Coziness

I realized in the past couple of weeks, since it's been colder outdoors, that being cozy this time of year is so important to us. And since we've been using our basement, it's turning into the nicest place in the house to relax and be cozy.

Andy and I cuddle up in our respective recliners with our fleece, fuzzy blankets, our gameboys or with the TV on, sometimes both (I rarely just sit and watch TV...can't seem to do it because I feel I'm wasting my time!!)...we turn on the little room space heater and relax and enjoy being together in a nice cozy atmosphere. Even Rosie is loving being down there with us. She will snuggle under one of our blankets on our lap, or in her little cozy bed between our recliners and stay there as long as we do. Here are some pictures of the basement.

The recliners...the exercise/game/craft room is behind the blue curtains.



The view from the recliners...



Behind the curtain that divides the two rooms...



From my craft table...



Rosie in her little bed...(just so you know, she has such a funny look on her face because she's beginning to hate having her picture taken!!)



I'm looking forward to decorating the basement family room for Christmas just like I will our upstairs space. We have a small table-top tree we'll use in the basement and I got some more of those little village pieces from Wallyworld yesterday too. Now I can paint them and fix them up and have a village in both the living room upstairs and the family room downstairs. I finally took some photos of the village pieces I painted with the other ones I got so you can see the difference. I like the snowier look, since we live in the snow belt. They look more Christmasy to me. Sort of like they are made of gingerbread. Here they are...













I finally got all the records I bought on eBay for Dad, they were in the mail yesterday. I'll spend the next couple of weeks listening to them and make sure the new record player I got for him for Christmas works and that all the records are okay. They all look like brand new!! The covers and sleeves aren't the best, but the records all look like they have barely been used. I hope Dad enjoys having some of his old music again and I hope we can teach him how to use the record player. He has always loved music and is so into watching Guy Lombardo and Lawrence Welk, of course those are some of the albums I bought for him. You can see his new turntable stereo on top of the entertainment center in the photos above. We opened it so we could review all the records we got for him. It's really cool looking...sort of an old fashioned retro look.

I got a new crock pot yesterday too. I got one of the kind that you can latch the lid down when you take it somewhere. I am always taking things in the crockpot and it's such a pain to try to keep things from spilling out while in transit. And there's nothing like a good meal all done and hot when you get home from work on a cold winter's evening. The smell of food cooking makes the house so inviting and cozy! I see a lot of new soup recipes being tried in my future!!

Speaking of recipes, I bought a cookbook at work the other day. It's to help benefit a local family with a child they adopted who is deaf, blind and who they said would never walk. She is walking now with the aid of a walker and she has a wonderful outlook. They think she will be walking soon without the walker. But their medical bills are very high and since they have 8 kids (a few of them are adopted) they need help with medical bills, thus the cookbook being created. I was reading it last night and it has some great sounding recipes in it. Lots for soup too!

I got a new cocoa/tea mug at Wallyworld yesterday. I will use it for my blood orange fruit melange tea in the mornings, or perhaps I'll have cocoa. I love them both. I got some great cocoa that's very diety and will be having that quite often. I love to put a little vanilla in my cocoa. It makes it taste so rich and yummy! And maybe I'll even use my immersion blender in the cocoa to make it nice and frothy!

Coziness must include spending money because after re-reading this blog post, it sounds like I've sure been buying a lot of stuff! But just for the record, it was all on sale or really cheap!!