Wolf River Valley Creations

As a nurse…….dad called about 30 minutes ago and said he cut his hand with a dull axe! He was splitting kindling down in the basement….rushed over with a handful of boxes of gauze pads not knowing if we’d have to make a flying trip to ER or not.

He had a wad of paper toweling wrapped around the hand, which of course stuck to the wound. It was a gash about a little over 1/4″ but deep. The corner of the axe (point) got him. The minute I took the towel off, it started bleeding again, his hand was covered in blood. Made him go to the kitchen sink and I grabbed the bottle of perioxide. He wanted me to use an eye dropper to drop the perioxide. At that point, I somewhat lost it and told him that he called for the nurse and the nurse was gonna pour it over his hand.

After cleaning off the hand and area, I had to put a double 3×3 pad on it, then wrapped the hand in tape to keep light pressure on it. He wasn’t happy when I gave him instructions to not go back in the basement.

And how was your Sunday?

We’ve all had those types of weeks where it seems everything you do goes wrong, or breaks or whatever.  This week was hectic to begin with.  Monday, I spent the day baking Christmas goodies.  Tuesday, dh and I went over to the next town over that has a Walmart.  I needed to finish up some Christmas food boxes for some needy friends.  He wanted to get a GPS for his work and while there, I decided to get his present.  This year instead of getting each other gifts except for 1 or 2, I decided we’d give food boxes.  At this stage in life, neither of us really needs any more ’stuff’.

As I went to get him a new monitor, it dawned on me that what I might pick may not work as he is so much taller than I, so I tracked him down and let him pick out what he wanted.  When he chose a 15″, I thought it was too small but he said it would be fine.  Well, we got it home and when he got it hooked up, I went to see.  He had it sitting on a phone book!!!  I told him that wasn’t gonna work.   He needed a bigger screen.   So Wednesday while I ran a food box to the one family, he returned the monitor and got a 20″ one which is much, much better for him.

Thursday was another delivery day for food box, which means that I spent 2 days on the road, one day going south and the 2nd day going north.   Thursday night, I told dh that we had to get the tree up as it had been sitting on the front porch for almost a week.  We finally got it into the stand after supper and started putting lights on.   The dumb tree almost fell over twice!   My tree stand isn’t built apparently for 10 ft tall trees.  I decided that I wasn’t going to put any ornaments on until after the tree was stabilized.   Then I couldn’t find the wire I had used last year……sigh.   At that point, I called it a night.

The tree with just lights.

Yesterday, dh went downstairs to his office to check his email.  When he tried to boot up his computer, nothing happened.  We called the tech guy who came in the afternoon and discovered that 2 resistors were actually rattling around in power pack.   The computer was shot.  I kept trying to get the tree decorated in between interruptions.

Today, dh went to check on new computers but came back w/o one because all the new computers now have Vista on them and he didn’t know if his software for his polygraph would work.  He finally called and found out it would, so he decides to go back to get a computer.  By this time, I’m totally exhausted between baking on and off all week, trying to get tree up and house decorated, etc, etc.  We decided to have supper at Pizza Hut, then off to get the computer.   In the meantime, the house is still not decorated like normal but at this point, I’m too tired to care.  I didn’t even put all the ornaments on the tree like I normally do.

I tried taking some pics tonight of the finished tree, but just not happy with it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try some new ones.

Oh yeh, I forgot. Along with every thing else happening, every other string of lights that I picked up to use on the tree or else where, didn’t work! I spent a whole day just trying to fix lights! Finally was able to get enough to do what I wanted to do and tossed the rest!

After lunch today, hubby and I started out looking for a Christmas tree.  I dislike artificial trees and also the sheared live trees.  Both are too thick and you end up having to hang ornaments on the outside of the branches.  I decorate my tree from the trunk out to the tips of the branches.  My tree usually has around a 1000 lights on it, sometimes more.  Many years I’ve hit the 1200 mark.

Anyway, I was expecting to have to spend at least an hour or two looking for a tree.  I hadn’t spotted one ahead of time like I usually do so I was prepared to spend some time looking.   We did check out one tree across the road from the house, but I didn’t feel comfortable cutting it if I could find another.   The beavers have almost stripped all the trees off the hillsides on our lake and every bit of growth is important to keep erosion down.

After looking at the one across the road, I decided we would check the property behind our garage.  It is an old horse pasture and has slowly been going back to the wild.  Many of the trees have grown too big and I really didn’t want to cut down a 30 foot tree to get my Christmas tree.

We looked at a couple and then off in the distance I spotted one growing in a clearing.   When we got up to it, it was taller than I had anticipated, but not as bad as I thought.  After walking around it and checking it from all sides, I decided it would work.   I had my hubby cut it up as far as he could reach so that a new tree could start from the cutting.   Did you know that if you cut a balsam above a ring of branches, that one of those branches (and sometimes more) will begin to grow straight up and form another Christmas tree?

After we cut it down, I realized that we would have to cut it more once we got it back to the house.  I wanted to have level ground to work on so hubby carried it back and then we trimmed it down by about 2 feet.  I probably will have to trim it some more, but I hope not.

Right now its sitting, or rather leaning in our entry way warming up slowly.  I don’t have the clay table cleaned off yet or the table moved so that I can put the tree up.  Probably won’t be able to do that until Monday.

Here’s our wild tree, warming up on the porch, waiting to come inside.

This afternoon, after closing out my last case that I’ve been working on, I decided to make a batch of Christmas cookies.  I made spritz cookies which is one of my favorites for the holidays.  They’re a butter cookie so I always make them with a cookie press.

I grabbed the cookie press out of the drawer, stuffed it with dough and started pressing out the cookies.  Wonder of wonders, after 20 years of using the press that I inherited from my late aunt, I finally figured the silly thing out.   I was so proud of that first sheet of cookies………little trees all over.

I popped them in the oven and set the timer…….the recipe calls for 7 to 10 minutes in a 400 degree oven.  While the first 2 pans were baking, I was pressing out more cookies so that I could pop additional pans in as soon as I took the first 2 out.   Just as I was finishing that up, I could smell the cookies and decided to peek in the oven.

ACK!   Noooooooooooooooo……the 1st pan burned and the 2nd wasn’t far behind.  I’m so disgusted.
The 3rd pan came out ok….after I cut the time down to 5 mins!
This is the picture of the tray of burned/slightly too brown cookies in the middle here.

I couldn’t figure out why some of the designs weren’t as I remembered, then I thought, “Wait a minute, check the other press”.   So I dug it out and lo and behold, it had the designs that I normally use.  Heh.  Here’s a pic of the big cookie press with its discs and the small one with its 3.   I think I’ll probably be making another batch of spritz, but you can bet I will be watching the time much closer.

Oh, and the cookies on the counter are the ones that were in the oven for 5 minutes only.

For the last 6 months, it has been pure, unadulterated you-know-what to do checkbook.  Until my dh retired, it balanced every month, since he’s been home, it hasn’t.   He’s now in the living room going through 5 months of statements.  I’m sick of trying to figure it out, so its his turn.

I wish he’d just let me write all the checks for a month and see what happens.  Grrrrrrrrr……..

Woke up this morning to 5 below.  At least the wind has died down from yesterday, at times we had blizzard conditions but thankfully only short periods of snow.  I’ll take the snow any day over the below 0 temps.

I’ve been busy with daily living of late, not really had to time to play here.  Hopefully that will change soon.