Alex waiting patiently Christmas morning to open packages.

We had a good Christmas. How about you?

It snowed about an inch on Christmas Eve. It was so pretty coming down. We turned on the outside light around 8:00 p.m. and just sat in the sun room with a cup of homemade egg nog (yes, I used raw eggs) and watched it snow. Perfection! When we got up Christmas morning and opened the curtains to that covering of white it was picture perfect. The snow mostly melted during the day when it warmed up to the high 30’s.

We had a small Christmas (meaning not many gifts) but the gifts we did get and receive were not as small. I thought it was pretty funny that both Rick and I gave each other a kind of camera! I gave him a time-lapse camera because he spends his days around cameras that do the opposite (high-speed slow motion) and I thought he needed to slow down a bit.

He gave me a Lytro camera, which I had never heard of before. It’s just a tiny little thing that can be easily popped into a pocket and taken along. It takes “living” pictures. I’ll be featuring them in my blog from now on in combination with normal photos. For the Lytro pics you can click on various spots of the photo and it will come in to focus as other parts go out of focus. I have added a perspective feature to most of them which makes the photo look 3D (depending on how deep my depth of field was in that particular photo) and you can click and drag to explore the photo a bit more. Try it with this photo I took of Hailey in the foreground and Bella in the distance.

See how her head pops out of the photo? Cool, eh?

So, how does the magic happen? I’m not too up on the technical bits but here is a brief explanation from Rick.
“Called a “light field” camera or “plenoptic camera”. A digital camera that acquires images in a whole new way, then uses complex computations to render the photos. Each pixel you see in the photo is actually imaged by many different pixels with different focal distances. All this data is later used to computationally render the photo.” Hmm … clear as mud, right? All you really need to focus on (Hah, pun, get it?) it that it takes cool photos.

Here are a couple more.

We spent the day playing with our new toys, taking the dogs for a walk and cooking our Christmas meal of Duck in orange sauce, two-potato gratin and roasted brussels sprouts with homemade profiteroles for dessert.

Yesterday we ventured out of the house and into town for a few things, then took the dogs down the road to Green Turtle Pond for an off-leash run. Brrr it was cold—below freezing! Just like littlel kids, the dogs had to step on every frozen puddle and break the ice. It was a game to them.

Then yesterday afternoon it snowed again, as predicted, while we watched the movie “Inception.” I may never think the same way about my dreams again! We got about four to four and a half inches of nice snow before it turned to freezing rain, then rain. I took these two shots just as it was turning to freezing rain. The trees were coated in what looked like white cotton candy and looked very strange. I hope you appreciate these photos because I went out in my slippers and bathrobe to take them! You can see my footprints in the snow on the steps for depth.

They say we are getting more snow on Saturday. I guess winter has arrived in New Jersey!

And the pretty much sums up the weekend, folks!

We went to see the Sound of Music on Saturday at the Paper Mill Playhouse. That stanza of the song “My Favorite Things” keeps running through my mind ..

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes …

That and “How do you solve a problem like Maria?”

The performance was wonderful, the staging so well done! What lucky raffle winners we were!

And, speaking of snowflakes on my nose and eyelashes, I guess our expected snow amount has dwindled to “a coating to an inch” which is not ideal but certainly better than no snow at all. We shall see. Of course, places like Oklahoma are due to have a blizzard. Can you please tell me why it’s cold enough to snow in Oklahoma but not in New Jersey? Weather mystifies me. It truly does.

Yesterday found us up bright and early doing our Christmas grocery shopping. We needed to go to Franklin Lakes (stomping grounds of the Real Housewives of New Jersey) to the Market Basket to get our duck breasts and a few good cheeses. We had breakfast at the Oakland Diner, better known to its patrons as just the O.D. (I know Bigsis, I know!)

After groceries it was off to neighbor Kim’s annual Christmas open house across the street for a few hours of holiday cheer and chatter.

We hadn’t been home for very long when Rick yelled “SANTA, Lynne, get your camera!!” I had already changed into my around-the-house-sweats and slippers but I grabbed the camera and headed out the door. I didn’t have time to change lenses and had my biggest zoom lens on because the last time I used the camera I was aiming it at a woodpecker at the feeder. It worked out okay though. It was a little challenging since our normally empty street was lined with cars at the open house.

A slipped a twenty dollar bill in Santa’s helper’s hands and got a candy cane thumbs up from Santa!

I love living here. I just wish the expected snow counts were reversed and we were getting the blizzard and Oklahoma would get the coating-to-an-inch.

This morning I decided I was going to walk down to the newly opened Jessie’s for a TEC (Taylor, Egg & Cheese) breakfast sandwich that I’ve been craving for months now. Remember Jessie’s that burned down? They have reopened in a a different space: a restaurant that went bust just a few doors down from where their old place used to be. It’s right at the bottom of the hill on the main road that we live off of. We’re glad to have Jessie’s back! I’m not certain if they are going to rebuild in their old spot or not. For now they are renting the building.

This location has been three different restaurants since we’ve lived here. Most of the time it has just sat vacant. Every time we’ve seen a new restaurant open up we get excited since it’s so close to us. We eat there once and think meh. When they put up a sign that says “On Vacation” we know we won’t be seeing them again. It was a grill, then a pancake house (basically diner food) and most recently “Mexican” (I use that term loosely to describe their food) called El Rusty Anchor. The bars associated with the assorted restaurants always did a lively business but the food has never been great.

The last owner even planted a palm tree in the front to go along with his Mexican theme, which as you can see does not like life in northern New Jersey. It thrived the same way his restaurant did.

It’s a nice walk, maybe 3/4 of a mile? And here was my reward. Yum! I don’t indulge in these very often but they sure are tasty.

My walk took me past Green Turtle Pond which was placid and reflective this morning.

Alongside the road the woods are brown brown brown right now. Still pretty. But very brown.

This sign caught my eye and I thought it was funny.

I was hoping that the walk would help to burn off the calories I consumed but probably not! It was a nice walk either way.

I’ve been drinking a lot this. I caught Rick’s cold bug and have been trying to shake it now for a week or more. It’s not the flu, just an annoying drainage down the back of my throat combined with laryngitis, a hacking cough and just a general malaise. I’m ready for it to be gone!

Today we are supposed to have freezing rain, my least favorite wintery precipitation. It makes the roads slippery with black ice that you can’t see and you don’t get much out of it moisture wise. It’s just nasty.

So I’ll be sticking pretty close to home today. I have the bone from our ham that we baked on Sunday (we’ve been having ham all week in one way or another) and I’ll be cooking the bone with split peas for Split Pea Soup tonight. I think I might even make these oh-so-easy-and-super-tasty rolls too.

Bring on the freezing drizzle and more hot tea and honey, please!

Sunset last night.

Was it really just one week ago today that we got our power restored? It seems like such a long time ago. If not for the closed gas stations, all the downed trees and all the leftovers from Sandy it might seem like just a bad dream. It certainly has been a strange couple of weeks here in New Jersey.

We finally have someone lined up to take care of our clogged-with-trees driveway. After getting three different estimates we finally narrowed it down to this: the cheapest! Our insurance company will pay $500 towards the clean up, but with estimates coming in anywhere from $1500 to $3500, we can’t go with our normal tree service people.

Strangely enough, the insurance will also reimburse us for the gas we used in our generator if we give them a tally of all the food items in our fridge and freezer that was saved by running the generator. I think that’s weird. And, they have suspended the deductible which is kind of nice.

“My” turkeys heading out of the yard.

Temperatures today were in the 50’s and most of the snow has disappeared. The weekend promises to be lovely with temps in the 60’s! From snow boots to nearly sandals in one fell swoop. I think we just might have to have a day trip in Mia.

Junco in the snow.