We spent a little time this week putting up our Christmas lights outside. We hung 6 strands of white icicle lights along our short fence that runs along our driveway and for the first time, we put our big colorful bulb strands along the front deck railing. I just love coming home in the evening to the house lit up like that!
I also trimmed back my rose bushes. For two reasons - I am hoping it makes them come back full in the spring, but also so that we would not get scratched to death while maneuvering around them to put up the lights. There were a few gorgeous roses still in bloom, amazingly enough, and I cut those to bring inside.
The little owl card was a Thank You card from my nephew, Ryan.
A couple of months ago I repotted some of my older house plants. They were quite root-bound and the Christmas Cactus hadn't bloomed in at least 2 years. I ended up moving the cactus to a different window, also. I understand they like the west facing sun, but I don't have any good window space on my west side, so they went into a north window. I wasn't really sure how that was gonna work. I was going around watering a couple of weeks ago and was so excited to see that it had big, juicy blooms on it again. And then last week they all popped open!
And on the glass front, I have sold quite a few of my ornaments at the Mountain Arts Network Gallery in Lake Arrowhead. I really wasn't sure how well they would sell, so I only made 15 or 20 of the glass ornaments. I had one woman come in and buy 13 of them in one day! Well, I don't expect that to happen again, but I did make some more, different ones, and took them up to the gallery the other day.
Unfortunately, I took pictures of them after the clear glass was hand painted, but before firing, but forgot to get any finished pictures because I was in a hurry to take them to the store. But, you can see the new images I painted - a Christmas tree, reindeer and snowflake. They were all fired onto a vanilla colored background and I hung glass beads beneath each one. I will have to get some photos for you. :-)
I like the reindeer, but the red ones are another example of how the red paint can be so tricky. During firing, the red blurred out and became very thin in spots. I was not able to actually use them to sell. I am planning to try to repaint and refire them, so we will see how that comes out.
Enjoy the Flowers of the Season!
