Duke's Mixture 01.2026: A Little of This-n-That

Hey friends, 

Can you believe it?  Two posts in a month's time?  I might be getting back in the hang of this blogging business after all.  Decided that one way to ease back into the groove would be to join some popular link-ups for a Duke's Mixture compilation post.  

Where Bloggers Live

The girls who write the Where Bloggers Live (WBL) posts have been so patient with my sporadic blogging.  When I told them I might try to connect with them for their first 2026 post of the series, they welcomed me to join them.  I am not yet sure I'm dependable enough to say I will contribute every month but I always so enjoyed the monthly themes for Where Bloggers Live.  So, I am here for today.

Daenel @ Living Outside the Stacks

Bettye @ Fashion Schlub

Jody @ Jody's Touch of Style

Em @ Dust and Dog Hair

Sally @ Within a World of My Own

Hope you will pop 'round to say hi to each of them!!

Winter's Hidden Charms: 5 Favorite Things about Winter

If we have been buds for any length of time, you may remember that I love ❆snow❆.  Almost every winter I would add a weather effect widget to my WordPress blog that enabled snowflakes to fall across my page.  Some of my readers really didn't appreciate the snow as it made reading my posts a little more difficult.  But to me, the snowflakes were magical.  Don't be too surprised if you discover snowflakes falling across my page here, next time you visit, if I can figure out how to make that happen!!

PC and I are just back from a week in Durango, Colorado with my youngest daughter Lauren, her husband Francisco, and my granddaughters Lucia and Cami.  While it wasn't exactly the winter wonderland that Durango often is this time of year, the landscape was perfectly snow-dusted.  And I was enchanted.

Winter Favorite Number Five

Cozy clothes have to be one of my favorite things about winter.  I love wearing sweaters and graphic sweatshirts with my jeans and cords.  Tucking my feet into wooly warm socks and into snuggly warm boots.  Bought this dark chocolate brown 'let it snow' sweatshirt on sale at Loft early in the fall and could.not.wait to wear it in Durango on the Polar Express.

Winter Favorite Number Four

Enjoying all the warm, comfort foods.  Soups and chili.  Hot chocolate, especially Mexican cocoa - try this one - scrumptious!!  Seasonal coffees with chocolate and peppermint and lots of whipped cream.  Christmas cookies and decadent desserts we seem to reserve for the holidays.  

Every winter I set up a hot chocolate bar but we don't always find the time to enjoy a family cocoa evening.  Yet year after year, I am hopeful that it will happen.

Winter Favorite Number Three

Chilly evenings.  I really dislike being cold but I have to admit I sleep better when I am at least cool.  And I love having the weight of blankets, quilts and comforters piled high around me on long, winter nights.  We have a very old (like 2 ex-husbands ago old) electric blanket that I should replace just to rid our bed of the cobwebs of past relationships.  I haven't turned it on much this year even though I really detest climbing into a cold bed.  But once I get nestled under my covers, it isn't long before I am comfortably drifting off to sleep.  

When I was little, my mom would tell how her mother would heat bricks on their kitchen stove to stick under the covers to warm their beds just as they were ready to go to sleep. When my daughters were little I shared that story with them and my recollections of the ways Laura Ingalls Wilder's family used hot potatoes to chase away the winter from their beds.  Nowadays, my grandbabies and I like to pretend we have hot bricks or potatoes tucked into the foot of our beds.

Winter Favorite Number Two

Freshness.  In El Paso, when the air is crisp and cool, people here say it is 'fresh' outside.  Fresh can also describe that (rare) after-a-rainstorm feeling when our dusty desert smells clean.  Freshness is my second favorite thing about winter. The way the air is brisk and almost feels easier to breathe.  It's as if the nippy winter air is healthier for our lungs, for our whole body.  

In Durango last week, we hiked the Purgatory Creek Trail twice. It meandered about an area forested with snow adorned aspens and evergreens through which a partially frozen creek was trickling.  It was so picturesque.  My whole body felt alive, my lungs were singing as the clean, fresh air filled them.  Gotta love that freshness.

Winter Favorite Number One

With all that being said, ❆snow❆ has to be my top favorite thing about winter.  I ask you, is there anything lovelier, anything more pristine than a freshly fallen ❆snow❆?  So pure and white.  Yet in the sun, ❆snow❆ glistens and sparkles and dances with all the colors of the rainbow.  

(IMO) ❆snow❆ makes everything prettier.  It makes the world clean and bright (I guess until it doesn't - until it turns to a muddied mush but let's not think about that!!). When I was still working and there would be ❆snow❆ in the weather forecast, I would encourage all of my students to join me in doing the ❆snow❆ dance - twirling 3 times one direction, 3 time the other direction all with raised jazz hands to represent the anticipated snowflakes falling. The dance has an incredible success rate so give it a try next time you are hoping for ❆snow❆.

Can you tell I am quite passionate about ❆snow❆ and winter, in general??  And yet, our El Paso winters are mild.  This year even more so.  Which, I guess, makes snow even more delightful to me.

HodgePodge with Joyce

You might remember the HodgePodge series with Joyce at From Across This Side of the Pond I used to participate in.  Every Sunday, Joyce creates a list of 5 thought-provoking questions on a theme and invites readers to share their responses on the following Wednesday.  In true form, I am a day (or 2) late and always a dollar short, bringing up the rear with my responses on Friday.  But would you expect anything else of me?

 

1. What are three words you would use to describe your 2025? 

I spent much longer thinking on this than necessary.  Healthy-adventuresome-delightful.

2. I ask this question every January, and I always get comments about how we shouldn't be banning words. This is fun and games so just play along : ) 

Every January 1st since 1976 Lake Superior University has published a list of words they'd like to see banished from the Queen's English. Words may be banished due to misuse, overuse, or just general uselessness (go here to read about how the words are chosen). Here's the list for 2026- 

67 • demure • cooked • massive • incentivize • full stop • perfect • gift/gifted  • my bad • reach out 

Which one (if any) do you use most often? Which one of these words/phrases would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why? Is there a word you think should have made the list? 

I probably use 'perfect' most of all.  Yes, I do know that nothing in this world is perfect.  But my grandbabies are darn close!! 

I have gotten a kick out of the '6-7' phenomenon with the kids in a third grade class I sub for somewhat regularly.  Early in the fall, they tried to get me to say '6-7' every chance they could.  I was reluctant because I suspected the kids were using those numbers together for some mischievous purpose.  But I looked into it and realized it was really kind of a harmless phrase - thank goodness - so I have embraced it and use it with the children for whom I sub.

Never have liked 'my bad' and would gladly banish it from popular use. 

3. What are your nightly rituals? Is that different from your 'ideal' nightly ritual? If so what's your ideal? 

Interesting question.  We usually call it a day sometime between 9:30 and 10:00 pm.  I tell the kitties goodnight and now that it is winter, I make sure their electric beds are turned on.  I change into my pjs, which are sometimes pajamas and sometimes nightgowns, wash my face, brush my teeth, and then turn down the bed.  

Over the holidays, I had a new outfit created by a local seamstress for a 60+ year-old Raggedy Ann type doll my maternal grandmother made me.  Five-year-old Cami has taken a real shine to Elizabeth lately.  She has insisted that Elizabeth sleeps with PC and me in bed rather than sitting on the cold wooden rocking chair that had been her special spot.  So, after I get the covers turned back, I put Elizabeth in bed by the pillows where she will be nice and warm.

PC usually counts out our nighttime gummies - magnesium, apple cider vinegar, vitamin C, and fruit and veggie gummies.  He serves them to me in a lid from one of the bottles.  I eat my gummies slowly.  He gobbles his all at once.  We watch a little TV - PC more so than I.  Almost always read on my Kindle. When I find myself nodding off mid-sentence, I turn off my Kindle and announce that it is bedtime on my side of the bed.  And within a few minutes, I am usually well into my first dream.  Unless I am stressed or worried about something.

4. January 6th is/was National Bean Day. Do you like beans? Which one is your favorite? Last thing you ate made with beans? 

Yes, I like beans...all kinds of beans.  My own baked beans are among my favorites.  Made green beans tonight that I slow cooked all day with turkey bacon, a little onion, rosemary and a bit of sugar.  Mmmm.

5. Are you easily embarrassed? Elaborate. 

I don't laugh at myself well at all.  And get embarrassed when others are kind of making fun of me.  Maybe not immediately, but if I continue to be the brunt of the joke, I do get embarrassed and uncomfortable.  Sometimes I say the darnedest things and embarrass myself.  And almost always when I am out in a social setting with people I don't know well, I will spill my drink, or drop a forkful of food on myself.  Can't take me anywhere.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

It is 8:44 pm.  We have had a busy day with a good workout at the gym, then taking all of the Christmas decorations down, packing them up and putting them away.  Then I got out the little bit of Valentine's Day decorations and put them out.  By the time I climb the stairs to bed, I will have over 13K steps.  I am ready for bed.  

And just like that, it is Friday...2 days since I started this post!!  But I am about to wind things up.  One last thing...

My Word of the Year

Like so much of everything else about blogging, I have been kind of hit or miss with my Word of the Year (WOTY) in the past.  To be honest, once I quite blogging last year, I never gave my WOTY much thought.  And now I am not even sure what it was.  Ha!!

Yet here I am, going to give it another go for 2026.  This year my word is flow.  Had we been selecting 4 words of the year, I would have selected 'go with the flow.'  So you get the idea; I need to quit sweating the small stuff and just go with the flow. 

Example:  on Christmas Day, my daughter Lauren was sick, and PC and I neither felt 100%.  I had planned to cook the holiday meal late in the afternoon and have Lauren's family come over to eat and open presents but with 3 of the 6 of us under the weather, we postponed.  I didn't get too bent out of shape over it.  Yay, me!!  But things like that can often throw me for a loop.  I get frustrated when my plans don't go as...planned!!

So, this year, and all the years going forward, I am hoping to better go with the flow.  Or just flow.  And not get so wound up when things get upside down.  For me, that is a tall order.  We shall see how I do.  Probably should have the graphic below tattooed all over me to remind me to flow.

Your Turn

That's quite the mixed bag for today's post, huh?  My mom called an assortment of things like this a Duke's Mixture.  So that's where the title for today's post comes from.  My sweet mama.

What are your favorite things about winter?  Some of you might think that the best thing about winter is spring is sure to follow.  And I do like spring a lot, too.  How would you respond to the HodgePodge questions this time around?  Do you have a WOTY picked out yet?  Please share in a comment below.

As it is now Friday afternoon, PC and I are going to the movies.  We rarely go any more but have decided to go see "Song Sung Blue".  I am most interested in the popcorn.  

Thank you for spending some of your day here with me.  Happy new year, my friends.  May 2026 be a kind and gentle year for everyone.

Big hugs,