Ornament of the Day

 

According to Google, ornaments in the shape of a honeybee are hung on Christmas trees, as a symbol for good luck or prosperity to come.

A Christmas present from my sister.  I almost threw it out with the gift wrap but discovered it when a lump of tissue paper felt heavy.

Santa was good to us, bringing us mostly small, consumable gifts, which is how we like it.

We hosted a potluck on Friday (Christmas Eve's Eve). It was a fun evening with 11 guests.

On Christmas we were invited to our friends for a delicious dinner.  Though it's unseasonably warm out with no snow in the forecast, it's been very windy.  We went for a short walk, but it was not very pleasant.

Out Christmas Carolling

 

Christmas is Coming

 

We drove out to our bluebird route to get a pine Christmas tree.  We walked around for 5 minutes to find the perfect tree.

We have inherited a few more pieces of furniture so finding a spot for the tree was difficult.  We also inherited some Christmas ornaments so it took a full day to decorate it.

Finishing touch. Leo places the angel on the top.

Now it forms part of our house light display.  Note the lack of snow.

The Advent wreath is made, 

And the wreaths are on the doors.

I had a bit of a Christmas baking disaster. I inherited my mother's Joy of Cooking and decided to bake her recipe for Stollen.  But the yeast I used was too old and it didn't rise, so I added more yeast, then it overproofed and I wound up with

Six loaves that rose horizontally rather than vertically.  So we are working our way through 6 loaves of 1 inch high stollen.  Tastes just like my mom's though.

I started over with brand new yeast and just to be sure I used my own recipe. Everything turned out fine.

We've had a leucistic house fich visiting our feeder.

And yesterday a ruffled grouse ran into our window and then sat in a tree for a few minutes to recover.

Yes, they are both blurry, taken through the window.

Long Time No See

Not dead, just not up to much.

 In November we went out for sushi with friends.

They finally reinstalled the pedestrian bridge that washed out when the creek valley flooded so were able to do our circular hike through the meadows on the far side of the creek.

Our first snowfall didn't arrive till December 2.  It didn't last long, and we are expecting a green Christmas.

 

Sybille and Dave dropped by on their way back from Turkey and we went for a walk at Scout Island.

Leo spotted an ermine while running in the creek valley.