New Years Electric Mandolin

New Years Eve 2018

Fireworks more 2018

HAPPY, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I'd like to say so many beautiful things, but above all I'm so very grateful to have friends and family to love. In this life it's important to be loved, but I feel it's way more important to be able to give love. Without God Who Is Love, life has neither meaning nor purpose. Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year is my wish for all.

Bueno, Quisiera decir tantas y tantas cosas bonitas, pero sobre todo estoy muy agradecida de tener amistades y familiares a quien querer! Porque en la vida es importante ser quierido, pero para mi es mas importante querer! Sin Dios, que es amor, la vida no tiene ni sentido ni proposito. Felicidad, Salud y Prosperidad en este A~o Nuevo que tengamos todos son mis mayores deseos.

Not all it's cracked up to be....

and the tree, well the tree now that it's drying stinks to high heaven! It's not a rotting smell or anything, but it's a sickly, pine type smell, I can't describe it, but it makes me sick, and I water it and everything but the more I water it, the more that smell exudes, the less I water it, the less it smells! Artificial for me, yessireee!!!

I can't wait for Tuesday for this Christmas thing will be over, Imma take it down! If my daughter says anything, I'll just innocently say " but I thought you wanted this? last year it was up til march! This way it's done!"   God, I can't wait!!! (you think that'll work? ;)

So, yeah, it's not all it's cracked up to be!

Latah...

Sheeet...faggedaboudit!

That fuqin rice with coconut and spices plus the friggin coquito with the same nasty spices cost me a freakin entire day in the hospital!!!! Dayum! As soon as I stuffed my greedy ass with it (cause I don't know when to stop, that's my problem,) and drank a bunch of the damn coquito, I felt bad. I felt like my stomach got bloated and then the pain began! Gottdamn! I had to go to the hospital, I couldn't even walk with the fuqin pain, I thought I had appendicitis! A whole day there while they did the labs and the CT Scan etc.  Acute gastritis...

So maybe it's my age too, maybe I can't deal with all those spices anymore, because they are hot in nature. Anyway, I'm never,ever,ever,ever making that rice again!!! I say that but I will, but I won't eat it that's for sure...or maybe just a small, tiny amount  ;D

Rice with coconut and spices

Rice with coconut water, coconut cream, condensed milk, evaporated milk, a tea made with cloves, star anise, regular anise seeds, cinnamon sticks, ginger, a little nutmeg is brewed and then the spices strained out, the rice that has been soaked for a half hour or more to soften it, is added, it's cooked till tender, then raisins soaked in brandy are added almost at the end of the cooking.

Purple Angelonia and Blue Isabelina ll

My white Hibiscus

Rustic Decor...Rustic...hmmmmm

anyway, over here for outside decor we like to put up Santa decorations, especially where there's kids, as well as trees, lights, lit reindeer, lit candy canes, all that stuff etc. But, many also hold the tradition of putting up something rustic alone or alongside, such as the Nativity scene with a 3 sided shed-like structure made with dried palm fronds and wood or some such thing.

So I have a straggly palm in the backyard, it's weird, not too pretty, so it developed a seed pod, they do a branching inflorescence type thing, and my grandson macheted it off when he mowed, but as I looked at it, it looked just like a little Christmas tree! So today I had the brainstorm, and couldn't make it stand alone so I stuck it in one of the cinder blocks my daughter bought, she wants to make a little side wall out front, (and that's another story, neighbor situations, we actually had to pull out all the beach grapes that the previous owner put up as a divider and for privacy but that's another post) and then I strung up a set of solar lights I had on it, and three green decorations from past years, and voila, rustic Christmas tree!!! Well not really...not so much...but you know what some people actually do here? and it's ridiculous but they do it!  They just wind lights up the trunks of palms...and that's it! A lit tree trunk/s and that's it! It looks ridiculous is what! If you're going to put lights, put them on the the tops! Jeeze! The woman in front did just that, and not even in a symetrical fashion, just helter skelter, I mean??? WTH? That's decorating??? I dunno call me nuts but at least make it have some kind of sense ya know...jeeze...anyway, so if they can do that, I most certainly can do this :D because it looks cuter!

It looks sooo pretty when it's lit, just like a little tree

My little Palm seed pod tree, it looks flat but it's not, its full like a tree all around

It's kinda cute, I'm going to put something in front of the block to camouflage it, and maybe add some more decorations too, it's just I'm so busy helping my grandson with his advanced English class that I don't have much time for anything else! It's essay after essay after essay, and the beotch makes them watch movies to write the essays off of!!! So I have to watch them! Y'all know how much I looove movies!  NOTTTT!!!  Oy vey! what I'll do for the love of my grands....

Christmas nightime sparkle!

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum...

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter.
Du grünst nicht nur
  zur Sommerzeit,
Nein auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter...

Yeah, I know I said we weren't going to put up a tree this year. But, then my daughter said, you know if we didn't have to put it away I'd put it up... so we started ruminating and pondering what about a real one?  But, says she, we already have an artificial one, what a waste of money to get a real one too??? Okay, case closed...

But then Friday we're in Sams, and we smell the real ones, by the Home Depot...weeelllll...

Now, when I was a little girl, that's all we ever put up, a real one. I don't know if there were artificial ones available, or if they were just beyond our means, but I remember always the smell of the real one in our home. So it's a smell that brings back nostalgic memories for me, and for my children also as I have put up a real one on occasion.

Anyway, long story short, and yeah you guessed it, my daughter said ef it, and I'm getting a real one! $49.99 for a 7 footer, that's not bad at all. So we drove back and bought it, but then the stands were almost as expensive as the trees!  So my son said he'd seen something on Google made with wood, and we had the wood at home. and we have all the tools necessary, so in about an hour he'd built it! Then he had to saw off the end of the tree stump so it could absorb water because it had already sealed, and the sap or resin kept clogging up on the blade, that was a little troublesome but we prevailed. Oh the smell in the house!!! Ummmmm! So piney and super Christmasy!!! Lovveee!

Tree in car:

I could've put it on top, but it might've lost needles

Gabe making the stand:

My son making the stand

Tree on stand: 

We pushed the bottom half of a plastic Coke bottle in the middle to fill with water, and he drilled screws right through into the tree trunk to stabilize it, and voila! 

 

Oh and my daughter fell in love with 2 beautiful spotted Vandas and got them for me as my Christmas present! 

Vanda Kulwadee

Vanda Bonanza, yellow spotted with red

Thank you God! Life is beautiful and good, so good, I'm thankful, so thankful for life

Latah my loves!...