What’s in a word?!

 

One word.

COLD.

It’s cold here.

Chilly.

Nippy.

Shivery.

{{I could play all day with my Thesaurus}}

Our new house has radiant floor heating and it isn’t feeling very radiant.

And yet…..

We just had to mortgage our second cousin’s, uncle’s new house to pay the propane bill.

Speaking of words……..

I see all over the internet that people do this thing where they choose a “word of the year” kind of thing.

Quite honestly, I sort of mocked it at first. Mostly because I was sure that, like New Years resolutions, I wouldn’t be able to sustain it past January 2nd.

But the thought has taken hold and bumped around in that empty space between my ears until it dawned on me that the very reason I didn’t want to do it……… provided me with the perfect word!

STRENGTH

Behind the masks. Beneath the pain. In that place where I still keep a little happiness and faith safely tucked away----I long for strength.

 

The strength to walk a mile……………..

The strength to smile more and to be less cynical….

The strength to say “yes” to my family more often…….

The strength to gather my family for scripture study and prayer, DAILY……..

Most of all, the mental and emotional strength to realize the difference between “my strength” and the “power of the Lord”………………..

 

One year.

One word.

An interesting experiment………………………….

Willy Nilly Ghosts of Christmas Past

Feel free to FLEE---

Christmas wrap up ahead-----

Comments are off---(can you believe I figured out how to do that??!!)

So, sometime BEFORE Christmas we..........

Put up our advent calendars............

Beanie had a Playmobile one and

Milan had a Lego one as usual...

Kelly wanted a riddle/scavenger hunt one so I made one up in a muffin tin...

Then came the annual gingerbread house decorating. Grandpa Bob and Grandma Lola joined us and brought the stuff...we supplied the house. Hard work that was...

Hydrolics were needed to keep things from sliding from rooftops....

Serious faces.......

I think that guy on the left is bald with a long white beard and the tree on the right is a "closet" cyclops...scary....

more serious faces....

Then Kelly picked us out a tree (the first live one we've had in around 10 years!!) And we got it up and decorated...

I buy or make new ornaments for the kids each year to represent their year...this is Kelly's because she spent the year going around saying, "I'm so ninja" or, "Did you see that ninja move?". And can you believe I found this green one on Etsy???!! I LOVE Etsy!

This was my first ornament as a child. A rudolph thats lost his "Shiny" nose. Oh how I love unwrapping this one each year and putting it on the tree! I am such a GEEK!

I bought a more current one to keep him company a few years back but they just seem very uncomfortable around each other.

This ornament contained the second wedding ring Studmuffin gave me when I lost the my first one. So romantic.

This is my Angel. Angel Moroni. LOVE it. What else can I say?!

This is the ornament I made for Tae. It is of her and her boyfriend of 5 years that passed away this year. She loved it. We shared tears and hugs.

That's about it--keep all hands and feet inside the ride until it has come to a full and complete stop. Thank you for riding Lisa's Looney Lines--come again soon....

The race is on…..

 

Since all my children have been securely fastened to the walls with duct tape, I thought I would take a moment and finish up all my posts for the year so I could make one of those book thingies.

HAH! I joke, I kid----I will never get all these posts caught up.

 

KIDDING!

My kidlets are all duct tape free and enjoying their holiday freedoms.

No worries.

Except for my sanity, and like I always say, “Sanity is highly overrated”.

 

I had all of my offspring home for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and it was just lovely. I love that my new home fits lots of people so easily and yet has these great gathering spots.

 

I did something I swore I would never do on Christmas Eve.

I told everyone we were going out for Chinese and it was going to be our new favorite Christmas Eve tradition. Amen.

We did and it was and it is and can I just say, “Hallelujah!!!”?!

 

When we got home the Jammie Elves had come and so everyone ripped into their packages and the following chaos ensued………

 

Its a wonderful life, I tell you. That's one of the perks of being bipolar. In just one post I can go from duct taping my children to the wall to having my heart ache so much I think it will break at the thought that soon the time will come that all of these faces won’t be together on Christmas Eve. I’m just a mess. Ah well, I’m off to do something important—like read one of the 5 books I got for Christmas or watch one of my new Cary Grant movies. I’m a busy, busy girl. AMEN and AMEN.

Hallelujah!

My friend Annie,  who lives in Alaska, posted this on Facebook today.

I may or may not have watched it a bajillion times.

I have DEFINITELY found my hibernating Christmas spirit.

Who knew it was in a small village in Alaska??!!

I promise..it is worth every minute….

‘Tis the Season people!!!!!

Is it Christmas yet??!!

 

I am flying a little under the Merry Christmas radar this year. Nothing horrible—just nothing to launch me into tears at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life “ either.

 

People who are bipolar, such as myself, find Christmas carol titles such as---“Do You Hear What I Hear”—especially entertaining. Just sayin…..

 

For those of you who might be new around here—I really AM bipolar and have written a blog post about it that you can read HERE.

 

My sweet #2 daughter read it in a class at her cosmetology school recently when they had a class about dealing with suicide because there had been so many there lately SO…she reminded me  there were probably others out there who could maybe use it------(longest, most grammatically incorrect sentence EVER)

 

All is not doom and gloom though—promise.

As I went to decorate my home for the holidays I discovered (much to my budget’s dismay) that most of my decorations that I used in my garage home (click on it to read about it) don’t really fit this home. So I looked around blog land and gathered a few different ideas and got my Christmas Pottery Barn catalog and came up with this:

and this:

Oh look, we have a visitor:

It is a little blurry, and Martha I’m not—but it’ll do, I think. And, hopefully I have many years to collect and make more! I have been up to a few other things but will save them for another day.

Meanwhile, got any other great ideas for great Christmas songs for this bipolar girl??

(Like, funny ones {ie: Do You Hear What I Hear}—I already have a playlist of 300 favorite Christmas carols—thanx tho--)

Your house smells like……..

Today we are going to discuss house perfume.

Most perfume gives me a headache.

I can’t even get within a mile of Bath & Body.

The store that is.

I promise I bathe my body on at least a semi-regular basis.

Candles aren’t much better. Their smell, that is. I don’t ever bathe my candles. Am I supposed to? No one ever tells me these things!!! I am filled with shame and deep confusion….okay..moving on…(Obviously we have been doing a little fine tuning of my medication lately)

There are a few candles I like and keep around the house to use for when I run out of ingredients for this favorite:

It is so easy and so forgiving and so YUMMY smelling!

Ingredients:

Orange

Lemon

Cloves

Bay leaves

Cinnamon Sticks

*I have an old pot that I have used for years but because it is all edible, you can use any pot.

*I use:

2 oranges

2 lemons

6 cinnamon sticks

3 or 4 bay leaves

1/3 jar cloves

Because I like an intense smell that fills the house quickly—most people use less.

*I have even used dried oranges and lemons and bought my spices in bulk so I always have the stuff on hand. (Call me Suzy Woodland Homemaker and I’ll shoot you between the eyes—go on—I dare you)

Then you just simmer to your nose and hearts content.

And when someone comes to visit they don’t ever say, “My what a lovely candle smell”

They say, “Mmmm, your house smells just like Christmas”

Merry Christmas!

I used to LOATHE this song....

I used to loathe this song.... till I found these guys.

If you all know about them already, then shame on you for not telling me about them. If you haven't heard of them.....

You are so very welcome.

Merry Christmas! I'm off to beg someone to spike my eggnog...

(kidding, dear Bishop's wife)

Why sending out Christmas cards requires me to up my medication…..

 

‘Tis the season.

The Christmas Card.

I love receiving the darn things.

Even the ones that inform me that Tommy received his 4th Doctorate and little Jill is simultaneously getting straight A’s, in every school club and still finds time to play every instrument known to man.

I just take it with a grain of salt—sometimes a big chunk of rock salt—but I still love opening my mailbox and seeing all the holiday joy inside.

What I struggle with is --------THE PICTURE……

I love getting the darn things.

I love having someone else take my children’s picture and sending those.

But when our pockets are empty and I have to take the picture---well—those are dark times my friend….dark times…

 

Here is an example:

 

The year is 2002 and yes, I may or may not have just learned that you could play with photos on your computer, why do you ask?

 

 

                                Look… up in the sky

 

 

                                Whoa…Beanie, your other front………..

 

 

 

                                  AAAHHH! Nat packed her scary eyes! Beanie, your other front!

 

                                         This is the one I finally went with. Can you tell what my husband got for Christmas that year??

 

This was from last year:

 

And then this year:

                             Yeah Beanie—you got the right front!!

 

It’s just ridiculous.

 

Good thing I love them.

Good thing they love me!

 

But I do kind of miss these days…………..

1989 was a very good year……just sayin…..

Here a stitch, there a stitch…

I had a bit of drive by surgery 2 weeks ago.

Wait.

That's not right.

Outpatient surgery, that's it.

Felt like a drive by, there have been a couple little complications and I kind of feel like the CSI people need to come and figure out why I died.

We had our Thanksgiving on Sunday, the 21st. My husband had to be back in the Great Frozen North for Thanksgiving and my big girls had other plans, so the 21st it was!.It was lovely. My girls and husband did ALL the cooking. Really---ALL of it. And the clean up. ALL of it……

While I devoured the rest of the peach pie and nursed my pitiful injury.

Oh….the injustice of it all.

I am thinking this will be seriously affecting how our Thanksgivings go down for the next 40 years—or until I die—which ever comes first.

My #2 daughter brought 3 friends home with her. So, we had a house full.

It was truly, truly, lovely and I am very blessed. Then everyone was able to leave and get home before all the scary storms started----double blessings! (Not that they left, that they made it home safely—sheesh)

On the real Thanksgiving---well—we just stayed in our jammies and had leftovers.

And I ate pumpkin pie and gave thanx for the piece of pecan pie that was still waiting in the wings.

Drive by surgery victims need lots of pie for a healthy recovery—true story.

This is a picture of one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories, way back around 1993.

Besides the flying nun hat that I forced on my poor baby’s head and that thing growing on the door….

(Studmuffin is looking fine as usual)

this picture commemorates the only time in our entire marriage…..

that we got to go out for Thanksgiving dinner.

It was a beautiful thing.

Please don’t hate me. Amen.

Outline of October or…OOO….

 

Since its beginning to look a lot like November, I thought I might take a moment to properly bid a sugar coated, happy to be moving on, adieu to October.

Our party was a success due in large part to copious amounts of sugar and several well planned OUTDOOR games. May I also recommend that Disney Trivia TV game---nothing says Halloween like a rousing game of Disney trivia.

I am happy to report that in spite of the fact that I am a costume grinch and was wearing my “High School Guidance Counselor” costume for the 15th straight year in a row (well actually, during the height of the Harry Potter craze I took a few years off and dressed as a Muggle), I won 2nd prize in the costume contest!

My daughter was not amused. Something about me not being a teenager and even in the running. I wanted the whoopie cushion as my prize but she would only let me have a ring pop. Hmpf…

Kelly is in red—she was a swash buckling pirate princess! The 2 to the left tied with another guy for first place—cutie-patooties!

 

Milan is on the right. He was a piece of plaid. Personally I think it was one of the most brilliant ideas for a costume EVER.

The boy on the far left comes from a family of 8 boys and 3 girls. 4 of those boys came and they came as guys from Braveheart—pretty cool.

First place winner--

 

Shall we dispense with the rest of October?

Who knew that the gingerbread thing had migrated to Halloween???!!

 

And that hair dryers were a necessary part of construction?!

Or that my son was such a goof??!!

Or that the lighting in my kitchen was so bad?? Ack!

Finished products:

My son made a “Monster House” replica—(do you just LOVE the Lego men???!!!)

The girls were much more conservative…..

Beanie’s

  Kelly’s…

The only other creative thing I did for Halloween was make this countdown calendar. I found a similar idea online somewhere but cannot even begin to remember where. I’m sure they don’t read my blog but if someone does, let me know and will be glad to give them credit. And before you think I am crafty or something—we didn’t EVEN get our pumpkins carved this year. What kind of people don’t get their pumpkins carved? People who can’t find their thanksgiving decorations and need something on their front porch—that's who…….hypothetically speaking of course……..

First I made myself a little easel stand….

And then I pretended I was in kindergarten again and cut and pasted to my hearts sweet content……

   

I am excited for November! We are having our Thanksgiving early on the 21st and everyone will be home! Huzzah! There might be a little outpatient surgery thrown in there and Studmuffin won’t be home for the “real” Thanksgiving” but I am grateful for our families flexibility and their desire to gather during this upcoming holiday season.

What is everyone else’s plans for Turkey Day?