Christmas Chez The Poulos'.

My friend, "Maxine," and I visited the Poulos home tonight for our annual Christmas trip.

They won the Today Show's national contest last year for best decorations.

You must see it to believe it.

And they actually start this in August.

Thank you Pouloses for this wonderful Christmas display. I've been bringing my children since they were babies and we have all enjoyed it every year.

http://home.earthlink.net/~1obxpirate/

Happy New Year Everyone!

My Roses On December 31.

What's that noise?
You hear it?
Why, I do believe it's the
grumblings of xmaskatie.

Yup, I just heard a "BITCH!"
Definitely xmaskatie.

Fun And Frolic At The Hawthorne Home.

The Hawthorne home is looking very festive. And I'm almost done with my Christmas decorating.

I went back to Wally World after Christmas and bought a bunch of these red rope lights for half price. Now I'll have enough to do the whole deck next year.

Mr. Hawthorne hung my antique
pizzele iron for me.

Now, Miss Hawthorne left yesterday and I have company coming today so I asked Mr. Hawthorne to please hold up the mattress so I could put the skirt thingie on it. This is his idea of fun. He just left me there unable to breathe while he went to look for the camera, then I had to wait for him to figure out how to turn it on.
And let me tell you, a mattress is heavy.

Rosie Gets Her Grout On.

GroutBoy came today and finished the back splash.

Ouch. GroutBoy got bitten by that electrical outlet,
even though he was wearing rubber gloves.

Nice job.

The grout is basically the same color as the glass tiles.











My favorites are the abalone accent tiles.










When TileMan came last week to install, I told him I had marked an arrow on each tile and that was the "up" side. He looked at me like I was nuts. Then I showed him the tile, turning it 90 degrees, three times.

There is only one "up" side.
He agreed.



FYI, according to my research, a quota is set each year on the total allowable commercial catch of abalone, in order to protect the species.

This is New Zealand abalone - or paua. It is only havested by free-diving.

No breathing apparatuses (apparati ?)
are allowed.

















If anyone's interested, check it out here:

http://www.matrix-z.com/

This is where I bought mine from. And they were less than half the price of the ones at the beach tile place here, where I first found them.

It pays to internet-search.