Posted tagged ‘Christmas lights’
November 25, 2016
Dinner was delicious yesterday, and I even brought home a doggy bag so they’ll be a dinner of leftovers this evening. The restaurant was bustling when we arrived but quieted down as we sat and dined.
The day is cloudy as it has been seemingly forever. I don’t remember the last time I saw the sun. The temperature has been in the high 40’s, but without the sun, it seems colder. The trees are bare with only a few brown leaves clinging to the ends of branches. Winter is coming with all its starkness.
Some houses have their outside colored lights lit, and I saw a few Christmas trees through living room windows as we drove home last night. One strand of lights on my deck rail comes on every night. It is my way to beat back the darkness, but within the next week or two, all my outside Christmas lights will be put up on the fence, the gate and the deck to brighten the night. I need to buy a few wreaths, one for the door, one for the front gate and one for the fence off the deck.
Gracie and Maddie are napping. Neither of them was good company last night. They had no problem sleeping the night away. Gracie woke me up this morning by tapping the mattress near my head with her paw. That dog has no patience. I, of course, got up to let her outside. I don’t toy with a dog needing out.
I will avoid going out today because of the shopping crowd and the uninviting weather. Tomorrow I’ll do some local shopping for small stocking type gifts. Sunday will be dump day. I didn’t get to sleep until after 3:30 this morning. I have no idea why this sudden insomnia. I entertained myself by watching the new Anne of Green Gables, Star Trek Deep Space Nine and by looking through catalogues and magazines. I cut out recipes and dog-eared pages with interesting stories. I found a few neat things to order. I like shopping in my comfy clothes from my warm house.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Anne of Green Gables, brown leaves, Christmas lights, Christmas trees, cloudy, dinner, insomnia, leftovers, napping, Shopping, stark, wreaths
Comments: 4 Comments
December 14, 2015
The rain is coming and should be here by the afternoon. It is welcomed as we are down from our usually rain amounts. The summer was pretty dry. Gracie and I were out early because we scoped out the kennel where she’ll be staying. The owners are quite nice and Gracie was on her best behavior. On the way home we stopped at the vet’s where Gracie got a shot against kennel cough and had her nails trimmed.
I was out the other night and meandered home so I could have a short see the lights ride. It is amazing how many houses have lights, the most I’ve seen in a long while. My street with only eight houses, including one which is empty all winter, is ablaze of lights. The houses are beautifully decorated some with white lights, some with colored lights and others, like mine, with a combination. We’re talking fences, wreaths, trees and houses lit for the season. The house at the end of the street has a train lit up in its front yard. Blinking lights are wrapped around a tree, and they look as if they’re floating in air as the tree trunk is too dark to see. They have four kids who must be so excited to see their house decked out for the holiday. The other house with so many different lights has stars of light hanging from their tree. They have a tree of colored lights in their front yard. They too have four kids who must be delighted.
I remember how excited I was when my dad put the outside lights on the front bushes. They were the big bulbs which shone so brightly and were always so hot to the touch. After finishing outside, he’d find the window candles and tape them to the sills. The bases were made of plastic and had a tendency to be top heavy because of the bulb, always an orange bulb, so tape was a necessity.
At Christmas time the lights shine brightly against the dark of winter. They seem hopeful and remind us that winter will end. The days will get longer. We’ll all soon be back in the light.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bushes lit, Christmas lights, colored lights, dog shots, house lights, orange bulbs, orange lights, rain, Train, tree lights, trimmed nails, vets, white lights, window lights
Comments: 10 Comments
December 13, 2015
Today is a grey day but still warmer than it should be. Last night my house was ablaze with Christmas lights. My neighbor from across the street called to say she loves the lights and can’t stop looking at them from her window. Most of the house has colored lights, but a giant white star sits atop the fence to the backyard and strands of white flow from the star. I love that star.
When I was a kid, we had turkey for Christmas dinner. With it we had creamed onions, mashed potatoes, stuffing and another vegetable or two. Over time my mother changed the menu. We’d have some sort of a roast, fresh vegetables and always those mashed potatoes. We’d eat dinner in the dining room instead of the kitchen. First came the festive table cloth which changed from year to year. My mother and I would then set the table with her Christmas dishes. The centerpiece was made of boxwood and decorated with red balls and ribbons. The middle of the table groaned under the weight of all the dishes. We’d pass each dish and fill our plates. We’d compliment my mother on how delicious everything tasted. The mashed potatoes and gravy never had lumps. The vegetables were just right. It was every time a perfect feast.
I had been my mother’s sous chef for dinner and after dinner I was her cleaner upper. My mother would stay in the kitchen, dry the dishes and keep me company. We’d put on Christmas music. My mother loved the Carpenters Christmas, Frank Sinatra’s and Andy Williams. It was a treasured time for me. My mother and I chatted the whole time. Everyone else was in the living room, but they’d appear every now and then for some more desserts. The table was filled with choices: whoopie pies, cookies or candies, all made by my mother and me.
My mother made Christmas a joy. We all honor her by doing the same.
Categories: Musings
Tags: centerpiece, Christmas dinner, Christmas dishes, Christmas lights, colored lights, dreary day, red balls and ribbon, warm day, white lights
Comments: 13 Comments
December 12, 2015
The Christmas lights are going up right now. Skip is hauling the boughs out of the cellar and putting them on the front fence. I will no longer have the darkest house in the neighborhood.
We’re still in that warm spell. Today’s high here on the cape is supposed to be 59˚. Last winter was crazy because of all the snow. This winter has its own brand of craziness with the warmth of December.
I bought some ribbon candy the other day, the thin kind, the sort which carries a whole bunch of memories. When I was a kid, we didn’t have all the choices of candy decked out for the holidays that we have now. Boxes of chocolates were around, but they were more for gifts than for our consumption. We had lots of hard candy. Some of it came in a box similar to the animal crackers box including the string. The boxes I remember best were blue and had the Three Kings and the star on each side. I liked the peppermint, the cinnamon and the green ones which tasted of spearmint. My mother also bought hard candy for the house. I remember the candy would stick together in the bag, but she’d put them out anyway. We’d pick through to get our favorites. I loved spearmint the best.
The thin ribbon candy stuck to our back teeth so we used to click our teeth together to hear the sound of the candy, a sort of thud. I liked the green ones best and then the red.
We used to get lollipops in our stockings. They were the see through types made in a mold and were mostly Christmas trees. It took ages and ages of licking to finish them so sometimes we’d get to the point where we couldn’t lick one more time. We were done. They’d get tossed.
I buy my sister thin ribbon candy every year. It is a connection to all of our Christmases. It is a tradition.
Categories: Musings
Tags: boxes of hard candy, Christmas candy, Christmas lights, cinnamon, decorating, hard candies, lollipops, peppermint, ribbon candy, spearming, warm day
Comments: 24 Comments
November 27, 2015
Dinner was wonderful. The plate was tottering under the weight of all the food. There was even enough to bring home for me to have leftovers tonight, a whole meal of leftovers.
The restaurant was already lit for the festive season, and on the drive home we also saw houses bright with lights, some in white and others multi-colored. I always feel like a kid when it comes to Christmas lights. Even alone in the car I ooh and aah. Every year I take Gracie, and we go on a see the lights trip, just as I did with my family when I was growing up. I remember my brother was at one back seat window, and I was at the other. We’d yell out, “There’s another one,” and all heads would swivel to see the house. We had favorite houses and favorite streets. A few streets in Saugus had a neighborhood competition. All the houses were bright with strings of colored lights from those large outside bulbs we had when I was a kid. The colors were true and they were beautiful. We’d drive through the streets with our mouths wide in wonder. Nobody had to say a word as every house was lit. Our heads went back and forth quickly so we wouldn’t miss a thing.
My hometown fire station had a Santa climbing a ladder to the top of the bell tower. The town hall down the street from the fire station was out-lined in lights. The square had lights strung across the main street from building to building. One house, a couple of blocks from mine, had the whole house outlined in lights including every window and door. Lights also ran across the top of the fence surrounding their yard. I remember they had collies running in the yard. My dad decorated the bushes in the front of the house, and we had Christmas lights in the windows, the ones you turned on and off by twisting the bulbs. If I close my eyes, I can see the picture window with a light on each side and a light with five bulbs in the middle. I remember the bulbs were orange.
I was always excited to see those lights they were the signal that Christmas was creeping nearer and nearer.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Christmas lights, leftovers, see the lights drive, Thanksgiving dinner
Comments: 20 Comments
February 22, 2015
Last night it poured. I could hear snow and icicles sliding off the house to the deck. Even the dog woke up a couple of times, listened, heard nothing else and went back to sleep. Today has been a medley of rain and snow and rain again. My street is a sheet of ice. This morning I went across the street to get my yesterday’s mail and started to slide. I caught myself but the going and coming was so slippery I had to keep stopping to regain my balance. Finally I got to a snow bank and the walking was easy. That I didn’t fall is a miracle and soon enough the pilgrims will arrive to this holy spot.
Today is above freezing but tonight will be in the 20’s, the start of another cold trend. Tomorrow night will be 2˚.
When I was young, I thought of snow as a wonder. I loved to stand outside with my face raised to the sky and my eyes wide opened as I watched the snow fall. The individual shape of each flake reminded me of the doilies on the backs of my grandmother’s chairs. As the snow fell, the lawns and branches would get a light covering, but I could still see the tops of the grasses taller than the snow. The roads looked wet and the snow took longer to cover them.
Newly fallen snow undisturbed by cars or people is beautiful. Tall trees alone stand above the white carpet. Everything else is covered. My favorites are always the fir trees. They have snow but they also have greenery, mostly at the ends of their branches.
The strand of Christmas lights I didn’t take down from a section of my deck rail shine brightly every night. In the storm to end all storms, though they were covered in snow, I could see the different colors shining through. They looked as if they were covered by a white veil. Each night the little heat from those lights melted a bit of the snow and the bulbs’ colors got brighter. There is now no snow left on the rail. Tonight the lights will shine in all their brilliance and push back a bit of the darkness.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 2˚, Christmas lights, doilies, fir trees, freezing, icicles, icy road, light covering of snow, newly fallen snow, rain and snow, sliding, snowflakes
Comments: 10 Comments
January 8, 2015
I’m running late. I changed my bed, showered, shopped a bit on line and watched CNN. There was no urgency in getting things done. In due time I thought. The tree is still in the stand, bare of Christmas and sitting in the middle of the living room. I tried to get it out of the stand myself, but I couldn’t. It is the only glimmer of Christmas left, and later today it will be gone. My outside lights continue to be lit each night. I am loath to return to darkness.
It was so cold yesterday I brought the bird feeders into the house to fill them. My sister thought it strange and said I should have bundled up and done it outside. I fear the cold has warped her thinking. There I’d be out on the deck layered and wearing mittens and fumbling to get the seed into the feeders. Getting dressed to go outside would have taken longer than the task.
Today is sunny, but the light is muted, even chilly looking. I am not going out. This will be the second day in a row of my self-imposed exile from the world. I have all of life’s essentials: books, TV and Christmas cookies.
Last night I cooked chicken. I rifled through my herbs and spices and found one I hadn’t used, Caribbean Calypso Spice. It came from Penzey’s Spices, an occasion of sin for me. I’m sure a few of you are shaking your heads and wondering what in heck is an occasion of sin. I’ve known since childhood as the nuns were diligent in teaching us to avoid an occasion of sin, “Any person, place, or thing that of its nature or because of human frailty can lead one to do wrong, thereby committing sin.” When I was younger, the list was long. Now that I’m older, I don’t even think I have a list. I live life with abandonment and am better for it.
I am wearing my new sweatshirt. It says Doctor Who and has a picture of the TARDIS. I am also wearing new slippers. I am warm and comfortable. I just ate a couple of cookies. I’m thinking this is a bit like paradise.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bird feeders, changing the bed, Chicken, Christmas lights, Christmas tree, cold, darkness, herbs and spices, life with abandonment, mittens, occasion of sin, Paradise, Penzey's Spices, self-imposed exile
Comments: 10 Comments
December 21, 2014
The Winter Solstice is official at 6:03 EST tonight, the longest night and the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere. We are moving back to the light.
It always seemed unfair somehow when darkness came so early. We had the street light curfew so winter afternoons for playing outside were short, and if it was cold or snowy or windy, we sometimes didn’t go out at all. We played games, watched TV, did our homework and read. The afternoons felt endless. Supper always seemed to be late, deeper into the early evening, but it wasn’t. The early darkness fooled us.
Today is the same as yesterday, a grey day, and it’s cold so I’m glad I don’t have to go anywhere. The inside Christmas lights are lit so the house looks bright. Multi-colored lights are my favorites for the tree though I do put a strand of white lights around the trunk, starlights in the middle of the tree. My window lights are white candles, bright white candles, which shine in a circle of light above the bulbs.
It is easy to create beauty this time of year. The tree is in my living room in the same spot it always is. Sometimes I stand at the edge of the room just to look at it. I’m always taken by how lovely it looks, a bit of bias I suspect. My dining room is lit by the window candles and by the small tree in the corner. The table runner is bright red and green. The centerpiece is a tree made of blocks. Each row is a word or phrase spelled out in the blocks. All of them have to do with Christmas. It was once my mother’s. My kitchen has a red pepper bunch of lights and a string of scallop shell lights. I never mind going from room to room to turn them on. Their light is welcome especially tonight.
Categories: Musings
Tags: block centerpiece, Christmas lights, cold, early darkness, grey day, pepper lights, scallop shell lights, shell lights, street light curfew, the longest night and the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere, window candles, Winter solstice
Comments: 12 Comments
December 6, 2014
The rain started last night and continued into this morning. The day is dark, the sky a pale grey. It’s a stay at home day. I’m thinking I’ll do my Christmas cards and maybe bring up a few decorations from the cellar. Last night I was able to get all the outside lights to work with the timers. One comes on just a few minutes later than the other, but I can live with that. My street looks beautiful as so many houses are decorated with lights. One house has a lighted train car on its lawn which looks as if it’s moving as the lights flash around the wheel.
When I was a kid, I didn’t care about the weather except for snow. I remember getting excited watching the first few flakes. They were usually small and took their time falling to the ground. Every kid wanted those small flakes to get bigger and multiply to cover the ground with inches of snow. It wasn’t just for a snow day but for the fun the snow would bring. We could make caves, have snowball fights and go sledding down our street, a giant hill. The TV didn’t list closed school announcements in those days. The fire department blew their no school signal around seven, and it could be heard all over town. I swear the shouts of joy right after could also be heard all over town. If the snow was still heavily falling, we waited inside until my mother would let us out. I remember when the snow finally stopped and the sun came out. The world was at its most beautiful. The snow was untouched, no footprints, no car tracks. The sun glistened off the snow and lights twinkled and shined from the tops of drifts as if diamonds had been strewn about.
It didn’t take long before the snow had footprints and the marks of sled rails. The first few sled marks were rusty but the snow quickly cleaned them. We all had wooden sleds with metal steering in the front you could turn left and right. You took off running and jumped stomach down on the sled, legs from the knees down in the air and you hoped for the ride of your life.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Christmas lights, lighted train car, no school announcements, rain, Sledding, Snow, snow day, snow fun, snowball fights, the sun, twinkling drifts
Comments: 12 Comments
December 4, 2014
Yesterday I had a vision of the post-apocalyptic world, and very few had survived. There were only four cars at the dump, a miracle as it was closed for the two days prior to yesterday. I went to Benny’s for lights and cords, and it was near empty. I was almost tempted to buy a million batteries for when the lights go out. In front of my coffee-sandwich store there were several parking places right in front. I was the only customer at the counter. The roads were nearly empty, and I had no trouble crossing two lanes of traffic. It was cold out yesterday, and it did start to rain but not until I was nearly home so the weather wasn’t a deterrent. Where were the people?
This morning an uninvited cat was sitting outside on my front steps. It looked quite at home. I was upstairs as was Gracie. That was a good thing because Gracie doesn’t like cats other than her own, and she’s not even sure about them. Gracie would have gone through the glass to get at that cat daring to invade her yard. I made noise and the cat just turned and looked at me and didn’t move. Finally I went down the stairs halfway and the cat scooted. Gracie never saw it. Catastrophe averted.
My outside Christmas lights look lovely. I added some white lights on top of the fence which look as if they are emanating from the giant star, and I outlined my sled and the skates hanging from it in colored lights. I put ball ornaments in a basket on the front step. My neighbor called last night to tell me how wonderful my house looks. Now I just have to get inside decorated. That will be a multi-day project but one which brings me joy and even wonder as I remember the history of the ornaments especially the ones from our family tree.
This afternoon I will finish the deck lights and call it a day. That book is waiting.
Categories: Musings
Tags: a bit of shopping, Christmas lights, colored lights, decorations, post-apocalyptic world, stars, the dump, uninvited cat, white lights
Comments: 16 Comments
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