Sunny and Cold

The sun is dazzling this morning, and the temperatures are turning colder. We're expecting more snow and ice beginning late tonight and into tomorrow morning. For now, it's very pretty outside.

Look far off into the distance and you can see Mt. St. Helens. We haven't been able to see it for a couple of weeks, at least.

The roads were clear, even though there was plenty of snow on the ground, and so I was able to get off the hill for lunch with Matthew. Here's how the driveway looked as I drove off.

Lunch was nice. Matthew is in a very good place, leaving his job this month and venturing off on a start-up company. It's scary for him, but he's hopeful and optimistic about his future. After lunch, I had a few errands to run. On the way home, I could see that the snow was limited to the very top of the hill where we live.

It's expected to fall to the valley floor overnight, which is never a good thing for the morning commute. Add in the expected ice, and it's pretty much a disaster. Fortunately, I'm not going anywhere, and Mike has the option of working from home.

One of my errands yesterday was to pick up a tree. We're only putting up a table top tree these days. We have some short strings of lights and decorations saved from previous Jackson & Perkins trees we've purchased. Mike put the lights on it last night, and I finished decorating it this morning.

Including time spent standing in line to pay for it, I think we spent about 20 minutes on this tree...my kind of tree. The rooms in our house are small, and we don't have little ones running around any more, unless you count the furry little ones. These days we keep our decorations pretty simple. There's the two dimensional tree hanging in the family room downstairs:

And this beady-eyed Santa hanging in the living room. It's probably just as well we don't have little ones running around. I'm afraid this Santa would put them off Christmas for good.

There are a few other little things sitting around too, but that's pretty much it for us and Christmas.

This morning I checked in on the seed culture. It has barely risen from yesterday. It needs to at least double in volume before I'm ready to move on to the barm.

There are bubbles, and so I know there is fermentation going on. I'll give this another day, and maybe two, to reach its full potential. There's no rush on this, and so I'm being patient and waiting it out.

Also this morning I finished stitching the little quilt, the dog's face, and some of the items in the suitcase on this Summer Holiday block. It's good to have the embroidery finished on the applique.

It can be hard to stitch through, and it gave me a sore knuckle yesterday. You can see how the edges of the dog applique are pretty badly frayed. I'll hit those with some Fray Check and it should be fine.

Today I'll start quilting the Gingerbread Square quilt. It's taken me a few days to work up my nerve, but I'm ready to go now. Wish me luck. Also, be sure to check out my giveaway post for Giveaway Day right here.