Sunday Salon --- Update on stuff and holiday fun

Our family at the Pt. Defiance Zoolights. Thank you, Diane, for a fun evening!

Weather: Windy and rainy Saturday morning. Sunny and windy Saturday afternoon.

Busy Sunday: Last Sunday we had a big day. The kids were in the Children's program at church, our daughter's choir, Northwest Repertory Singers, had their Holiday concert, we were invited to dinner with a cousin and her family and then a trip to Zoolights afterwards.  You can see from the photos, it was a good day!

Ian, a lamb. Jamie, the donkey in the church Nativity program.

Carly, center front, and her choir singing at their second concert of the week on Tuesday at Univ. of Puget Sound.

A spectacular tree at Zoolights!

Addendum on Stuff #1: If you read my post last week, you know it was all about stuff. Here it is if you missed it. Well, the day after I published that post my husband entered a raffle for a bunch of new kitchen stuff and he won! Of course, he did. This is the the definition of ironic. I am trying to get rid of stuff and he wins a raffle for more stuff. As it turned out the kitchen items were mostly high quality, unique things we didn't already own. 

New stuff.

Boxes of new stuff before we uncrated it.

Addendum on stuff #2: Keeping any of the new kitchen items meant we had to make room for them which led to a chain reaction of cleaning out cupboards. First I cleaned off three shelves in my pantry where I store candles, vases, cookbooks, etc. I threw away about three bags of "garbage" and set aside two bags of stuff to take to a charity shop. The magnetic knife rack needs counter space, so I cleaned off the counter tops which also caused a chain reaction. This time I cleaned out two cupboards, pitching that old espresso maker, the George Foreman grill, and a bunch of coffee mugs. This made enough room for me to move items like my tea containers and OTC drugs which lived on the counter without any place else to go before. This led to at least another two or three bags of items to go to the charity shop or the garbage can. My daughter took the grill and few mugs, which is part of the well-known phenomenon of moving stuff around within families. 😆 So I am on my way toward getting rid of 40 bags of stuff by Easter.  By my count I'd say I am eight bags down. It feels good.

Christmas prep progress: Don and I finished writing and sending out our Christmas cards this morning. The house is decorated and the lights are hung, almost all the gifts are purchased, most of them are wrapped, plans are made for our Christmas Eve dinner. Time for a bit of baking and now we can just relax into this time before the big day. We ran errands this past week during the middle of day and marveled at how different it is to shop when others are at work. One of the benefits of being retired. How is your holiday prep going? 

Books: I finished one tiny book this week: The Woods at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke. That is it. I did make progress on Knife by Salman Rushdie and The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende. But progress is slow on both of them.

The Best Books of 2024: I looked at 39 Best-Books-of-2024 lists and compiled the top 50 from them. Take a look at my findings. (Please! It took me a lot of time to pull together all the data!) Thanks. Let me know what your favorite book published in 2024 is.

Rose Bowl: Our football team won the conference championship so they are heading to the Rose Bowl to play another game on New Year's Day. We decided to go, to be part of cheering squad. This week we've been busy making plans to travel south in a few weeks. Pasadena, CA here we come.

Duck fans. This Duck blow-up is on display at Don's cousin's home.

This: We still have lots of work to do to protect our environment, and to heal the world.

Vote: Which books should I read for my One Big Book 2025 Challenge? Help me decide!

-Anne