Almost Warm-ish

It must have gotten up near freezing today because the sun was shining and the birdbath glacier nearly melted away. I was watching this big flock of Sparrows working hard to empty the round feeder and saw that the ice was nearly out in the birdbath basin. Lots of room for Sparrows and squirrels to get a drink.

There was a constant fluttering battle for perches on the round feeder. The Sparrows were relentless. You can see one bird flying in on the right. He edged another bird off its perch and took it over. They worked hard to fling seed and cracked corn out of the feeder. There was a nice size flock of birds under the feeder reaping the benefit and one lone squirrel nibbling away at it too.

I spent part of the day watching an Ad School video about how to figure out your Return On Investment for your books or series. I'd done it before but didn't really remember how or what so I watched it again and redid the calculations. Using data from last month as he advised was pathetic. Sales were so low and ad spend was higher so my ROI was dismal. Things looked slightly better when I used the lifetime numbers for Royalties, Ad Spend, Profit, and ROI. He said at the end of the video not to do the extra credit homework if your numbers were at 1% or below and that's where I am. *sigh* Maybe the work I'm doing with KM my virtual assistant will help change that. 

Then to cheer myself up a bit I did today's watercolor. The flower is Stock which I've heard of but didn't know what it was supposed to look like. We painted a very soft, smooshy version of a flower stalk. It's so pale that it was hard to get it to show up in the picture but I like it. I like the way she had us add other colors to the wet flower shapes to make them look more real and I just like the whole pastel look of it. And I'm loving the brush washer I got from DD and her family for Christmas. It's so easy to clean my brushes in the little pool of clean water and scrub the brush against the ridges on the edges. It's a very cool gadget.

In the afternoon I went over to DS's house to have Christmas with his family. We had a lovely time exchanging gifts. DS and DIL1 were happy to get their annual gift of Mt. Meru Fair Trade coffee from Tanzania. I'm so glad that they like it. I'd rather give them something consumable than stuff that will hang around forever. My knitted items were well received. Here's LC's Hermione's Everyday Mitts. She took them out of the gift box, put them on, and kept them on. That made all the complicated knitting worthwhile.

Here's OJ's Gryffindor Beanie. It's just a bit roomy but it fits and he likes it. He wore it for a while, took it off when he got too warm, and then put it back on. They both liked the Harry Potter Lego sets and the set of all of the HP movies so they can watch when they want without having to pay for them. It was a Harry Potter Christmas! There were also books because there always have to be books.

I got a Barnes & Noble gift card which I am anxious to get over there and spend. I'm hoping I can find some drawing or painting or knitting books. I also got this nice jar from LC. I commented that I didn't know what I'd put in it and she suggested Dum Dum suckers. They fit just fine. I know two grandchildren who are fans of Dum Dums.

On my way home from their house I stopped at the grocery and spent more than I thought I would. I suppose I should have expected it since I needed toothpaste and toilet paper, both not cheap in bulk, and I stocked up on more Lean Cuisine meals but they were on sale. I'm just grateful that Durwood was such a careful investor and financial guy. He taught me a lot, mostly against my will.

--Barbara