I found out a few years ago is the ONLY way to host such a party!  

Christmas decorations went up, presents have been wrapped, the table has been set up...PARTY ON DUDE!

Merry Christmas

(Oh, and I tweeked my back yesterday...yes, that may be a problem!)