Close-up Shot of Strange Mushrooms

Okay, I am turning to anyone who happens to understand fungi. As I posted a few weeks ago, we had the front beds cleared out and significantly reduced the tangle of shrubs that we’d had and the weeds that we couldn’t get to that seemed to be constantly out of control. The weeds still pop up of course, but we can get to them more easily. A few days ago, I stepped out and looked to see what was an explosion of an odd-shaped mushroom that was unlike anything we had ever seen before. They cropped up throughout the front bed. I suppose it’s possible that they used to be there and we never saw them because of the shrubs. On the other hand, perhaps this particular species can now grow because we cleared the area more.

If anyone can tell me what they are and more importantly, how to get rid of them, I would appreciate it. I mean, I suppose they aren’t edible since I’ve not seen them in a market to the best of my knowledge. It’s kind of hard to tell in the photo, but they aren’t very big and they have a flat top, almost like a disk attached to the thin stalk. All those white spots are the mushrooms and there are others that I didn’t capture in the photo.

Mysterious Mushroom Invasion

Cute Christmas Craft

My crafting ability is pretty much confined to words, but I always find it fascinating how people can come up with craft ideas from ordinary things. I appreciate art in most mediums that I can think of, yet the variety of crafts is amazing. Sure, I did the make stuff out of popsicle sticks when I was a kid (under careful instruction) and I guess everyone made animals with Styrofoam cups, but actually coming up with an idea of something is not my strength (nor is usually executing the craft, but that’s another issue).

When a friend of ours gave us this cute Candy Sleigh, it was easy to see how it was done and in looking at it, you think – well, sure, that makes sense. If, however, someone had given me four bags of candy and told me to create a sleigh from what I had, I doubt I would have figured it out. Part of that, of course, is because I am not a visual person. The individual who did these acknowledged that glue is an important component. In actuality, we have a hot glue gun that hubby wisely does not allow me to touch.

Anyway, back to this cute thing that uses a Kit Kat bar as the base of the sleigh, classic curved peppermint sticks as the runners, and stacked chocolate miniatures to complete the look. We’ll disassemble it at some point and devour the candy, but we do want to keep it intact for at least a little while.

The Smaller Christmas Tree

Part of the remodel of the kitchen was to move the table, two sideboards, and corner cabinet into what was always designed to be the dining nook of the front room. Doing that, however, meant moving the love seat to under the front window and that arrangement is fine and has worked well. What I didn’t think about though was that would encroach upon the spot where we usually put the Christmas tree. Plus, I’ve got plants on the window ledge where I used to put some holiday figurines. Finding a place to temporarily move the plants is really more trouble than I want to go to, so our household decorations this year are fewer than before.

When hubby went to get the tree he took the smaller space into account and picked out a tree that fits well, but it is obviously smaller than in the past and I’m not one to bunch ornaments together too tightly. We’ve always had a lot of ocean-themed ornaments to include whimsical ones such as a scuba-diving Santa. I decided to focus on those and then fill in the remaining spots with others, making sure of course that we have a Nutcracker ornament in honor of all the Nutcrackers that our son has danced in (and will continue to for another few years). We managed to add to our wreath collection though and the ones we picked up are fairly large and quite festive. It all come together for a cheery look even if the tree isn’t as big as it was before. Oh, we don’t have odd blue lights on the tree – there was an extra reflection when I snapped the photo.

We have a recumbent bike that we bought after I had a meniscus tear in my left knee. The doc said that if we would swap off using it for part of our workouts as opposed to always walking (me) or jogging (hubby), it would probably give us an extra 3 to 5 years “wear” on our knees. Since we remodeled the kitchen instead of having the dream house, we don’t have a dedicated exercise room and the bike fits into a corner of the guest room. (Yay for Febreeze!). We also do not have U-verse in that room, but do have an old television and DVD player. Unlike hubby who usually enjoys reading and listening to his I-pod while on the bike, I watch DVDs. I’m building a collection of some of the old TV detective shows and in a few cases, I’ve gone way back to some that I was either barely familiar with or didn’t know at all. I mean, we’re talking the original “Dragnet” before Harry Morgan joined the cast. Anyway, the other day, I popped in one with some “Peter Gunn” episodes (kind of knew that one), “Burke’s Law” (knew that one) and “Jim Diamond”. I didn’t know that one, but it has a narrator, a technique that we both like. The voice I knew instantly and it took a very close look to recognize a young David Janssen. It turns out that the original “Jim Diamond” was a radio show in the early 1950s and they brought it to television in 1956 where it ran for four seasons.

The extra interesting part of this is that one of hubby’s favorite TV detective shows from the 1970s was “Harry O”, the series starring David Janssen that was on after the “Fugitive” series finished. One of the first DVD sets I bought was the old “Harry O”, and unfortunately the  conversion technique wasn’t very good at that time (or with that particular series) and thus the viewing quality is rather lacking. It’s fun though looking back at the period pieces and seeing how so many things have changed.