I ended up taking all of the holidays off from blogging, tweeting, and Facebooking. I spent the time with my family. And working on my new business. And wow, is there a great deal of work to be done on the new business. Taking a building that is well over 100 years old and renovating it takes months of hard work.

I am a bit mad at myself for not meeting up with a couple of my friends who were in town here for the holidays. They were flat out busy the same as me. And it seemed that each time I was available, they weren’t and vice versa. We’ll just have to meet up another time!

About the picture above: friends of ours are boarding their horse on our property. We have the horse in the pasture with our two miniature donkeys. The horse and donkeys are now great friends with each other and never really leave each others’ sides. Notice how huge the horse looks next to the little donkey. Oh, and the horse will be having a foal in about March so stay tuned for photos of a wee baby horse.

You know which restaurant I miss sometimes? Steak and Ale.

Remember them? They had such a cozy, British pub feel to the inside of their restaurant. We passed an old Steak and Ale location this morning that had been closed down for years now. The building was falling apart.

I don’t know of any comparable steak houses right now that have that old world appeal in food and feel. The steak houses that we seem to frequent now all have a Texas and western vibe to them.

And Bennigans. That was another restaurant that I liked to go to back in the late 80′s. They had the first fried cheesesticks I ever tried. But alas, they went the way of Steak and Ale. They were both owned by the same company and sold a few times to different corporate conglomerates. Maybe that is what led to their downfall. Corporate mismanagement.

Do you have any restaurants that were favorites but are now closed and gone?

The latest news on my new business venture is that the logo design is complete. Thanks to Jon Hebert of Northlinx Web & Graphics for his design prowess.

Now that the logo is done, I have lots more work to do. Like setting up a website, Twitter page, and Facebook page. Ordering a sign for the business and other items that need the logo.

So without further ado, here is the logo for my new shop:

 The name for my business came from the creek that runs near my home in Iuka. It is the creek that we played in as children. I always thought it had a sort of mystical sounding name. So I named my business after Pennywinkle Creek. And as for the Station part of the name: Iuka is an old railroad town which was founded back before the Civil War. The train still runs right through old downtown Iuka where my store is to be located. So I thought it fitting to name my business partly after a train station.

Projected opening for my new business is February 2012.

Last night we were driving to have dinner at a restaurant we love on the seawall in Galveston. We drove down Broadway which is the main drag through the heart of Galveston and where many of the historic homes are lined up.

Christmas decorations are now in full-swing everywhere we go, including along Broadway. We oohed and aahed at some of the fine displays of electrical waste. The Bishop’s Palace looked especially lovely lit up in the foggy night even though it wasn’t decorated with twinkling Christmas lights.

But the one house that I loved the best and appreciated the most had the simplest of decorations. I didn’t have time to take a picture. It probably wouldn’t have turned out well anyway since it was nighttime and fog was blanketing the island for a second evening in a row. That house was a beautiful old wooden home from over a hundred years ago. It was two stories tall and painted a cream color. And on every window outside the home owners had placed an evergreen wreath with a simple red bow.

That’s it.

Just a wreath on every window. It looked perfectly beautiful and I enjoyed it far better than all the garish Christmas lights at the surrounding houses. It brought to mind a traditional Christmas like Currier & Ives would have illustrated. I’m such a sucker for those Currier & Ives pictures. And yet I have none in my possession right now. I once owned a very large old illustrated book by that company. But alas, it burned up in our house fire of 2006.

 A background note about that big Currier & Ives book I once owned: about 20-something years ago I accompanied my maternal grandmother and step-grandfather to an auction. During the auction, they auctioned off boxes of household goods and lots of antiques. I was a college student at the time and did not have much money at all. But a box of curtains came up for auction and I needed some for my apartment. So I bid on them. And I got the box for a mere $5. And way in the bottom was a very large book of Currier & Ives lithographs.

I loved that big book. And I never bothered to look up the value of it until just now. And believe me, it was far more than the $5 I paid for that box at auction. Perhaps someday I will replace it. But for now, I’ll just admire the Currier & Ives Christmas pictures on-line and drive about the countryside looking for the perfect Currier & Ives setting.

A Texas boot filled with yellow roses

Last night we went to Moody Gardens Festival of Lights in Galveston. It was quite cold walking around the lighted trails which sit directly by the water. But the lights were beautiful and it really got us into the Christmas spirit.

We kept craving hot cocoa because it was cold outside and hot cocoa would simply go perfectly with the Christmas atmosphere. We missed the first hot cocoa station. Then the second one we came to had ran out. Finally the third and last place to get hot cocoa had run out but expected to have more in about 10 minutes. So we got a turkey leg and a frito pie (I know! But we hadn’t taken the time to eat dinner) and waited for the hot cocoa. Unfortunately, when it came, the only thing it had going for it was that it was hot. Since they have to make the hot cocoa in such large quantities they apparently use the cheapest cocoa mix. You end up with a sweet watery hot drink that is nothing whatsoever like the drinking chocolate I make at home. Ah well.

After touring around and looking at the lights, we went inside and watched the adapted version of The Polar Express in 4D. Complete with seats that poke you when Santa whips the reindeer and snow that hits you when the train skids on the frozen lake. It was a good short film version of the movie and the 4D features reminded me mightily of the It’s Tough To Be A Bug attraction at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

Since we have yearly memberships to Moody Gardens, I think we will go back again a couple of times before Christmas. Because the place just makes us happy. And the Christmas decorations are beautiful.

And perhaps we will try our hand (or feet) at the outdoor ice-skating rink they have set up at Moody Gardens.

You know that bucket list we all have? Some of us have it in our head and some of us have taken the time to write it all down. But we all seem to have some form of the bucket list in that there are certain things we want to do/accomplish/learn, etc. in this lifetime. Like going to Mount Rushmore. Or learning to play piano. Or maybe reading all of Edgar Allen Poe’s writings.

One of the little things on my bucket list was to learn to hook-up, tow, and back-up a trailer. It seems like such a minor thing to some people but living in the country on a farm, we are often using a trailer for one thing or another. And up until this year I have always relied on Danny to take care of hooking-up and towing the trailers.

In August I towed a Uhaul trailer from Texas to northern Mississippi. It wasn’t bad at all. Now I needed to learn to hook-up a trailer. Danny explained it to me and showed me how. Then yesterday, I put the skill into action. Of course, something caught up inside the towing ball and I had to get my brother Gregory to come help me out. Then I had a couple of phone calls with Danny who is working three states away. But finally, I got the trailer hooked up and the lights working perfectly on it.

And I towed it 50 miles to pick up a load of antiques and bring them back for my shop. Now, I need to learn to back up a trailer. That is way more difficult than simple towing or hooking up. That is going to take some practice. But I’ll get it. Eventually.

Here’s a photo of my little trailer hooked up to my Hummer yesterday (Yes, I drive a Hummer, please don’t judge me):

It is snowing here again. For the second time this winter. And it is just beautiful! I tried to take pictures with my iphone but the photos simply can’t capture the beauty of the falling snow. It almost looks like a little blizzard.

I am thinking of going for a walk in the woods. If I can find an orange vest to wear. Because it is deer hunting season here. And despite the fact that no one is hunting on our land right now, the land boundaries of our 52 acres aren’t clearly marked so a hunter could easily stray from neighboring land onto ours.

Work is stalled on our house because our carpenter’s daughter is in the hospital in Memphis. He is also the main  carpenter/electrician/plumber for my new business that I am working to open. So the progress on that is stalled also. But I’m patient and completely understanding. Family comes first!

I do have a secondary carpenter working on my business and he has been really trying to pressure me to hire him and his crew to do ALL the work. He is very disparaging about my main carpenter and says that work shouldn’t stop because the guy’s daughter is in the hospital. I have taken big issue with that attitude and am about at the point of letting the secondary carpenter and his crew go on their way!

In other news on my business, I got the preliminary mock-up for the logo in yesterday and I really like it. I requested that the artist use a design like an old general store sign for our logo. As soon as it is complete I will post it on here.

I am thinking that perhaps I have gone crazy after all. I have taken on the huge task of opening another business and quite frankly, it is exhausting. In addition to all the work involved in starting up this business, I also work my regular job and homeschool my daughter. And to make life even more crazy, I am over-seeing the process of building our house on our farm here.

Whew.

Progress on my new business is going along quite well. The carpenters have taken out lots of old pegboard and other junk from the walls of the main level of my building. They have painted the walls and built the bathroom. I decided to leave some of the old brick exposed on the walls. Today the carpenters are painting the long row of shelves that line the right side of the building. Those shelves are as old as the building which is over a hundred years old.

I am now trying to figure out how to renovate the upstairs of the building. I’ve got a floor plan laid out. But the thing that is really going to cost some money is the heating and air-conditioning for the upstairs because it is not tied into the downstairs. But I will get that taken care of eventually also. Because I really really need an office space to work from.

We had our first snowfall of the winter last night. It wasn’t a huge snow by any means and it was washed away by noon today because of freezing rain. But while it lasted, I took a few pictures:

Our woods:

A pile of cut logs from some pine trees that caught the pine beetles and had to be cut:

Another view of the woods:

A bit of snow on leaves:

I have to simply laugh at the many spam comments that come my way on this site. The inane statements. The words spelled completely wrong. The lack of good grammar. Here is a sampling for your reading pleasure: