Watercolors! Christmas Cards 🎄

 I have wanted to paint watercolor Christmas cards for decades. I have probably wanted to do it ever since I took watercolor classes many many years ago. This is the year that it finally happened. I have about 70 of them ready to go into the mail tomorrow. They might even get to people's homes before Christmas! 

I have taken photos of the ones I have left today because I made close to 90. There's always people who send cards that I didn't send a card to, and I want to make it up. So I had these extra. Actually, when I went over my list of people I would love to send to cards to this year, along with a newsletter, it was over 100. But I stopped making cards at 92 or so. At some point I'm going to have to clean off my dining room table from the pumpkin tablecloth and replace it with a Christmas one. :-) The dining room table has been my "Studio" for quite a while now. 

These snapshots are just for my record. Just so I can remember that I finally did do it. The photos make them look like maybe third grade level art. Doesn't matter. It's old -lady-out-of-practice-level art. Haha.

This leftover batch includes some that are not very good and at have obvious boo boos I them. Watercolors are surprisingly forgiving. But some of these were beyond that level of boo boo. But not bad enough to trash. I only had a couple of those, too  (trash- can worthy ones). I hope I don't have to send many more out. Some of the ones that are set to go in the mail are quite nice and I really liked doing them. I hope the recipients enjoy them, too. At least for a minute or two during the season.

December Beginnings

 This Birthday Party at State Bank of Southern Utah was really in November. We go every year if we can. This year the decor was so cute-- butcher paper wall murals all over, depicting the desert and western theme. The employees were dressed in western attire and greeted us with a hearty "Howdy." ;-)

I took this photo on our way home from St. George once in November. It's Zion National Park and we're just speeding up the freeway on the way home. It was such a gorgeous site, I could not resist.

Here are some samples of a few of the Christmas Cards I painted this year. I have been wanting to do this for YEARS and finally did it!  I think they turned out nicely. I hope I get them mailed out in time.

I picked up some pretty leaves on neighbor's lawns during the past month, pressed them and got them made int o a new, brighter fall wreath. My old one was so broken and faded, it felt good to get it updated. In all honesty, this photo is an "enhanced" one making it slightly brighter than in real life. But only slighter.

One wintry December morning, Mike and I went to the temple to do our regular Wednesday morning shift in the office . . .  first cold and snow of the season!  We are praying and hoping for a good snow pack this year in our mountains. We sure need the water!

Even thought we didn't get a lot of apple cider made, we can still enjoy it for a while. This is a caramel apple drink!  yummy and delicious!!

Sort of Christmas cookies.  Mike found marked down cookies, so we took those out to our Relief Society sisters when we did our visiting early this month.

Thanksgivinig

 We had a small group of 8 for our Roast Beast Dinner:

Me, Mike, my Mom, Gayela Garnder, Eric, Matt, Caroline, C's roommate Nickie.

We did share some things we were thankful for and tried guessing who wrote what as I read them from slips in a jar.  We had a rousing game of Thanksgiving Bingo, as well. But no prizes.  Lame. :-)

I ordered some Rolls from Liz Carter Hink. They were good, but Mike assured me that mine are just as good.  I don't make them often enough to know! ha.

After I came home from AGW in November, Gayela came to stay some weeks with us. Part of that was spent with her children up North. We all went on Friday November 14 to Olivia Gardner's wedding to Braeden  . . . hmmm. Somebody. I don't remember their last name right now.  It was a lovely day. Nice drive up to Payson from Cedar City that morning, the sealing in the Payson Temple at 12:30. A dinner in the evening, followed by a reception.  Gayela got to see ALL her kids at one time in one place! That hasn't happened for about 15 years, she said. She stayed up there for a few days after the wedding and came back to Cedar City on the Shuttle

 

We went to parties, our Ward Christmas Dinner on December 2nd, and a Temple Office Party on December 1. We went to the movies once, met Mom and Donna there to see "Sarah's Oil." That was a really good film! Donna was here for a few days after AGW, too. She and Mom got to shop and play and relax together. It's fun to have Donna here. We played games with HER, too.

Once, Mike and I and Gayela went out to eat at Rusty's and enjoyed coconut shrimp with Kim and Terri Hunter. We had one of those coupons that we just couldn't let go to waste, you know. haha. And of course, we never think to take photos of our fun times like that! Ever.

We saw one more movie with Gayela, Wicked for Good (2) before she left to go home to Denver on the 3rd of December. Other than that, we just sat around and read and did our usual stuff, plus a trip or two down to St. George. Once to attend the temple at Red Cliffs with her, another time to gather some shoes and office supplies.

 

I've been doing Christmas Cards to send out this year.  I haven't SENT them yet as I only finished water coloring them today.  I did 94 of them! That was a lot but I had a lot of fun doing it (most of the time). The only things I had to buy were some envelopes and cardstock. And I opted to get a gold and a silver gel pen, too.  I had the paints and paper and brushes already. Plus a slew of screenshots stolen off of the internet of others painting trees and ornaments, etc. 

 

And I have decorated for Christmas up stairs in my house. Two trees because I'm scheduled to host the December Relief Society Sisters birthday dinner. But only a couple can actually come. I hope we don't cancel or postpone it like we did in October. . .  all that decorating for naught. haha. No, we will enjoy it lots. 

 December 4 I went to my first session of Physical Therapy. It's been MONTHS since I injured my hip playing pickleball (? maybe? I'm not really sure how it got hurt). Hopefully after a few sessions I'll be able to use stairs without pain once more.

December 5 was Eric's Christmas concert for the St. George Chamber chorus he sings with. It was lovely. Long, too. We were tired, but they sounded so good.  The drive to St. George was nice, too.

 

Dec 5 I did some Relief Society visits to sisters in our ward and dropped off pointsettias or cookies and just had some really nice visits. We really need to do that lots more. We just tend to get caught up in our everyday busy lives and don't get it done. However, I think the coming months will be very busy for us as we have two shoulder surgeries, one knee replacement and three babies coming up in our Ward Relief Society Sisters in the next three months! That's a lot of meals to take around and tending to help with as 2 of the sisters are having baby number 5 and their oldest ones are only about 7 or so.  LOTS of littles! 

 

Nov 10. Travel Day home

 We all had different departure times, but we took a "Lyft" ride to the airport together. Wet went our separate ways and, as it is still early in the day, we shall see what happens! I believe the government shutdown is still in effect, affecting the air traffic controllers. But in all honesty I have not watched any news or read anything about it at this time. I have been on vacation! 

Look at the interesting decor on the CEILING at SFO terminal 1. Hanging upside down plants and trees. 

And my huge breakfast. Breakfast quesadilla that was super good. 

Last night on our night time sit on top bus ride, we had a crazy driver! She was very personable and came up on the top side where we were to speak with us and remind us that the night time version is not a hop on, hop off version. We must stay in our seats at all time. Well, that might have been easy except she drove like a crazy woman! It was so funny. One time was like a roller coaster ride. We were shocked that going down a very, very, very steep Street, when our light turned green, she released the brakes and gunned it! I thought we were going to pop right out of our seats. It was pretty scary and very surprising! We did giggle afterwards because we were all still alive. Nevertheless, it was unexpected I will. I wonder how many people wet their pants. :-) 

The other exciting moment was when she exited the freeway. (I never really thought about those open-air buses going on the freeway at High speeds., but that is where the bridge is on what they have to do) The curves were Sharp and she was taking them so fast that Donna very nearly slid out of her seat and onto the middle aisle. We had to All hang on! We were looking at each other with shocked expressions, saying what the heck is this lady doing!? It was bizarre. We went over the Oakland Bay bridge to Treasure Island and took some pictures and then drove back. But that driving! That was incredible. She kept reminding us to tip the driver. Donna said her tip was to, "Slow down. Therese MY tip!" Haha. Of course Donna did not really tell her that, but neither did any of us give her up financial tip. 

I enjoyed looking at the homes during the night, as many folks leave their drapes open and we could just see inside their homes as they were living their lives  in their apartments. It's always fun to see how others live. :-) there are so many people in this city! Homes and luxury condominiums. Of course, we could only see what was eye level to us which wasn't very much. But it was still a more interesting view than what we have seen driving and riding around before. We got to see a lot of the city.

I don't know if you can read what it says on the receipt from our Ghirardelli chocolate splurge for dinner one night. (They really had no prices listed, so I never knew what I was paying till I checked out.) !! There is a health program surcharge on my receipt. Hmmm, a "Health program"?? At a chocolate factory? Just how healthy is this stuff! We think it was because we didn't share ours and it was really a fat people's tax. We all ate our own dishes with no sharing, even though they brought all those extra spoons FOR sharing. Bwahahaha  And they were truly big enough to share. But they were truly big enough to hog all to yourself and enjoy every last bite. I was kind of ready to have another one by the next day. But I didn't.

Highlights of our all girls weekend were:

Alcatraz Island tour

Precidio Park

Sorensen family visit

Sea Lions

The houses.

We thought we chose wisely in taking public transportation from the airport TO our hotel. We got to experience the San Francisco Metro system. I believe it's called BART. Bay area Transit. Yes that's right.  And we rode on an electric train. It wasn't quite a trolley, and it was very flat, but it was old and retro and on a track with electricity running it. And the driver was SO nice and helpful to us, while we stumbled and struggled with luggage and purchasing our tickets--even letting one of us ride for free. They have hybrid public transit buses that can go on tracks or by engines. So that was fun to see. Going back to the airport, we rode on the surface streets and got to see more of Southern San francisco.

We never did actually hop on or off the street cars, or "Cable Cars". They were not running when we tried. I didn't know they ran by under the street cables. There are only two streets that still have the cable cars. And the other time when we could have tried, we decided we didn't want to because we were too tired after being on buses all day. 

Our hotel was in a very convenient location, was comfy. Except the first night when we didn't think to adjust the temperature. That was Way too hot a night. 

We gals had a nice time together. We walked LOTS. We talked lots. We ate lots. We relaxed some. "And a good time was had by all."

Sunday Nov 9

 San Francisco is NOT the filthy place we had been warned about. 

We drove around, walked around, bused and boated and were never met with awful grossness. Birds refuges stink. Sometimes sewers stink. And sometimes people are gross and leave their fast food trash around. 

But street sweepers come, trash collectors pick up ( eventually).  And our weather was absolute gorgeous!!!

We went to Pier 39 way early and enjoyed it with NO people about. We had a nice walk, got tickets to both things we wanted--the hop on hop off Big Red Bus and Alcatraz Island tour. We also had a night drive around the city on the bus.

We saw sea lions! We ate shrimp! We had more chocolate. We learned history at alcatraz

 We had fun! And we walked a lot of steps, climbed a lot of elevation. Great day all around.

The outdoor exercise yard at Alcatraz.

We left our hearts in San Francisco 

Large sea lion on dock

Breakfast. Sour dough pastry. Yes, it was good.

Inside a cell. Very small.

On the ferry out to "The Rock."

3D model inside the beginning of tour 

Other relief models outside by the ferry. Therese were large.

Some of the views from the night bus. We had an early dinner at Bubba Gump's restaurant. Yummy.

China town.

Church

Bridges.

Our authentic tour guide. But only for a bit. She was far too long-winded, gabby and opiniated for us, so we left her very soon and took off in our own.

This photo needs cropping badly!

Donna has an idea. Note the light bulb over her head.