Why I Oughta...

Here's a vintage Christmas pro-tip:  Head to your local Goodwill about two weeks after Thanksgiving and you'll come across an abundance of Christmas decorations that people have discarded.  It works something like this:  Friday after Thanksgiving, people decorate their houses.  By Saturday or Sunday, the 'remnants' (as I call them) are still sitting in the tubs and people have decided that certain things didn't make the cut.  That can be ornaments.  Or figures.  Or garland.  Or lights.  Or...on occasion, Marshall Field's Walnut Room Christmas mugs.  That's how I came across this Walnut Room Mug from 2000 that features Santa Bear getting married.  Yeah...getting married?!?!?  I don't know the details, but I'm guessing that the folks at Marshall Field's were trying to introduce a female Santa Bear?  So they got Santa Bear married to Mrs. Santa Bear.  Kinda like how Disney introduced Duffy first, then moved on to adding ShellieMay the female

A week or so ago, I posted a coaster from the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs here in the [ coaster collection ] that made it the #21.  Today is another sweet hotel - the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas - that is now #22.  I stayed at the Adolphus for a few nights and had a huge room.  I guess I shouldn't expect anything less down in Texas, right?  I have a soft spot in my heart for vintage, old-fashioned hotels and the Adolphus lived up to it's billing. 

Over the weekend, we went out to Wheaton to attend the Great Midwest Train Show with my Dad for our annual visit.  We go every December to look through the tables and I get a big shot of nostalgia as I recall the trips to the train show that I took with my Dad when I was just a little one.  We always come home with some nice loot from the vendors and this year is no different.  Above you can see a Lionel billboard with a Schlitz Beer card inside of it with the 1974 date on the bottom.  Just $1, too, which makes it all the more sweeter.  We scored a few other items that I'll post here on the blog this week, but this billboard is my favorite item. We haven't had time to set up the Mantleburg line this year (shameful, I know), but when we do, this will go perfectly trackside next to some of the other accessories.  I also posted about some animated billboards that I picked up earlier this year here on the blog , but I don't remember if I bought one for Mantleburg or not

There are a few things in my world that I geek out about:  Disney World.  Pizza.  And Christmas.  I like everything about Christmas and even have a tub of shirts that we drag out that contains *just* Christmas shirts.  Part of one of our Christmas traditions is going down to the Tammen Treeberry Farm and cutting down a tree for our house.  Here's a post from 2010 that talks about that trip .  I also included the Tammen Treeberry Farm on my "favorite holiday things" list of 2010 and 2012 .   This year, we cut down two trees for our #newoldfarmhouse - which is one more than we normally do.  And that meant that we needed a second tree stand.  I went to the Wirecutter - where they (of course) have a piece comparing various stands .  They recommended the Krinner Tree Genie XXL .  They bill it thusly : A unique design makes clamping a tree in the Krinner far easier than any kind of stand we’ve found. The Krinner grips the tree trunk with five claws that you tighten b

Yesterday, I posted another in the series of Walt Disney quotes on construction signs down at Walt Disney World in Florida.  All of them are sponsored by Stanley.  Today...here's another one.  This one hits me right in the belly because it is a big part of the reason why we keep going back:  The joy that I get to share with my children.  Together.   This now has become a 'thing' on the blog where I can document the various versions of the construction signs at WDW.  This one, in particular was located on the same walk as this other longer Walt quote where the Skyway construction is going on outside of Hollywood Studios.   Here   are   a   few   others .

We spotted this sign on the walk from the Boardwalk to Hollywood Studios that features the longest Walt Disney quote of all of the signs that I've documented here on the blog.   And sums up the whole " Disney Bubble " phenomenon. Here are a few others .

Do you guys follow Boyfriends of Instagram ?  Besides all the pizza nerdery that I follow on (as the kids say...) Insta, my favorite account *has* to be Boyfriends of Instagram .  For those of you new to this handle, it is a place where people share images and videos of people forced to take ridiculous instagram photos of their girlfriend/spouse/partner/friend/etc. So, when I came across this weird situation right in front of Cinderella's Castle at the Magic Kingdom down at Walt Disney World, I knew that I had witnessed a 'Boyfriends of Instagram' moment myself! Check out what this Dad (I'm assuming??) is doing to get *that* special photo of his daughter in her big, Princess dress.   This is taking place up the ramps that are open sometimes, like right in front of the opening that you take to go 'under' the Castle.  During a super busy time.  You can see all the other people just walking past trying to experience the Castle.  All the while....Dad is being a

The folks at TrainWorld just shipped a few of my 2017 Christmas Catalog pre-orders including this one:  the 2017 Santa and Snowman Tag Boxcar.  The box is not a normal O Gauge train box from Lionel, but a two piece top/bottom orange box.  The front of it only reveals the blue boxcar.  But once you open it up? You see this: That's the boxcar with the platform on top, Santa, Frosty and the 'bridge' that you put up for the boxcar to pass under. Here's the side of the box with all the product details.  I haven't set up our track yet, nor can I find this year's model being run on YouTube, but I *did* find this older version that gives you a sense for how it works.  Kinda cute, right?

Have you had these pretzels yet?  They're a fast-emerging ' favorite thing ' of mine this Holiday season that I'm certain will make this year's list .  And, unfortunately, they quickly disappeared once they arrived in our pantry.  The peppermint and almond one?  Awesome.  The sprinkles one?  Fine, but always the last tray to empty.  I've mentioned to Natalie like four times that the 'next time you go to TJ's, can you buy more of these ???', but it appears that they might be sold out already because our rations haven't been restocked.  Or perhaps it was the fact that I/we devoured these in four days that she's purposely not rebuying?

Caught this moon showing up strong just as the sun was setting on a walk to the train one evening.  Nat alerted me to the moon based on her view in the suburbs and sure enough, framed right down the valley of high rises and above the Gehry pavilion:  there she is!  Lots of buzz around the Christkindl market and theatre crowds arriving for early dinners, but it was still worth stopping and enjoying. 

Now entering #21 in the [Coaster Collection] here on the blog.  This one from The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs.  Which...is a delightful place.  Turns out, it is owned by the same folks who own Heaven errr...Sea Island .    That explains a lot .  I have a few photos of my stay (which was entirely too short) that I'll post up here on the blog with more details at some point. The most recent coaster prior to this one was Abracadabar down on the Disney Boardwalk . You can find the full coaster collection here .

That's a shot of Nat and I on the Tower of Terror down in Orlando at Walt Disney World.  It was taken at mile 10 of the Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon.  And it was the first time that I had ever been on the ride.   Under normal circumstances, I would have been able to fend off the pressure from Nat to ride on something like this, but perhaps it was the half-marathon brain fog that weakened me and dropped my defenses.  I pity the person who had to sit in my seat after we left.  I was soaked at this point from the humidity and my back was starting to seize up.  I left a pool of sweat behind, I'm sure.  You can also see the other people to Nat's right that were running the race, too.  The dude looks like he's reading his phone, though?  Total pro move, I guess?

One morning in the past few weeks, I witnessed this weird event:  a tree in the front yard was shedding all of it's leaves at once.  Check out what seems like a shower of leaves falling.  One right after the other.  You can see from the pattern on the ground that this tree was dropping them all in a matter of minutes while the other trees still are holding on to theirs.  You can also notice that there's frost on the roof across the street from us and I *think* that this might have been the first frost?  Could that have set off this reaction? 

Via the Kansas City Star:   ...But “Dilly Dilly” wasn’t a pure stroke of genius out of thin air. According to dictionary.com, the origins of “dilly” are in a shortening of the word “delightful” or “delicious,” probably from the 1930s. On its own, it has come to mean “something or someone regarded as remarkable or unusual.” File this one away next to the "It's Wednesday, Gary."  "I know that Janet" one  as gold.

We brought just a little bit of Indiana Street with us to Downers.  Over the weekend, we put up our trees inside the house, but we also went to Menards and bought a small 5' Fraser Fir to put up in our front yard.  Just like we did on Indiana Street.  Starting with our first Christmas in Elmhurst (in our first house), we participated in the tradition of erecting a 'front yard tree' along with our neighbors.  My sister Vic told us about the tradition before we moved in and sure enough, we fell in love.  The street(s) always looked so great when all of the homes had a uniquely-styled and lighted tree.  You can see the C7 bulbs I put on our tree this year out in front of our #newoldfarmhouse.  Nat did a great job doing 'classy' decorations on the porch with garland and lights.  And wreaths in the windows that you can see above.  So, while we have moved out of Indiana Street, we still wanted to bring some of that tradition with us in our new digs.  So, right no

There are plenty of Christmas traditions that we participate in (trains, advent calendars, elfs, tree day, Walnut Room, etc), but there's also a beer tradition that I've grown to look forward to:  the opening of the annual Anchor Steam Christmas Ale as done by my brother-in-laws in Naperville. I've chronicled this in the past here on the blog.  Here's a post from last year's version .  Here's the 2015 version .  And here's a post from 2010 with that year's bottle .  And based on those posts, I've been drinking a little bit of this stuff for 10 years now, despite this only being the fourth version that I've documented on the blog here. As for this year's brew, they once again picked a unique tree for the label.  From the Anchor Steam site : This year’s tree is the Santa Lucia fir. Extremely rare, it is native and limited to California’s Santa Lucia Range along the central coast of California. They bought some smaller bottles like nor

The kids and I recently upgraded our bird watching area with the introduction of our heated birdbath.  It is more like a re-introduction as we had this heated bath at our old house, but up until a week or so ago, it was just sitting in the basement.  We put it right next to a few of our feeders that you can see in the top part of this photo.  If you look closely, you can also see a very pretty cardinal right behind the pole on the right and a little bird - a finch of some sort, maybe? - on the feeder on the left.  We get a lot of yellow and black and brown little birds.  Finches, nuthatches, chickadees and pine siskins/  We also run a suet feeder right in this area, too so we're getting visits from woodpeckers despite us not having a tailprop version.   We're getting a lot of late fall/early winter action on these feeders and have, so far, stopped squirrels from owning all of them completely.  I still find a squirrel trying his best to get to these, but usually, the cage