Good-bye January, Hello February

I was just going to title this Hello February until I realized that the first picture was from January 29th, the evening of the last snow storm we got that turned out to be much less than predicted.  Where we are there was only between 3-4 inches.  Our son got over a foot where he lives.  But catching the sunset that evening, in those sherbet colors was rewarding.  Someone on Facebook remarked that it looked quite peaceful and it was compared to 30 years ago when that hill would have had children and their father's on sleds headed up and down the hill.

We dropped off HWNSNBP's truck for service on Sunday night and went to pick it up on Monday afternoon when it was finished.  He was a little annoyed because they didn't call to let him know what exactly had to be done and how much it would cost, they just went ahead and did it.  So he did complain to the head of the service department about it.  He would have authorized the work anyway as it had to be done, but they should have called.  The manager knew he was right and gave him a free oil change and employee pricing on the repair which was a nice savings.  When we went to pick it up, as I got out of the car to switch to the driver's side I looked up and saw this.  A man coming out of the building saw me taking the picture and asked if that was the moon.  I told him it was a sun dog and attempted to explain that they are found in an arc around the sun whilst waving my arms.  He backed away saying he'd never seen anything like it before.  I could see it in the side view mirror part of the way home and it did make the inconvenience of the trip worthwhile.

This was the end of the second stalk blooming on our white amaryllis.  You can see the third one just off to the left getting ready to bud.  This is the first time that we've had a white one and we're liking it. Hopefully we'll be able to get it to rebloom next year.

I've been watching the second season of the PBS Masterpiece series "All Creatures Great and Small".  I'm not sure that my children will remember but we listened to the books by James Herriot on tape in the car when they were younger so I looked forward to watching this.  Though I can't say I remember a lot about the books at this point, I am enjoying the series.  This is a picture of the housekeeper, Mrs. Hall.  I took the picture because I had been working on a card whilst watching and realized that I had chosen the same color palette as that of her outfit.   

I was gifted this beautiful Sizzix Peony die from Sabrina for Christmas and I think it works out wonderfully with the paper I found in my stash.

I used another die that Sabrina had gifted me a while ago on this birthday card for my godmother.  The die is one segment of the fan that I created with 7 of them side-by-side.  I used some die cut flowers that I had in my stash that I had made when I got the Forget-me-Not die from The Greetery last year.  

I was pleased with how this came out with all those different shades of purple and lavendar.  It's not easy sometimes when you have a certain idea in your head and you just can't get the colors right.  But this worked.  

And here is a picture of Rachel and GS2 taken the evening they returned from their first day back at school after being quarantined for 10 days (with leading and ending weekends).  Her caption on her FB account 

"We all went back to school today after a long quarantine. I missed this little boy all day today. Then we sat down to watch Dumbo under the blanket, he turned to me and said “Look at this booger Mommy” and put it right on my cheek. I’m good now."