happy Halloween to you!

Do you have any special Halloween memories? I can remember that my mother gave the best parties ever..for adults and children. I still think about bobbing apples in my basement…do kids even do that anymore? Tonight is Trick or Treating evening but last year we only got one treater. I guess we’ll have to eat all the peanut butter cups.
   Today I had my girlfriends up for pumpkin bread and hot mulled cider. Just a get together for talking and laughing. What fun.
   Tomorrow Don goes for a chest cat scan to help diagnose his heart problems. It seems that his heart hasn’t been beating correctly causing some heart failure and fluid buildup. He is on a new medication and I hope that will help. For years he’s had such great checkups and excellent bloodwork. But in the last two years he’s has prostate surgery and an aortic abdominal aneurysm surgery. Now this with his heart. It’s starting to get him down.


Sean as a cowboy for halloween!


Sara’s first trip to the zoo.


Carving the pumpkin.

Sean’s First School Picture

My little grandson, who is only 2 1/2 years old had his first school portriat taken. He looks so much older in this picture. His hair looks barely red now.

Sean in the “bouncy house”.

What’s a girl to do?

Hubby’s gone fishing for the day. What’s a girl to do?  Buy more dishes…ah, ha…no! Play with dishes…yes. You know how you walk by something every day and it doesn’t bother you, but one day all of a sudden you think…hmmm…I should clean that out?

This is my china closet. We’ve had this oak dish keeper since we were first married. Over the years it has held our antique glasswqre. But now it is crammed with glasses and dishes of all sorts. In the spirit of making room for the new dishes I decided to take a look and see if some of the old could go.


It does look rather crowded and unorganized. I pulled out a card table and began to sort.


It doesn’t look too different now that I’ve rearranged, but I did find spots for all my dishes.


My black and white set, my black dishes, the Paris plates and my new oblong Chinese plates are on the top.


I found a spot for the fruit plates and cups and a place to put my new individual soup/casserole bowls.



Even my Christmas dishes found a home.



These are the things that didn’t make the cut…my wedding china (beautiful silver edged, but I never use them) and our collection of pink depression glass. They will go to storage (so sad!)


Of course, with the dishes out I had to change my tablescape.



I love the bird plates.


And what was dear Sadie doing all the time I was fussing with dishes?


Just sitting in her crate.

A Purr-fect Day

It’s a cat’s life…

Top Gun loves Sadie’s crate.


This was the tea table at our Literary Club meeting. The snack was made to look like a computer. How clever!

It’s Saturday night

It’s Saturday night again and how fast the week passed! Don and I are off for date night..dinner and a movie. Tonight it will be Hereafter the new Matt Damon movie. Hope it’s good. This was a lazy day. i watched a movie, The Impressionists (Claude Monet and his buddies). It made it more meaningful to me since I visited Giverney in France where Monet lived. I’ll never forget how beautiful the gardens were and walking on the Japanese bridge. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to do that!

I know you have the dish disease too!

You can’t resist dishes either, can you? I know your heart goes pitty-pat when you spy that plate sitting at TJ Maxx or Marshall’s. How do I know? Because you are mousing through all these tablescapes with Susan at Between Naps on the Porch. (You can go to her blog by using the link on the side).

   When I saw these plates from Walmart..I just knew I had to have them. How can I justify more plates? What can I tell my husband?  “Oh, honey…I just couldn’t resist?” or “This will be all, I promise?” “I don’t have any purple ones, right?” Maybe your comments will help convince him that I really needed these colorful dishes. There’s always room for one more, isn’t there?

“This is the last dish I’ll ever buy…I promise” (said with fingers crossed behind my back)

SOME OF MY FAVORITE PHOTOSHOPPED PICTURES

Could this be Sadie?

I’m having a little trouble with my dog. Yes, I know she’s a Jack Russell Terrier (I mean terrorizer). And I know they are energetic, intelligent, and love people. But I don’t remember reading that they are chewers and can’t be trusted. Our Sadie will get into trouble when we aren’t around. Is it just that she’s bored? I can imagine her wondering around the house when we leave looking to see if there is an unguarded wastepaper basket or some morsel left on the kitchen table. It is common for us to come home and find some evidence of her little “free for all”. Lately I find I must put her in her crate when we are gone for her own safety. Once she got her head stuck in a plastic bag and almost suffocated. Another time she got into a pill case which luckily didn’t have many pills in it. She needs to be protected from herself. …the little scamp!

Are you hunkering down?

The days are getting colder..39 degrees now and the rain is coming more often. We spent Sunday finishing our winterization…putting decorations, cushions and pots from outdoors down into the basement. We put the table and chairs in the shed and I cut back all the flowers. It’s time to get ready for winter. The courtyard looks bare now.


Today I am helping some friends get the church set up for our teacher’s retirement luncheon tomorrow. Tonight I’ll attend the BCPAC performance of Forever Plaid. It’s a doo-wop story and I love music from that era. I treated myself this year to a season ticket.

Literary Club day

Every Friday from October to March the Women’s Literary Club of Bradford meets at our public library. This year I am the president and today was the first regular  meeting of the year. It is a lovely group of women who have had lots of worldly experiences. Today a program on Southeast Asia was given by one of our members. The tea table was decorated with Oriental fans and china and special cookies were made in the shapes of fans and pagodas. It’s fun to sit with the ladies after the program and have tea and talk. The weather today reminds us that winter will soon be here. It is rainy and cold out today. Don helped a friend of his with some car work this afternoon. Tonight would be a good night to have a fire in our fireplace and cuddle up.

New pictures of the grandchildren

It was really cold one day last week, so Sean wanted to wear his hat and mittens to school. He said that his hands looked like Mickey Mouse!


Sara is growing bigger, nine pounds now!


Sean loves the water!

It’s another beautiful day!

What a gorgeous day again today. I guess we fooled the weatherman who said it was going to rain. It’s 55 and sunny. Sadie and I enjoyed a morning walk with Joan and after coffee I went to Walmart. Our bedroom tv decided to quit on us last night so it needed replaced. I also bought a small crockpot which will be more practical for the two of us instead of using my large one. I love to make something in the morning and have it ready when it’s time to eat. Right now it’s holding some leftover beef and gravy. I’m catching up on laundry and doing those chores that need to be done in a house. (Boy, this is a boring post! Sorry my life isn’t any more exciting.  Yesterday I sorted through my jewelry and put it in the new jewelry armoire that I got from pier One. That really freed up a dresser drawer.

wHAT A GREAT WEEKEND!

What a great time we had this weekend in Boiling Springs. The purpose of the trip was practical. Chris (our resident mechanic and son) needed to take a look at our ailing car. The good news is he eliminated what the garage was going to charge us a $1000 to look at, and will order us the right part (to be put on at a later date). But he did some other things to the car, like change the transmission fluid and put on a new filter, fix a rattle that has been plaguing me for years, and put on new back shocks. We had a comfortable ride home. It was fun seeing Scott and Chris. On Saturday I walked around the little lake at Boiling Springs. Sadie loved it.

Serendipity

It is another rainy, cold, dreary day in Bradford. I went to coffee and then to Walmart to get the oil changed in my car. So I’m standing at the Verizon store with my broken phone laying on the desk contemplating which new phone I want to get when all of a sudden it rings. Surprise! It’s my cousin Beverly from Eastern New York State and her husband. They are calling from the Lighthouse Restaurant which is just a stone’s throw from the Verizon Store. I hurry over and meet them and invite them to my house for lunch! What a great time we had talking, and looking through old pictures. Bev and I had lots of fun times as children when she lived in Eldred and I used to go over there and ride horses. She is moving to Florida and wanted to come this way to visit our aunt and uncle. It was great seeing her and her husband again. What a great serendipity!

IT’s a fall morning, all right

It’s this type of day that I am thankful for having a garage for my car. Our hot, hot summer has ended and we are officially into the colder fall…only 42 degrees today with constant rain. I met my friends for coffee and then went to water aerobics class. I love the exercise but this morning the water was cold. I was glad for the hot shower afterwards. On these days I’m a little tired from the hour of pushing around in the water with boards, barbells, and noodles so I’m not planning on getting much accomplished just a little laundry and general housecleaning.

When my sisters visited last week Diane brought her dog Zoe. Sadie latched on to Zoe’s stuffed fox and carried it everywhere she went. She was constantly pushing it into Zoe’s face saying ,"Please play with me”.

 

Have you ever visited this store?

This is a chain of stores that I first shopped at in New Jersey and Cape Cod. I discovered that there is one north of Buffalo and there soon will be one in Erie. Yeah! It isn’t strictly Christmas items but has home goods as well.


When we were coming into Jamestown we just had to stop and take a picture of the Rainbow house.


For some reason I couldn’t get a clear picture of this bird necklace Linda helped me make. I got the charms and chain and Linda put it together for me. It’s so cute!


Aren’t these flower lights amazing. I got them at Lockwood’s Greenhouse in Hamburg, NY. Thanks Charlotte for the birthday gift certificate. The little photo is me when I was five. Mom made me a witch’s costume out of crepe paper.