90 mins to go.

How are you this morning?

Hi roo! Doing well, trying to dry out. I don't think we had as much rain all of last year that we had yesterday. Steady, hard rain and wind for six hours! Everything is soaked and leaves are everywhere. In fact, I think the entire neighborhood's leaves are in the backyard.

Is everyone excited? What are you having for Christmas dinner (if you haven't already told me, I forget, sorry)? Today I'm going to make a breakfast casserole that sits in the fridge overnight, then Christmas morning I can just pop in the oven since Starbucks is closed, darn them. What were they thinking????

Then I'm going to make a chicken dinner for the guy next door, his wife is in a hospice I think we already talked about it. He needs to have something to eat rather than the tv dinners he's been eating.

We've had a bit of a thunderstorm tonight and it is still raining - drat. Not unusual after such a hot day, although it doesn't happen as much as it used to. Supposed to be going to rain tomorrow but I hope not, I hate driving in it and DD lives about 40 mins away. Hope to get out of here early, as to leave mid morning can take up to 2 hours to get there. Leave the leaves as they are - good compost!!

DD is doing a turkey breast roast with baked potatoes and a variety of salads. The children will come mid morning and stay for lunch and then go to their other grands. Her partner will be having lunch with his kids at his parent's house and will be back mid afternoon after taking the kids back to their mother.. These compostite families!!!!! Too much to keep up with, especially when ex's are stubbornly rigid and refuse to be flexible at all. Can't say I'm excited, I've had no real lead up, and then it will be straight back to house business, but I'm sure a bubbly or 3 will get me in the mood PQS.

Hope you are going to write Starbucks a stern letter - how rude of them!!!! Nice you are making your neighbour a home cooked meal for a change.

I always seem to be a day behind on the discussions here! You're making me hungry. I'm going to cousins' for the holiday on Tuesday afternoon, and have no clue what's for dinner .. ham, probably.

Learned something new about Houzz today. Was doing a targeted search of photos: mosaic+bathroom+wave. When I saved some to my porfolio, I always make a comment, to remind myself what I was thinking. Then I accidentally closed the webside .. and when I went back to where I'd been, I saw those reminders posted with the photos as "recent comments" (or something like that); I thought they were private! Is NOTHING private here? I'm tempted to start saving photos on my own computer instead .. more work, but it's really no one's business what my comments to myself are!

I actually found one designer/showroom about 15 miles from me, and a Massachusetts designer who did a job just a few towns away from me! But I could see where that house was .. across the street from the beach in Sea Girt, NJ .. so I know that house has to be in the $3 million range, and their bathroom budget had to be way more than mine!

Merry Christmas Roo, have a lovely day with your family.

Astraea, you need to check out that bathroom design, there might be a lot of good ideas there. Sometimes you can take just a couple of elements to really ramp up the look. I came across a tile I thought for sure that would be 25-30 a ft. I'm sure I had a silly grin when I learned it was 6.99 woo hoo
!!!! As for those comments, I never comment on the pics I save. My theory is if I don't know why i liked them six months later I didn't like them enough, plus I'm not that organized :/

Bobbi, That's so thoughtful to make a dinner for your neighbour. I'm sure he and his wife really appreciate it. Warms my heart :)

While you guys are having rain,rain, rain, I'm getting snow, snow ,snow. Had to clear the driveway twice yesterday but Hogie sure is loving it. As for me, the Vancouver company came,saw and concurred. There off to my nephews new home at the lake for the rest of there stay. My son and GF delivered to the Airport and are off to Cuba... something about the -25c.....wieners!!!! Today I have a few grocery items to pick and fresh flowers, a friend is coming for dinner. Christmas dinner is here....lord help me again!!!!! I feel like I've been shot out of a cannon for the last 10 days or so. Time will tell if the number of dinner guest's increases. On TG we were to have 8 for dinner but 12 showed up :) oh well, everyone should have somewhere to go and share in the fun. We have a set of friends that moved to Canada from Mexico about four years ago. My son was working at the same place as this fellow. Poor guy, could barely speak a stitch of english but several bottles of wine later he was fluent and we were speaking Mexican ha ha ha. Anyways two years ago he was married to his long time GF from Mexico and she moved here too. Her english is perfect. They will join us again, they have spent every holiday gathering here if they haven't flown back to be with family. There a ton of fun and really enjoy our Christmas night bomb fires outside....even if it's really cold. We roast marshmallows make them into shooter glasses and fill them with Baileys and no need to worry about the beer getting warm.
Astraea.

Gotta get the cabbage rolls out of the freezer, going to bake them today to make more oven space in the oven for tomorrow. I can't serve them tomorrow if there not just perfect.... right?

Merry ho ho, ROO!!

Merry christmas eve to everyone else!

ok...saw a bumber sticker on the way to work a minute ago...HAVE to share, even though it's not christmasy "PMS + GPS = A crazy b*tch that can find you!"

Well, my holiday is turning into something very weird... can't go into here. My daughter is ecstatic however...her ipad came in the mail saturday and it wasn't supposed to get there until the day AFTER christmas..oh well. She is still thrilled beyond belief, and I'm looking forward to seeing Boo Mappin's face when she sees that santa brought her minnie mouse bicycle. This is really the first christmas where she kind of knows what's going on.

Hi, girls, Merry Christmas Eve. Off to daughter's tonight for a dinner for 10 of us. Looking forward to it as she is a great hostess. My tenant, who I love, and is 5 years older than DD is joining us tonight as his family is in FLA. I would love for the Christmas Santa Love Reindeer to hit them both between the eyes. They were meant for each other…same interests, same mellow personalities. Of course I would never even let on that this would be my wish. I try to keep a low profile in her life and it works well as we are also great friends. It was hard for me to learn to let her be (mothers), but she is smarter than I am, has accomplished way more than I ever could, can do just about anything (including shingling a house) and has traveled the world. :>)

Dinner tomorrow is a rib-eye roast that the butcher seasoned for me, bake stuffed potatoes, butternut squash and green beans with shallots. The butcher also made this delicious mushroom red wine sauce for the beef. It will be a quiet day, just the three of us (for now) as olldcan says you never know who will show.

greengirl, left a post for you on yesterday's thread asking about the Prime Time.

bobbi, on my walk today, I saw a beautiful outfit in the store window. Rust pants, a powder blue sweater and a gorgeous rust and gold chunky necklace. Really stunning.

mp, that bumper sticker, who ever was driving that car, I think we have met her here a couple of times :>) Merry, merry.

I love the bumper sticker, and judy what a great idea for my rust pants! Have to go out and get a powder blue sweater now, what a wonderful excuse!!!

Sounds like everyone has great plans for tonight and tomorrow! Me too! I just finished the breakfast casserole and the neighbor's dinner, so all I have left is to clean the floors and shower, woo hoo!!!

Poor R, he just finished raking about a million leaves and the street sweeper came by and swept around them!!! OMG, what was that guy thinking??? Our backyard is 1/3 mud, 1/3 grass and 1/3 leaves, unbelievable.

Ok! Everyone (including you eztia) have a wonderful Christmas and I expect a full report on gifts, ok?

Merry Christmas. Feliz Navidad.

Aww, gracia eztia, y tu tambien!

Merry Christmas, OLLDS.

Astraea - when you put comments on photos you save, make sure you tick the square that says 'make comment private'. I always do that and have never had a problem.

I think I have a new 'fan'. Someone found my ideasbook today and went through it commenting on so many aspects of it and made an overall comment about my good taste and then on another post recommended the poster check it out for great ideas. Makes one feel good.

Wow! Roo! It sounds like you had a whirlwind Christmas, what with all the weather, food and people! Your granddaughter sounds so adorable, OMG. First makeup! I still remember my first makeup, it was a pink blush, made by Yardley (very popular at that time), I think I used half of it the first day. Pray tell, what is Sydney Harbour Bridge climb?

Your new towels sound yummy, do the colors work with your new bathroom?

What are bon bons? The only bon bons I know of are chocolate candies, kind of like truffles.

Are you skype-ing your LA grands? I can't help you stay awake, tho, I need to get R up. It's almost 3 AM Christmas morning and he's still asleep. What is he waiting for, Easter? I will catch up with you later, tho! Merry Christmas!

I needed to find a Celsius to Farenheit temperature converter .. 39 deg C is 102 deg F? Wow .. that's HOT! After Julie made those comments about privacy settings, I set as much on my profile private as I could (I think). I guess I didn't pay attention to when I saved the pictures. I'm not sure why, but I saved that one photo to my computer instead .. that ceramic fish border, so now I'm not sure where I saw it! It's really not what I want either, but everything give me more ideas.

Astraea, just Google what is x deg C .... and it automatically comes up with F conversion. Links will also come up with whole conversion charts. There is a formula but I can never remember it - too lazy to try, especially when Google make it so easy. Going from 102 one day to 60 the next is a huge jump and one that does make people ill.

You have to tick that box every time you save a photo, it isn't something you can preset unfortunately and several times I have been in a hurry and forgotten to do it.

Love that fish border, that is very me because I love a beach theme. There is something about it that looks a bit period too, it isn't trendy modern. The blue in the fish is the accent colour I went for in my ensuite and the new towels go with it. I would have liked a border in one way but you buy them by the tile here which can work out extremely expensive, especially one like that which seems to have 3 rows of tiles. Not sure though if a border is a keeper for me, I love them, but I do get over things quickly and I would worry it would date the bathroom too quickly.

When I first started my ideasbook for the bathrooms, I put every photo I saw of every little thing I liked in it till I ended up with dozens of similar photos. Every week I went through and deleted things that were too similar or I realised I didn't want. It took me months to really start to get down to just what I wanted and then of course I had to go to the shops and see what was available and then come back to find things similar to what I had seen in the shops. It was funny though, in the end I ended up going so simple, I decided to be creative with the things I can change out often or as the mood takes me. I am so happy with the end result now, which is basically an off white bathroom that always looks clean and sparkling and I enjoy keeping clean because it looks so good. That has actually rubbed off on my attitude to the rest of the house.

Originally I always said I could decorate 10 homes because of all the styles and colours, I just couldn't make up my mind, but now I have started I have come to realise that the primary consideration is the aspect and light in a room and what the room needs to deal with issues there. The rooms that have the biggest issues are the ones that have then influenced the rest of the house for balance and flow and in my mind, everything is coming to gether well, I am getting the end result I want.

Hope I might find my battery charger this week when I clean up the two spare bedrooms so I can put some photos up for you all.