Holiday Decorations

Here are some of the Easter and Spring decorations we set out.

Here's the basket for Easter Dinner with the rolls.

After Easter come the patriotic holidays:  Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Fourth of July. I repeat this for Labor Day and 9/11 too.

Then we have more summer decorations. After the 4th of July, I hide the blue drum inside this basket for the rest of the summer.

 This is a wreath I got on my visit to Jessie's family in Hawaii.

In September I put up our fall wreath and some autumn touches here and there.

The little "bouquet" you see here is Broom Corn from Louie's garden.

This is a table mat I made as one of the group projects with my Art Group.

Here's a little paper bag book I made with an autumn theme. There are little pull-outs with family photos.

Halloween is fun.

Halloween sort of morphs into Fall and Thanksgiving.  I have my pumpkins and Mom's turkey that I gave her on our table.  I recently added pictures of the namesake of my hometown Winona, MN; Princess Wenonah, along with a photo a college friend took of me with the statue, in silhouette.  Nice to remember Native Americans on this holiday, I think.

Christmas decorations are my favorite. Here's a link to my post strictly about Christmas.

This is our lovely Christmas tree. Many of the ornaments are really mementos of wonderful memories.

After Christmas I move the snowmen onto the buffet and they stay until Spring.

Sleeping

My sleeping boys

 

And Lully

Early mornings at the Wisconsin Dells.

Partying too hard!

And Jessie always catches us sleeping!

And of course... New Years Eve!

And from a long time ago:

Pet Goose

This goose with a broken wing touched Louie's heart and he fed him all winter.

Grain Drill

Old-time grain drill ready to go!

Coronavirus Pandemic

During the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020, I had just come back from Spain, and was under self-quarantine for 14 days.  Louie stayed in the farmhouse with Hank so I could be at home.  We visited several times each day with him sitting on the porch, the patio door open an inch, and us talking through the glass.  Here we are having old fashioneds together.

We had our Stitchery get-together via Zoom.

ADK met via Zoom too.  Here we are.

For Mom's safety, she and her helper Alma, had to wear a mask while Alma was there, and so did I. Here she is Easter morning with her little Easter basket.  No Easter dinner that year.

Shadow

Here's our darling kitty, Shadow, when she was younger.

When she was really little, our otherwise wonderful dog, Taffy, would steal the cat food if given the chance.  So the cats had to be fed up on the counter in the laundry room, but Shadow was too little and couldn't jump that high yet.  So Louie taught her to climb this little ladder (which we stole from the bird cage!) 

She loved boxes, as all kitties do.

And she loved kids!

Now she is almost twenty-one years old, and can no longer jump up onto the couch, so we taught her to use this step-stool.  It took us about 50 times showing her and helping her to get the hang of it, but now she uses it every time.  Here she is.
            


Here she is now in 2020.  Precious old girl, so skinny and frail.

And now, a few weeks later, she can't jump up, even with the step stool.  But Louie made her a ramp, which she very quickly learned how to use to get up and down from the couch.

On her last night with us, March 25, 2020, she whimpered quite a bit, and was only comforted when I was touching her.  So finally I held her and she slept like this on my chest for about two hours. I knew she wouldn't last much longer.

  

Can't leave this post without a picture of our dear old Taffy (from many years ago, of course.)

And our darling Tigger, who loved the Christmas tree.  I finally realized I needed to wire it to the window frame, so she wouldn't bring it down.

And of course Sonny!

And my kitty when I was little was Fluffy, the best kitty in the world.  She lived to the age of 18.