Happy New Year!

Here I sit. The television is off, there is no music playing. It is quiet. For the first time in what feels like months, it is just quiet here except for the sound of Sadie moaning because she's happy and the sound of our pellet stove cranking out the heat! My husband is off playing poker with the boys and even called to make sure it was okay because he felt guilty leaving me home by myself! HA!! He forgets he married an only child and we, my friends, are expert at entertaining ourselves! In fact, if I don't get me some alone time every day, I start to feel sort of overwhelmed and crazed.

No offense, of course, to my family, but I recently visited many of them in Georgia, and BOY! There is just always SOMETHING going on and noise and animals and this one over here and that one over there...Our life here is very quiet and I kinda like it like that!

Now, New Year's is the time for resolutions and new starts and all that crap, right? I have a few obsessions that I'm completely fine with, thank you very much. They are - in no particular order - flip flops, dogs, plants, flowers, flip flops, shoes, earrings, flip flops, the ocean and flip flops. There. I think I got most of them there.

I cannot get enough flip flops! Especially at this time of year! Which is odd, really, because the chances of me slipping on some flip flops right now are about .00000000001% given the temperature and snowiness that are New England winters! But, really? I love flip flops! They remind me that we WILL be warm at some point, that summer WILL arrive aaaaannnnnd the best part about flip flops? They always fit even if you've gained weight and nothing else feels good or looks good on you! They don't ever let you down! Same with earrings! A little color near your face during this drab time of year? Very good for the soul!

So, I didn't just buy flip flops tonight, I discovered this brand called "Sugar." They make THE cutest shoes and boots and lots of them have graphic-y flowers on them! I'm totally into flowers and polka dots on my accessories these days. In fact, I'm wearing polka-dotted socks and a polka-dotted scarf as we speak!

Anyway, here are the boots I HAD to have. And I found them on sale, so that was great!


Aren't they just adorable? Oh, I just love the colors and the flowers and they are happy! I think my feet will feel joyous wearing these!

Sure hope my husband wins that poker game! Momma DON'T need a new pair of shoes but she got some anyway!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Whoops! I guess that's over, isn't it? Well, it really IS looking like Christmas out there! It's snow snow snowing in New England right now. A very pretty blanket of white on everything, even the trees. This is the view from where I sit at my computer.

It's pretty, right? That dolphin sure looks out of place with that scene, though!!

That is a really neato stained glass window that I won at an auction for my own research center when I was the whale lady! It was a really cool event that took place at sunset on the whale watching boat that used to be my home away from home! I spent more hours on that boat than I did at my house sometimes! Anyway, it was a sunset cruse/auction/dinner on the boat. We had a full-on lobster dinner and then my husband was the auctioneer for all these very cool items we had collected for the auction! It was a real hoot - my husband had people bidding against themselves! Hilarious! Anyway, I was really happy to win that dolphin window.

So, back to the subject at hand: SNOW. Lots of it. We were only supposed to get a dusting to maybe 1-2 inches, but it's been coming down steadily since about 11am. Here is what Sadie looked like when I let her out a few minutes ago...Note that her fur is black!


And this is what she looks like now!




She's cute, isn't she? She's really the sweetest dog I've ever met. Never complains, never a bad word for another dog! She loves EVERYONE!! Whimpers when she sees other dogs because she wants to go say hi and make friends! I'll tell you the bizarre story of how she came to be our girl...She had quite the childhood. Would love if she could tell us about it.

So, again, back on subject... SNOW! Look at my car!


And the yard! And the street!



So, farewell, and Merry Christmas! Errrrrr, I mean, Happy New Year!

When is it that we're going somewhere warm??!!!

Yooo Hooo!

So when I first started this thing, my friend, June, over there at Bye, Bye, Pie mentioned this blog and I had a few visitors. Now? Not so much.

In fact, like her husband, Marvin Gardensalad wrote in a guest post yesterday, I appear to be writing this blog for my mom. Hi, Mom! Hope it's warmer in Florida than it is here. Don't know what your weather people are saying about the temperatures here, but they do not have to exaggerate today. It really IS that cold and miserable.

When I walked the dogs earlier it was 17. Like degrees Fahrenheit. 17 Celsius ain't too shabby, but 17 degrees Fahrenheit is not fun. Plus we have lovely gusts of wind which are creating a wind chill of MINUS TWO. Thanks for the blast of cold, Canada! Stop clubbing the seals, eh?

Aside from complaining about the cold, not much else going on here. This week in between Christmas and New Year's Eve is always kinda strange, isn't it? It's this weird limbo week where some people sort of are still working, but then some have it off and it's just strange. I think we should start the New Year on December 26th. Get it all over with in one giant, fell-swoop.

What IS a fell-swoop? Such an odd term.

I will bid you adieu (Bye, Mom!) and leave you with a couple of photos from warmer days on our beloved boaty. If I'm not gardening in the summer, you can find me on our boat. The ocean is still in my blood despite my resignation from the whale biz!

This is our adorable boy dog with a herring in his mouth! We use herring as bait to catch and release striped bass. Doesn't he look so cute with that fishy in his mouth?!!


And here is our dog Lady who decided she really does not like sand sharks! She was very upset when Dan tried to put this fish on the boat! When we catch these small sharks, we also release them. They are caught incidentally when we're out fishing for codfish.

Christmas 2009

Here is our house right now. I'll be taking down the Christmas lights next week, so I wanted to get some photos of the prettiness during the holidays!





I like the wreath this year. I wanted to do something very simple. This is a neato juniper base and i added just pepperberries, birch branches and the maroon bow.



You can see the snow leftover from the storm that came through here on the 20th of December. It's all gone as of today, as we had very warm temperatures yesterday and then it rained today. That's one of the wonderful things about living on the coast - we might get a blizzard, but then the temps tend to moderate and it all goes away. This is very appreciated after growing up in Michigan where the snow comes and comes and never melts until practically May!

How-to With Cut Fleurs

Ok...First, you need the flowers, greens, oasis, clippers and a pot or basket or whatever you want to use that will hold your flower stalks in your soaked oasis block.

Oasis is a brand of floral foam that comes in blocks and can easily be cut to size with a knife. You can find it at most garden centers, floral counters at the grocery store or florists... This is what the brick of oasis looks like:


Make sure the oasis fits snugly in the pot or vase. When I took my flower arranging classes, the teacher had us use floral tape over the top of the foam cross-wise to hold the foam in place. I find that if I cut the oasis big enough it stays put very nicely.

If you want to use a clear vase, make sure you get some flat-leaf greens, like banana leaf or something that can be wrapped around the inside of the vase to disguise the oasis underneath.

So here's what I started with:

Clippers. I really like fiskars. They work well on almost anything unless it's very woody. Then I use more heavy duty clippers.


These are the two pots I used. They have the cut oasis inside, soaked in water.


These are some of the greens I used. They are preserved eucalyptus. One is the seeded eucalyptus, the other is a flat-leaf variety.


Here is some preserved lemon leaf I had from last year and some cute twiggy things that I bought last year.


These are the varieties of flowers I bought. Pink tulips, white lilies, pink alstromeria, white spiky flowers that look like mini-asters, and several green poms.


When you start the arrangment, some people prefer to start with the greens and then add flowers. I do it the other way around! I start with my "focus" flowers in the center. This time, it's the white lilies. When you get the flowers, they generally have many leaves down the stalk. Strip the leaves off the stalk except those up near the flowers themselves. Here is the stalk:


Then here is what they look like after stripping the leaves and cutting them to size:


Next, I added the tulips around the lilies:


One trick I also learned is that assymetry is good. The arrangement should not look perfect and in using odd numbers of flowers, you accomplish that easily. Additionally, this was to be a centerpiece, so it should have a similar look, back to front, side to side. However, I always use odd numbers. There were seven liliies, 11 tulips, etc...

Then, it starts to really come together with the addition of the poms and white spiky asters:


Lastly, I add the greens until it looks full and you can no longer see any of the oasis. Here is the finished product from three angles:




That was the bigger arrangement I did for my husband's step-mom as a surprise. I also made one for our holiday table using the left over flowers. This was about mid-way through doing it:


And here's the finished product...For this one, I used the flowers and the seeded eucalyptus, some lemon leaf and the twiggy things for accents.



Hope you liked them!