dang it's cold...

the way the light of sunset was hitting these trees when i walked outside a little bit ago was magical.  i wish the beauty came through this picture.

oh well...

i was going to post pictures from last week's snow, but when i went looking i found i hadn't taken any!  what?! i know!!  that is soooo not like me.

the artic cold is on it's way back south and while we won't get any snow we will get temperatures in the 20's during the day and teens at night for most of the week.

anyhoo... i have lots of projects i can work on inside during the cold. 

hope you have had a good week and weekend.  i've been distracted by migraine life and new doctors' visits which require traveling the roads quite a bit. :-(

well...hope you have a good week. 

thanks for stopping in for a read.

love & kisses & magical wishes

~*~

 

snow days...

 i'm so cold today.  the system that is moving across the south has made it here and it is snowing! plus the temp hasn't moved above freezing all day.

the forecasters are saying we could get between 3-5 inches of snow.  i hope so.  i love a good snowstorm.

in honor of today's cold weather i stocked up on a few things yesterday and this morning started some pinto beans in the crockpot and later in the am made the one-pot chicken, mushroom, spinach, red pepper pasta.  i'm pretty sure i've shared it here before.

last weekend i was able to acquire a beautiful old piece of furniture from a neighbor's daughter.  the neighbor passed a few weeks ago and they have been cleaning out her house.

i can't wait to get her cleaned up and put in place.  i'll have to do quite a bit of re-arranging to get it where i want it. so, yeah, i found myself another project to work on.  hee hee

anywho...well the snow is falling and i'd say we've probably received about an inch so far.  

hope you are having a good week.

love & kisses & magical wishes

~*~

the tree dilemma...

but not...

i wasn't going to put up a tree this holiday season.  since last october i've been working on a project of getting things organized and purged out a little bit.  it's super hard for me to do because everything i see is "hmmm...could i use this in my art?" or "how can i repurpose this for something else?"   hahahaha

but i've been cleaning out old (20 year) files and shredding like a fiend.  re-organizing art and crafting supplies that includes paper, fabric, beads, etc...

i wasn't going to decorate for the holidays at all, but then i decided to host the family holiday meals. the old tree is just too big to put up, so i decided to see if i could find something small to use.

2018's tree...

2024's Yule Tree...

i really love this tree. i'm thinking of using it all year and decorating it for each season/holiday.  i haven't decided yet, though.

anyhoo...guess what we had today? 

the first snow...

it was brief, and just dusted things, but...it snowed!

i guess that's all i have to share for now.  hopefully, i'll have something fun to share soon.

thanks for reading...

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

keeping up 2024...

one of the things i did, sort of, keep up with was my yearly journal/planner...  i could never figure out what to call it.  it is a journal, it is a planner (calendar pages, etc), i put art in it, it's part bullet journal too.

i started working with these a few years back, inspired by a favorite art teacher.  it starts with just a plain composition notebook and grows from there.  when i first started i would switch to a new notebook whenever the current one was full.  then in 2023, i took the covers off a second notebook and taped the books together so it is all one book per year.

as you can see in the photo below, it becomes quite large and unwieldy.

2024's planner/journal

near the end of october i started thinking about how to make this a bit smaller, not necessarily in bloom but in just general size.

so this is what i came up with for this year.

last year (on left) and this year (on right)

so far, i'm really liking the smaller size.  the new one is a Moleskine Cahiers lined journal. they only have 80 pages so i have no idea how many i'll end up needing to get through the year.  but i decided i would glue covers together and just keep building the depth.

only three days into the new year and new journal/planner and it is already blooming wonderfully.

after spending a year calling it my planner/journal, a journner, and my life; i've decided to call it my collective.  it's not a grimoire or a book of shadows, so collective sounds nice.

anyhoo...that's it for today.

though i did want to let Debra know that i agree with her comment, chocolate is definitely the way to go. :-)

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

 

guess who's back? back again...

yep...it's me...

i'm still alive and making my way back into the world of blogging and well, the world.  let's just say that 2024 was not my best look.  i was pretty agoraphobic there for a while, but i was able to get some help and am feeling much, much better.

anyhoo... here are a couple of pictures from the end of 2024 (ie: yesterday) and the first day of 2025. 

Death by Chocolate Cheesecake my sister-in-law and i made yesterday. 

Ours isn't very pretty, but it's only our second ever attempt at a cheesecake, so.  Click the link above if you want to see what it is really supposed to look like and get the recipe.

ps...it is soooooooo good!!  

 

new year's day sunset...

I laughed when i got to my blog and saw that the last post was also a sunset, but new year's eve.

that's all for now...i've really missed being here and missed reading all the blogs that i follow/followed.  i wonder who's still here in bloglandia.

happy new year to you and i hope that this year will bring peace, love and hope into our lives.

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

ps...anyone else have "Houdini" in their head after reading the title of this post?  :-)