A friend of mine is traveling in Norway right now. She climbed a mountain and was able to capture this beautiful photo of the northern lights. Amazing!
Happy Holidays!
Traveling – Norway… Northern Lights
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Merry Christmas – The Holiday Puzzle!
It’s the Christmas holiday, it’s cold and snowy. Time for a holiday puzzle, right! I found this one with the vintage red van, made me think of California, surfers, and Lake Tahoe.
At first, I wasn’t enjoying this puzzle. A few things… The puzzle pieces are small, they don’t stick together, so if you want to move a group of them, they all fall apart. Then they have some strange shapes that don’t click in place, they just sit side by side. Some pieces had me fooled, they looked like they were for the border, but NO, they go in the middle somewhere. Chuckling, I guess that’s why we do puzzles, we want to be challenged, right.
There was a huge surprise. I found three special pieces. The cardinal, the snowman and a reindeer!
A special THANK YOU to fellow blogger, Danny Watts: Chronicles of a Fountain Pen for recommending the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. I’ve been listening to the audio of the first book in the series.The narrator, Orlagh Cassidy is fabulous! What a wonderful story!!
Five more days, then Christmas Eve!
Got to focus, get the puzzle done. I might be on book 2 at this rate.
Happy Holidays!
Special Christmas Gift — Tea time!
Every year, my sister and I send each other a little Christmas present. This year, she sent me some tea cups. They are so pretty. By chance, at the Antique Shop, I found this tea pot. I loved the bright colors.
The shop owner was a good saleswoman. She happened to walk by and saw me analyzing the tea pot and said, “You are the second person who was looking at that tea pot.”
I smiled and thought, maybe she saw me 10 minutes ago holding it, and didn’t realize it was me. Of course, MAYBE another person WAS looking at MY tea pot. She sold me on it. I couldn’t let someone else have it, I would be thinking and thinking about it on my long 3 hour drive.
Don’t they always say, “Someone else’s junk is another person’s treasure!”
Since the weather is so dreary now, wet and rainy, when I look at the tea cups and tea pot, I smile. My sister is the greatest! Those tea cups are beautiful, they remind me of Spring time.
Time to make tea!
Holiday Decorations – Great marketing idea!
This was an interesting Christmas display. I had a funny marketing idea. The only one missing from this photo is Goldilocks. They could put these three bears in the bedding department with each bear standing by a mattress. The baby bear could still be hiding behind the Xmas tree and find Goldilocks in HIS bed.
The marketing message would read…??
I have to say, I would probably try out the three beds!
We need some humor in sales!
Emoji’s… What do these mean?
I saw these two emoji’s at the store. They are bag clips. No one knows what they mean?
The one on the top left, picking his nose? YUCK!
The one on bottom right, looks like he’s up for trouble.
Have you seen them before? Any clues?
Antique Shopping
This weekend I was driving home from Michigan and I saw an Antique Shop. It was on the other side of the road, I had to make one of those “quick” decisions. Stop or keep going. I decided to take the extra time, stop in.
Glad I did. I found this painting. I really liked the vibrancy of the blue color of the lake with sailboats.There were a lot of interesting things to see.
Some booths had such old things. I immediately thought of a movie set director needing some props for a WWII movie or something like that.
Antique shops are interesting by area too. What you find in Indiana would be different from California, Texas or New York for example.
An enjoyable outing.
Do you NEED that much cheese?
Ever since I can remember, I’ve bought this parmigiano reggiano (parmesan) cheese from Costco. We’re Italian, it lasts a long time and we like to have it on hand. So, my daughters grew up thinking nothing of it. Doesn’t every house have parmesan?
UNTIL… my daughter’s boyfriend opened her fridge and saw this HUGE hunk of cheese and acted horrified. Why do you need that big piece of cheese, it’s ONLY you? What are you doing with that?
My daughter said her first reaction was to become defensive. Grab the parmesan. YES, protect the parmesan! She started to explain, than thought, “WAIT, it’s normal, what’s HIS problem! Why shouldn’t I have this?”
I didn’t know this happened until the other day. I was heading to Costco and asked my daughter if she needed some parmigiano reggiano cheese. It used to be around $12.99, now it is $17.99. We need to treat it like GOLD. Inflation is real.
That’s when she said, “I have a funny story to tell you about my hunk of cheese.”
We both laughed!! I said I was PROUD of her for defending the parmesan.
Lately, I’ve been in a pasta mood. I found this pasta noodle, I love it. It’s called, “Fusilli Corti Bucati.” If I go for a different noodle, other than spaghetti, I go for the bow ties or orecchiette. THESE are so wiggly, just a fun noodle shape.
If I had this noodle when I was young, I could see myself flinging one of the noodles at my twin brother. When he would get angry, I’d say, “It’s not my fault, the noodle flew off my fork!” Now, that would be FUNNY! We did goofy stuff like that.
So, here’s to pasta, Italian heritage and defending parmesan!!
We ALL have our pantry staples, right! What do you have that we might laugh at?
You find something… Return it… Expect a reward?
This was an interesting story in the news. Did you hear about it? A man found a check at a train station addressed to HARIBO for 4.8 million in Germany. He called to tell them. They told him it was a cross check, tear it up. Then as a “thank you,” sent him six bags of gummi candies.
Now, people are rushing to judge the reward. Technically, it wasn’t a reward, because to Haribo, check could not be cashed; however, as an “Appreciate the call, they sent some gummi candies.”
This made me think. WHAT should a reward be for doing a good deed? Should anything be expected?
Since there was no reward, will this discourage people from doing the “right thing” in the future? Being kind, trying to return something takes effort.
My daughter has found things, returned them. No reward, a big “thank you!” One was a driver’s license, the address on it, wasn’t far away, so drove it to the person’s home. The lady said, “Thank you.” A year later, she still had my daughter’s email. She wrote to her, saying, “It’s the holidays, thinking of you, wanted to thank you again for returning my driver’s license.” No reward or gift, a thank you.
Curious, what do other people think? If someone found something of YOURS, returned it, would you give them something OR just express great gratitude?
When eyes are watching you!
I walked in the store to buy some milk. Look what I saw. This cat pillow alone on the shelf. While I don’t have a cat, it caught my attention. The shape, the eyes. It’s fun!
I wonder if a dog might attack it thinking it was a “real” cat. I don’t have a dog either, so cannot test it out.
Sometimes in our busy, rush, rush, rush day, we were meant to STOP and SMILE!
What’s made YOU stop and slow down lately?
What’s for dinner tonight? No curry, we go Italian!
What do you do when you can’t find your favorite curry?
This S&B Golden Curry is from childhood. My father had traveled to Japan many times and ate this curry. He would get in moods for it. He also liked the Fukujinzuke pickled vegetables, they came in a can. He was insistent on eating those with the curry.
In those days, you could only find this curry in Chinatown. So, off to Chinatown we would go. We loved exploring the shops and learning to eat with chopsticks.
Well, this just means no curry. Maybe there is a supply chain issue again?
So, GUESS WHAT!
I’m going Italian. YES, I’m making bolognese sauce. Hopefully, the store isn’t out of tomato sauce.
If they are, I’ll keep going around the world. Maybe tacos or matzo ball soup? What do you think?
What’s your speciality? Having trouble finding ingredients?
Brilliant Viewpoint 