Friday, December 09, 2016

Lighting Our First Fire Today, Yes!!!


Yesterday was "Snickerdoodle" day in the kitchen.  Before baking my cookies, I went to town and bought some oranges because one time I had snickerdoodles accented with orange rind bits. Twas a nice touch to one of the more traditional Christmas cookies.


So far, three batches of cookies have been stored for later use. Besides the snickerdoodles (first cookies I ever baked in my 4-H cooking project), I've tried the Betty Crocker caramel brownies and lemon bars. 

Always hoping for my own touch to most any recipe, I added half a bag of butterscotch chips to the brownie mix.  

Messy but YUM, so much so that I'm glad that most of them were hidden because every time I walked through the kitchen the next day more of the reject brownies were missing.  Bill approved. 

I'm hoping to bake a batch a day for a while now that almost all my Christmas cards have gone into the mail.  So far, Bill is approving of that idea. 

My next domestic goal will be to finish my shopping, and this weekend I'll ask Bill to go find me a tree. He's getting better with his selection process every year.  

With luck, next week will involve more baking, a lot of wrapping and the fun (I hope) of decorating the house and the tree for Christmas.

Today, our immediate goal is to be warm. It's darned cold outside, and our wood stove needs repair.  With luck, the technicians will fix it this morning. A few glitches involving replacement parts have put off lighting our first fire in the stove for the winter.

And, yes, our toilet seats have been mighty cold in spite of the heating units in different rooms. We've also been wearing several layers of clothes, from top to bottom, around the house.  

So, we haven't exactly frozen to death, but it will be very nice to have that stove putting out its usual warm, toasty feeling. 

This morning we're getting a little breezy snow.  More than likely it will stick around, thanks to the single digit/teen overnight temperatures. 



My Lily mare will be very glad when the snow gets deep enough to provide a cushion for her tender hooves. 

I feel sorry for her at morning and night as she slowly picks her way across the frozen mud ridges and ruts all around the barnyard.  

In years past, we have not had so much mud freezing prior to winter, so this frozen surface without snow is a whole new challenge for the horses. 

Anywho, December moves along, and we're both keeping track on a daily basis how close we're getting to Dec. 21 when the days start getting longer again.  That will be nice. 

Not much else new. Just a snowy, cold Friday morning, and with luck and a fire soon to be burning in our newly repaired wood stove, it could get a whole lot warmer and much more comfortable inside this house. Nice!

Happy Friday. 

1 comment:

Helen said...

Tell Bill the Lions Club has some trees at their Lion's den at Lakeview Park - trees were donated to them and they are passing them along to the community for a donation to Toys for Tots. They look like really nice trees.