The week in a nutshell

Well friends, it is New Year's Eve and my week off from work has sadly come to a close. I had such high hopes to get a lot more done than I had. On Monday, I managed to get the tree taken down in the living room and packed up the ornaments to store back up in the attic. I usually leave the tree up until the week after New Year's but since I will be back to my grueling mandatory overtime hours when we get back this coming week I will have little time for myself to do much else. However, I still left a few winter decorations out and about the house.

On Tuesday, I finally colored my hair - it was much needed. And, after a couple of frustratingly unsuccessful days attempting to find a pet groomer in my area who will actually groom our cat, Lady Tabitha, I was finally able to get an appointment for her on January 10th with the help of my friend, Meg's referral. MANY THANKS to her for saving the day.

Between my husband doing his usual "in and out" of the house routine as always because that is unfortunately the downside to his mobile job and the holiday family commitments, I did not manage to get near the things accomplished this week in the house as I had planned to - oh well, that's life.

On Wednesday, I was in the rare mood to cook dinner and so I made  Chicken Cacciatore with a side of spaghetti. I saved some grilled chicken for Chester, our outside guest who devoured it. I figured it was his early New Year's dinner ...

I did not actually leave the house the entire week except for last night when I met up with my sister Aurora Skye and her hubby for dinner at Flanagan's Pub ...

HAPPY NEW YEAR from all of us!

As for today, I will be cleaning the house and then picking my mom up later on in the day to bring her back to my place to spend New Year's Eve with us and the kitties until tomorrow. We will most likely just be chilling out in the iving room watching "Rocking Eve" or something of the like until the ball drops on Times Square. Nothing very exciting, mind you. As you can see, the cats have a head start on us ...

And last but not least, I figured I would add a Fun Friday vid clip to make you smile! Happy New Year's Eve all - stay safe and warm!

The Monkees- Mike Nesmith as The Princess ... lol

I LOVE PIEROGI!!

Yesterday morning while working on a post, I came across this by pure chance. This guy is great! He goes by the online name of "Pierogi" and he devotes a lot of his time 'scamming the scammers' out there - in other words, he tricks them into thinking he is one of their victims and then exposes them online! He hacks into their "victim file lists" and deletes their files in order to save us from their disgusting criminal behavior of stealing from innocent people - of course their main targets are elderly folks which makes me sick. With these files, he contacts the victims and warns them that they are being scammed - sometimes even AS they are on the phone with the scammer! He also helps them become whole again by helping them to retrieve their money back. I spent much of the day yesterday watching a whole bunch of Pierogi's YouTube videos and he is brilliant! This is one of his shorter videos and WELL WORTH the watch! ...

Blogger vs. Facebook

 

Back in September of 2010, I started a blog at the behest of a good friend. Naturally, being a Solitary Wiccan Priestess and practitioner of Wicca for many years, I wished to write about my thoughts and experiences - maybe even help educate others about it as I was educated through the years and perhaps provide some information for those who were interested in learning. At that time it was a choice between Blogspot and Wordpress. Blogger seemed a lot more user friendly by far and so I began my journey using Blogspot (Blogger). 

At that time, Blogger was supported by both Yahoo and Google accounts, UNTIL Google decided they would no longer allow it for whatever the reason and BAM! - every Blogspot account LOST hundreds of followers within a day! In my case, I lost over 100! Talk about pissed off ....you bet! It took me years and hundreds of blog posts to reach that many people and Google took them all away in a heartbeat.

Along with a hell of a lot less blog followers, the comments dwindled immensely! Now, considering the fact that there are approximatley 1.8 billion websites and more than 570 million blogs active, it's a logical conclusion to make that there must be millions of bloggers as well. Based on the forecast, the number of bloggers is around 32 million as of 2021 in the United States alone. Something to think about!

At one point, and against my better judgement I might add, I had decided to ask a good friend and another fellow Wiccan to help me set up a Facebook account for my Wiccan Life blog as another vehicle to reach people. Well, it worked - I currently have 3,000 followers in less than a year on my Facebook page, but very little to no feedback what-so-ever via comments or interaction. In fact, I get more feedback on my Blogger site.

Truthfully, the only reason that I had ever started a personal Facebook account of my own in the first place was to keep in touch with old classmates and such - not to actually meet new people per se. I can not tell you how many times I almost walked away from both Facebook AND my blog! Somehow however, I am still plugging on - at least for the time being.

If anything, my Facebook account will bite the dust before I leave Blogger because I can NOT stand the drama and BS that truly encompasses Facebook and its' media circus. Their so-called "Fact Checks" are a complete joke and have recently been exposed in court by the Facebook founder himself for what they are - merely Zuckerberg and his staff's liberal (or more accurately "not-so liberal/open-minded") "opinions." No thanks. Although it is far from perfect, I prefer to stick with Blogger - for better or worse. 

Holiday weekend happenings

Greetings, friends! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday (Yule, Christmas, or whatever special holiday your family happens to celebrate at this time of the year). 

It has been a pretty busy last couple of days, Yesterday, I picked up my Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodle cookie order (for our family Christmas dinner) at Chef Jesenia's house. While there, we exchanged gifts. She gave me two small bags ...

One of the bags had these two especially delicious cupcakes in it - a Chocolate Peanut Butter cupcake and a Chocolate Peppermint cupcake ...

The other bag had a cool purple long-sleeved hoodie in it. I gave her a couple of little items and this handmade heart wreath. She messaged me this morning to thank me (and sent me this pic) and she said she loved it as she is planning on decorating her house with roses for Valentine's Day ...

Also, my other friend from work, Rosa, surprised me with this lovely aromatherapy gift set ...

Sweet Rosa! Thank you so much!

One of my gifts from hubby was this very COOL metal cat mermaid plate ... I plan to put it somewhere in the cats room, of course.

The cats opening their special baggie of goodies from Nana Rita (my mom) ...

And, my cat mommy card (supplied by hubby on the cat's behalf). It plays, "Deck the Halls" and lights up ... 🐱

After we exchanged our gifts on Christmas morning, we headed out to pic up my mom for dinner at my MIL's house ...

It was just a small, quiet day with our very small family. My mom baked a PA Dutch family favorite - a Wacky Cake (a moist fudge cake) ...

After we returned home for the remainder of the evening, we spent some quality time with our fur babies. The following pics are of Butterscotch enjoying a cat video of a mouse running around on the laptop screen. He loves it! LOL!

Fun Friday!

HAPPY FRIDAY, EVERYONE! Well, last night I worked from 6PM until 2AM this morning and now we are off for company shutdown for their yearly cleaning until January 4th ... FINALLY! I have so much planned to get accomplished next week around the house - long overdue. 

Yesterday, I was getting ready to take a pic of Ginger and Butterscotch sunning themselves in the living room window when I saw our usual UPS guy standing in front of the window wearing a Santa hat paying them some attention. I saw him talking to them and "shushing" them (holding his index finger over his mouth) while smiling. I tried to get a pic of him with them, but the sun got in the way and washed out the pic ...

🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅

... (just a couple of my friend Renee's Christmas pics of Moose) ...

Renee adopted "Moose" from a local shelter just before his 8th birthday. She says, "Before we adopted him (just before his 8th birthday) he was a barn cat and shelter dweller. He's no longer afraid to brave the cold and explore with his snazzy sweater and the promise of a warm home. He'll never spend another Christmas outside or in a shelter wondering why he wasn't chosen. He'll always be my #1." ...

🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱

Have a Blessed holiday weekend all!

Wordless Wednesday

Rest in peace, Nez - you will be sadly missed by millions of Monkee fans everyhere! 

A MUST SEE VIDEO! LOVE THIS!!

https://youtu.be/Crw9JkanFiQ

What's new ...

Last weekend while shopping around at Murdough's Christmas Barn, I found some new additions for the Yule tree. 

And, a box of Shiny Brite glass balls for my Samhain/Halloween tree for next year. They were marked down "as is" because some them had slight paint flaws, but none were broken. I only paid $8.00 for the entire box set ... I was very pleased. Afterall, I did not purchase them to resell or make money off of them, I just wanted them to decorate my tree.  🎃

I also bought these additions for my Mermaid Tree ...

And last, but not least, my mom's new wooden sled she used to help decorate her outside Christmas wreath.