I started my village years ago at the same time mom started hers. We found some real pretty ceramic houses at a craft store and bought as many as possible. Then we would sit and paint them as we watched TV. Mom finished painting her houses several years ago whil I still have at least 5 more to go. I keep getting distracted with other projects I want to try! With 2 active indoor cats I have to keep my christmas village up high. I used to arrange it on top of the china cabinet but there really wasn't enough room. This year I put it on top of my new entertainment center and it work great there. To make different levels so that all the houses are visable I take different size boxes and arrange them however I want and then cover everything with an old damask table cloth. I used to use fake snow but was woried about the cats getting ahold of it and eating some (the youngest will eat anything that even remotely looks like food!). As I finish painting more houses they can be arranged on the bookcases on either side of the entertainment center.

hi.. and mery christmas to you all... i was wowed by all your hard work and wonderful pics..i could use some help this year for my village i have 15 20 peaces and i usaly put them around the fire place, but i have a grand daughter that is 14 months old and in to everything (they live here ) and my husband has a pool table smake dab in the middle of my living room that he will be losing this christmas for im going to move it under the window and put my village up there ( oh yes he will cry.. but he will be good or no santa for him lol) so any ideas would be so great i have a big spot for them....god bless ya ...debbie

LIsa, I did see some radar-indicated rain maps that showed a narrow band of 10-11" of rainfall, so it wouldn't surprise me that people are reporting that much in a small area. It is a good thing it wasn't widespread at that amount or y'all would be floating down the road. I am glad you took photos of your garden just in case. I don't do many photos, but whenever severe weather threatens I go out there and stand and take a long look at my garden, sort of recording a good memory of it in my mind in case it is about to be destroyed. Scott, One thing I noticed was how fast they popped up. Dr. Forbes said those supercells went from zero to 57,000' tall (estimated) in about a half-hour. That sounds incredibly fast to me. Paula, It was a good attempt at humor. I liked it. We can dig up our fishing dock from our pond that stays dry and no longer supports fish and bring it over there and install it on your lakefront property so y'all can go fishing with the grandkids. You'll have to supply your own fish, skeeters and water snakes though. Lisa, All you need for a gauge is a kitty litter bucket like Mia's! (It is hard to find tall rain gauges. Most seem to stop at 5 or 6".) Mia, That is an incredible amount of rain and I am impressed the mulch stayed where it belonged. I hope y'all use a pool service so they are stuck restoring the pool to its usual clear, sparkling water...so that y'all don't have to deal with it! Susan, It was a crazy storm but, remember, Weebles wobble but they don't fall down. : ) I bet your hail fell at a really strong velocity to cause all that damage. I am sorry your plants are so damaged. It makes you wonder where the butterflies shelter in order to survive crap like that. Maybe after you clean up all the broken bits and pieces, everything will look a little better and then will perk up and will regrow and, by the end of June, will be almost back to normal. Plants are so resilient and sometimes I think that seeing the damage hurts the gardener much more than the actual damage hurts the plants. One amazing thing was this storm wouldn't die. I just kept watching the radar and saying "get out of there, go away" and more storms just kept coming from the west toward y'all, so not only were they not leaving very quickly, but new storms were backfilling behind them. I wonder if the outflow boundaries from the first storms were feeding the development of subsequent storms. Maybe June will have calmer weather than the last half of May had. Oh, and if anyone is wondering, Reed and his family are out of town so were not in the OKC-Edmond area when the storms hit. Dawn

Juanita, no wonder you like to shoot it. It's beautiful. I love the treatment in the first, looks so ethereal. JoanMN/FL