Happy Birth-day!

Good morning to you all! Today is my actual birthday and, I suppose, the birth date of this blog, too. For Christmas, my husband gave the gift of my own mini-computer, an ipad2, so now I can type and dream and hare with my friends anytime. I am happy to be freed from the guilt of borrowing one of our children's laptop computers, which they really need for school, so this is a good thing! :-))) I work in our school district as an aide in a classroom, so creating things like scrapbooks, sewing clothes or creating kitchen towels with lovely rose prints along the hems, or just sitting and reading help me get away from the stresses of teaching handicapped students. I really enjoy working with our students though and wish that all of you would have an opportunity to work with some people with disabilities someday. They are warm, funny people who just happen to take a lot longer to learn what you and I can pick up quite quickly. So, with that introduction, welcome to my shabby world. My family is less into the beautiful whites than I am, so my house isn't all white, as you will see. However, parts of it are and for me that is enough for now. ;-). This Christmas-time, because we were working hard to finish putting in a travertine floor in our dining/living room/entryway, our Christmas tree didn't go up until December 23rd, I think. Amy, my 19-year-old daughter, and Peter, our 17-year-old son, put our fake tree together. Unfortunately, here in Southern California, it is so dry here that one can buy a cut pine or spruce tree but the needle drop is really bad by Christmas, so we didn't get a real tree this year. We had one last year, though, with only lights on it. It was beautiful in its simplicity. Anyway, I wound on new white lights on this year's tree as last year so much of the old strings' lights were not working (don't you just hate that?). I also liked some new-fangled rounded ball LED lights by Martha Stewart, so I purchased two strands of those and wove those in, also. Amy, who usually isn't into white anymore (the furniture in her room is all white), really liked the tree and suggested having only white and silver ornaments. I did include a few with gold or very small touches of red (because it was included on the ribbon or incorporated into the ornament in a small way), but "to make the cut" the ornament had to have glitter sparkles to make it on the tree! Next year I might do an all-red ornament tree. That might be fun! Only the past few years have I been into theme trees!!! So, hopefully I will be able to post some photos for you of our living room and tree. Christmas is such a wonderful time and it is lovely to think that our Savior died on a wooden cross for us! We owe him everything. Many blessings to you and your family, Yours, Barb :)