Happy New Year!

 Wow, life has been so busy!  I have been away from the blog for a while as family health problems, getting closer to God, and grandchildren have been my highest priority, along with figuring out what is going on in our nation.  Now that I think we have more of a handle on those mostly, it is time for a blog.  

My favorite new Christmas decoration we made for this year, was the nativity scene for our pond.  My neighbor gave us an arched metal piece he had, my husband wired on some leftover sorghum from our field, I drew the nativity figures and star on a leftover piece of osb board we had, it was cut out, painted and put up.  We used a solar security light down at the pond to light it up at night.  Then we used the picture to create Christmas post cards.  So lovely!

 

Another new Christmas decoration was an angel for my bed.  I discovered when I was decorating the tree that I was apparently a big fan of angels.  Lol.  I didn't realize.  Funny how that happens.  Anyway, I wanted something for my grandchildren to play with on the bed while we were changing diapers.  It also gives you a reason to talk about angels.  All the materials were some that I already had and the body pattern I downloaded free and enlarged to the size I wanted. Thanks to the youtube rag doll instructions and pattern found here.  A special touch was the wings made out of a doily my grandmother had hand crocheted.

A painted figurine for our nativity set this year was I bought a golden retriever dog and painted it to look like our dog that is a great pyrhenees/anatolian shepherd.  This was the only dog I could find with the right body shape.  Our dog's name is Morpheus.

Other than that, we are now using our canned goods from last summer, we processed two pigs and rendered the lard, we have spinach, two kinds of turnips, lettuce and carrots in our garden.  We are loving especially the turnip dish that uses half turnips and half potatoes and is made like mashed potatoes.  Life is good!