From the Weather Desk: Just to get everybody in the mood, the Winter Goddess blew 8 1/2 inches of snow our way before Thanksgiving...

She finished up the job later that night.

The Borough's front loader is pretty scary. It came back a couple more times.

From the Upsizing Desk: A handsome set of six placemats that Pat made for my Christmas and my future residence...

Complete with my own personal snowman. Thank you, Pat.

And from our friends at Walmart, I purchased some "Rollback" bamboo cutting boards...

From the Holiday Desk: Thanksgiving was happily spent with family, mostly. Here is Wendy's kitchen Thanksgiving day...



The turkey was from Necessity Farm close by. It was wonderful meat.

Typical holiday in the Bolding kitchen. Yes, that's Keoni in the background practicing viola.

Karma Kitty, potatoes, and JM.

Ah, bliss. No more perfect space on the countertop but over the running dishwasher.

And Fancy blissfully dreaming in the living room.

Table setting by the boys...er, young men...

Aidan and Keoni. It was good, good, good food.

From the Arts Desk: Sandy sent a set of water miscible oil paints to me with some small canvasses to try them out. Yes, right here in this small space I gave them a try this morning. It is interesting and different than any other medium I've ever used. Behaves a little like watercolors and like oils at the same time. I began with blue (ultramarine) and began to get a feel of what it's like...

This is one of the five Tillandsias that Jeanenne sent late winter of '17. It bloomed through the last half of summer, still retains the bloom, and has a baby! One of its neighbors has a baby, too!

From the Figure It Out for Yourself Desk: I thought you might like to see what served so well for paint brush storage the last 20 years.

A somewhat firm fabric placemat, chopsticks for additional stiffness, underwear elastic, safety pins...

Roll them up...

And secure with rubber bands.