Naked Trees

You can definitely tell that winter is on its' way. All of the beautiful leaves that were hanging on the trees last week are now scattered all over yards and streets and the poor little trees are so naked. Here are 2 pictures I took last week looking out of my craft room






Beautiful, huh? Look at how colorful those leaves are. My intentions last week when I took these pictures was to run up the road to the state park on the weekend and take lots of pretty pictures. Of course that didn't happen because someone whose name I won't mention (ahem, Will) wanted to paint instead. And now I'm regretting not going because all the leaves are GONE! Oh, our Weeping Willow is still full of leaves, but I suspect those will just fall off without any real color change. Here are 2 pictures of the same part of the yard I just took a second ago. See the naked little trees?





I'm going to miss looking out the windows and seeing beautiful colors everywhere. Buuuut, I'm also excited about winter. I love winter, really. The cold, crisp air, snow (man, I *REALLY* love snow!), all the yummy soups we make for dinner, ice skating, frozen waterfalls. LOVE.IT. Some people hate winter but I really like it. Perhaps it's because I grew up down south, where "winter" is anything under 45 degrees. Y'all think I'm kidding, don't you? Haha Nope. It was a "cold day in Hell" if the mercury dropped below freezing!

And snow. We hardly ever saw snow. Maybe half an inch every 5 years. And the entire 3+ years I lived in Charleston, it never snowed once! Now, where I grew up in SC it would snow maybe .5" every 5 years and then every 10 years or so we'd get a "big" snowfall, which in SC terms means anything over an inch! If the forecast predicted any sort of frozen precipitation, the entire state would shut down. Down south we just aren't prepared for any sort of frozen stuff. The grocery store shelves would be empty, people would be stock piling like they were preparing for Armageddon. Of course if you live down south, you know I'm telling the truth. But people that have never lived down there don't really believe that the entire town/state will shut down until they experience it for themselves.

Back in 2001, my boyfriend moved to SC from New Hampshire, a state which is frozen and covered in snow for something like 10 months out of the year, and he didn't believe me when I told him that if it ever snowed while he was living there that the entire city would go nuts, stockpile like lunatics and then the city would shut down until all traces of snow melted. Luckily for me, within 3 or so months of him moving down we had a HUGE snowfall. Now, huge by SC standards is probably a lot different than say, South Dakota. Or New Hampshire. But it was HUGE to SC. I remember the day like it was yesterday. It started snowing one afternoon around 3:00 and when we got off of work, I took him to the grocery store to show him the pandemonium. He couldn't believe people were acting like that. We took pictures to send to his friends back in NH. The bread aisle was completely empty, no lunch meat, no canned goods, no milk, even the fresh meat section was almost empty. LOL I'm telling ya, people down south ain't playing around when it comes to snow. We ended up with 7 or 8 inches of snow, the town was shut down for 3 days and that was the last time there was considerable snow in SC.

So, now that I just went off on a tangent, lemme get back on track! Yeah, I love winter. Especially winter up here in Maryland, because we actually get a couple of snow days each year. Last December, I was home alone because Will was overseas in Africa, and it snowed a good 6" one day. It was beautiful! Of course the next day it all melted. Boo! Then a day or two after that, some jackass decided to drive a little too fast down a very narrow road leading into our neighborhood, hit a patch of ice, took out some utility poles and we lost power. So, there I was in my old house, freezing, pregnant, no friends or family anywhere around, my husband halfway across the world. It SUCKED! Each time I called the power company, I kept getting the runaround. Oh, the power would be on in 2 hours, then 4, then 6 and finally I spoke to an actual person, explained my situation and told him I needed a straight answer because if the power wasn't going to be on for several days, I needed to know so I could pack my crap and drive down to SC. Yeah, I drove to SC. Ugh!

And the year before that, on Valentine's Day no less, we had a terrible ice storm. Terrible. Like a good half inch or more of ice coating every single surface. We lost power then too, but Will was home that time. Although I was very sick with a terrible winter cold and thought I would surely die. That storm saw us sitting in a old drafty house for HOURS, then trying to find a pet-friendly hotel for the night, finally driving all the way over to West Virginia to stay with Will's aunt & uncle, driving all the way back home the next morning because the power company said the electricity was back on, realizing it wasn't, driving 70 something miles down to Virginia to a pet-friendly motel....on and on and on. It was insane.

Wow, I guess it probably sounds like I don't like the winter very much after all! But I do. When we still have power! And I'm excited that it's only 2 weeks until Thanksgiving. And Christmas is coming too and I love decorating for Christmas! We usually go all out but I'm not sure what we'll do this year. Looks like Will is going to be back in Wyoming for 2 weeks during the holidays so I'm not sure if I'll stay here or fly out there. I don't want to decorate as much as I normally do if I'm not even going to be at home to enjoy it. But, I don't want to sit around a naked house either. Hmm, decisions, decisions.

Oh, here's a picture of my cute little coat I bought at the VV on Monday. It's actually dark black but I had to lighten the picture in order to show the detail of the trim. And check out the brooch. That's the one I won a few weeks ago over at Lisa's Retro Style . Looks fabulous, doesn't it?



Ignore the ugly pink price tag I've yet to remove!

Anyhoo, I suppose I've rambled on enough for one day. I need more coffee, I need to figure out if my 5 year old camera is going to live to see another day so I can take more pictures of stuff for Etsy and I need to let the puppies outside. Oh, and catch up on some of my favorite bloggy pals! Have a great weekend, y'all!