Signs of the Coming Winter Season

Well it's that time of year, time to get ready for the winter. It has been getting down in the 30's at night and I am not ready. I shouldn't complain to much, they have had snow in the mountains, 15 inches in some places. I'm not ready to be cold, although my flannel pajamas do feel good. I am certainly not ready to turn on the furnace. I can just see the gas going through and burning up money. Our monthly gas bill went up last year and I'm not ready for it to go up again this year. So to help with that cost, my dear husband goes out and cuts wood for our wood-burning fireplace. He feels as though he needs to cut more since we have already had a fire going twice now. I have to thank our good friends and neighbors for letting us cut their old wood. I know they feel like we are doing them a favor by cleaning up their wood piles but really they are doing us the favor.

In all the years we lived in Florida never did we think we would cut wood or even own a chainsaw, but here we are, my husband in his overalls cutting wood like a professional lumberjack, and me with my work gloves on loading it up on a trailer.

This winter if you're in the area come on over and get in out of the cold, sit by our fire. We'll swap stories and drink a little hot chocolate.

Smash Albums Are Nothing New To Me

The "Smash Album" is all the rage in the scrapbook industry right now. I even went online to You Tube and found hundreds of videos of people making their own because they didn't want to pay the expense of buying K & Company's line of Smash Albums and accessories. I have even read other blogs where someone has went out and bought the album from a local store and they are so excited about it as if they had never thought of this idea before.

I have been doing my own line of Smash Albums for years, I mean years. I didn't know that was what you would call them. I just called them my 'scrap' books. Actually scrapbooking was started with these types of books. Ladies would save pretty cards or postcards, they would save a pretty ribbon, even maybe a photo if they were able; all of these things they would adhere in a book of some sort. And here we are all these years later doing the same thing, and some even making a pretty good profit off of it too.

My first 'scrap' or 'smash' book was a high school senior yearbook. It wasn't the book of all of the students photos, no it was a book that had pages with words and sentences that would prompt you to write down memories of your school year. It had built-in pockets so that you could save tickets from basketball games, or letters from your friends, any little memorabilia that you might have wanted to save so that you could remember your last year in high school. I'm not sure if my book is still around. I will have to ask my mom if she may still have it up in the attic.

Ever since that book, I have been keeping a journal/diary, and in them I have put the same things: tickets from a movie or ballgame, leaves turned into their fall colors, love letters from my husband, little pictures that my son has drawn for me over the years. There is just something about saving these things that appeals to me. I don't know if anyone will ever take the time to look back on them after I'm gone, or maybe it will just become junk to someone some day. Right now I just know I enjoy looking back over them. It may not mean a whole lot to anyone else but they mean so much to me. I can look at a movie ticket and remember exactly what we did that night, not just the movie but where we might have eaten that night or if we enjoyed the movie, little things like that. These things make me smile, and right now that is enough.

So good for you K & Company for bringing this type of memory keeping to the public at large. I might look into buying one of your albums just because they are really cute. More than anything I'm glad that you have shown the scrapbookers out there that there is more to this 'scrap' business than just keeping pictures.