Congrats! I bought myself a news years gift, 2 new orchids! Got them locally. One is a MTDM. Bartley Schwartz 'Highland' and the other a Lc. Cluster fire 'Cinnabar'. Both are in bloom!

My oldest daughter (who is in the Army) and has some money for the first time in her young life, asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told her lots of dirt for Winter Sowing and Bubble Mailers for exchanging seeds through the mail. She had a fit!! She said she was not getting "some raggedy stuff for her mother for Christmas!". I tried to convince her that it was what I really wanted, but she was having none of it. She ended up buying me a very lovely indoor tabletop water fountain that I will NEVER be able to use because of my 4 large dogs and three smaller children that would just destroy it!!!! PLEASE!!! SOMEONE GIVE ME SOME DIRT!!!!!!!!

Jay, Thanks. I hope the greenhouse will give me a new place to play on cool spring days. After a dozen years of carrying seedling flats in/out whenever the wind kicks up too strong or whatever, I'm ready to have a somewhat sheltered place for them. On that horrible wildfire day of April 9, 2009, when all of Oklahoma burned, I carried out my tomato seedlings which were at the tail-end of the hardening-off process. Then, I went into the kitchen and starting preparing food for our firefighters because with winds expected to be blowing around 50 mph by late afternoon, and with a Red Flag Fire Warning, I "knew" it would be a bad day and I wanted to have food ready. My friend, Fran, was at her house cooking as well and we were so proud of ourselves for getting ready in advance. I thought I'd finish cooking, move all the plants inside and out of the wind, and be ready to roll when the pagers went off. My timing was off, though, and the pagers went off while I was cooking and the plants were still outside. I started throwing food and drinks into the truck to head for the station as the fire situation rapidly, rapidly escalated and the call went out to start evacuating homes...... I quickly moved the plants up against the house, hoping it would block the wind enough to protect them. There just wasn't any way I could stay home long enough to carry in a dozen flats of plants. I returned home from the firefield about 12 hours later to many dead or nearly dead seedlings that had been beaten to death by the wind. I hope I don't ever have to go through that again. Luckily, I start way too many seedlings and always have plenty to spare. Still, losing that many of them hurt. That's the main reason for the greenhouse....to give the poor little seedlings some protection from the elements. If I had that day to live over again, I probably wouldn't have carried out all those plants knowing fire was inevitable in those weather conditions. If the weather had performed "as forecast", it would have arrived a couple hours later and I would have had the seedlings back inside. You know how the weather is though....it does what it wants no matter the forecast. Tim recently had to replace the walk-in door on the east side of the barn-style garage back in late summer. It was a really hard job. First of all, the door was not a standard size and the door he picked up at Home Depot didn't fit, so he had to take it back and drive to J&I Mfg. in another county to get a door that was an exact fit. Then, it took him and our friend Jesse about 5 or 6 hours to get that door installed. It ended up taking an entire day, a trip to first Home Depot and then J&I, lunch in town with friends, and a long afternoon/evening of wrestling with that door and getting it installed just perfectly. It is odd how seemingly simple projects turn into major ordeals sometimes. We have a door in our laundry room that has a window, and it would be more energy-efficient to have a solid steel door there, but I'd really miss the light from that window. Dawn

When my kids were very little (before being able to read), I had different paper for each child. Then my husband and I could relax on the couch and they would know which gifts they could open without us having to read the tag on each one. (Am I lazy or what? ) It also makes wrapping go much faster if you have the gifts presorted by person and don't have to change paper for each gift. In our family, Santa brings each child one big thing and the rest of the gifts are from mom and dad. I buy special paper for the gifts from Santa (usually with pictures of Santa on it). I make gift tags with "special" writing and these gifts are placed under the tree separately for the other gifts. That paper never makes another appearance. Santa also leaves each child a letter about their behavior and accomplishments for the past year. It's getting harder to pull this off each year. Happy Holidays!