We had a lovely thanksgiving. We had to take a ferry out to the Olympic peninsula and drive out into the country to get to my mom's place. It was the first time we drove there on our own, so we took a wrong turn and ended up on the Pacific Coast Highway for a bit. That was actually the best part of the drive because there were so few cars on the road there. We finally made it to the house just before it started to snow. I LOVE the snow. I mean, it makes me giddy. I started jumping up and down with glee. Unfortunately, it only snowed for about 10 minutes.
Being at my mom's house is like being in a museum. She and my stepfather collect 18th century American furniture and accoutrements. My grandmother kept walking around the house, pointing at things and asking, "How old is this?", "Where is this from?" It was so cute. I told my mother that she needed to start putting little tags on everything so everyone can knows what they're looking at.
Here is just some of their pewter collection.
I love how it used to be popular to have paintings of one's dogs in their homes. This is not a painting of my mother's dog (a golden retriever). It is a painting of a dog belonging to someone who must have loved it very much. Now, it hangs in my mother's house beside her bed. This is the first Thanksgiving I have spent with my mom in about 8 years, so it was really special. Unfortunately, I have not been feeling very well in the last couple of weeks, and I couldn't finish my mean, and I had to lie down for a bit. I'm really trying to take care of myself and do everything I'm supposed to be doing to be well. I have my moments of weakness, but overall I feel like I've been doing well. It looks like I just haven't been doing well enough because I'm having all the old symptoms again. Very frustrating. I think I have been unwittingly eating gluten in places where it hides, and I just have to be far more diligent about making sure I'm not consuming this poison (to me at least).
We were going to wait until next weekend to decorate our house for Christmas. I usually don't decorate until we have a tree, and we are going out to cut our tree next weekend, so we weren't going to decorate the house until then. However, it snowed yesterday, and I simply could not restrain myself for one moment more. Out came the camera and the decorations.
I bought this tree on Ebay a couple of weeks ago, and I'm completely in love. It is a vintage aluminum tree made in Japan. I have no idea when it was made.
Oh, but that is only the beginning! More holiday decorations to come...
