I freely admit Christmas is not my favorite time of year. I’m more of a Thanksgiving girl. I love having extended family together and the only real effort is the day of cooking – even though cooking is not really my thing! I much prefer the focus on family togetherness that comes with Thanksgiving without the stress of gift giving –well- it’s not the giving I find stressful, it’s the shopping for that perfect gift for everyone.
 
This year however, was blissfully stress free. Throughout the year as I noticed things either in stores or online that I thought someone I loved would enjoy – I bought it. Instead of a mad dash to shop the week before Christmas, I actually had everything I needed for everyone! Though I did have to run out and replace my son-in-laws candle (yes he likes candles) for a different scent after my daughter nixed the one I’d bought- but that wasn’t difficult at all. I rather enjoyed bringing a little last minute shopping to a small candle shop – all his goods are made from scratch (soy and cotton wicks with no soot) on site and they smell fabulous and last forever! When the first of my new series are out of the way – I’m hoping to gather some friends for a candle making party!
 
Another change is last year I bought a smaller tree on deep sale after the holidays so we set up two trees. I also picked up some Father Christmas pieces at an estate sale and I feel it added to the festive and yet traditional moods of the season.  My goal for this year is to have personalized stockings made for the grandkids as next year my grandson will be old enough to appreciate the season! 

 ​Historically my family has always celebrated Christmas Eve so that means two dinners in our family, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and both went off without a hitch. The evenings were peaceful, the conversation was pleasant, and smiles abounded with everyone I love. Even more fun for me is that I have a first cousin in my Dad’s side of the family who has moved to Texas and she and her husband came over early to make us breakfast (she likes to cook) THAT was a true gift for me as every year I do a nice Christmas breakfast but I’m not really a morning person so having someone else take over was loverly ! (My hubby is missing - he was still making coffee!) 

​Another thing I have always enjoyed doing is working on puzzles. It’s an interest I share with my son-in-law and cousin and seem to be passing on to my grandson (lol). Having puzzle in the works is always a fun pass time. Especially this year as we have a new fantastic puzzle table courtesy of one of my dearest friends downsizing!  This is looking to be a two puzzle Christmas (well, I cheat and get the ones with the bigger pieces so I don’t need a magnifying glass LOL) 

​Now we wait for the New Year to ring in – I am very much looking forward to 2022 – I like the number and am expecting big things for everyone!
 
Do you have any favorite traditions this time of year? 

This week has been a flurry of activity in my household. For a couple of days I had my grandson visiting and now he’s off at his other grandmother’s. Though, he’ll be back for this weekend’s festivities and then we’ll have him all to ourselves for New Year’s week. We’ll see how good Oma is at keeping up with a two year old – LOL!
 
On the things accomplished: our tree is up and plugged in- for us that’s a huge step. My German translations (the first three) have gone live on all available sites including five new to me in Germany stores. Well, Google is apparently going to be a little late but it is what it is lol. I have autographed paperbacks for sale.
 
Yep, you heard right. A pet project of mine for YEARS has been to be able to autograph books for fans. I’ve looked into it, perused the options, discussed the challenges, and finally this year we have a plan that should work for us. The challenge of course is that it takes a huge amount of time to get all the little tidbits up and running so what we’ve got available for immediately is the paperbacks I have in stock at my home for miscellaneous reasons are available to be purchased and signed by me now. Soon we’ll have the entire catalogue available – very soon.  This is sort of our test for working the kinks out. So, if we have a book you’d like signed we’ll turn it around pretty quickly.
 
For those of you who follow my challenges with my mother who has stage five dementia due to Alzheimers, here’s a bit of an update. We’ve noticed Mom is more confused with basic things. She’s having more trouble following basic instructions like the item you want is in the other aisle. She’ll just stand looking where she is wondering why she can’t see it and we have to direct her to the correct aisle and sometimes that means urging her to walk. Mind you Mom is in great physical shape, our family doctor has her receiving PT as often as allowed by insurance so we can delay the physical decline of the disease as long as possible. So, all of that said, we suspect that this Christmas might be the last where she’s really aware of what’s going on. I hope not, but it’s so hard to tell. Some minutes on the phone she seems perfectly normal, then a few minutes later we’re reminded she’s not.  Where I once said dealing with Mom was like dealing with a five year old, more and more it’s like corralling a two year old. I can see the similarities between her and my grandson. The need for instant gratification with a lack of understanding as to why you can’t always have what you want and almost no understanding of inappropriate. Even though we’ve obviously know for a long time (four years) that Mom has dementia probably due to Alzheimers, even though I got her DNA testing back last year that shows she does have one of the strong likelihood for Alzheimer gene, even though we took over her finances and bill paying a year ago, it was a bit of a shock to get a letter from the neurologist stating that she’s incapable of handling her own personal or financial needs. Funny how things affect you unexpectedly.
 
The bright thing about Mom is her love of Christmas has not diminished. She’s enjoyed shopping for everyone and wrapping gifts. The decorations are up at her house and for this her childlike attitude is a treasure. She’ll be pleasantly surprised to find we have two trees in our home this year – the main big one for the formal gift exchanges, and the small one where we hang out as a family and watch TV or work on puzzles.  Since this year I actually picked up a few things during the year that I thought family would enjoy, I am looking forward to a nice holiday weekend with the people I love most in the world under my roof.
 
In keeping with the season, I am wishing everyone a joyful and merry Christmas.
 
See y’all next week! 

Spent my morning at the doctor after spending the last few days mostly lightheaded and or dizzy.  Turns out something in my inner ear is inflamed so I'm on new meds now. The doctor said it's like when we were kids and would spin around really fast and then wobble around until we found our balance. Something he doesn't recommend at our age LOL. And I don't need to spin like a top to get dizzy, just walk LOL. 

Just to make sure it's not blood sugar or some other weird thing, they did draw blood - hence my bandaid booboo. 

The other good news I liked with my doctor was his comment that no one should be dying from covid anymore - that treatment has come a very long way - he has 100k worth of treatment available in his office paid by the government (okay yes our taxes but that's another conversation lol) for anyone who tests positive and comes in to see him. I like good prognosis for all things :) 

Now as soon as the dizziness improves, we can start decorating for the holidays! (yes I'm a tad behind on that!) 

Are you big on holiday decorations? 

Lots of tidbits to share today!
 
Anyone who likes audio books will be happy to hear we are seriously close to releasing the first Farraday books in audio. I believe at first they will be available exclusively on my website, but eventually they’ll be pretty much everywhere you want to listen LOL.
 
If I have any German fans, the first few Farradays are almost ready for sale as well in German. I think they will be up for preorder before the end of the month.
 
Personally, my mom’s old house is now turned over to an estate sale person. Yesterday I found boxes of my grandmother’s old manuscripts. I’m going to see when I have a little more time if they can be published now. There were also lots of albums of old – really old – family photos. The crime of it is that there’s no one alive to know who the heck they are- sigh. I’ve started writing names on the back of the old photos I have. I realized when going through mom’s house that there are things I know from my childhood that belonged to my grandparents but if my kids were to walk through they’d have no idea that some of those things have been in the family for close to a hundred years. One of my goals is to photograph and catalogue everything. Another goal of mine is to pick out some of the family photographs and put them into one album with dates and description and maybe lineage and pass that one book down to the person in the next generation who likes history and genealogy. Hopefully there will always be at least one! We’ll see if I ever get that far!
 
With real-life issues slowly coming together, I gave myself a few hours yesterday to relax and watch movies with a friend. We picked two. The first was Iron Will.  I always loved that story about the underdog coming out a hero. Except that I hate how Walt Disney always kills off a parent, but the rest of the movie is great. After that we watched the remake of Sabrina. There are a few lines in that movie that crack me up whenever I think of them. Definitely both feel good movies in different ways.  I guess that’s why I write what I write. I like the idea of escaping the daily grind and spending a short while just smiling.
 
For this week, I’m hoping to get back into the new series I’m supposed to be writing and enjoying the pleasant fall weather. Mid seventies during the day is my ideal running around weather.
 
Everyone keep safe and happy and if you have favorite feel good movies to recommend – let me know! 

My refrigerator has never been so full! I may have overdone it with the sweet potatoes. We had a tray of plain sweet potato casserole and one with roasted marshmallow on top – more than any family needed! LOL.  I honestly expected all the little kids (we had six) to gobble up the ones with the marshmallows the way my kids did, but nope, not a lot of sweet potato lovers this dinner!

For me the special thing to be thankful for was my French Coca Cola. My dear friend, author Olivia Sands, brought me a liter bottle from France and I have been saving it for a time when I can slowly enjoy it. Unlike the rest of the world, the French Coke has a fraction of the sugar. And on top of that, it’s real sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. The flavor is a bit different but I savor every sip LOL. Somewhere I read that it’s the closest thing to the original formula available!  
 
My husband’s treat is the leftover dinner sandwiches. He looks forward to those as much if not more than the meal. The man finds a way to fit stuffing and mashed potato and turkey and cranberry sauce and sometimes green been casserole too into a toasted sandwich. Sometimes I have to make extra stuffing to keep up with the leftover turkey sandwich requests, but it’s worth it for all the smiles that come with the family eating time.
 
This year we added ham to the mix. We had so many people I thought a little extra protein might be called for. To my surprise the big spiral hams were not available the days before thanksgiving. They’d sold out weeks before and wouldn’t have more till after New Year’s. I was flabbergasted. We did however find some small black forest hams at the local market and I just sliced them up and added a little honey water to make juice and the big old spiral was never missed!
 
What I found myself eating a lot of was leftover ham sandwich with butter on those little Hawaiian bread rolls. Those suckers are tasty and I enjoyed them as much as my husband his massive sandwiches. I may have to pick up more of the bread for the rest of the leftover ham!
 
As proud as I was of my ten foot table for twelve, (thanksgiving is actually my favorite family holiday)  I forgot to take a pretty before photo, so all I have is one shot of everyone eating and then a shot of the empty after table LOL. We did two tables. One for all the adults, including my fifteen year old nephew, and one for the kids, including my two year old grandson.  We all fit beautifully, but for the first time in over twenty years I was thinking we may need a bigger dining room – LOL! Especially as the younger generations increases and the young ones grow up.
 
 
I did have one little disappointment – someone spilled on the table and it wasn’t cleaned up fast enough so I have a cloud spot on my dining table. Anyone have any home made cures for that? I seem to remember something to do with mayonnaise but haven’t had time yet to look it up. The remainder of the visiting family will be here for a couple more days.  Then it will be back to working on the new series and Neil for Farraday Country.
 
All in all, the big hit of the holiday wasn’t the dinner at all but croquet! My husband introduced my nephews and niece to the game and they have been having a great time with it. Even this morning in the bitter cold, they’re out there swinging those mallets! So much fun to watch!
 
In the meantime, was anyone able to enjoy Picture Perfect over the holiday weekend? The reviews have been fun to read. I don’t get a lot of time to keep up with reviews, but early on I do read some and it’s always nice to see that a book we all fretted over (and this one had a LOT of fretting- LOL!) was well received and gave my fans what they expect from me.
 
Do you have a favorite holiday? Any family traditions? Would love to hear from you!
 
Take care! ​

In a mad dash to get Mom’s house ready for the deluge of family – which by the way is already going very well and why I’m a day late on this post lol – it was decided that the ugly brick floor needed to be covered fast.

​So Mom picked out a nice travertine looking peel-n-stick vinyl tile and I spent Friday afternoon laying and cutting (with scissors) the tile.
 
To my surprise, it looks really nice! The photos don’t do it justice. I tried from a bunch of different angles but it simply doesn’t look as pretty in the photo as in real life.

As for the family visit. I’m getting a really sweet picture of what life would have been like had I had more children. First off my eleven and nine year old nephews are great babysitters for my two year old grandson. They all wake up at 8am and play together upstairs until breakfast at 8:30. Then they go back up to play some more. Of course my grandson spends most of his time rolling his cars or running around his cousins but the giggles and laughs are super sweet.
 
As of last night I have three extra adults and four extra children. Tomorrow I will have two more adults and two more children. The house is full and the way it’s meant to be. I hope your Thanksgiving week is going well. I’ll report next week on how the cooking and table setting went! Should be interesting.
 
Who does the Thanksgiving cooking in your family? ​

All in all we’re quite happy with the results! And even though I don’t care for the dark gray, Mom liked it. Including the blue counters LOL. 

Do you lean more toward old style design or modern trends?  Me, trend traditional. 

Okay, have to run, still so much to do! ​

It’s been a very long week – we’ve scrambled to work on Mom’s new house.  The goal is to move her and the big stuff in this coming weekend so we have a lot of painting to do.  Though we did get started. Hubby painted the walls and I followed up on the trim. Of course first I taped off all the baseboards so we don’t have to paint them again. I also started out cleaning all the dust from the repairs. There was a large sitting area in the room originally. I know from all the houses I’ve seen in the area that there must have been an option to make that either a closet or a sitting area. That or the previous owners tore out the closet – we put it back.  This made for a LOT of dust. I basically swept twice, dust mopped twice and then really mopped to have a clean floor for painting. 

Hubby snapped a shot of me up on the ladder. And I’ve included a shot of the area before, the closet under construction and that wall painted after – didn’t get a good shot of the whole room but will! 

​I used to do this stuff all the time when my kids were little. I was a stay at home mom and doing house projects myself, I would call the money I saved my salary- LOL ! As a result I know how to do a whole lot of stuff – even basic – and I mean REALLY basic – electrical. And I actually enjoyed it because I’m a one and done kind of gal. Love seeing the before and after of hard work, but hate things that have to be done over and over, like laundry LOL.
 
Any how – off to the races!
 
Do you like doing household projects? 

Welcome to November. I can’t believe we’re in Thanksgiving month already. I’m going to have an exceptionally robust holiday this year – I’ll have three first cousins and their families joining us for dinner! I’m already figuring out how to make room for sixteen adults and seven children in my dining room, and I can’t wait! Big leap for us. Until a few years ago it had always been holidays for just our little family of four! Having extended family continue to move into our state is a ton of fun!

Once I have the house organized and ready for Thanksgiving, then I speaking at local luncheon group in December. In preparation I was searching for cut scenes from the upcoming new Christmas release Picture Perfect, and stumbled across this cut snippet. It’s from Iris in the Hart Land Lakeside Inn Series. No idea where it came from or why I cut it – but here it is – just for you guys!

          “I uh,” Eric stuttered, either gathering his thoughts or debating how much he wanted to say in front of a room of witnesses.

          “Is something wrong?” Concern dripped from Iris’ words.

          “No. It’s just that. Well. We had a surprise for you.”

          This time her brows rose high on her forehead. “A surprise?”

          “You know the old house across the road?”

          Iris hesitated. This part of the country was full of old houses.

          “The one by the creek,” Eric elaborated.

          “The old Watson place?”

          He nodded.

          A cute gingerbread Victorian at one time, that old house had been abandoned since the old man had died a good ten years or so ago.

          “It’s in remarkably good shape considering how long it’s been since someone
lived in it.”

          Iris’ gaze narrowed. “And you know this how?”

          “I’ve had contractors over there all week inspecting and repairing.”

          Her eyebrows shot up high again. “Why?”

          “Because according to my lawyer, the two siblings who inherited the house are tired of paying property taxes.”

          The entire room grew very quiet.

          “Do you still think it would be a fun house to fix up?”

          Iris slowly bobbed her head.

          “I put a deposit down and pending your approval—”

          “My approval?”

          He nodded. “The contractors are ready to start work on Wednesday. All they need is a little direction.”

I’m guessing this is why they all live up the hill in Hart Land LOL. I really need to do better about keeping little things like these that I don’t use for some reason or other.

Do y’all like this sort of thing? Would you like me to share more?

Okay, I need to go clean and sort and work on the first book in the new series that still doesn’t have a name! LOL. Feel free to share any of your holiday family stories!

This has been a whirlwind week. The good news for our family - we bought a new house for my mom that brings her closer to me! For anyone with an aging parent, they’ll understand why a house less than a mile away without a traffic light in route is seriously fantastic. Especially for my sweet husband. The man drives fifteen minutes north of us to take my mother her meds every day, then drives fifteen minutes south again to go to work.  Having Mom a three minute drive will be huge for him. And for me.
 
Many of you know Mom has dementia, so some things just don’t make sense to her no matter how many times you explain it. Being forgetful is an understatement. And change never sits well. So when she sees a house and asks every day about it, you know it’s the right house to move her into. We had to do some fancy footwork (read dog not letting go of a bone) to get it, but we did!
 
There’s some work to be done to make it an easier transition for her. First thing we did was widen the entry to the kitchen – this had to be done for a couple of reasons. First, the room really needed more light (too easy to get depressed with dementia) and secondly, she needs to see the way to the kitchen easily and not just a doorway or all the doorways confuse her.
 ​
I have been over there every day for the last three days (hence why this is a day late) sweeping up after the contractor, carrying wood, fetching tools, even painting. Anything to make the work go faster and cheaper!  Yesterday the electrician was there all day – so many switches that we have no idea what the heck they go to! Took a while to track most of them down!
 
Today I get to take Mom to show her what has been done and then we have to pick out tile for the bathroom where we ripped out the tub and are installing a walk in shower. Will keep you posted!
 
How are things going in your neck of the woods?