The search for a White Christmas

There will be a lot of cities and towns having a white Christmas this year, the weatherman has told us that we won't be one of them.

There is a lot about a white Christmas that I love:
the quiet, the brightness and cold, snowballs, rosy cheeks, markets with hot spiced wine, warm gingerbread and caroling while wrapped up in scarfs and woolly mittens, snow falling on lit up houses, a warm cosy kitchen, a Christmas eve service in a freezing church, roaring fires and even chestnuts.......but most of all, the sparkle.

My search for our own white Christmas began though the house, where I found snowballs and Santas, a few silver snowflakes, sequins and glitter, there are flickering candles and twinkly white lights, even snowy white sheep - and finally on to the small town of Fairhope, where the streets are lined with sparkly white lights.

Growing up with a summertime Christmas where a white Christmas was only in our dreams there will be plenty that I will miss: the bare feet and shorts, the Christmas lunch outside under the shade, the family arriving with fresh raspberries and peas from their gardens, the worry about flies landing on the food, the uncles and cousins picking up a cricket bat and starting a game, sunscreen or sunburn, the very hot kitchen with hopes for a breeze from the open window, the delicious cold puddings...........

Down where it is summertime you are waking up to Christmas eve today, the shopping is all done, the cooking begins and Father Christmas is on his way..... Merry Christmas to all!

Something is brewing

My Grandfather, Poppa (Pavitt) would be proud!

Memories of his home brewing came flooding back, while his great grandson set out to follow in his footsteps.

I was very glad that I could open all the windows the day of cooking!!

I have been told that it tastes pretty good! And that batch #2 will be started very soon.

Hmm...a delicious feast?

Delicious? maybe, it depends on who is eating it. But four teenagers thought it was delicious!

2 onions, grated,

salt & pepper

5 pounds of ground beef.

Mix together and form hamburger patty.

Cook 45 mins.

Top with 2 pound grated cheese

continue cooking until cheese melts

Cook two 10 inch pizzas - (cheese stuffed crust)
Place one pizza on platter

Top with hamburger patty

Top with 2 packets cooked bacon

Top with remaining pizza

Take photos

Slice and enjoy!!

You are invited for dinner.

now she is knitting...

Hey, we all need a new challange now and then....my latest is socks!! Maybe it's got something to do with wanting to have warm feet on these colder days (I have plenty of warm socks already) sitting by the fire when it's dark and raining outside, or maybe I just need to add another thing to the huge pile of handwork I have....who knows??

It all started when I ran out of wool making more baby beanies and headed out shopping for more when I saw a free sock pattern. Hmmm I thought, I could do that, so I picked out the "sock" yarn (which isn't very warm and maybe even a bit scratchy) , found the pack of needles and headed home.

The progress shown took me at least four tries....cast on 56 stitches and devide onto three needles..... got that done, but no where in the pattern did they tell me to use a fourth needle to do the knitting - finally I figured it out!

This is complicated! and looking down the instructions I have no idea what half of it means, so watch for progress updates :-)

A good book

I recently read "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett. Thought it was a fantastic read which I couldn't put down - it's a huge book, so not much else gets done! Once finished I got the sequel and am now half way thru that...another huge book. So today I was excited to read that an eight-hour TV miniseries has been made of the book. Will air in the summer (northern hem) filmed in Austria & Hungary. I can't wait.

....and more on Baby-Girl Squirrel

I know, I have left you wondering how she is.

Almost weaned now I think. A week or two ago she started to just take a mouth full of milk then run off to see the world in her enclosed back porch, coming back for another mouthful before running off again...feedings became very long!!! Since then I have given her the milk in a little ramakin dish for her to snack on as she likes. Some days it is lapped up and others it is ignored. We put a small bowl of fruits and veges put in her cage twice a day. To teach her to hunt we add a selection of things like sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, pecans, peanuts, chestnuts, and acorns, which we scatter around in the piles of leaves on the floor of the cage. The main food outside will be acorns, which she rejects as a last resort...she needs to change her ways. Her one and only love is the pecan which is in season now but not to be found out in our yard or any nearby yards. Once she is free I can see myself hand feeding those if and when she visits us.

Watching her natural instincts develop has been fascinating. When she is happy and climbing on us she makes a faint grunt noise, similar to a cat purring but shorter. I am finding nuts hidden away under things on the porch. When eating she picks up a nut and runs off to a safe branch to eat. She demonstrated her alarm call for the first time when a cat prowled from the other side of the screen (from the safety of my shoulder - frozen but for her tail - it was hilarious).

She is fast!!! it is nearly impossible to get a good photo of her now, she will jump and zip around in a blur - here she is zipping around on James(just home from school with a fat bleeding lip after being hit in the mouth with a basketball during PE)....only eight photos out of twenty that I got a bit of squirrel in them. The last photo she is just about to take off and land on the camera - she did that many times. She has jumped on Chester too, his reaction happens way after she has moved on.

December arrives!!.

The Thanksgiving holiday was keeping me busy last week. There were days off from work and school. Lots of food - we severed Turduckin at our feast, and lots of football. Shopping too...the crazy pre-Christmas sales are underway.

We have had our share of leftovers: plates of all the meat and fixings (we did have to make more cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy), made turkey pot pies, and finished up all the meat last night in panini's made with Camembert, cranberry sauce and red onions. The only remaining morsel is the pork sausage that was stuffed inside the Turduckin. We plan on eating that cold with crispy toasts, mustard and pickles...kinda like a pate.

We ate too much and all feel a bit "Piggly"

(This is an actual supermarket here in the deep south!)

Tonight though it's back to normal food, starting with that nice warm pumpkin soup to celebrate the arrival of some colder weather.

anyone seen my glasses?

We were making homemade pizza last night.....fresh pizza dough from Publix as always. I had shopped for all the ingredients several days ago and anything else we needed was in the fridge. When I realised we had used up the remaining pizza sauce in something else a couple of nights ago...(we needed to rescue a too dry pasta dish) I had to run to the store.
While there I spied some very nice thickly cut rib eye steaks - two to a pack, took a close look at the price and couldn't believe it, the bright yellow sticker said $6.00... hmm.... I thought....what a find! So I was very pleased with myself and headed to the cashier with my basket loaded with much more than just the steaks and pizza sauce I needed. (who goes to the store and only buys what they need?)
Once home with my prize I showed it off to Frank, both of us commenting that I should go back for more, hey there is always room in the freezer for good steaks. This is the moment when Frank actually looked at the steaks and asked me again what I thought I paid. Right there on that yellow sticker in small print, very small print, it said "you save" right above $6.00 - you don't really want to know how much I actually paid for them, let's just say that it was more than I ever pay for steaks!

Got to go....am off to the store, I forgot we needed bread. My glasses are in my bag and I won't be walking down the meat aisle as we have plenty of steak!

The tale of a baby girl squirrel who thinks we are squirrels too!

So now that Baby-girl Squirrel is outside on the porch she is seeing a bit less of us. It's a good thing because wild animals should not become attached to people - they should keep a good distance for survival reasons... but I think we have a long way to go before she understands that....

A watery weekend

Friday night by the Bay

Saturday at Orange beach

& Sunday watching rainbows - do you see it?

They play Rugby here too!

Our city has a Rugby team called "Battleship". This past weekend they held a tournament with teams from all over the country, mostly university teams, with the odd old boys teams. We went over to the park to watch a couple of games, they were playing four fields with games on the hour. Was a nice couple of hours with some pretty neat back drops to look at if the Rugby wasn't your thing. Between games I strolled off to take a few background photos.

a new adventure...for a baby girl squirrel

It took a couple of days, a few trips to Home Depot for supplies, a few cuts and scratches...and ended with a new home for Baby-Girl Squirrel.

Her climbing, jumping and her speed were more than enough hints, she was ready to explore the world outside her bin. We pulled out the old dog crate and covered the whole thing in cage wire as the gaps between the bars were too large....a makeshift home until she is set free.

She still has her bin and nest box filled with the soft cuddle blankets (to be replaced with leaves one day soon). The cage is out in the screened porch, protected from the wild world for now. There are a couple of hours in the morning when the sun is on the cage - which is good because according to my research squirrels need at least 30 minutes of sun a day. Tomorrow I will bring the cage indoors as we have a hurricane heading our way.

She's a happy little girl!

I wear my poppy

Armistice Day

Field of Valor at the USS Alabama Battleship Park

The tale of Baby-Girl Squirrel

Missed my weekly posting of squirrel photos.
I did take photos though and here she is showing off a more bushy tail...and finally holding it up!

She is much more interested in the world around her and is getting fast!! Kodak moments are much harder to capture as she doesn't sit still for long.

She likes to climb into our clothing - here she is inside my jacket - I am holding open the front, looking towards my upper arm.