January thaw

My new blog photo was taken in January of 2007. We are currently experiencing a January thaw, the temperature today is 50 degrees and it's raining. Much of our snow has melted. Although the snow is beautiful, I prefer driving on bare roads and not shoveling. So, here's hoping the snow stays away for awhile, although I doubt that will happen. Wishing everyone a very happy new year with gardens full of flowers.

Chocolate Yule Log

I made this cake last week for a birthday. It's just a chocolate cake roll with a cream cheese filling.  I wanted to decorate it but not with the traditional meringue or marzipan mushrooms. While flipping through my recipe books for ideas, I came across the peanut butter ball (or buckeye ball) recipe and thought - if you can shape the peanut butter mixture into balls, why not mushrooms and mice? It worked great! I also flattened some of the mixture and cut out leaves. Everything was dipped in white chocolate. I sprinkled green sugar on the leaves before the chocolate hardened and put mini chocolate chips and dried cranberries on the mice. With the mushrooms, I dusted them with cocoa powder after the chocolate had hardened. Mouse tails were painted onto the cake with chocolate and red cinnamon candies are the holly berries.
I've decided to try this again with other cakes making other decorations from the peanut butter. A springtime or summer cake could be made shaping and coloring the chocolate like flowers. The possibilities are endless!!

Are you ready?

Are you tired of hearing this question? Are you ready?  It doesn't matter if we're ready, Christmas is coming. It won't wait until we have our house decorated, shopping done and wrapped, baking done, cards sent out, etc. etc. etc.  I decided this year I am not stressing over anything. What gets done, gets done. No longer do I strive for the "perfect" Christmas. Our 2 trees are  smaller this year, due to a very old cat who likes to spray. So our trees are up on tables and I actually like them that way. I was able to set my village up under one of our trees instead of moving all my houseplants out of a bay window to set my village up there. 

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas, stress free and full of happy family memories.

A day in the life of a Christmas tree farm

A day in the life of a tree farm - this season started with a lot of rain and mud. Then it snowed, making everything pretty. Now it's raining so it will go back to mud. Then it's supposed to freeze, which will turn everything to ice. Then snow on top of the ice.  We've had everything except sun!

Thank goodness for the Gator - it goes through mud and snow!

 A pre-cut tree being carried up to the baler

 Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree - how much snow is on your branches.  The kids love to see their tree being shaken. It's extra special if a bird nest flies out. The guys doing the shaking aren't too thrilled with snow filled trees. Today it's raining, they will be soaked.

 This was 2 years ago, Santa goes around Oswego Town every year on the fire truck and they stopped at the tree farm to see the kids.

Wreaths, wreaths, and more wreaths

It's my busiest time of the year, I've turned into the "wreath lady" for a few weeks. My brother owns a Christmas tree farm and I am the wreath maker. I've been at it for a couple of weeks now and I've neglected my blog. Today I am using a vacation day to go out to the tree farm and cut more boughs (in the pouring rain) and get ready for my Girl Scout meeting tonight. We will be making fresh evergreen arrangements with residents of a senior ladie's home. I enjoy creating wreaths but I miss out on having time to decorate my house and all that fun stuff!  I hope you enjoy my photos of some of my creations. I had thought of doing a giveaway - sending a wreath to the lucky winner, but decided I just don't have time.

Leaves, leaves, and more leaves

The leaves are down, raked, shredded, and spread around some plants and heaped on the compost pile.  Who remembers jumping into huge piles of leaves as kids? We had 2 large maple trees in our yard and an older lady, 2 houses down, also had 2 large trees. We'd rake all our leaves into a pile and then rake her leaves and somehow get them up to our house.  I don't remember how we accomplished that.  Do kids today realize how much fun a pile of leaves is? We'd spend days playing in them.  I also don't remember how the pile was ever removed from the front yard or where it was removed to.  Every year, I wish for a child to be around so I would have an excuse to jump in a pile of leaves and not look like I've lost my mind!  Just the smell of takes me back to those childhood days.

 Leaves surrounding and covering my alyssum.

 Someplace in here, look real hard - you'll see some impatiens peeking through.

 Mums and alyssum surrounded by leaves.

A Fall "Easter Egg" Hunt

Autumn is here and that means it's time for the squirrel's annual "Autumn Nut Hunt", similar to our Easter Egg hunt.  Everywhere I go in my yard,  discover beechnuts hidden in the oddest places.  Here are three pictures of hidden nuts. 
A few days ago, I was pulling down the dead morning glory vines and was rudely bopped on the head by a beechnut hidden in the vines.  These only stay hidden a few days, when the squirrels get hungry, they find them and make quite a mess scattering the outer layers as they get to the prize inside. 
(I had more, but they were in my camera program on my computer and my computer crashed. Don't ya' love these computers! I thought I had everything backed up, but forgot about all those pictures sitting in my camera program waiting to be saved to a folder. )