Oh Christmas Card, Oh Christmas Card

Oh Christmas cards. You are so complicated!!!

Argh!!! I love, love, love the idea of Christmas cards. Some years I send them. Mine always come ridiculous late. If you are watching the mail, just give up...go get your shopping done. I am so sorry and I truly vow to do better and get more proactive next year with planning. I aspire to be "those people." I have all these constraints though, see?

First, I have a compulsion about making sure that the photo we include looks wintery....that means I want to wait until its cold outside. And then of course as soon as its cold outside I get ridiculously busy and so then the first chance I get its Thanksgiving. I almost always end up taking a shot right after Thanksgiving when we are out cutting our tree. This always seems like such a perfect idea but really its more like when The Grinch gets a "wonderful, awful idea..."
There are caveats:

1. I always want people to look nice and people just want to tromp around outdoors and look scruffy.
2. I sometimes make people take off their coats for the photo and its invariably friggin' cold this does not make for good facial expressions. 
3. I am living on borrowed time trying to rev up enthusiasm for portraiture when the boys would all much rather be hacking away with the handsaw on our family tree. 
4. One picture can never, never do it. "One more time for Mommy now!!! Cheese boys!!!" 
5. It is at this point a very close shave to get the cards made, ordered and addressed in time...not to mention mailing them out! EEP! I'm The Duchess of Late...every Christmas.

What to do? Last year I told myself I would start fresh and live outside the box. I planned to skip Christmas cards and instead make and mail out Valentine cards. Seemed perfect. Turns out there was no world outside of that box. Heh. I procrastinated my ass right out of any yearly greeting at all. There was nada ever printed. I live in shame.

This year I couldn't get the boys to cooperate and although I got a nice shot of A and I, I had a zero luck with the boys. The shots are all like this: 

I am now planning to mail out paper cards....genuine, old fashioned paper cards that I bought in the grocery store in the buy-one-get-one-free rack. They will come in real envelopes and they will have holiday themed artwork on the covers. I will sign our names inside one just for you and if all the stars align....the pictures I took in the yard today after I finished raking with be tucked inside, a little momento of how insane cards and photos and holidays really are. The next time you are having your portraits taken...think of me, I can promise it will elicit jolly expressions.

Corn Maze Adventures

Today a little photo essay of our visit to the local corn maze. Sometimes images are better than words. :)

Happy Tuesday night, everyone!

Home From Florida

Just back home again after a week in sometimes sunny, sometimes torrentially rainy, Florida. Great to get away, wonderful to be with family and inspiring to experience beauty in new little ways. Nothing in this world quite like tent camping in the rain to make you ultra-grateful for your own dry bed. :)

Not a whole lot of anything happening around here today except for laundry and schedule resuming and extra naps when we can grab them; time to share a few select pix from our little family rendezvous in The Sunshine State.

And a grand time was had by all! 

Next stop...Laundry Room! See ya'll on the flip side.

Pretty Hunky Dory!

Life is just pretty good around here lately. We are into the thick of summer, the lazy hazy days when things tend to whirl so fast that eventually it all becomes one numbing, blind blur of basil scented, cicada accompanied pleasure. I know that this mad pace isn't sustainable, eventually I will fatigue and begin stumbling around panting but no worry, summer doesn't last long in our climate, just a short phase and pretty soon we'll be all cozy hearth fires and knitted throws. We are spending many evenings at the pool, eating and making lots of ice cream, running around outdoors, shirking the dishes, and eating, eating, eating. We're to the part of the year with the really great food.

I am thinking about where to go for our annual peach picking venture, wondering when we can get out to pluck wineberries from a right-of-way and thinking a little about the tomato sauce canning in my future to boot. Mmmmm.....

Here's a short photo tour of the high points of recent days:

Fresh guacamole...these sorts of things can be a whole meal lately. They are so fresh and juicy.

 

There are tasty, crisp carrots now at our CSA. Last week it was take-as-many-as-you-want-of-the-carrots day and we loaded up. Carrots are one of those things that taste completely different when just pulled from the ground.

That's "our" farm

I put organizing bins above the bookcase to contain the flotsom and jetsom that lives there

Love them! 

We have two monarch caterpillars living in a jar on our counter! (one already in chrysalis!)

I made ravioli. (Check Check on the New Year's Resolutions List!)

Ru "reads" to Dee now. I melt.

Snapshots of The Big Storm 2010

Big local road....kinda occupied.

View of the average road shoulder at the moment.

 

Road itself....not a dilapidated bike path.

 

Our small local stream...well flooded beyond it's banks.

But on the upside...all this spring rain means the 

miniature daffodils by the front door are blooming!

50-60's all the rest of the week! Wooohoo!!!