Scattered Thoughts . . .

The other day (the day after Thanksgiving), we started putting up all the Christmas decorations inside the house.  I put the tree up and then starting pulling out strings of Christmas lights.  I quickly realized that most of last year's lights were no longer lighting up. I spent too much time troubleshooting each string yet I was still unable to fix any of the faulty strings.  We decided that perhaps this is the year to start replacing our old incandescent Christmas lights with LED Christmas lights.   I've been putting off making this switch to LEDs for two reasons.  First, the first few years of LEDs were only available in cool white which emitted a color somewhere between blue and cool white.  Those were a sickly color of blue and I didn't want my Christmas lights looking like that.  The other reason for putting off this switch to LEDs was the ridiculously high price.  Those early strings of LEDs were far too expensive. This year, I had no problems finding more appropriat

After I wrote and posted my previous blog entry, I headed outside to help Sheila shovel. Fortunately for my spinal injuries, this snow is light, fluffy stuff so it was a quick and easy job.  Then I went in to retrieve my camera to see if I could get some decent shots outside without a tripod. They came out okay for shooting in complete darkness, handheld with driving snow covering me and my camera... I should have dug out my tripod though.  Hopefully, they'll be more chances to get some nice shots of the house decorated for the holidays...

It has been very Spring-like through December this year. We occasionally had some snow flurries but it was so warm during the days each day that we had some flowers blooming in our wildflower gardens as Christmas approached! As of last night, our temperatures have dipped down into the single digits and today promises wind chills below zero. And, we even had a bit of snow yesterday!  I think winter has arrived! My health was not feeling well enough to wander outside last night but I did manage to get a few photos from inside our house through the windows. Before it is time to turn off the Christmas lights, I'll need to get outside with a camera so get more shots...

Just like many others across the midwest and the east coast, we got a bit of snow this weekend.  We had originally planned to cut a Christmas tree today but we canceled our plans so we could stay off the roads. The single digit temperatures also factored into our decision to cancel our trek to a tree farm to cut a Christmas tree today. Staying home for the day allowed me to get some more work done on our fireplace project.  I spent some time staining our new maple and aspen paneling on the wall behind the fireplace. Then I managed to rip a bunch of 2x4's that I had sitting around from a previous renovation. I ripped the 2x4's down into 1.5"x1.5" which I intend to use for framing the fireplace structure.   After all that ripping, I cut out a test architectural brace for the fireplace. This original design had a compound curve in it that is difficult to cut at the thickness of this test piece. Turns out I didn't like this design. I decided on a simpler design

Shot through our laundry room window... and through some frost on the window! Well, Christmas is upon us but we are so far behind in everything that I highly doubt the Christmas Spirit will catch up with us until sometime in January or February.   We did manage to get some Christmas lights strung up outside.  We don't have as many as anticipated, but we have enough.  Actually, very few of our neighbors have any Christmas lights this year... our street is unusually dark. Very strange... perhaps we are all in the same boat this year... Stringing up Christmas lights outdoors was a bit frustrating this year. First off, the weather was frigid. That always makes for a frustrating time. Next, approximately 1/2 of our Christmas lights went into the garbage this year because they were no longer lighting up. Frustrating, huh? We ended up using all of our indoor light sets just to fill some of the emptiness outside. So, now we need to get out to buy some Christmas lights for indo