Here and There: Christmas Collage

Here and there: our Christmas

Christmas dinner - Auntie May, Mum,
my brother Darren, Dad,
the Prof, The Young Philosopher
and my cousin, Simon. 

The tree at Mum and Dad's 

My brother's dog Fudge opens her presents

Boxing Day. Mum, Grandad and Rose.

The Young Philosopher and Curly Girl

Mum and Dad's garden

 Boxing Day sky

 First signs of Spring

Here and There: Final Touches

Here and there: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Here and There: 2011 Favorite Photographs

I've been seriously, consistently taking photographs for three years now.

When I look back on these compared to a few years ago I cannot believe the difference.

Enjoy that new camera friend, the more you take the better you get.

You've already got a fantastic eye.

Isn't it fun looking back?

Here and there - 2011: my favourite photographs

I just got interested in taking photographs about a year ago, and over the year I experimented a little with the settings, and also learned how to edit the pictures a little, and I am really pleased with some of them. These are a few of my favourites.  

 

  

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Here And There: Out My Window

Another crazy, gloomy, blustery, dark, rainy day. So if I tried to post photos for you out my windows this week they would all look like gray black blurs.  So I've tried to grab some that I already had.

Below is the view from my kitchen window.  I always wanted a window above my sink when I lived in my previous home.  This window looks out on the garage, but still I love having all that light streaming in on me and any herbs I set in the window.

This is the view out my bedroom window.  It looks out over the field.

This is a photo of the same field but closer up.  These are my neighbors across the street.  In the summertime I sit on the front porch and watch them walk up from the field at night.

This is the same view from downstairs.  I hate that I can't get a good photo of the field without the electrical wires.

This would be what you would see if you looked out the back dining room window.  This is the back yard.  We are incredibly blessed that we have this beautiful yard with a woods bordering it.  When I got divorced I feared having to walk up to a cheap store-top apartment with no green or no yard for the girls to run around in.  I pictured having to take them to parks for that.  My grandparents gave us an amazing blessing by allowing us to live on this little place by them.

This is the view out the side dining room window.  That's my Grandmother's birch tree last winter.  When they took down the old small house my Great-Grandparents, her parents, lived in and built this new house, she hoped so much that they wouldn't have to take the birch tree down.  Luckily they didn't.

Here's my favorite view though.  This is the view out my Grandmother's kitchen window. That is my other   kitchen window you see in the background. We can look out our kitchen windows and see each other.

Here and There: from my window

This is the view from the living room window at the front of the house. Mostly you can see my privet hedge, which is original to the house and been growing there since the 1930s or so. I keep it fairly high because it stops people walking past from looking in the front window. The houses opposite are quite close, the road is very narrow, I have seen those lovely wide streets on American films! The cars you can just see are parked in the front gardens, many people make their front garden into off-street parking as it's difficult to park here. The Prof often has to park right down the street, or even in the next.

This was taken from the side window at the top of our stairs. It's rubbish day today, so you can see there are some bins in the street. Children play on the green there, the sign on the right says 'No ball games', though I have spent many summer afternoons having a football repeatedly thump the side of my house. 
The branches you can just see at the bottom of the picture are the pyracantha which grows up my side fence and badly needs cutting back a bit! Not going to happen in this cold weather.

Ours is a little house with a little garden. The end of the garden you can see, about two feet beyond the blue pot. This is taken from my back step - I would have taken it through the window of the back door but the awful truth is that the glass is too dirty. From the back step to the end of the garden is about fifteen paces, and the garden is triangular. I know over there you call your gardens yards, well here it's a garden if it's grass and a yard if it's concrete so really mine's a yard, I just refuse to call it one. At the moment it's all quite barren out here, in the spring and summer  the Virginia creeper on the left fence is lovely, though every year just to be awkward it sheds all its leaves before they turn properly red. Most years I do my best in the summer to make it look and feel more like a garden, with pots of flowers. This year was so busy, I didn't do it but I have high hopes for next year. I painted my bench this year, it needs redoing because it got rained on before it was dry and the paint got all pitted, so there's a job for the spring.


I'm glad at least the sun was shining for my little urban photographs. Tomorrow you are going to make me jealous with your pictures of the grass and trees surrounding your house.

Here and there: favourite Christmas songs

Jennifer, what a topic to suggest for our here and there post this week!  Don't you know I love ALL Christmas music? I have a big pile of Christmas CDs, and I have started on them already this year. Here are my two favourite feel-good Christmas songs. They were both released in 1973 when I was five years old and have accompanied all my Christmases ever since.

Christmas has a strange effect on me. I am not a Christian, but I think years of the Christmas Story and carols during my childhood have embedded themselves in my psyche and I just love the whole thing. I am hoping to get to a carol service this year, I love singing Christmas carols. This is one of my favourites.

Here And There: Grateful

I'm stressed out over Thanksgiving dinner which I say every year I'm not going to be, but it's a big meal.  A huge meal to make for one evening.  Luckily I am on vacation and today I will cook the turkey the day before to free up the oven for the big day.  Here is our Thanksgiving menu:

Roast Turkey and Gravy

Mashed Potatoes

Stuffing or perhaps Dressing?

Roast Carrots, Leeks and Mushrooms

Green Beans with Dill

Succotash

Fresh Cranberry-Pomegranate Sauce

Pumpkin Pie

Bread Pudding

Wish I could send you a slice of pumpkin pie, it is my favorite part!!

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Tomorrow we will be writing down five things each we are grateful and putting them in a jar and then will try to guess who wrote each one.  

In preparation here is a list of things I am grateful for right now

A warm home.

The sounds of the birds migrating.

The way the trees looked in the fog this morning.

Christmas Carols playing in the background.

The lady who let me use her discount card at the grocery when I forgot mine.

Having my family so close to me.

Having my Christmas shopping 3/4 of the way done.

Vacation, vacation, vacation

Little girls outside splashing in puddles.

A friend a country away emailing me a last minute recipe.

Having a gaggle of good friends including you!!