It snowed last night so everything is a blanket of white for Christmas day. I feel a little guilty, but I don't think it is too deep so I'm not going out with the snowblower til tomorrow. I'm the caregiver for my Mom, and it is just the two of us this year. We open presents on Christmas Eve, so we had a lovely night with the house decorated, the fireplace going and the tree all decorated and lit. Then about 11:00 pm as I was settling into bed but not asleep yet, I heard this funny thump and a tinkling. Uh oh, that can't be what it sounded like! Sure enough, go out to the living room and the tree had fallen over. Didn't fall out of it's stand, just tipped the stand and flopped over! Luckily only one ornament broken. Unfortunately, it was one of my favorites, my duck bell. If you are now scratching your head and going, "Duck bell???", it has a bell for a body with a duck neck and head on top and duck feet for the clappers. Very cute. Fortunately I think I can glue it back together. And I was very relieved that none of the older (my grandmother's and mother's) ornaments were hurt. Anyway, just stood the tree up again, filled up the water and everything seems back to normal today. We just had a simple dinner (lunch?) today, turkey and cranberries, asparagus, rolls and peppermint ice cream. And just for snacks, of course, we have 3 lbs. of See's candy and assorted cookies, fudge and other goodies in the house. Should be enough to last for awhile! Forgot to mention the wine we had with lunch, which will make Mom nice and sleepy. So I figure she will plop herself down in front of the football game and promptly fall asleep, thus giving me a restful Christmas afternoon to read or shop on the computer - my sister-in-law gave me an Amazon gift certificate. Which reminds me, Mom gave me a moth orchid for Christmas. First orchid I've tried, so anybody who has any tips, send them along. Also growing paperwhites this year (usually do amarylis). They are just starting to bloom. Look lovely. However, they are supposed to have a wonderful fragrance and while they do have quite a strong smell, I'm not so sure yet that it's wonderful. Maybe it will improve as they open more, or maybe I will get used to it. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays to all of you and yours.

@ sjmitch Hi, the sink is by Ikea, the single bowl apron front Domsjo. There is also a double bowl apron front and a smaller drop-in without the apron front, all called Domsjo. At the moment it is not featured on the Ikea US website, but that site is hardly ever complete :-( Here the Domsjo is topmounted, because it sits right in the corner, but Brickmanhouse did a fabulous undermount, see the link. HTH, Petra Here is a link that might be useful: Brickmanhouse Kitchen

âÂÂMay your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.â -Neil Caiman, author of American Gods

Happy New Year !! Hope everyone has a happy, healthy gardening year. We've been getting lots of rain here. Weather seems to be only coming up out of the south, with lots of moisture. Glad it's not cold enough for snow, we'd have had a lot of it. I'm trying to patch up the wires running over the top of my deer fencing. I have a bunch of old 20 foot long plastic well pipe that I want to try using to replace the rotted oak posts. I cut them to 12 feet and today went looking for J bolts to hold the wires up on the poles which I intend to wire to the fencing. Can't find them with light weight machine threads. Was hoping to get this done while the temps are high as a test. There's 4 or 5 more rotted posts all oak, that will be coming down soon.