My Weekend

I don't know the history of the 'Saturday sky' thing, but this is what it looked like from my front porch about 9 a.m. Saturday while my second cup of coffee was brewing. (I love my one-cup coffee maker that makes the coffee into the cup.) I wish the banner had shown up better. My sister made it for me; it has a spinning wheel on it. I'd go out and take another picture of it, except that I replaced it with a Christmas banner later that day, after Alexis got here.

We also hung this on the front door - of course we rarely use the front door, but I know it's there. It's a needlepoint I did years ago and gave to my mother. After she died, I claimed it for myself.


Since Wednesday is St Nicholas day, we also got out the box of Santas and Lexi arranged them on the hearth. I especially like the one that looks like a tree. It and the purple one were done by a local carver.

While I'm showing pictures of collections, here is some of my sheep collection, joined by a couple of cats, and of course, a guard donkey. I have sheep in a lot of other places, as well (had to take some off the hearth to put the Santas there). Most of them have been given to me. I had a boss for years who was always buying things for other people. She was forever leaving sheep on my desk. One time when we were at a conference, we stopped in the gift/snack shop off the hotel lobby. They had a display of Ty animals, one of which was Bam, a pastel sheep with curly horns (at the left of the lower shelf here). After admiring him, I realized that I had to buy him myself, or my boss would sneak down later and buy him for me.

And above those shelves hangs this. It was done by a dog. It's one of the paintings I 'won' at the Graves County Animal Shelter's animal art silent auction several months ago. Alyssa claimed the other one. They take dogs and cats to the Art Guild and let them walk around on watercolor (?) paper with paint on their paws. Then the ladies at the Art Guild select the portions to use as art. I think they mat them, and then a local business frames them. They had this one hanging 'portrait' at the auction, but I like it 'landscape.' I think it looks like a bouquet of flowers.

Saturday night, Lexi and I discovered that we had on matching socks, so we had to take a picture of them. I know you've seen one of mine before, along with the matching ones for Rose. Here they are again, this time with feet in them (except for Rose's).

Yesterday was a big day for Lexi and the other kids at Grace Church. To begin with, they left their shoes in the parlor. Then, after the gospel reading, St Nicholas (Bishop of Myra) visited and told them about himself. After service, when they went to retrieve their shoes, they found 'goody bags' in them. Finally, they had the first practice for the Christmas pagaent, where they each got a copy of the script. Lexi told me that it's very important that she not lose the script. She's afraid that she won't be able to memorize her lines. She's one of the angels. Her only line (along with 7 or 8 other kids) is, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men." The stage direction says they are to shout it. Somehow, I think she'll manage that.

Now I need to finish the second crocheted sock for myself - only about half a dozen rounds to go on the toe. I also need to bake the cookies for the Ewe-nique Knitters' cookie exchange tomorrow night; I put the butter out to soften before I started this.