Hello December

I had been wishing for colder temperatures and man have they arrived. I still love it though. The air feels so cold and crisp. Just the way it is supposed to feel this time of year. It’s so hard to believe that December is here and a new year is coming soon.

How was your Thanksgiving? Ours was very nice and quiet. My nephew and his girlfriend came for dinner as well as my sister in law. we had such a fun time. My entire family no longer gets together on Thanksgiving Day. It seems as though each family is having their own special day. That makes me sad. I think next year we may try to plan a day, close to Thanksgiving Day, and get together with all of us. Time together is so special and should be treasured.

My sister and I took off early Friday morning for Black Friday shopping. It’s just not the same as it used to be. The crowds are not the same. So many people are doing online shopping and it makes going into the stores unnecessary. Most of the stores started their sales on Monday before Thanksgiving. I guess as I get older I’m just not that interested in being in huge crowds. The fact that I work with the public and experience this almost every single day also has a lot to do with that. But I’m not quite ready to give it up yet.

I still love going out on Black Friday. My sister and I start out early. We check out a few sales but we mostly love it because it is always our kick-off to Christmas. This past Friday was no exception. We started out around 7:00 AM and returned home around 4:30 PM. We had a wonderful time just being together.

As I said I wasn’t really looking for anything particular. I did buy a few Christmas presents and got some of that out of the way. But on our very last stop, which was as at Marshall’s, I found the best gift of all. It was for me but still.

While I was digging through some throw rugs I found a cat rug. It’s purrfect. Sorry I had to do that. It was my best find of the day.

Isn’t it cute??

I put the rug at my front door and Gus is already in love with it.

I guess he thinks I bought it just for him.

My nephew lives in Smithville and it is about two and a half hours from us. He had to work on Thanksgiving and didn’t get to enjoy any of his favorites with the family. On Saturday my sister and I met him about halfway to his house and had dinner with him. I made him a pumpkin pie, and his all time favorite, Butterfinger Cake. I didn’t get a picture of the cake or the pie. We got home late on Saturday. But it was totally worth it getting to spend some time together.

On Sunday I stayed home and relaxed. We did put up our Christmas tree. We still haven’t added all the decorations yet. I also finished my socks I was knitting.

I think they turned out pretty well. Most of the stripes match. I had just a little different coloring on one toe.

Even though our outside kitties come into the garage at night it can still get really chilly. We have a little heated house for them. They all love to pile up in that small house. It is the cutest thing ever. I am leaving you with a picture of Izzy poking her head out of the house. She secretly thinks the house is all hers and she is only sharing it with the others.

It was back to work for me this week. A full week ahead and a lot of things going on. I love Christmas and all the fun things that go along with it. But it can be so tiring. Remember to take care of you during this time. I think as women we tend to try and do it all and be all for everyone. Sometimes that is just not possible.

Have a wonderful week. Stay warm if you are in this area.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

Thanksgiving Week and A Scam

Hello friends, I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is just a few days away. We are going to have a very quiet day around here. I think it will be just me and hubs and maybe my nephew and his girlfriend. We are having ham instead of turkey. I will do the traditional sides and a couple of desserts. It seems a little strange because for so many years we had such huge gatherings. Sometimes twenty and thirty people and often several places to visit. I say if you still have that many people to celebrate with enjoy it while you can.

I had a great weekend. We planted fifty tulip bulbs. I am hoping it is not too late in the season. Hubby and I had a great system. He used his drill with an attachment and dug the holes and I placed the bulbs in the ground. I can’t wait until spring to see if they come up. I will be so excited and grateful if only a few survive. I am hoping some critter does not dig them up. That has happened before, and the critter mentioned is one of the cats.

I got scammed:
I can’t believe as old as I am I fell for such a scam on the internet. For weeks I had been seeing those adorable gnome advent calendars. Some were on Facebook and some were on TikTok and a couple of other social media platforms. I thought they were adorable. They were $39.95 and each day starting in December you would open one of the little gnome windows and get a different gnome. They were a great size and the ad showed some people putting them on their Christmas tree as ornaments and some made a little garland from them. I couldn’t wait to get them. Now to be honest, there are some real gnome advent calendars out there, but you have to watch carefully to see what you are getting, I didn’t, and that was my fault. So lesson learned.

Look how big they were supposed to be. And cute!!!

The day the package finally arrived. I went to the Post Office to pick it up. I was expecting this huge box that I would probably have to wrestle to the car. I opened my PO Box and, instead of a card telling me to come to the counter to pick up my box, there was a locker key. The locker keys are for the larger boxes in the Post Office. But there was no way my big box of gnomes could ever fit in one of those. Right??

And to beat it all it was one of the smaller locker boxes. I opened it and there was a small box maybe an 8 x 10 size. Oh well I guessed, this was something else that my husband ordered. But no, it had my name on the box. I took it to the car and I could actually carry it in the palm of one hand. Once in the car I opened it and there was the gnome advent calendar box I had seen online. Only this one was incredibly small and well no, just no. It couldn’t be. I opened one of the tiny advent windows and a small hard trinket fell out. What???? I opened up several more and each had an ugly little hard plastic trinket not much bigger than a charm for a charm bracelet.

I sat there staring at the box with the cold hard realization hitting me. I had been scammed!!! I had been scammed out of $39.95 plus shipping. Close to $50.00 in total. As I looked at this little pile of kids toys I couldn’t believe that someone could sell this. But wait!! There were three bigger gnomes in the box. Sort of ugly they were. But they were there. As I looked at this I started to laugh. I couldn’t stop. If anyone had seen me in my car that day they would have wondered why I was laughing so hard. They would probably shake their heads and say “yep she’s finally lost it”

I was so disappointed and mad that I had allowed myself to be scammed. I went back to the ad and started reading the reviews, something I should have done before ordering, they were terrible. A hard and expensive lesson learned. I was too embarrassed to take a picture of it. I gave it to one of my co workers and she was going to give it to her little sister. She said she would enjoy playing with the little trinkets. So if she liked them it is not all wasted.

I sent an email to the company asking for a refund. Of course I have heard nothing back and certainly have received no refund. It’s funny but this is reminding me of the time when I was about eight years old and wanted to send away for 100 little dolls. They were only $1.99. You can read that post here

I guess if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Enjoy friends and family and be sure to love on each other as much as possible. Now I am off to knit on my sock for a little while.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

It’s Thursday, Let’s Catch Up!!

Hello and happy Thursday. How has your week been so far?

I am backing up to last week. I did get the three extra days off last week. On Wednesday I took my sister to Knoxville to UT hospital to have a procedure done. We arrived early and got out before lunch so that all worked out great.

I will have to say, for most of my time off, I have been a knitting fiend. Well let me add crocheting to that as well. I worked on my nephew’s afghan, a pair of socks and another cap. I also googled how to make a daisy granny square and did a few of those. So as usual I was all over the page. I did spend one day cleaning my house and then another day cleaning my mother in laws house. This house now belongs to us so we are responsible for it. It needs some improvements so we will be working on it as we have the time.

Look at all of this. The yellow is the cap I am working on. The red and gray is the sock and you can see the trial granny square I did.
This is the daisy granny square. This was my first one. I have some different colors. I plan to make several and use them for a pillow. I used these colors just to experiment.
This little bag I use to put small knitting or crochet projects. I used it this time for the cap I am knitting. These are actually make-up bags but they fit so well into my purse and I can take my knitting anywhere. People are always curious when they see you knitting or crocheting and want to know what you are making. I am always happy to share and even teach them a stitch or two if they are game.

I finished an entire sock on Sunday. I started the second one, which is never as much fun, and I will wait until I have completed the pair to show you.

We haven’t done a lot of Christmas decorating around here. We actually ordered a new Christmas tree and it should be here tomorrow. We did put life sized Santa at his post in the upstairs window. Kitty Kitty loves him and she loves to stand beside him. Crazy kitty.

Outside view of Santa in the window. I love coming down our driveway and seeing him in the window.

On Monday I left work early and took my car to Knoxville back to the dealership to have that dark window tint removed. If you missed an earlier blog post where I bought a new car, the story is I didn’t realize how dark the tint on the windows actually was until I drove it at night. It took about three hours to remove the tint and they gave me a tiny loaner car to use. I did a little shopping to kill the time. I was so glad to be able to see through the windows. The tint on my new car was just too dark for me. It made me very nervous driving in our rural area at night.

This loaner car seemed very small to me luckily I only had it for a few hours.
Tuesday night at dusk we looked out the window and couldn’t believe this beautiful purple hue. The clouds cast a purple reflection onto the water. I have never seen the lake this color. It had been cloudy all day and at dusk just a tiny bit of light was trying to shine through. It was just beautiful.

I hope your week is going well and you are gearing up for a great weekend. I am off to work on some knitting. I don’t know what is wrong with me I just feel the need to knit or crochet. I better take advantage and get some projects finished before Christmas.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!