This is one of the evergreen trees in front of my house.

Still a little snow and ice clinging to these berries . . . also in my front yard.

I have two clumps of ornamental grass in my front yard and this one was still sporting a a little snow in it's "hair".

And, alas, the roses in my back yard have been frozen, thawed, and refrozen several times over. They are looking pretty sad.

This is what it looked like at my house the day after Christmas. It was snowing big fat fluffy snowflakes, but they were melting as soon as they hit the sidewalks or streets, but some of them piled up on the grass and plants. I love the snow. It makes everything seem clean . . at least at first it does.

Notice that the workers on the new construction across the gulley from us are working . . . even when it's snowing . . . such dedication.  

As a wind sock this poor thing is definately over the hill.  It's been flapping in the wind in my back yard for just about a year now. I know it's been a year, because I got it last year at our Garden Club Christmas party. Once I hung it, I was surprised at just how often I looked out my window to check the direction and strength of the wind.  Several times I even had to hunt it down when it flew the coop. Usually it was within 3 or 4 houses somewhere along the gulley behind my house and yard.

I've been looking in all the gardening departments and stores for a new one, but had resigned myself to having to wait until spring to find one, but Alice found one on eBay and gave it to me as an early Christmas present. I LOVE it.  

So, LAST week was SanAntonio Candy Days and YESTERDAY was the Oklahoma City Candy Day. From 8:30 AM till 3:30 PM we made candy, candy CANDY.  Alice had the really good idea of inviting our friend Gil to join us because the three of us usually get together for a monthly outing and we had been unable to have one yet in this busy busy month of December. She was a big help too. We only hope she had as much fun as we did.

Alice is dipping coconut balls in the first picture and she and Gil are doing the same in the second picture. Mom is making White Chocolate Cashew Clusters in the last one. I know the pictures look very similar to Alice's shots, but . . . what can I say? We WERE all there together.

The weather men really goofed up this week end. They were predicting that we'd get 2 inches of snow over night and even more as the morning progressed. We were supposed to get an accumulation of around 6 inches of the fluffy white stuff, but we got only about a half inch. I'm really glad too, because today Alice and I had tickets to the Lyric at the Plaza where "Plaid Tidings" is playing. Thank goodness we didn't miss this delightful, creative, and imaginative Christmas adaptation of "Forever Plaid".  If you live anywhere near Oklahoma City, I'd encourage you to find out if they still have tickets available. I think it runs through December 23rd.

There is a layer of ice over everything. It started late Saturday night and it's just gotten thicker and thicker until around 2PM today. The temp got above freezing and a steady light rain fell and melted a lot of the ice. But we're supposed to get another coating tonight.

I was worried that my young tender tree in the back yard would break from all the ice, but thankfully it did not. I hope it fares as well tonight.

I did have a precious few flowers that were still blooming, but I suspect that they'll be toast once the thaw is complete.

I drove down to San Antonio to have a mini Candy Days with my daughter-in-law.  It was a lot less complicated for me to drive down there rather than have her drive up to OKC for the regular Candy Days. And I'm sure my son would rather not have his wife leave him alone with the two kids (8 months and 20 month old) they're trying to adopt. He'd be crawling up the wall by the 2nd day.  Anyway, we made enough candy for both of them to take to their offices.

I got back Saturday evening and I'm soooooo glad I did. Sometime in the night it snowed and sleeted and I would have hated to be driving in that. Our church services were even canceled today because of the bad roads.

It's a start. I've decorated the front porch of my house with a wreath and 6 cute Christmas Carolers. The last 2 years I didn't decorate a bit. You see, my late husband absolutely LOVED Christmas and we decorated to the hilt, both inside and out. We had lights outlining the house, the driveway, draped on the bushes and wrapped around the trees. We used to say that the electric company knew precisely when our Christmas lights went up . . . they also knew that they'd make a profit that year because of them. The rule of thumb inside the house was "if it has a flat surface, it gets decorated".  That first Christmas after Mike died, I couldn't bring myself to get any of the decorations out, and then last year I was still in the throws of moving into my new house when Christmas rolled around, so again I didn't decorate. But this year I'm going to decorate a little bit and see if that doesn't help my holiday spirits.