Home, Ready for winter

I've been busy "winterizing" here... every morning we watch out the big picture window as a handful of snowflakes drift past.  Soon it will be more, much more, and I'm trying very hard to get ready.   Our new "wipe your feet please" mat arrived yesterday, and I'm so pleased I went with the red.  It's very welcoming, I think, to see color when you step into the house.  I'm training (re-training) the boys to immediately sit down on the step and change into their slippers... which I've placed in a nice basket underneath my plant stand.  It took me a while to find everyone's long lost slippers in the far away dark places of our closets, but I did find them eventually.  So now everyone's feet can be nice and warm, AND the house will stay clean(er).  :)

Mike and I also finished painting the craft room, and the new blackboard.  We went with yellow again, but it feels a lot brighter and cheerier than the previous shade.  I'm finding happiness in my colored chalk too, as I play around with little pictures and doodles during the days. I especially like this set, because the big blocks of chalk don't break as easily when dropped on the floor by accident (which happens, ahem, sort of frequently around here). 

I finally managed to get my nature prints hung up nicely in a row too...   Right now, we're busy bird watching, so we're checking the bird poster frequently.  Mostly we have woodpeckers.  A whole lot of woodpeckers.    But occasionally we see some other visitors at our feeder too.   Perhaps I should try a different type of food or feeder...