See that beautiful tree with its orange and red leaves? Up until this morning, that tree was merrily going about its business believing that it was still Fall in Virginia. It has been so warm here, that our leaves changed very late and have been holding on to some of the trees longer than usual. But this morning, we had our first snow of the season...and let's just say that the poor tree doesn't know "whether to shit or go blind..."

It is very odd to be looking at the colorful foliage covered with snow...but the contrast sure is lovely!

I thought the berries on this tree were pretty, surrounded by the fresh new snow...Needless to say, it is a perfect day for hot beverages and wood burning in the fireplace.

Welcome Winter! You are beautiful.

Labels: beauty, confusion, current events, favorites, fireplace, photos, pictures, pretty, snow, Virginia, weirdness, winter

This cute little bitch...

...decided that mommie needed to play the world's largest game of Pick Up Sticks. Thanks, Nutmeg!

Here is the magic happening in the oven yesterday -- it was delicious and we are going to eat it again tonight...Yum!

Since it has gotten colder again tonight, we are going to have a fire later. We went to the National Gallery of Art in DC today with the man's visiting momma and we are exhausted.

Hope you all are having a great holiday weekend -- and for my non-American reader friends -- Happy Full Moon (Saturday)!

Labels: cats, fireplace, food, FullMoon, heide, holidays, household, Man, mom, museums, Nutmeg, pets, turkey

We have temporarily changed the appearance of our fireplace...and it looks kind of strange...but we sure are toasty!!


It has finally gotten cold in Virginia and we were using the fireplace daily, but we were getting tired of lugging wood home every other day from the clubhouse. And then, after constantly having to run the heat in the apartment for very long periods of time to heat up the living room and the bedroom (at opposite ends of a long 4-room external-walled apartment) we got sick of how much electricity this was wasting. I realized that we were spending the majority of our time in the living room because it was the warmest room...so I partially closed off the rest of the apartment, turned off the heat, took out the very efficient space heater and decided, we are only going to use electricity to heat this one room (rather than 4 semi-used rooms) and stay there. Then, I got the great idea to hang a mylar blanket in front of the fireplace to reflect our heat back into the room (instead of losing it through the drafty fireplace) --- and let me tell you, WE ARE TOASTY!!! And using less electricity. Al Gore would be so proud of us. Of course, Noodle wants to know what the heck did we do to his fireplace?? [No more sooty paws for you, mister --- at least until the mylar comes down!]


Noodle and Jackie love their pass-thru --- it really is the best way to watch everything that is going on in the kitchen. Especially in the sink!

And so, our large family is warm on the couch futon by night and doing our work on the laptop in various corners by day. When we are not using the bed, the cats have decided to implement a quadrant strategy to divide the space fairly --- no touching, please.


Goodnight everybody!

Labels: cats, family, fireplace, jackie, noodle, pets