My Place and Yours: Outside

This week's My Place and Yours meme theme at Punky and Me is "outside." My "outside" is currently a little worse for the neglect, so close up photos were the way to go:)

Lots of figs on the tree (but they won't be ready til March)...

Flowers going to seed...

Garden marker made by the kids...

Brick planters...

Table leg...

Privacy screen...

First blooms on flowers planted by littlest.

To play along your self or see more "outsides" make sure to visit this week's My Place and Yours. Cyndy Pin It

My Place and Yours: Green

My initial thought when I saw the theme for this week's My Place and Yours meme at Punky and Me was "I don't have anything green!" And then I walked from room to room with my camera, and you know what? You guessed it, I have a lot of green! Here are some of my favourites:

Part of my vintage tole tray collection (mine are all from the 1940s and 1950s)...

Lily of the valley plate on the wall...

Bedside tables (yes, there are two of them and I LOVE them:)...

Vintage tole crumb catcher (from 1950's) on dresser (painted by me 15 years ago)...

Crayons waiting to be melted...

If you want to play along or see some green at other places you can visit here! Cyndy

PS I am really hoping somebody has a Kermit the frog at their place:) Pin It

My Place and Yours - Christmas Special

This is a hard one for me. As someone who grew up in the northern hemisphere (the United States) Christmas is about cold, snow, a fire in the fireplace, hot chocolate and tacky Christmas lights all over your house. Hot, sunny and going to the beach just doesn't seem right:)

That said I have (kinda) adjusted and besides Christmas in our house is all about the children. No designer colours or decorations, just lots of stuff made by the kids, picked out by the kids, given to the kids, was mine when I was a kid:)

This year we actually have two Christmas trees. One is fake (got it for $12 the first Christmas we spent here) and one is real. This is our first real tree because I am a bit of a Christmas tree snob. It's not that I like perfectly manicured Christmas trees, because I don't. In our house, we used to go out to the Christmas tree farm and cut our own. It was usually wider than it was tall:) It's more that I like a certain kind of Christmas tree (Douglass fir) and it appears they don't grow them here in Australia or if they do they cost a bazillion dollars. But this one was free, just the right price for me to overcome my snobbishness:)

Christmas is also about memories. I love it when we are decorating the tree and the children shout out, that ones mine, or I got that from ____, or ask me about a decoration that predates them. When I was in my mid 30's my mother decided (without telling us children) to move to a themed tree. That meant all the decorations we had made as children, had been given etc... that didn't meet the theme were tossed. My sister and I about had a heart attack, because even at our "mature" age we still loved the memories that all these things represented.

And finally Christmas is about traditions. It's about putting up the tree the weekend after Thanksgiving (yes even here:), making Christmas cookies, writing a  letter and visiting Santa, watching Its a Wonderful Life at least once, and getting up at the crack of dawn on Christmas day to open your presents from Santa no matter how old you are:)

Merry Christmas from my family to yours and you can check out more Christmas specials here! Cyndy Pin It

My Place & Yours

On my (very dusty) shelf:) To play along or see others you can visit here. Cyndy Pin It