A Christmas full of Photos.

“If your gonna play the game boy…you better learn how to play it right” Kenny Rodgers, The gambler

I have been leaving my camera at home a lot lately. We are in our Winter gray right now, which is my all time least favorite color. I have brought that up many times before.

There is a reason behind that…and now it seems that people are starting to catch on, and that’s good. More and more colors are starting to pop up in protest. Where the colors have slowly been taken out of our environments, people everywhere are finding them and putting them back in….at least this is the chatter about.

What I have noticed, is that even when there is gray, some color naturally out in nature pops in to brighten it up. Like a red cardinal in tree full of leafless limbs…so striking, so pretty. I see that on my walks. Then when I least expect it, a beautiful colorful sunset will end out those gray Winter days…now that is something to see.

So here they are some of my favorite photos from this Christmas. In this years events I mostly let my eyes be the recording. As most of you know…I have no cell phone.

Didn’t bring out a lot of Christmas decor, but I did decorate our windows all through the house. Window clings, paper snowflakes, and lots of fairy lights twinkled our windows.

One evening getting ready to do the dishes I noticed our kitchen window was glowing pink. I stepped out our back door and looked out and saw the prettiest sunset yet.

This Christmas I bought my gifts for friends and family at antique stores. I got to meet those mom and pops running those stores. They always have good stories to tell.

In the Antique stores they also have new items that are made by local artists like these beautiful Christmas cards.

I believe I have always had a thing for snowmen because I grew up in a desert environment where I never got to build one. They are so jolly and cute, I like snowmen better than Santa (have to be careful saying that one out loud) Snowmen are less intimidating. I also love paper crafting. Paper chains, cards, paper dolls and art…in Italy they have stores where you can buy all kinds of beautiful handmade paper and printed papers in all colors and styles.

Sometimes you can find toys in the mom and pop antique shops. Actual toys that don’t involve batteries.

Any old jar will do when setting up a garden propagating station.

So cute. I walked into the room to get some ribbon and my husband and our kitten were taking a late afternoon cat nap.

It looks so different without the leaves.

This is what it will look like when Summer gets here. I don’t use filters on my photos, I don’t know how to do that…all my photos are untouched.

Pippi and Vesta having lunch together, Pippi always seems to finish first.

Our free monthly craft class for Christmas was clothespin snowflakes. The kid’s and parents got to paint and decorate their own snowflakes. The glitter was a hit.

Always pick up a food tray box when working with glitter, less mess. We left the craft class with sparkles everywhere. We don’t usually work with glitter, too messy, but once a year is okay and Christmas is the perfect time for glitter crafts.

This year’s ornament that I bought just for me, was from Branson, Missouri. It’s a little squirrel.

Drove to Missouri after the craft class. This was a busy day for us.

A pretty chandelier at one of the shops.

Food was cheap back in the day, and you know this meat was actually meat.

At one of the shops the owner shared a story with me that she said she couldn’t go too far with as it burned her up talking about it. I thought that was such a funny way to describe the emotion of anger. Then she shared her story with me…

The shop owner shared a little bit of history of the town she was from, she said things had changed in it. New visitors showed up one day in her little Christmas town. They were housed in the old historic buildings that were abandoned in town. The buildings were not meant for mass amounts of people. They over loaded the electric systems inside the old buildings. This ended up burning down several buildings in town, and they have not repaired them since, money is short. You could tell this hurt her deeply. I walked down to see the buildings that she was talking about. The train was coming through and there were lines of cars on both sides waiting to pass as I walked down to see the burned out buildings.

The shop owner said they had mattresses on the floors, many mattresses . Again, she stressed how those old buildings were not made to house people to live in, especially so many people. The buildings couldn’t take the stress of it, all those electrical outlets and extension cords everywhere.

This photo is of one of the oldest buildings in town. It used to be beautiful inside, so much history. The locals from the area filled it with Christmas decorations after the fire clean up. This town is known for being a very special town, the Christmas town…Noel, Missouri.

A huge wreath above one of the burned out buildings.

The local people and children in town decorated the burned out buildings with snowmen and scenes from the bible, telling the story of the birth of Jesus.

They also painted American flags on their buildings.

This is why we drove to Missouri, to visit this post office and mail off some Christmas cards. They have a special stamp at this post office during the holidays.

We found a Hispanic market, reminds me of the markets from my birth home in Arizona. The owners were so friendly and we bought burritos that tasted like burritos from Arizona. We told them where we were originally from. One of the owners was stripping cacti for food. We told her a story of how we made tacos from our cacti back in Arizona during the lock downs from Covid. We will be going back in the future for more burrito visits. They were that good.

And this is what I’m always looking for, fruit that doesn’t come packaged or looks pretty. A sign it’s the real deal. Sometimes we will have food and toss it out to the chickens and they will not touch it, it sits in the yard for awhile and the chickens leave it. Something is happening with our food and has been for a long, long time.

Before I left one of the shops, the owner told me to stop by anytime, for a visit she said, to just talk and share adventures. Her and her husband were setting up tables of food. She invited us to eat with them, everyone was coming over to her shop from the other shops to eat and share food together, a parade was coming through town later and she had a huge picture window to watch from inside where it was warm. I thanked her and said I would be back another day, we had to drive back home. I was trying to catch Old Saint Nick at an event and time was passing fast. I didn’t tell her that part though…just that I would be back.

Made it just in time. Santa and Mrs. Clause were still at the farm speaking to some guest and families. I had some new children’s books to drop off to Santa to hand out to children. I thought I wouldn’t have made it in time.

Santa and Mrs. Clause had other places to go, they are very popular right now. What a beautiful couple they make. Of all the portraits I have taken for fun, Santa and Mrs. Clause are one of my favorites.

The sun was setting fast at the farm. I love this light though. I am starting to learn how it works here in the Ozarks compared to Arizona.

Decorating our homemade gingerbread house.

We also made some of our canned cranberry/blueberry jars for everyone. The spoon is from the historic home we are fixing up. We found a whole bunch of them that I will be making an Art shadow box with. For now I am using them for photos.

The day after Christmas I went for a walk and this is what I saw.

Why do they have to make things so scary now. I would rather see a giant flower canopy than this scary looking creature high above me as I walk the trail. I never liked spiders. This one reminds me of that Tom Cruise movie War of the Worlds. It’s as big as the trees.

This was mesmerizing to watch, just a butch of silver baubles floating in a pond.

It gets dark here early in the Winter. In Arizona it sometimes seemed the days lasted forever. Here…the days are shorter, that is both strange and kind of cool. Just different. I don’t know how to explain it.

Still, quiet, beautiful water. One of my many walking trails.

My favorite artist, Grandma Moses. There are two paintings at the art museum by her.

The sun is starting to set at The little lake. The perfect end to a perfect day.

I always love seeing this little dog statue whenever I come here for a walk. Sculpting is not so easy.

I like how this art piece captures the reflections in it’s surroundings, bouncing off of each other. Art making it’s own art.

This would also be a fun one to color, there are several textures in it’s design. I think it would be a great art installation to do several pieces for all people to enjoy. To include many senses to experience. For people who do not see, an art piece to touch would be encouraged with several textures, for people who can not hear, than art pieces with many colors and visually pleasing to their eyes. They could even include the sense of smell, having several natural fragrances around the gallery like Oranges, vanilla, Gardenia, roses, baked cookies…to include in this art installation. A nice daydream of what to create.

I love this lamp. Every time I go for a walk around this museum I always go inside to see my favorite art pieces.

I lost my little alpaca from Peru the other day. I went looking for my Kitten Pippi, I found her in my room asleep with her giant Panda bear, her favorite little wool needle felted heart I made her , and my alpaca laying next to her as she slept away. It was up high on a shelf, that little monkey cat must have done some serious climbing when I was out walking to get this. Now the Alpaca rest on a shelf knob. I believe it’s safe now….we will see.

Sela, a rescue cat from the city. She is the one with the wonky and crooked tail. No one was adopting her because of her tail. She has a lot of character. We think she is beautiful.

A hand painted ornament from Arizona that I received this year for Christmas.

I was gifted brand new colored pencils. The colors are so bright.

When I take my camera with me on my walks, I look for anything that might inspire a coloring page for me to design. Sometimes I will share my coloring pages with friends and family. I even share them in the community. It’s one of my favorite hobbies.

These photos down below unfortunately are not in focus. I was not quick enough to capture the cardinal and squirrel in the bottom two photos. So even though they are not so good, they still have good balance when it comes to the structure of what I’m looking for when designing my pages. I still have enough of an image to use as a guide.

There is a tiny red cardinal in this tree.

A tiny squirrel at the base of a tree with fading Fall leaves in front of it and Winter gray behind it…with little bits and pops of the color green still hanging in there. This would be a fun coloring page to draw out and color afterwards.

I’m ending this months updates with a little tip for anyone out there who is recovering from escaping a toxic environment. More and more people are getting the help they need, through counseling and support. Please find help if you find yourself in a similar situation. Toxic people love trying to keep you small, because your growth threatens them. Good people understand boundaries, toxic people hate them. Find your peace.

Also, please remember to keep praying, pray for strangers, broken ones, friends, neighbors…pray for your immediate and extended family…there is power in prayer and even though sometimes you may not get the answer you were hoping for, remember God always knows best. Everything always works out in the end.

This vlogger came up in my recommendations and I started watching her vlogs, she is on the Autism spectrum and lived a Mennonite life as a child. She has a humbleness about her that is really sweet. She of course gets picked on and trolled by some people out there in the world, which is really sad.
Sometimes she talks about what that feels like. Lots of meanies out there will pick on and bully anyone a little different. She started asking her viewers for prayers, without saying exactly what for and sure enough God answered it. So…just remember that, all kinds of prayers are being answered even now as I type this…so please keep praying, never loose faith no matter what.

The weather has been perfect here so far but Jan-March can have pockets of Winter storms so until then we have been taking advantage of these nice days and getting small projects done at the historic home. I redid the Christmas lights inside, there were too many up and it was a little chaotic, so I went back one night to fix that problem.

One of the houses in the historic center by main street was so cute, I had to take a photo,this isn’t our house, just a random house around the area that I thought was really nice in how they decorated. You know…cute.

Since we took many days off to just enjoy December, we didn’t get a whole lot done over there, but what we did was enough. It can be hard work, but so satisfying too, seeing the results. That’s it for the news on that. Oh…my husband found some ice skates from the 1930’s, that was really cool.

My favorite lights are on the shop building down below.

Have a Happy New year everyone. May only good things always come your way in the New Year. God bless you all and keep you all safe, from all of us at Our Little Red House.

2 Corinthians 4:2

But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

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