Christmas Tag

Many of my answers are probably going to be like Mindy's but some will be different.

Christmas Tag

1.Do you like Hot Chocolate or Egg Nog? I LOVE both! They just don't love me!

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just put them under the tree? Since I was Santa for the last 30 years, I tried to wrap all of them unless they were too big and then a bow. (Oh, I hope I didn't just disillusion you girls!) Mom was Santa, not old Saint Nick!

3. Colored or white lights on tree/house? I love colored!

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No -don't need to. Mother nature does that for us. For the last few years we have gone to California and big bunches of mistletoe hangs down from the trees, so when we drive under them I get kissed!

5. When do you put up your decorations? I used to like to do it after Thanksgiving, but since living here I haven't really put any up. When we moved I threw away my old dilapitated tree and decorations. Last year I tried to put up a few lights. Christmas is for children and it just seems like a lot of work when I wasn't going to be here for Christmas. This year may be different though, maybe Davids daughter will come and visit us for Christmas and so I will put up some decorations

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Aunt Maries Frog eye salad and her apple crisp.

7. What is your favorite holiday memory from your childhood? I loved to make homemade gifts for all of my family and my neices and nephews. I got such a wonderful feeling as I was making doll blankets or some other gift for them. When I was grown with my own children I felt the same way. I loved to make things for them that I thought they would be excited about. It brought me such joy to think of how excited and surprised they would be when they got my gift. I miss my frame shop though, because I did alot of nice gifts with the tools.

8. Do you open a gift on Christmas eve? Growing up no, because there wasn't very many, and no now.
9. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? What tree?

.10. Snow! Love it or dread it? Love the look, hate the cold and driving in it, so Arizona is great for that reason.

11. Do you remember your favorite gift? My dad would buy us girls some sort of piece of jewelry. I looked forward to that the most. Most of the gifts growing up were bras and underpants and socks. I do remember when I was a teenager my mom bought me a hair blow dryer, I thought it was so neat because it wasn't a bra or undies. I was pretty excited about the zoom lens that David bought for me for Christmas a couple of years ago!

12. What is the most important thing about the holidays for you? My family. Making gifts for my children and grandchildren also for my parents. The music. I love Christmas music. I miss being around my family at Christmas. Not only my children and grandchildren, but my own mom and dad and family.

13. What is your favorite hoilday dessert? I love pomagrantes for Christmas and mandarin organes. When I was little the only time my parents could get these really wonderful mandarin oranges, (They would call them jap oranges) was at christmas time. That was a real treat.

14. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Just being with my family.

15. What tops your tree? When I have one, it is an angel

16. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? I like to see the joy in someones eyes when I have given them a gift that they love. But I like to recieve because it feels like someone loves me when I am given a gift that was given with love.

17. What is your favorite Christmas song? Cantabell carols? It that the name?

18. Candy canes? I like the spearmint ones. .

19. Do you feel Christmas is too commercialized? Yes.

20. Favorite Christmas movie? Do I have to pick? There are so many fun ones!

21. Can you ice skate? When I was four I could, but now no! I wouldn't even want to try, I would probably kill myself!

I have no idea who to tag because I figure just my daughters read this. If Marie or Heather my niece or Kareena or Andrea read this, then I guess that I tag them.

My birthday present

I went to Utah for my birthday. I wanted to spend my birthday taking pictures of my daughters and my grand children. Holly took me to the mountains with all of their beautiful colors and I took lots of pictures of Jackson and Annie... I couldn't think of a better place to be or where I would want to be more than in my beautiful Utah mountains taking pictures of my beautiful family.. unless it was the lunch afterwards with all of my grandchildren and two of my four daughters. Here we have Holly. WOW! Many more pictures to come of Hollys family and Mindys. But it is 11:30 pm and I am tired so I will post later.. Be patient!!

New Posts

I just posted a lot of new photography and my ideas for another painting. Check out my other blog. Art from my heart, or go to siouxzbellesart.blogspot.com


Let me know what you think! I had fun photographing these.

Mom, Susie, me

Petrified Forest

Nothing like a vacation to the Petrified Forest in Arizona to put a little balance back in one's life.

We went deer hunting . . . found three.

Famous newspaper rock. Click it to get a closeup and find all the news fit to print.



Some rocks erode less easily than others and create overhangs.

A furry friend for Jackson, Alex, Kayla and Annie to see.

Once giant trees, covered by sediment and later replaced by silica, now rest in the Petrified Forest. Here, Susie stands near the roots of a fallen giant.

The colors can be quite amazing.

Buried in sediment for millennia with its wood replaced by multicolored minerals, a petrified tree, ultimately unearthed by the forces of erosion, lies just as it had been laid down anciently.

More amazing colors.

It's against the law for people to take any petrified wood out of the forest . . . a good thing for us, as otherwise we wouldn't have seen much, if any.

Large segments of logs on a hill.

The agate bridge, a petrified tree spanning a ravine, lies near a lone and dreary tree overlooking the great expanse of grassy valley below.

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These photos give just a sampling of what we saw.

Angie and Austins Vacation to Arizona

Check out the Biker Babe!

We took Angie and Austin to the Renaissance Fair here in Arizona when they came for their vacation in March.


Beautiful lady



It was fun to see all of the architecture that looked like in Shakespeares day.




Check out the other beautiful lady?

Austin is quite the thespian.





We loved watching the pottery maker throw pots on a wheel.






Here princess Angela is posing for the camera.






We also watched a glass blower.








Jousting was also on the program.

Check out the costumes

Here is a really mean Ghangis Kahn! But wait...
the fair maiden will soften his heart with a kiss!


Like putty in her hands!


Check out all of these magnificent costumes! It was quite spectacular to see so many incredible costumes. We felt like we had gone back to the days of the 3 musketeers!

Wearing this outfit in the Arizona sunshine. That is what I call Brave Heart.

One of the musketeers! Or a good replica of one.

Here we are in our finest regalia. The king and queen of the festival!

Angie just flipped over the Festival! I think this was the most fun for her, I know it was for me.

Todays Garden

This is our friendly garden lizard. We thought Alex and Jackson would like to see our pet lizard.


My Kohlrabi is starting to bulb out! I am so excited about that. I love kohlrabi with a little bit of salt. Yummm

You can see a ripening tomatoe peeking out from the tomatoe bush.

Yes, we are going to have crook neck squash. These babies are around 4-6 inches in length and I am just eyeing them each time I see them. I can't wait to have fresh crook neck squash!

My beans are getting bigger. A few more days and I might have a mess of beans for a meal.

You can see how luscious and green my little garden is! Pretty exciting for me! No weeds! Now that is a first for my gardens!

siouxzbellesart.blogspot.com

Check out my newest creations in this blog. I have been working at improving my photographic skills because if I have a great picture to see, I can usually paint a great picture. (Anyways, I am trying to be positive!) So have a look see and enjoy my world and adventures.

My Lasagna Garden

In the Arizona Desert with all of the caliche (not sure of the spelling) but it makes the ground really hard like cement with very little organic matter in it. And all of the clay like soil, and the heat, and the scorpions and the ants, and the cochroaches, and the heat, and the sun and the heat... You get the picture?

Actually it can be very beautiful down here. As proof, if you go to my other blog site you will get to see some of the beauties of Arizona and I also love the sun! http://siouxzbellesart.blogspot.com/


I missed my big green productive garden in Lehi and so instead of crying over something I didn't have any control over, (not to say that I haven't cried over things I have no control over) but I decided that store-bought vegetables had no taste and were blaaaahhh! I also miss the green, and so artist that I am, I decided to bring a little green into my world by planting a garden. It is called a Lasagna garden.

I wanted to keep my garden enclosed and so I put a plea over the ward internet for anyone who had used blocks who could donate to me. A very kind and generous man gave me some wonderful cinder blocks which you can see in this picture. This first picture shows the walls around what will be our garden.

We first covered the ground with cardboard to keep weeds from growing up in our garden and to keep it moist, then our first layer was old hay and then we started layering it with compost, mulch, grass clippings, old leaves, cow manure, peat moss, and just kept layering it until it was about 14 inches deep.



Here you see the hay and some compost as the first few layers. After it is filled, you can plant that very same day if you want to. I think I planted the next morning.

Here you can see my plants growing after only a week or two. We had such a gorgeous spring and these plants just popped out of the ground. I have an automatic watering system in it so I don't have to weed or water. Just enjoy the fruits of my labor.

But... there are critters down here. The critter that I am referring to is a feral (wild)cat. It decided that our garden plot was a perfect glorified litter box and took the opportunity to leave its little presents there each morning. At first I thought that it was birds because my bean sprouts were getting ripped out of the ground. In Lehi, the robins loved the baby sprouts and would scratch them out of the ground and eat them.

But lo and behold, I found the cats droppings and realized that it was a cat. I didn't want it to get too accustomed to my garden and ruin all my hard work with its poop! I thought hard of what I could do to get rid of it and the thought came that I could put cayenne pepper on the ground. Why not? I thought, I had a quart of cayenne and so that is the red powder looking stuff you see in this picture above. Guess what? Cayenne works! The next day, the cat tried to use my garden plot again in two places but never got to.. It got some hot paws or whatever. (We won't go there!) And so, my garden has been cat poop free and growing like a weed, with no weeds! Yahoo!

This is about 6-7 weeks after I planted my garden. From left to right we have cantalope and watermelon which will trail off of the edge and vine out onto the open ground. We have a row of colored swiss chard and kohlrabi a row of cylindra beets, a row of tomatoes. (I call them, mater (the biggest one) tater (next biggest) and toe (which is the cherry tomatoe). Then we have a row of beans and a half row of cucumbers which will trail off onto the rocks below and 2 crook neck summer squash.

As of today, we have been eating chard and beet greens. My beans have baby beans on them about 1 inch long, cucumbers have baby cucumbers, my squash is about 4 inches long with lots of squash and flowers galore on the cantalopes and watermelons. I have eaten one ripe tomatoe about 2 weeks ago and the cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen. I am so excited about my garden! Thanks for sharing it with me. I will post more pictures when I start to harvest more.

Grandmas Brag Book

For the next few posts, I am sharing my precious grandchildren with you. That's what grandmas do!

Fun, fun, fun

You gotta love em! They are soooo cute!!!

These little boys sure are active!

Joe Cool!

Who can resist precious granddaughters