A single moment, no words, from the past week that I wish to linger on and savor.
Author: Cabincrafted1
-
A Week In Paradise
This blog has been silent for slightly more than a week because we jetted off to a week in paradise. On Tuesday, December 3rd, we put the pups in boarding and drove to Northern Virginia to spend the night with our eldest son’s family prior to a 6 a.m. flight out of Dulles International Airport for Mexico, via a layover in Detroit. Don’t ask me who thought that was a good route, but it is the way it happened. We landed in Mexico City in the early afternoon and did the customs/immigration business, had a light lunch in the airport while awaiting our air shuttle hop over to Zihuatanejo, located about 150 miles north of Mexico southern border on the Pacific Ocean.
It is located on a sheltered bay and is a small fishing village with hotels, boutique hotels, restaurants, and recreation opportunities surrounding the bay. Our destination was Casa del Platero (http://www.casadelplatero.net/ ) owned by our cousin and his wife, who we were visiting. When they are not there visiting and performing maintenance, the house is a vacation rental, just check out the link above.
Their home is beautiful, set in a secure walled setting with gardens of tropical plants, a lovely open dining porch and an open napping porch for the downstairs house, a tiled infinity pool overlooking the bay shared by the upstairs and downstairs houses and colorfully cushioned seating throughout.
The house sits just above Playa la Ropa, a beach of white sand with available sailing, parasailing, swimming and fishing right there.
Hubby parasailing
The next beach over, a short walk on a rocky path or a quick hop on a water taxi is a row of vendors of food and equipment for snorkling with strolling musicians and Indians hawking their wares from handmade shell and stone jewelry, Mexican pottery, baskets, to fresh tropical fruits on skewers and lots more white sand.
We walked, sailed, snorkeled, swam in the pool, ate and rested until there was no stress to be found. The village and surrounds have restaurants that serve seafood, traditional Mexican food, Italian, Thai, even American hamburgers. There are Indian market stalls selling painted pottery, silver jewelry, T shirts and embroidered Mexican shirts, leather goods, coffee and vanilla. We were there during the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe and saw parades on the streets and the water, entertainment every night on the waterfront and fireworks.
It is a beautiful location to visit and our cousin’s home has a delightful couple that serve as caretakers and cooks for guests staying with them or renting their home. If you need a place to unwind in the tropical weather, this is the spot.
We arrived back last night to snow on the ground in Northern Virginia and along our route back, evidence of the ice storm we missed and awoke today to a balmy 23f degrees. I think it is already time to go back.
-
To Make Gifts Special
We have 3 children with significant others and 5 grandchildren and each other for whom we prepare Christmas gifts. We have long ago discussed and decided with our siblings and my Dad that the children are more important and as each of us had children then grandchildren and in my Dad’s case, great grandchildren, that we would quit giving gifts to each other. That is not to say that one of us will occasionally surprise a sib or parent with an unexpected token of our love, a “Just Because” gift.
Each of our children are trying to instill the true spirit of Christmas in their children and have asked us to not be too generous in our giving. They also, all requested of us (hubby) that there be no electronic toys this year, nothing that requires batteries or makes noise by itself. Two of the mom’s have asked for something knitted.
The granddaughters like finger puppets. One is getting a book and handknit finger puppets of the characters.
The other granddaughter is going to Disney World with her big brother this winter when they host a homeschool weekend. She is enamored with Mickey and Minnie and I am diligently working on the design to make finger puppets of those two characters. I think I have Mickey ready to stuff and sew together as soon as I embroider the rest of the face. Minnie will be basically the same but with a polka dot skirt and “hair bow.”
Daughter informed me that her son made the statement that he didn’t have anymore of grandmom’s hand knit mismatched socks. He is a Batman fan and my local yarn dying friend quickly dyed me two skeins of sock yarn to convert into Batman themed socks for him.
His little sister will probably also get a pair of mismatched socks, but of different colors.
Along with books, some sports gear or Legos. Some costumes for pretend play for the girls, the kids are nearly done. Their parents are always a bit more challenging and hubby is the toughest this year since we went on a cruise, we decided to go cheap on each other, but the one item I want to get him as he is now riding a motorcycle is not inexpensive. Oh well, it is Christmas and it is only money.
-
Traditions and Memories
Our daughter was due the day before my birthday 31 years ago, but she lingered until November 29. I would never decorate for Christmas until the weekend after Thanksgiving, but with that birthday, sometimes Thanksgiving came the day after my birthday, which meant I could technically begin decorating on November 22, but once daughter was old enough to realize, she made an edict that we couldn’t decorate for Christmas until after her birthday. I would sometimes put the outdoor wreaths up before, but would otherwise wait and still do.
As I started pulling out boxes, the reminiscing began. My sister in law quilts and cross stitches and many of the decorations were made by her.
One of my dear friends has given me many hand crafted gifts over the years.
When our children were young each Christmas my hubby would help them buy a Santa or village piece to add to the collection. My favorite Santas and the only ones out so far, are Tom Clark gnomes.
As I handle and place each piece I am flooded with memories of Christmas past and anticipate Christmas futures with our grandkids. Due to scheduling, the tree with it’s collection of a dated ornament for each year of our life together will have to wait for another weekend. -
This Moment
This idea is from SouleMama’s blog and will be a new feature on my blog page. A single photo from the past week, no words, that I wish to remember. If you are inspired to do so, leave a link to yours in the comments for others to see.
-
Thanksgiving
Tomorrow is American Thanksgiving. In our family, it is a time for family, falling between my birthday and my daughter’s and her daughter was born on Thanksgiving Day two years ago. When our children were young and still at home and we still lived on Virginia’s east coast, my Dad and I took turns hosting Thanksgiving dinner, including as many family members as we could.
This year, my Dad and stepmom are in the midst of a kitchen rebuilt due to a dishwasher leak and the discovery of old asbestos floor tiles, so they will be having dinner at my stepsister’s house. Our daughter and her family spent last Thanksgiving here from Florida, we recently spent two weeks with our youngest son and his family. Our eldest son and his family are currently on a bus travelling here from Northern Virginia to spend tomorrow with us.
Yesterday, it rained and rained and rained after an ice storm the night before and today it is snowing. We are hopeful that this weather doesn’t impact their travels. The preparation for a turkey dinner with all the fixings was begun and the house was cleaned up to help reduce son’s allergy to the dogs.
The pumpkin pies made with the last pumpkin, cooked and frozen last winter. The fixings are all in the house and we are awaiting their arrival.
The chickens were let out this morning, poked heads out of the coop and drew back in. We are experiencing very high winds and the morning temperature of 31f was the day’s high, it has been blowing and plummeting all day. Normally, I don’t have food or water in their coop to keep the rodents from visiting, but today I took pity and though the pop door is open and they can go outside, they are holed up with food and water indoors.
We wish you a happy Thanksgiving from our farm to your home.
-
Crispy morning
A wintry mix,
Crispy grass, slick deck, mini icicles;
Fog, rain, ice pellets, and snow and snow for tomorrow.
Hope my kids on the bus tomorrow are safe.
-
Winter Gardening?
Last Thursday was the start of the meteorologic winter in the mountains and it came in with a roar, a literal roar of Arctic blast air and high wind gusts. I should have harvested my cabbages last Wednesday, but I didn’t. They were under a row cover, so I smugly felt they would be okay until I could get gallon plastic bags to store them in the basement fridge. That was an error on my part, a colossal error. The past two nights have dropped to between 11 and 16f. Yesterday’s high was only 26f. Today we finally bought the bags and as soon as the outdoor thermometer rose above the freezing mark, today’s high of 34f, I grabbed a big canvas sack, garden clippers, gloves, barn boots and jacket and set out to see what the damage was. It was not pretty. Fifteen small to medium cabbages frozen on the outside at least. Debate with self, do I harvest them accepting the damage that has been done or put a layer of straw and the insulated cover over them to ward off tonight’s anticipated ice storm and see if they will “recover” on the next mild stretch (assuming there will be one). Harvest now won and they were brought inside to assess the damage. After cutting one of the medium sized ones in half, I realized that they were pretty much frozen through, so instead of throwing in the towel and accepting my error and the waste it wrought, each cabbage was cut in quarters, still frozen, packed in a plastic bag and loaded into the basement freezer. Most of the cabbage we eat is cooked anyway, so they should not go to waste.
Error number 2 was leaving the large pumpkin on the front porch for the past two nights. The chickens are now enjoying the stalks and lower leaves of the cabbage, the seeds from the frozen pumpkin that I tossed into their run and split with a hatchet. If it ever thaws outside, they will eat the pumpkin down to the stem and the added bonus is that pumpkin seeds are a natural safe dewormer if any of the flock is infected.
In spite of the cold, even though egg laying has significantly dropped off, they are still producing enough for the pups and me to have one each morning and enough to put aside for the holiday baking.
Life is good on our mountain farm, just cold right now. Guess I should bundle back up and go bring in some firewood for the wood stove and fireplace, just in case the ice storm takes out the electricity.
-
A Week on the Farm – November 24, 2013
This week has been all over the thermometer. We had a high near 70f one day and this morning when I went out to feed, water, and let the critters, dogs and chickens out, it was 18f with a windchill that probably dropped it to near zero. The chicken’s water tub and container were solid, I couldn’t even open the container to add warm water. I think today’s agenda will include the purchase of a second smaller tub that I can fill each day. There was a light dusting of snow which the pups love. Rooting their nose along the ground and tossing the flakes into the air. The sun is out but there are still sparkling flakes blowing around in the wind.
Our neighbor is gathering his herd to cull the ones that are going to the stockyard. One which they wanted to keep has become somewhat rogue and we found her, another heifer, and two young bulls in our yard a few days ago, having broken through the fence in the sinkhole and wandered up for a graze. I helped her chase them back down the hill and home, sealing the fate of the young heifer, who is now slated for the stockyard and sale. Didn’t get any pictures of that, but it was probably quite a site to see two 60 something women chasing 4 young cattle around our back field.
This week, we ventured away from our usual riding stable to take a lesson and 2 hour ride with a natural horsewoman on her Tennessee Walking Horses. We learned quite a bit more than we previously knew and thoroughly enjoyed the ride on her smooth gaited horses.
That particular day was very cold, so we made a stop at the local Tractor Supply on the way over and I purchased a new barn coat to go with the new barn boots that hubby gave me for my birthday this past week.
This greatly improved the comfort of the ride and was a welcome layer this morning doing chores. It turns out that the instructor and her husband have much in common with us and resulted in a dinner invitation to their lovely home last night with two other couples. It was a wonderful time with a great meal and new friends.
One afternoon after taking the pups out, still working on getting the big beast to get in the back of the SUV willingly, we drove on out the road past our house, up the hill and took this photo of the house, which you can’t see from there in the summer time.
The week has been a good one, this week we will have one of our children and family here for Thanksgiving. Life is good on our mountain farm.
-
This Moment
An image usually with no words, from the past week that I want to linger over and savor.
The funniest card I’ve ever received. It clucks Happy Birthday.
Cabin Crafted 