Dec 25

[helwen]

A Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it!

Very windy last night. That plus the warmer temps made for an exciting day and night, with snow and ice falling off the roof, sounding and feeling like avalanches. There was one especially solid thump last night that L investigated but there was no damage to the house. We think it was a large chunk of ice falling off the back attic roof onto the downstairs kitchen's metal roof, before sliding down to hit the ground.

***
For prezzies I received some nice knit gloves and an Indian silk scarf with gold designs on it from my mom. We also received a household organizer thing that looks pretty useful actually -- might even use it :D My SIL Doris had me in the Gray family exchange and gave me gripper gardening gloves (supposed to make weeding and stuff easier), and a mini garden claw (designed to be turned not pulled) -- I'm not a big tool person but it looks interesting so I'll certainly give it a try. L gave me a lovely necklace made by nazrynn -- I'll get a picture taken of it to put up. Pa Gray gave out his usual monetary gift as well as boxes of cashews, and Ma gave us a stone for baking pizzas, cookies, etc. on (she had fun going through the Pampered Chef catalog!).

Oh, and from earlier this month, ellid gave me a tin of a tea called Florence. She'd had us try some when we were at her house earlier this autumn and I loved it, so she got me some of my own :)

***
I have snowshoes! I have no idea how to use them!! So today we are going to do a little snowshoeing. We still don't have new ones for L, so he's going to try wearing a pair of the family collection -- we're hoping they aren't too old and fragile. Maybe tomorrow we can go to Olympia Sport in G'fld and special order a pair for him -- I'd like to order Yukon Charlie's iBlades for him, since he tends to be the trail breaker for me and Willie.

***
L is going to be checking the pipelines today finally, to see what the ice storm did on the hillsides and over in South Woods too. I'll go along for some of it but probably not all. Have to at least make it over to the grove and see how things look there, and hoping to see at least North Hill. West is steeper, so I might skip that. We'll see.

Comments

[flidaisairmid.livejournal.com]

Baking stones are very nice things for some foodstuffs, not so great for others. I used to have one and I loved it for making rustic breads and pizzas. There have been others whom have used them for things like cookies , but I always worried about getting carmelized sugar on the stone as a result and having everything stick as a result.

Snowshoe-ing is a very similar movement to walking with ski's on, but for a more sustained time and less hardware to fall over in the front and back. Enjoy the walk- while winter is nasty to deal with for day to day stuff, it does indeed offer a very special beauty as well.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about cookies myself, although apparently one of my sisters-in-law does this already. I'll have to ask if there are some types of recipes that work better than others. I'm not a huge cookie maker, but chocolate chip and oatmeal are a couple of favs.

I'm afraid I was a bit amused reading your comment, because I don't have experience with skis either :D But the walking went pretty well :)