Fall trip

Just a quick post to let you know I haven't fallen into a bottomless pit somewhere! (Oh, and the below pictures have nothing to do with my recent trip, but didn't want to leave you high and dry!)

 

Last week, I left hubby at home and drove to Gatlinburg to meet up with my nursing school roommate, whom I've not seen in over 20 years! In fact, the last time I saw her was in 1989, when we were flying from Albuquerque to Birmingham, and had a few hours layover in St. Louis. She came to the airport and we got to talk for a little while, but my hubby, daughter, and foster son were there, as were her 2 little girls, so not much was accomplished. Before that? 1975, nearest I can figure.

We met when we went for our nursing school interviews. She was from Helen Keller's hometown, and I was from Birmingham, and there was no guarantee either of us would be admitted. In fact, there were lots of gals there, and there was more than one weekend of interviews, but we found each other and almost immediately decided to be roommates. We were 17. Amazing, huh? We've been friends 43 years now.

Gatlinburg was gorgeous this time of the year, (which is why she trades her timeshare for that time and place), and the weather was nice, but all we did was talk. And talk, and talk, and talk. We did go outside to eat a couple of times, but that was it. Her poor husband just took naps and watched TV and just generally chilled out. He's her second husband, and it was the first time I'd met him. What a nice guy!

I took my cameras, because that's where my photos are, and she brought her wedding photos, but the only pictures we took were of us together on the tiny balcony just before I left. We have vowed to do this every year, so I can plan to spend more than just 24 hours and we can do some shopping or sight-seeing or something. Husbands are optional.

So it was a wonderful interlude, but now it's back to the yard haunt. It's coming along, though there's still lots to do. I had requested 2 vacation days this week just to enjoy the weather and work on my haunt, but it's hard to squeeze a month's worth of Hallowe'en into only a week. I need to be cloned! Pictures and details to come later.

Autumn Sunrise

I got off work a little earlier than usual Monday morning, so I sat in my car a few minutes and waited. It was a partly cloudy morning, which generally means a colorful sunrise, and I was not disappointed.

I moved my car to a different part of the parking lot so I could get less obstructed views.

People were coming in and trying to park, so I turned to get back into my truck, and saw the first rays of the sun tip the trees on the hills behind me.

Then the clouds moved all the way in and the sun disappeared again and I went home to bed.

Autumn in My Little Corner of the World

It started the last week of September...

....and this is my world now:

I know I say this every year, but fall is my favorite season, and I'm so glad I live here now.

End of November

Where has this month gone? Did you have a good Thanksgiving?  Did you get to spend time with family?

DD has a major deadline coming up next week, so we didn't get to see her this holiday.  It'll be Christmas soon, though, and I hope she has some vacation time left and can spend more than just a couple of days here.

We did have a couple of visitors, though.  Well, Tandi and I did. Tandi wants them to play, but I think they come by hoping I'll go back to giving them treats again.

The black and white dog loves to chase cars, and I'm worried one day she'll get hit. This was just as a car was coming up the street.

The brown dog is shyer, but has the sweetest expression in her eyes. I'd adopt her in a heartbeat if we didn't have Tandi.

I don't know to whom they belong, but I think they're the reason Tandi got fleas earlier this summer, so I don't encourage them to stick around.

As for me, I had 4 days of PDO to use or lose by Christmas,  so I took one day last week, and will be spacing the other 3 out during the next few weeks.  Since I was off  Mon-Fri night, I decided to go ahead and cook, even though there were only going to be the two of us, and one of us is on the South Beach Diet. 

Challenges can be so overrated.

I did try some new dishes off Kalyn's Kitchen website:   baked artichoke hearts au gratin,  Double Berry Jello salad, and SBD-friendly Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie with a crushed pecan crust.  Oh, my, goodness.  That pie was SO good.  Jack had dressing with gravy, and pecan pie, but he liked my cranberry salad better than the canned jellied stuff he usually prefers.

My weight loss has ping-ponged between 31 and 33 lbs for the last 3 weeks, and I think I'm going to have to go back on phase 1 for a few days just to get back in the right mindset. Now that I've lost enough to be comfortable in the next size down, I find my motivation to be slipping a bit. In 2 weeks I go back to my doc for repeat bloodwork and I am expecting much better numbers and a pat on the back. Maybe that'll help. I haven't told DD yet, and she hasn't seen me since July, so there's another reason to keep plugging.

Outside the weather was beautiful the last 2-3 weeks, with temps in the low 60s, until a cold front came through on Fri., and now the nighttime temps are below freezing. The Bradford pears are the last to change colors and drop their leaves, holding on to autumn as long as they can. 

They're also the first to announce that spring is on the way, with hard little buds appearing as early as February.  It's as if they know their time on earth is limited and they don't want to spend any more time sleeping than Mother Nature makes them.  One of them is struggling mightily, and I don't know if it will last the winter, or collapse with the first ice storm. Maybe we'll get lucky and not have any ice storms this year.

Sure.

My manager at work asked if I'd head up the Christmas decorating of ICU/Telemetry this year, because I "had such a fantastic Halloween display".  Pure flattery, as he didn't see it himself, and besides, being able to do Creepy and Macabre does not guarantee one can do Comfort and Joy.  But I'm a sucker for flattery, so I agreed.

Since themes seem to help me stay focused, I made an executive decision and chose "An Old-Fashioned Christmas".  We have a lot of elderly patients who will enjoy it, and I think it's something most people can relate to, whether we've experienced these ourselves, or watched "The Waltons" on TV or seen Norman Rockwell's work.  

Here's hoping I can pull this off--but if not, someone else will get asked next year and I'll be off the hook, right?

The Light's Right but the Temps are All Wrong

So I heard yesterday was the first full day of autumn.  Really? You'd be hard pressed to know it from walking around outside. Though the nights might dip into the upper 50s, daytime highs are still in the mid 80s.  Thankfully, the humidity remains pretty low, and next week the highs should be in the mid 70s, but it just doesn't feel like fall yet.

My roses are still blooming.

The celosia finally took hold.

The phlox has renewed blooms.

My coleus plants just went nuts towards the end of the summer.

I've pinched the blossoms and tiny tomatoes off the tomato plants so all the energy will go to enlarging and ripening those hard green blobs, but I don't know if that'll be enough. 

Here are the latest photos of the tipsy pots:

One of the pots below suffered greatly when we went to Birmingham for 4 days over Labor Day weekend and just never did recover.  

The vinca in the top pot stayed pretty sparse, too, though the blossoms were lovely.

That's the problem with clay pots--they dry out so quickly.  I've already talked with one of the little neighbor girls about paying her to water my plants if  I'm going to be gone for a while, but it'll be next year before that happens again.

The moss rose in the second pot from the top was supposed to trail, but it didn't really.  In the 4th pot I planted something with the moss rose (can't remember the name) and it looked much better than the moss roses. 

I might plant vinca and moss rose again next year, but not in the tipsy pots.

The chilly mornings have made some of the insects rather sluggish. 

This little wasp was just sitting there, not moving at all.  Even when I disturbed the plant a little, he only twitched an antenna.

But there are some signs the season is changing. The jalapeno plant yielded up its last pepper yesterday, so it's been pulled up and tossed in the trash.  The petunias are giving up the ghost, too, so most of them have been uprooted and I'm thinking of putting pansies in the pots instead. My neighbor planted 75 spring bulbs yesterday.  Ron the Mower Man comes by only every 3 weeks now.

It's time to pick a permanent home for the Japanese maple and decide on which trees will replace the Bradford Pears I lost last winter. But the other Japanese maple is showing those lovely burgundy tips.

 A lot of my herbs have been trimmed back or gone to flower.  It wasn't a good year for the mint or
 basil, but the lavender, parsley and chives have been outstanding. 

The afternoons are shorter and showing that golden cast that signifies the changing of the seasons. The State Fair is over for another year.

My Halloween counter says it's only 37 days til October 31, and I should be getting a little sense of urgency here.  I've ordered several items from Fright Catalog, Spirit Halloween and Grandin Road, and spent a few hours dismantling the red dresses as well as putting the first coat of paint on a display box for the glowing heart, and on the small coffin MightyMom gave me.

Last year, the party I'd planned was cancelled after Jack's hospitalization, and I hadn't given it another thought since then.  But at least 3 people have asked if we were having it this year, and one gal arranged her schedule to be off the weekend in order to come.  So it looks as if the party's on for this year. The decorations are going up anyway, so why not?  But nothing elaborate--just going to throw a couple pots of chili on the stove and maybe make some grilled cheese sandwiches,  and everyone can just bring something to share. 

A friend asked if we had a fireplace or outdoor firepit to toast marshmallows, and we don't, but I'm thinking the place in the center of the yard where the old oak tree was taken down will serve as a good place to make a firepit.  There are no trees close by, and the hose will reach as a water source, and it's right in the center of the action for this year's yard haunt, so I just need to dig out the leftover mulch and encircle it with the scalloped cement borders.  What a great place to tell ghost stories, huh? Guess I need to head back to the thrift stores to find wire coat hangers. Gee, another trip to the thrift shops. What a hardship. 

Weekend news

I have finally, FINALLY caught up on my blog reader. I'm sure it won't last long, but the unread blog count is at zero now--first time in weeks. Seems when I work several nights in a row, especially busy nights, everyone gets all chatty. Fri. night, when I finally woke up, there were 116 in queue--and of course, more get added daily.

So now, time to post a quickie myself. Oh, and thanks for the good wishes everyone. The world looks a lot rosier when my sleep account is not so overdrawn.

It's also nice when Marty the mailman (with the help of the UPS guy) loads up my porch with goodies. Below are a few things that have come in this last week.

Look at this awesome package I won from Mary at Quilt Hollow:

The first is a fall apron, with two patches for trivets, but which I'll probably use as pockets on the apron.


There is also an autumn panel, which I may or may not rearrange:

A cute scarecrow to stuff and put together (probably for Thanksgiving):




A cute vest that I'll need to figure out how to enlarge. Maybe I'll just applique the items onto a larger denim vest. But it's just what I need for the season:



And, just in case I run out of things to do, a Christmas tree skirt, that I might just make into a table topper for a friend.

The panel comes with a couple of stockings to sew, too:


And lastly, these three little appliques to place somewhere:

Wasn't that a great package? This time of the year, panels will really come in handy. They're so quick to do, not a lot of piecing, and enough to keep me satisfied while I'm getting ready for Pumpkin Day!

Speaking of which, some of the things I ordered came in this week, also.

Three of these books were ordered by me, but the 4th one, "Making a Monstrous Halloween:, was a belated birthday gift from my daughter.

My foam tombstones came in:

The large one is a cheater tombstone that lights up. A little distressing, some moss, and it'll look pretty good. I really couldn't resist this one.

I like the color on this one--it looks more realistic to me, and just needs the epitaph carved onto it.

The Nordic-looking ship on this one was unique:

I only bought one of these, but I think I'm going to order another so I can place them on either side of the sidewalk leading to the porch:

Another cheater item: a skull whose eyes light up.


DD and I talked for a long time by phone last night, planning the party. I'm going to decorate it in sort of an after the "Masque of the Red Death" style. Each room will be done in a different color.
I think I will be dressing as the Bubonic Plague, or maybe the Red Death itself. It needs to simmer in my mind just a bit more, but having a "theme" to decorate helps keep me focused.

One last note on the weekend. I started painting the front porch railing this weekend. All I got done was the primer, because the rest of the weekend was very humid, with threats of rain, and finally, some rain.
This is how the porch looked (photo from Halloween '06) before this weekend:

This is how it looks with the primer on it:

The railings will stay white, but I'm thinking of painting the porch and steps a dark gray. The wood is beginning to weather, and there is a place on the bottom step that stays slick when it rains (the gutter leaks) and is icy in the winter. If I add some fine grain sand to the paint on the steps, they should be much safer to climb.

I actually did some quilting on a Halloween table topper for a friend. It's one I started a couple of years ago, and really want to get it finished this week. When it's done, I'll repost the photo of it. And yesterday I did some more hand quilting on a table runner I put together from some swap blocks I received probably 8 years ago. There are more blocks from that same swap that I may try to place on point and make into a table topper. At any rate, when I finish the runner, I'll post a photo of it, too.

It's going to be the usual very busy 2 months, so don't expect too many quilty pictures. Only 52 days til the Halloween party!