Cold-snap Sunday.

Wasn't I just hoping that we wouldn't get hit with a cold snap? Yesterday, everyone was walking around in shorts, today it's at least 25 degrees colder-- no shorts to be seen. Oh well.... according to The Chronicle, the weather should be warm again by Wednesday.

I hate this cold weather. But seeing what's happening up in the northeast and the midwest, this is nothing to complain about. Our friends C & R are now both in their new upstate NY home-- C arrived just the other day and when he called us, he said that he's never seen so much snow in his entire life. R has been up there since August because she had to start her new teaching job then. C stayed on here to finish up his teaching job, then off he went in his little Texas car that has never been driven in snow. We had asked him if he bought chains for his tires and he looked at us with a blank look on his face. Chains? Why would I need chains? I'm sure he knows by now.


Young Miss C was over here after dinner tonight. She had called me this afternoon and asked if she could come by so I could teach her how to make the Victorian Christmas cones. She came over with a shopping bag filled with papers, ribbons, stars, pom-poms, plastic "googley eyes," and every bit of wrapping paper and package decoration that came from gifts we've given her throughout the years. That child had saved everything. Every last bow, every gift tag, every bit of wrapping paper. Everything. Amazing.

By the time we were all crafted-out, C had made three large cones and two small ones. I made another large cone for our decorations, and a small one using some of C's Oriental papers. She had been to a yard sale this past summer and bought a huge box of Oriental scrap paper for just a few dollars. Before she left here, we traded some papers--- I gave her a batch of my Christmas card-stock papers, and she gave me some of the Oriental ones.

I made a beautiful small red cone using C's red and gold Oriental paper, and I put it with my little red and white Chinese tree and the vintage Chinese statues that belonged to my Aunt Edie. C made a small pink cone trimmed with part of an old rhinestone necklace that I had in one of my boxes of craft stuff. She decorated the cone with pink rhinestone hearts, then told me she didn't want to take it home because it would look perfect on the large pink Santa in my sitting room. So my pink Santa is now holding a pink Victorian rhinestone-trimmed cone. He looks precious, said C.

C now wants to make the cones for Valentine's Day, Easter, birthdays--- the possibilities are endless, she said. Indeed. C loves to do crafts, and she always looks for supplies at yard sales and resale shops. Even if she doesn't know what she'll eventually do with something, if she likes it, she buys it, and into her treasure trove of "good stuff" it goes.

As we were quietly making the cones (neither of us gets to chattering too much when we're busy with something), C told me "When you were little, your Aunt Dolly taught you to save whatever you liked if it could be used again, and you taught me the same thing, and now we both have boxes of good stuff to make things with! Isn't that cool?!"

Cool indeed.