No, I did not take this photo this year, but it looks Christmassy to me and it is a favorite of mine. I took it right behind our house about four years ago.
Last time we visited, I was remembering my shopping experiences growing up. Christmas gives us permission to shop or the urge to shop or the duty to shop, depending on your situation or outlook on the holidays. I am one of the people who feels she has permission to shop this time of year. I love to buy presents! My biggest problem is stopping when I am done or sticking to a budget.
Oh well, Christmas comes but once a year, and it is so fun to show our family how much we love them. I think I am using most all my available means of shopping this year. I am Amazoning, buying from local vendors, special ordering from local craftsmen, buying from resale stores, making hand made gifts, doing special photo projects, baking goodies, and shopping at retail stores between here and Bismarck. I hope that I am successful in my choices!
When I was in high school, a favorite pastime was perusing the local shops in Beach ND during lunch hours and after school, as we did not have such things in Medora! I remember three grocery stores, a variety store, Clara's dress shop, Hazelones(a dress shop), Coast to Coast, Sleights City Drug, a jewelry story, Brockmeyers electronics, and of course, Dickinson's department store - these stores offered basically anything you might need and many people used Beach as their major shopping destination, with trips to Dickinson being somewhat like going to Bismarck or Fargo these days.
When I went to college in the big city of Dickinson, I don't really remember doing much shopping as I had neither the time nor money for that indulgence. I would buy what I needed, often at the new "Tempo" store on the way north end of town (currently where T-Rex Plaza is now.) Supplies and new clothes for the new school year were often purchased from Sears or Montgomery Wards or JC Penneys, and remember, we did not have credit or debit cards then. You had to mail your hand written order form along with the proper payment (calculated by you to include postage and tax) in the form of a check, and wait two weeks to a month for your merchandise to arrive. There were no messages telling you that it had been received or shipped or that delivery was pending. The only delivery we had was the US Post Office, period.
Just a wintery shot of some elk in Theodore Roosevelt National Park - I don't see them very often, so thought this was a seasonal photo for my blog.
Skipping forward, to the very recent past (I will continue this shopping discourse in another blog), this past weekend was my first Art Show at the Medora Cowboy Christmas Event. I thought you might like to know how it went. It is the Wednesday afterward, and I am finally getting some energy back -it was a lot of work for an old lady to haul all that stuff to Medora and down to that basement room, put it up for display (again and again, as some of my photos kept falling off the wall!), be present for the entire day and then haul it all out and back home again. But, I succeeded and met some very nice people and even sold some of my photos! The other ladies were happy with their day as well, and of course, the Lefse lady (my DIL, Kristy) totally sold out. My granddaughters, Avery (12), helped us all with extra arms and legs and Kalli (8), was our barker extraordinaire, standing at the top of the stairs, handing out flyers and loudly announcing that the "world's greatest art show was in the basement." Memories...
I also have to compliment the extraordinary young local people who cheerfully helped us carry all of our stuff out to the car and load it. Not sure if we would even have it home yet, without their help! The younger generation always gets a bad rap, but not from this grandma!
I have to shut this down, but before I go, I still have a few of my "Dakota Skies" calendars left and would love to send you one or some, for your Christmas shopping! Just contact me via email, or Facebook - they are $25 and the price includes postage and tax.
TTFN!