Winter Wonderland

And without further ado, here are the snow pictures! :)

Our house. (as you can see, my family members were outside as well... marveling at all the fluffy white stuff)

I loved the snow... while it lasted, it was so beautiful!
Me, in the snow.

My brother Mark made a snow Koala Bear. *Cute!!*

Our chickens were highly insulted at the weather, and hardly poked their heads outside the whole day while the aggravating precipatation fell.

Our garden pots were buried underneath a generous blanket of icy snow. Miraculously... some of the lettuce survived! :)

A view off the porch. (I believe I took this shot out the window)

This used to be our driveway - it morphed into an arctic forest while we weren't looking.

I can still feel the crisp, frosty air on my cheeks that I enjoyed while shooting this photo of our mountain view.

I managed to get Steven to take my picture in front of the view. That's me, down in the corner there. :)

This is a shot down the driveway while it was still snowing heavily on Friday evening. (Some of these pictures are from Friday the 12th,, and some are from the next morning.)

As a side note, I have no idea how I managed to get my wide-leg cargo-style corduroy pants to look amazingly like wild, hippie bell-bottoms in ^that shot.

I ended up making my mom's birthday cake the day of the great snow, even though her birthday was on the 9th... so I decided to photograph the cake with the snow. :D

The view out my bedroom window.

Steven, standing out in the little clearing where we have a tulip poplar, a pear tree, and a plum tree.

A shot through the woods.

More woods. This is on Saturday morning.

This is looking up the driveway.

Snow-laden branches of the post oak trees. Lovely!

Hope you enjoyed the snow pictures! :)

Spring Blog Makeover

My delightful mother picked out an ADORABLE new blog background for her spring makeover. :) I helped her with the font colors and designed a cute new header and blog button for her.

And, the obligatory sneak peek... ;)

I melted when I saw how sweet the finished project looked. You really must head on over to her blog, Gloria In Excelsis Deo, and drop her a little note! I know it would brighten her day to hear how you like her new look. :)

I am frightfully behind in posting pictures of the 8 inches of snow we were blessed with one week ago, but I plan on sharing those very soon. :) (in fact, if I don't post them soon, feel free to send me a little reminder via the comment section saying something like "Julia! Where are those snow pictures you promised??") :D

Love & Hugs!

Watching "Emma"

Are any of you interested in watching the new Emma Jane Austen movie, starring Romola Garai? *squeals* ;)

I watched it and I must say, I was more impressed than I expected I'd be. I love the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma, but there are many things about this new version that captivated me. :) I was pleasantly surprised by how many of the lines from the movie are actually taken straight from the book, and how little the screenwriters changed the plot, characters, and situations. The timing of everything is extremely close to how everything happens in the book. All this I love! :D I like the newer Harriet much better. At first I wasn't sure about Mr. Knightley, but I absolutely loved him by the time the movie was done.

Frank Churchill is much more like I would have imagined him to be... the ages of the actors seem to be closer to the actual book... Unfortunately, I didn't think Romola Garai acted quite well-bred and elegant enough for the part of Miss Woodhouse, and does a few things that I don't think Emma would have done... (i.e, bursting into Mr. Knightley's library, making a short electrifying statement, and immediately running back out) And Miss Bates was not quite as 'bates-y' as I would have liked. Overall though, this is a very well-done, satisfying Jane Austen Movie. :D

Love-y Things

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY...to all my dear readers!

And... HAPPY BIRTHDAY

...To my brother Mark, who today turns 16 years old. (sniff! He's growing up so fast.) :D

Love & Hugs,

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today my dear, sweet Mama has her birthday. :) I love you so much Mama!

 Love & Hugs,

I Loooooove blog design. :)

Today I went up to a house of some friends of ours and helped the very sweet Mrs. Pam set up a blog! :) We applied a totally awesome background from http://shabbyblogs.com, and I designed a header to go with it and helped Mrs. Pam edit her fonts and colors... and we had such a blast! :D I would have had a way easier time if my photo editing program had worked on her computer... *arrrrrgh* Windows Vista and I are not very good friends. :D However, I managed to outsmart the computer *da-da-da-DAAA! Victory!!* and use a different program to create her header online. (hurrah for Paint.net!)

Now, I would be absolutely thrilled if ya'll went over and said hi and tell Mrs. Pam if you like her new blog! Also, come back and tell me if you liked it or not. I'd love to hear your responses.

Here's a sneak peek.....

Ooooh, isn't it pretty??? :D

When Julia isn't blogging...

One of my very good friends remarked once, on hearing that I had been very busy lately... "I thought that's what it was, it seems that when Julia isn't blogging, she's really busy!" How right she was. :D

When I'm busy, I don't blog! It gets bumped back to the bottom of my priorities. Laundry, Dishes, Housecleaning, and checking my email all come first. :D

Also, I feel like for some strange reason that my blog posts should be meaningful and have a great and important topic. I feel silly typing away for no reason about not much, or giving little tiny tidbits of information on what I'm doing recently. (Why the picture of the beach? Well, that was rather random, but it conveys such a sense of serenity that I knew that... somehow... it went with this post. :D)

Take a deep breath. Now let it out slowly. Ahhhhhhh. Didn't that feel good? I sometimes have to stop and do that in the midst of a hectic day. It clears the mind. :)

Today I got my bedroom all clean and vacuumed the floor... and put away the piles of clean laundry left over from Wednesday... :D I feel so much more peaceful when my bedroom floor is all clean. You know what I mean? Somehow, when the area around me is cluttered, my mind feels cluttered too.

My next huge, gi-normous project is organizing my jewelry worktable. Oooooiiiiiyyuuugh. (That was a groan) My creative moods, oh-so-wonderful for designing jewelry, leave much to be desired in the area of... um... neatness. :P In other words, when I'm playing around with beads and colors and silver and crystal... I make a royal mess! :D

I'll have to take before-and-after photos so you can see what I mean. :) It needs to be done soon so I can start bulking up my inventory for a jewelry show in March. Having lots of beautiful stock on hand will be nice when it's a week before the show and I'm quickly and efficiently (hah, or frantically and crazily) finishing up the last few hundred pairs of earrings. :D

Anyway, thank you for reading my evening musings and do take a moment to drop me a comment. It's such lovely thing, hearing from you! What have you been busying yourself with recently? I'd love to hear about it. :D



P.s.
I just did a post on MOHL, if you want to read it.