It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

We decorated for Christmas this week. Some years I look forward to the annual tradition and other years I dread the holiday clutter. This is one of those clutter years, so when Ruth asked if she could set up the little tree (that usually goes in our front window) in the basement for a "kid's tree", I thought it was a great idea.





One of my favorite childhood Christmas memories is making and decorating sugar cookies. I don't have as many cookie cutters as my mother did, so we were making bunnies and houses and tractors along with the traditional stars and santas. We even have a big "it" cookie cutter we got as an eBay gift one year. Nothing says Christmas like eating a big "it" cookie.



Ruth's a Natural!



Ruth has been begging me for some time to give her guitar lessons. My steel string is a little too much for a ten year old to handle so I told her that she would have to start on the ukulele. For those that don't know, a ukulele is tuned the same as the highest 4 strings of the guitar. So the fingering of a uke is like playing the guitar - simplified. The video above is Ruth after only two lessons and two days of practice. Since the recording of this video I got her some Christmas music and she's learned a couple new chords. For awhile there we all thought we might suffer death via pearly shells.

A New Steam Vac

We've been needing our carpets cleaned for years now. But I am too cheep to call the professional cleaners. A friend recommended buying a steam vac, and then my sister over Thanksgiving also said how much she loves her steam vac. So when everything went on sale over Black Friday, we bought this hoover. It cost a little less than having the pros come out and clean our carpets one time.

After lots of hours of sweat labor, our high traffic areas upstairs are all cleaned. The results are better than any of the carpet cleaners I've ever rented, but probably not quite as good as a professional cleaning. My carpets were so filthy that they will need another cleaning to get them where I'd like them to be.