13 DAYS! It can't possibly be that long since I posted here!  I've done nothing but sleep, commute, work, commute, eat, sleep, repeat.  I haven't even talked to any of my family since Christmas.  We've had LOTS of snow and the last storm gave us a little extra treat... ice.  On Wednesday I was driving Mr. D's car to work 'cause he was getting mine inspected.  After getting nearly all the way I stopped for gas.  When I did the car made this horrible clunking sound.  I thought for sure it was the CV joint and so I called triple A to tow it home.  2 hours later I was at work, but poor Mr. D had to pull the car all apart and work on that all day in the cold after I got him up at 5 to plow the driveway.  Thank you sweetie... I love you!

This morning we got up to another 5 inches of new snow.  We had run out of propane during the night, so there was no hot water.   The snow around the camper is up to my thighs now.  At 5 am trudging through the snow to light the water heater so I can have a warm shower worked better than the alarm clock.  I've been wide awake ever since :)

I have 4 gas cans and one 30lb propane tank to fill today and they are all in the back seat of my Neon.  On the way to work I discovered I hadn't taken the matches out of my pocket from lighting the water heater... so if I get stopped tonight on the way home... they're going to think I some sort of terrorist or pyromaniac.  YIKES. 

I've been thinking about things I could do this year to get a little more organized.  *chuckle*  I first of all got a small notebook and titled it "Household Management".  It includes such things as daily/weekly/monthly goals,  Bible reading schedule,  memory verses, notes from church and prayer requests, general information/phone numbers/phone card number and various other emergency information.  I am hoping this will make my life a little easier, but already the thing is BULGING.  I may need to get a bigger binder, but then I'd need a bigger thing to carry it in.  At my age, you'd think I could keep this stuff stored in my brain, but it seems the older I get the harder it is to remember.

The next step... get a good supply of string.  Problem is, I only have 10 fingers... or should I say 8 fingers, 2 thumbs.

Now for some pictures.  I haven't taken too many, but thought you'd like a few of snow and a couple of Christmas and maybe a few random shots. 

Here's Mr. D with his "Christmas Tree".  Of course we have no room in our camper for a tree, so he grabbed the flyswatter and stuck an ornament on it and proclaimed it to be our tree.

Thankfully Esther, a friend from church, came to our rescue and loaned us a very small tree... so here he is with the real tree.

On December 27th was Joanna's birthday and we decided to go do something together.  That day we got the first big snow and so we were delayed getting together, but we did get to a thrift store and KMart and a latte.  Here is her little camper in the woods when she got home...

Driving on all the back roads made for a fun night.  We have lots more snow now.  I'm sure her little camper is now well insulated.

This was the cross stitch I made for Mr. D.  I found this pattern of his favorite hymn and knew it needed to be done.  I will hang this in his office when we get into our home.

On Christmas Day we called Heather and Dexter.  We also talked for a little while to Brandon.  In some small way we are all together... Joanna, Doug and I talking on the phone to Heather.

Here's little Esther one of our neices, wrapped up in a blanket from Aunt Jean and Uncle Peter.  Perfect!  We had a wonderful weekend in Maine January 1&2.

Well, this post has officially come to an end.  I must return to my duties and have been having issues adding each picture today for some reason. 

Hope you are all staying warm.  Keep thinking about spring... it's just around the corner.  Break out the seed catalogs and a hot cup of tea and sit before a roaring fire dreaming about summer gardens.  Except the "roaring fire", I'll be doing the same.

Love y'all.

Cool Party and Giveaway....

Make sure you visit Prairie Flower Farm for a wonderful party.  If you have not signed up to get her email updates you're missing many encouraging words.  Make sure you visit today 'cause there's not much time left.

First Week

We had a wonderful trip to Maine last weekend.  I was a little shaky about going 'cause our little furnace still isn't working, but don't you know... God took care of everything.  We had weather so warm it felt a little like spring.  On Saturday Dad looked at the thermometer and it was reading 60 degrees.  The little girls wanted to go sledding, but came back in soaked 'cause the snow was melting furiously fast.  No need to worry about anything freezing here at home.  All my anxiety was for nothing.  One of these days I'll throw out all those anxious moments and realize that God is able.  How many, many times I have doubted.  I'm far worse than Thomas! 

I've been keeping up with my 90 day challenge so far... barely... hope I can keep up.  I've been giving our neighbor a ride to work in the morning which gets me up about an hour earlier than usual.  This is not a bad thing.  I just sit in the local coffee shop with a hot cup of morning coffee (the only shop that gives you a bottomless cup for .80 still), and pull out my Bible and read.  It's a little noisy, but after teaching school all those years I have learned to read or study with noise around me.  It's not ideal, but it works. 

It's been busy at work with a new logistics system in place and we're all trying to get used to it.  I am doing the daily upgrades on data entry such as new customers and gps locations making sure the orders are all entered correctly.  We generally take about 250-300 orders per day.  On any given day there may be 25+/- that have some errors.  Doesn't sound like much, but this new system must meld with the old, so all the data needs to be exactly the same.  Soon everyone will know how to enter data accurately and there will be fewer errors.

We've not had any significant snow since last weekend's thaw, so all around the chicken coop is icy.  We lost one poor hen who froze in the ice.  We didn't see her at first because  she had tucked herself in as close to the coop as possible, but apparently didn't have the strength to find the entrance.  Inside the coop is quite warm due to a deep litter.  That will all be cleaned out in the spring and we'll start building it up again in preparation for next winter. 

Seed catalogs have come and we've been shopping a little for the garden.  We do save seeds, so thankfully there isn't need for much this year.  With all the mechanical repairs that need to be done, we have a much depleted budget.  I did order some new items and also some strawberries and raspberries.

I promise to have picture on the next post.  I mistakenly left my laptop in Maine.  Mom and Dad are bringing it back when they come back in a couple weeks. 

A friend of mine emailed me this funny about a week ago.  Thought it would make you smile today and no, I am not eating donuts with my coffee... we have plenty of that at work.

A New Year and New Goals.

Although I didn't do too bad with my Bible reading last year, I am sad to say I am far behind and doubt that I will complete my chronological reading.  I have since signed up for a "read the Bible in 90 days" and hope that another challenge will get me off on the right foot.  It's not that I don't read some each day, it's just that I don't often read all each day and so end up in the dust and I don't know about you, but it does sorta feel like a competition when you have to check off boxes on a form.  I'd probably do much better if I just read what I wanted or went along with a daily devotional book, but I'm not giving up on this new challenge.  How's that for crazy? 

I do love reading God's Word and no matter how many times I read it there is always something new.  For instance, this morning I gave our neighbor a ride to work.  This meant I was in town an hour earlier than needed.  I stopped for a bit of breakfast at a little diner in town and brought in my Bible to read while I was waiting for the time to pass before work and started my "90 Day Challenge".  I started at the beginning with Genesis 1.  Now, you can't imagine how many times I have read that chapter.  So I get to verse 10
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.  I don't think I remember that the gathering together of the waters called he Seas.  Well I know I've read it before, but I just don't remember the wording.  This could be significant when thinking of the flood of Noah when the bottoms of the bodies of water raised up.  It seems that lakes were not formed till after the flood.  I did remember that before the flood it had not rained because there was a mist that watered the earth.  After the flood it was the rain water that gathered in the hollows to form fresh water lakes, desalinization occurring during the water cycle.  I really find this all interesting. 
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We had a wonderful Christmas.  Joanna came over to spend the afternoon with us.  Even though our little furnace died on Christmas Eve and I spent the evening feeling sorry for myself and in tears... it was all uphill from there.  Christmas morning I spent cleaning up the debris and putting up a clothes rack and shelf in the bedroom for a little extra storage space... that did my heart good... and then cooking some good food and changing the covers on the bench seats in our dining area.  After that I felt so much better.  It is utterly amazing how a night's rest and a good cleaning session will lift my spirits right out of the gutter.  I do like a clean house and a good night's sleep.  We are warming our little camper with small electric heaters and God has graciously given us a lot of snow for insulation and a warm weekend.  We are waiting for parts to come in for the furnace.  Last night is was so warm that we even had to turn off the one little heater we had running because we both woke up sweating.

We had 20" of snow on Monday.  I had taken the day off... another blessing... because it was Joanna's birthday.  Doug finally got the driveway plowed out around 11 am.  He first couldn't start the plow truck because the battery was dead, then he had to put gas in it, then the poultry had to be tended to.  It seemed there was an unending list of things that needed to be done before I left to see Joanna.  I finally got together with her at around 1:00 pm.  She had gotten a ride out (she lives way out in the woods) with her landlord who does plowing and since it was taking me so long, he took her out to lunch for her birthday.  When we finally met up we went to K Mart and I got her a couple things for her birthday and then we went to a thrift store.  I found a pair of dress shoes and a nice bathmat.  Then we went to a new library in town.  Then we each had a latte at a coffee shop and shared a cookie and then it was time to go home.  We went home the back way though and the trees were just so pretty with all the new snow.  Even though it may not have been the day I had hoped it would be, it still was nice to spend some time with my now 31 year old daughter.  She talked about her plans to hike the Appalacian Trail... full length... and what she would do with her doggie for 16 months.  I wish I could just take off 16 months and go with her, but I'm just not in that good of shape and we really couldn't financially take the hit right now.   Not only would I need money for the trip, I'd need to somehow make up 16 months worth of income.  We're talking somewhere around $35K just for basic survival.  Well, even though it might be fun... it is really not possible.

Hey, how was your Christmas?
Do you have any goals for the New Year?

Hope you all have a wonderful and blessed 2011 and that growing in the Lord is a priority for us all this year.

AND THE WINNERS ARE.....

I had a coworker draw two names for me out of "the hat" actually a box. 


She drew....



drum roll please....

Michelle G.  from Undeserving and Yet Overblessed to win the market bag.

and....

Mary Ann  from Pharm Girl has won the little tea set.

I'm so happy for both of you and hope these items will be useful to you.  Please send your "snail-mail" addresses to me at rem1752nh@gmail.com and I'll get these off to you "lickety split" it helps that I work at a warehouse that has FedEx pick up 2x/day.

Sorry I didn't have something for all of you.  What a great response!  I was sooo pleased that so many of you entered. 

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas and looking forward to what the Lord has in store for the New Year.

I'll probably slow down on the blogging for the next couple of weeks, 'cause there's just so much to do and never enough time as you all know.

I'll see Mrs. T and Carrie tonight I hope at our Christmas get-together.

Love ya all!!!

Today is My Blog Anniversary

Happy, Happy anniversary... and today will be the last day to enter for the giveaway.
If you've been putting it off... put it off no longer.  This afternoon at 2pm I will do a drawing and then have one of my kind coworkers draw two names from the "hat".  First will be for the bag and the second will be for the tea set.

I love giveaways... so many new faces to my blog.  Hope you come again sometime soon.

I hope to be doing some more stuff on here in the next year.  I'd like to do some "tutorials" if I can figure that out.  And also more short Bible studies.  I love reading all your news as well.  It's like we have a little community growing here and we have lots of things in common.  I've met good friends like Conny and Gina and Lori (no longer blogging).  What an encouragement you all are to me.  I have "real life" friends I blog with to like Mrs. T and Carrie.  We see each other quite often, but it's still fun to read their blogs and see what they've been "up to".

I love each one of you and you are all very special people.  The best thing is that what binds us together is not so much this blogging business, but our love for the Lord.  Of course there are lots of blogs I've read that have nothing to do with God.  There is good information there, but not the unity that I find with those I read all the time.  Thank you all dear women of God who have encouraged, admonished and helped establish my faith.

I am looking forward to next year and what interesting things will happen.

I'll be back in the morning with the giveaway results.  I'll try to get this out right away so you will get it before Christmas.

Thanks to Mrs. T for the cool pics.

Giveaway in celebration of my 1st anniversary on Green Twig

The time has come and it's sooo exciting.  I am happy to say my first giveaway is officially started.  I will be selecting names from a hat... if I have that many to draw from.  If you would like to enter my giveaway just leave a comment here.

For several years now I have been building "bee green bags" a market bag made from materials that others are discarding.  The market bag I crafted for this giveaway was made completely from materials purchased at a yard sale this summer.  The woman who was running the yard sale was selling fabric for 10 pcs for $1.  How could I possibly go wrong, so I started going through this stack of fabric and there were some really cute Christmas pieces.  This bag was made from two of them.  I made 2 bags.  One is in this giveaway and the other is going with me to our annual Ladies Christmas party and Yankee swap at church.  My tradition is to bring a bag for the swap.

Without further comment:

This bag is fully lined with pockets on the front and back.  It's approximately 14" tall and you could fit a good amount of shopping items in here.  I keep lots of fabric bags in my car for when I go shopping.  It just seems like the right thing to do.  God made Adam the caretaker of the garden and I think we still are caretakers.  If we don't take care of what we are given, then it won't be there to enjoy.  I hate seeing plastic bags hanging from tree branches along the roadside.  I just seems so wasteful and sloppy.

If you would like to win this bag, just leave a comment here and post about the giveaway on your own blog.

I also have another giveaway.  These little cups were listed on and Etsy shop for a while, but no one was interested, so I'm giving some nice person a chance to win these.

I love the design on them

These were discarded and we salvaged them.  They have a very delicate pine branch design... a little bit "Christmassy" but could be used any time of the years.  There are 3 cups, 3saucers, 3 fruit plates and a sugar and creamer.  Would be really nice for a little "Christmas Tea" with your friends.  Again, if you would like to win these, just leave a comment here and post about the giveaway on your own blog.

I will be selecting a 1st prize and a 2nd prize.  

Hope we get lots of comments.