Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Grandpa and Alex building his Birthday present.

Homemade Christmas

We are very lucky and had a wonderful Christmas again this year, with all our family around us. What could be better? Esther and Nick did these wood burned temples, for each of us,with the date that we were married. Esther says that Nick did most of the burning and I must say, he is very patient and talented. He has hidden talents that we look forward to finding out about next year too!!!! The village in the back ground is just some of the many pieces my Mom has done for me through the years. Everyone gets them once they are married. They have all started their treasured collections. Thanks Mom for the beautiful homemade village pieces. This year I got this gorgeous wreath for my Castle door. Alex and Jacob, (with a little help from Cortnie), made these adorable hand print,Christmas tree, cards. Going right into my scrapbook after the new year. Thanks Boys!!! They also made these beautiful glitter glue snowflakes and pine cone ornaments. For more details see their blog. http://vivalosvillezcas.blogspot.com/ All the kids came over and helped decorate our Christmas trees this year, which is much more fun than doing it ourselves. We think a new Christmas tradition was started this year. Thanks for the beautiful tree decorations. We understand Myra and Myles made some too, but they were taken by the grinch while they dried outside of RV.
Esther and Nick gave us a babysitter-assistant-bouncy for not only Wyatt, but all those babies that follow in the future. They also gave us car seats for both vehicles so that we can transport grandchildren safely. I think that sounds like Officer Jones had some Christmas list ideas. GOOD JOB NICK! Underneath the bouncy is the squishy mats that Cortnie and Arthur gave us to put under the kitchen rug to assist grandma castles bad feet. What a thoughtful gift idea. Thanks Villezcas'
Emily (& Bryan), always make sure we have fun calendars with pictures of our favorite little people on them for the new year. They come complete with all the important dates to remember. Thanks Mortensen's! We love our calendars, when we retire them, they go straight to our scrapbook.
Thing one and thing two, (AKA the Villezcas boys) made us a fun fun pillowcase. Our house is filled with the wonderful reminders of our most precious family. We love love it! There are some definite window painters in training. ( What a great addition to the dungeon.)
Myra made Grandpa Castle and I these adorable hand painted mugs for our morning tea. Since we have tea every morning we are really going to enjoy these every day. Thanks Myra, looks like you may be on your way to the window painting crew too! This is our giant poinsettia that Wyatt got me. It has looked beautiful all season and will probably be beautiful clear into the summer. Probably how long it will take for us to get all the decorations down and put away again. We love music here at the Castle and we want to make sure our children and grandchildren do too. Wyatt got me these cute bells to add to our musical instrument collection. We are busy getting some music sheets enlarged so that we can group play the bells. Thanks Sugar Bear! At least one gift each year, arrives late. Last year it was Myra's piano, this year it was Bryan's drums. Sorry for the delay, but they have arrived now. Nick and Emily play the violin, Esther plays the piano, Arthur plays the drums and guitar (I think), Bryan plays the drums, trumpet and guitar, Wyatt plays guitar and some piano, violin, trumpet and flute. I took piano and clarinet lessons, but alas, I play none of those. I can play chimes and bells!!! Wyatt and I saw some cute little animals at JC Pennys that had the wheat or rice pads in them, so we bought some cute monkeys and made our own. Since we are late getting our Christmas baskets out we are putting them in New Years baskets.
Thanks to everyone for helping to make Christmas such a fun memory. We sure do have a talented and generous family.
I hope someone took pictures and blogs about our caroling this year. We had a great time.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Locals offer support, gift of play for children in need.

Those were the headlines with this picture of Dennis, Katie, Kathi, Eric and Karie. Great Job Shorrs. We are proud of you!

Friday, December 12, 2008

When we were painting in Richfield we stayed at Grandpa and Grandma's in Emery. We had so many windows we needed to stay over the weekend, so Cortnie called Arthur and he brought the boys and Wyatt with him. Monday morning we painted Grandma's windows. Here is my little window painter in training. I thought he did a very great job. If I can just hang in there long enough there may be a whole new generation of window painters to take over.
Grandma's windows done.
Arthur and Wyatt even hung up the lights. Merry Christmas Grandpa and Grandma.

Part two of Chirstmas Windows

The Lin's stores in St. George, Hurricane,Cedar and Richfield had us do these angels. The theme for all the stores was "We Beleive".This Joy turned out a lot prettier than it looks. GeraLynn drew it and painted it.
Here is that other set of caroling snow people at the Casa before we had to add the ear muffs.
At hole 19 they came out with a helmet and asked if we could put the U on the door. So we did.
GeraLynn came to visit Mom for a while so she agreed to come help us paint the casino's for a couple days. Mom came with her and helped the gimp. I try to sit and paint when I can, but Mom would push me around like a wheel chair. A couple times we almost biffed it when we would hit a crack in the walk.
The gift shop/spa didn't want any garland on their nice big windows but they did want the little panes on the doors done.
Poinsettea wreath!
We got a flat tire and had to go over to Valley Tire here in Overton. They didn't have the size of tire that we needed and couldn't fix our tire so they traded us these two tires for a painting. The tires arent the same size as the front and the truck travels really rough but me and the truck just limped through the rest of the season and we will have to get the correct tires for the truck, wish it was that easy for me.
One morning heading to Mesquite we ran into fog, not something you see much of here in the desert. It was pretty cool. The news said maybe snow this weekend? It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. And that's all I got to say about that.

Window Painting Season 2008

This was our 18th year of painting windows. Esther watched the babies and Cortnie and I went out into the craziness.
Cortnie hates this snowman but everyone picks it. She put it in for its font but is taking it out of our book and off of our website. I think he is kind of cute. We used to never get to paint Merry Christmas but more and more people are getting fed up with being politically correct. So we get more and more requests for Merry Christmas. It doesn't fit as well because the words are not the same amount of letters, but we like it. One year Jane Bush asked for a snowflake garland, we said we didn't have one but we tried it and it is now one of our most popular garlands. It is fast and easy, so it is one of our favorites too. Even though Cortnie claims she can't draw, she drew this little elf in Henderson and I think he is adorable. She also drew this little elf that she made up off the top of her head. I have nothing in my head, I have to copy.
This is one of Cortnie's very clever fonts.She does all the lettering for this business.
And some of Cortnie's famous candy cane striped lettering. Cortnie painted these festive clothes on the old faded John Wayne poster at Uncle Bucks in Mesquite! This is our new caroling snowmen. We also did them at Casa Blanca, where a lady at the Purple Fez restaurant watching us could just not be happy until we put ear muffs on the little guy.
Santa "dozing" at Trade West. It was so hot that day on the south side, that we were melting.I had to cut the long sleeves off of Cortnie's shirt. Wyatt came and helped us on his days off. He has been worried about my feet holding up! They held. It was fun to have him along doing all the heavy lifting and driving the beast. Cortnie made up these fun packages, I can't even paint that low. This is one of our new trees this year. The original picture is an all white tree, but we like it in green too! We don't get to do nativities very often, maybe that is why it isn't our best. This one is in Richfield and it was very cold on that north side. ( Did I mention my feet hurt on the ladder?)
This one is at Sugar's and on very small windows. It is hard for us to do small, all our brushes are big. Also you may notice one of our new trees. This is one of our first year Nativities that we dusted off and painted at the Logandale Chevron's Giant Windows. One year when I was painting this one on Napa Auto Parts a women walked by and said, "what cute poodles". Just for the record, they are sheep. Mesquite Tile wanted a washing machine with a snowman melted in it so we used Cortnie's clothes line writing. I think it turned out cute. Poor, poor melted snowman. Some people do adds. This next one is the store of the Red Hat Lady who arranged the tea party on our roof for the Mesquite chapter of Red Hats. The beast and the wagon.
I think that wagon has been dropped off the truck and run over at least half a dozen times. Every year for the last 5 years we wonder if the beast will make it another season. It did. Kind of reminds me of me. This cute little suntanning snow girl is on a tanning salon in Richfield. She is determined! Everyone knows that tan cellulite looks better than white cellulite;)