The Ghosts of Christmas Past

Wow, this is the last day of November in the year 2010. One month to go before another year has marked it's passing.

As I was going through the boxes stored in the closet for Christmas decorations, I ran across some old photos granny had saved though the years.

This vintage Christmas picture was discovered in my great grandmother Ophelia's scrapbook.

I'm not sure how old that one is but these were taken in the 1960's:

This is my brother Michael and Me.


This one is my brother Michael, me and my brother Mark.


I remember the snowy walks to school in December, the school Christmas programs and me singing Christmas carols in the chorus. I remember the school Christmas parties and the exchanging of gifts under our class tree. One year we crafted Christmas trees by folding pages of old Reader's Digests, painting them green and shaking glitter over them. They looked so pretty!

Back then Christmas wasn't offensive to anyone. It was a time of excitement, goodwill and love. It brought out the best in all of us and most of all, it brought hope.

The Holidays Are Here!

I got a jump on my Thanksgiving cooking today.

The turkey is baked and the dressing is too.


Time to get the pumpkin pie into the oven and later the sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Mmmmm....

Ray is off work until monday. We plan to stay close to home and keep warm.

Rag Quilt

After fighting a few painful days, (they happen when the weather changes), I finally finished the first of several planned rag quilts.

This one is a country patchwork of calicos and ginghams.






I'm working on a matching pillow to go with it.
Looks like a lot of people are making rag quilts for sale now so I've decided to give this one as a gift. I can't share who it is in case they may be reading this blog, but I have a feeling they're going to be surprised.

Results

Just got a call from the dog warden. He asked me if I'd noticed the dogs were gone. I told him I'd given up and focused on other things. He told me he did take two of them but one remains with the neighbors inside. It seems one of the children begged to keep it and promised it would stay in the house. If it went outside, it would be on a leash. I'm happy with that as long as they keep their word.
At last we can have some peace. I know the cats will be happy too.

What I Owe My Pastor

We owe a lot to them.
Such as…

• Respect. I owe my pastor respect as the ambassador of
God sent to teach me a better way of living.

• Affection. I owe my pastor affection, that he/she may
be strengthened by the knowledge that the members of
the church he is trying to serve are knit with him in the
bonds of holy love and unity.

• Trust. I owe my pastor trust, that he/she may be free
to serve the church unhampered by criticism and faultfinding.

• Prayer. I owe it to my pastor to pray for him/her each
day that God may bless him/her and make his/her service
a blessing to everyone with whom he/she comes in
contact.

• Protection. I owe to my pastor the protection of kindly
silence by refraining from repeating the slander or
unkind gossip that would burden him/her and prevent
him/her from doing his/her best work.

• Time. I owe my pastor enough of my time to help him/
her in his/her work, when and where he/she needs me.

• Encouragement. I owe my pastor encouragement
when vexations and annoyances make his/her work difficult,
or when he/she feels that his/her work is not
progressing as it should.

• Appreciation. I owe my pastor a kindly word of appreciation
when his/her sermons are especially helpful to me.

• Attention. I owe my pastor the courtesy of attention
when I go to church that he/she may not be annoyed
and troubled by seeing from my careless, inattentive actions
that he/she is not holding my interest.

• Love. I owe it to my pastor to overlook any trivial flaw
or personal peculiarity that is merely a mannerism of
speech or action and in no way hinders his/her work.

• Gratitude. I owe it to my pastor to remember gratefully
the many times he/she has helped me to bear some trial,
and the precious outpouring of his/her sympathy that
strengthened and helped me when some loved one entered the valley of the shadow.

I found this online in an old church news letter and thought about the wisdom found within it.


Ephesians 2:8-9
8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Hmmm....

Well, it looks like it's going to take a supoena to get the neighbor to do the right thing. So after the holidays, and once the new county attorney is in place, I'll be meeting with him along with our county judge executive. The dog warden drove by today, but the dogs were in hiding it seemed. Once he was out of sight, back into my yard they came chewing on some more garbage.
I love animals and hate the thought of any being destroyed, but the owner refuses to keep them up and out of mischief. I'm afraid it's only going to be a matter of time before someone is bitten, but I've done all I can do for now.

We called a fence contractor and was given an estimate of $5600 to chain link fence our property. Who has that kind of money in this economy? So it seems every solution is met with an obstacle of some sort.

It's time to get focused on other fun things like Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping.

I've been working on a pretty rag quilt in pretty ginghams and calicos. I've got it half finished. I plan to put it on Etsy for sale. I opened a shop there the other day and once I have a few things for sale, I'll post a link so you can see what I've made.

Dangerous Dogs

We have a neighbor who doesn't care what it means to be a good one. He owns a pack of three dogs that have become, not only a nusiance, but a danger to others. We called the police saturday morning when they threatened our neighbor across the street. The dispatcher said he'd see if he had an officer available, but no one ever came. I did get some pics of what he went through.




In the last pic he was picking up gravel to defend himself.

He was across the street from the neighbor who owns the dogs and yelled for the owner to call off his dogs, but the neighbor never came out.

On November 2, 2010, the dogs threatened a woman with a small child walking down the street. You can't see the child with her as she's being hidden by the bushes.

Again the owner never did a thing.

On November 1, 2010, they threatened another neighbor walking down the road.



Again the neighbor did nothing to help that man.

They carry their owner's garbage to our yard and littler it daily.


Again the neighbor does nothing about that either.
I know now why we have so many laws. The ignorant need to be made to be good neighbors.

A Short Outing

I managed to get out of the house for a few minutes on saturday. The annual craft show was up at the elementary school. There were about 20 booths full of primitive crafts as well as others. I found a picture I simply had to have. It's by folk artist Billy Jacobs, called "Grandma's House".

It looked just like the "old home place". That's what my grandfather called his parent's farm. He bought it after his mother died and we used to have family reunions and Easter egg hunts there.

The huge oak with the tire swing was just about in the same spot too. "Pappaw" used to push me in that swing for, what seemed like, hours. When you're five years old everything looks a lot bigger and time seems to move a lot slower too.

I remember one instance when pappaw was hitching up a huge, white work horse to a wagon. That horse looked as big as that two-story farm house. I was half scared out of my wits at first sight of that horse. I remember running around to the back of the house and into the kitchen where granny was making sandwiches. She gave me a big hug and told me I had nothing to worry about. Turns out she was right.

My dad and uncles on both sides of the family had gathered to help pappaw cut tobacco that year. I begged to get a ride on the wagon as they chopped and placed those huge leaves in the back. I got to ride one row before I was lifted off and was told to go help granny.

As I look at that painting, the memories keep flooding back. Now you can understand why it means so much. :)

I Did My Part Today

We just got back home from the poll where we did our civic duty and voted. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary and there were only a few people in line ahead of us.
I'm hoping for a conservative majority taking back the Senate and House today. We have too many communists that have taken over the Democratic Party and hopefully, the Republicans will have learned by now that Americans are conservative by nature and historically vindictive if we feel ignored and talked down to. Change is coming and this time it's going to be change that works. If it isn't, we'll fix that the next time around.
There's a lot wrong with the country and both parties are at fault. We've let them run over us, mock us and ignore us. We've let them pander to their power base and run us into bankruptcy. We've had enough.