Christmasing on the World Wide Web

After Thanksgiving comes house cleaning in preparation for holiday decorating. If I get around to it. And Christmas gift creating and buying. If I get around to it. This year, I've been shanghaied by the web.

Although Black Friday sales hold no interest for me, the internet versions -- CyberMonday, CyberWeek, CyberCome-on -- suckered me right in. I have made photo calendars for family the last few years and all the photo calendar sites had specials on. So I worked feverishly to find photos, out of the hundreds I've taken over the year,, that would, I hoped, be appropriate for each grandkid. Then I remembered that Steve and Munazza's kids "loved" the photo books I made of their 2011 trips here. (Or so their mother said.) I spent more time (because of more special deals) making photo books of their 2012 trips.

I raced to make the CyberSpecial deadlines, only to find, after sending off my orders, that the sites had new specials. Evidently, there is never a need to pay full retail price for anything. Interestingly enough, after applying my hard-earned coupon specials, the cost came to about what I think the products are worth, even though that was half the retail price. Oh how easily we are snockered. Or I am.

While working on these photo projects, I thought it would be fun to also make a photo book of Wrong Way Corrigan, the Barn Owl fledgling that spent many mornings flying about the arboretum when it should have been sleeping. I guessed that was the same owl who spent one day sleeping in a bare tree behind the barn (photos on my BIRDS blog). I enjoyed (and took a lot of time) creating a story to go with my and my friend Dawn's photos of our daylight owl.  Here is one of hers:

That made me think it would be fun to make more wildlife photo books for our young grandchildren, Kestrel and Cedrus. And that set me on a mission to take more photos of our resident wildlife. Yesterday, I succeeded with our winter resident Kestrel.

 Now I just have to dream up a story to go along with the dozens of photos I took of that handsome bird... And a title. A Kestrel for Kestrel?

I'll have to do one on cedar trees for Cedrus. And then... we have lots of trail camera photos of bear and deer and raccoons...

This is way more fun than cleaning house!