Pumpkin Carving Fun

For some reason, I couldn't post these with my last post. Oh well! Here they are...

Scott carving his first pumpkin!

Me, doing the finishing touches

Fin...c'est magnifique!

All lit up!

Bunko, etc.

Last night I had Bunko at our house. I had fun planning it and getting my house ready. I didn't really enjoy cleaning it, but I enjoyed it once it was clean. I even took pictures of it today while it is still clean and no one has messed it up yet! I wanted pictures to remind me of what my house looks like when it is all pretty and clean :)

Since it's October, I did a very "fall" themed Bunko party. All the prizes were "fall-ish" and I got out all my Fall/Halloween decor. I also found some pretty paper plates and napkins. It turned out nice. I made baked potatoes and had pumpkin pie for dinner. When I went shopping for my potaotes, condiments, pie, etc. on Tuesday night, I decided it would be fun to get a great big pumpkin and carve it into a jack-o-lantern to sit on the front porch. So, when I got home at 11:30 from the store on Tuesday night, Scott and I carved "him" up. Scott had never carved a pumpkin before (or at least he doesn't remember doing it), so it was a fun experience. I hadn't carved one it a very long time either. I had forgotten how potent and slimy pumpkin guts are. We also separated out the seeds from the pulp and roasted the seeds. I had never done that so I had to look up the instructions on the Internet. It was really easy (I knew it would be) and they taste really good!

Today I subbed at the high school. I am so tired! I am just glad all that big stuff is over and I don't have to worry about my house being really clean anymore :) However, my in-laws are stopping through in a couple of weeks, so if we can keep it clean for a little longer...

As for other news, not much else is happening. So far, working at the shop again has been going well. I have had to refresh on several procedures, but it has come back to me fairly easily. The main concern right now is getting Christmas stuff out and looking beautiful. That is a long process which we will probably be working on until the day before our Christmas Open House on November 19th! Decorating for Christmas in the store gets me in the mood to drag all my Christmas stuff out and decorate my house. I want to turn on the Christmas tunes, drink hot chocolate, and watch Home Alone and It's a Wonderful Life in front of the fire. But, alas, today it is in the high seventies at least and it's not even Halloween! Christmas will be upon us though...soon enough :)

Week's End

Well, it's the end of the week. I am tired, but I survived going back to work! My legs are pretty sore from being on my feet a lot of the day...I guess I should try wearing support hose or something. Man, that makes me sound old :) I crashed when I got home today on the couch for a couple of hours. I fell asleep watching TV and woke up to it being almost dark outside and Scott was gone to a volleyball game. I didn't even hear him leave. I guess it will take me a while to get used to having 2 jobs :)

Anyway, today I subbed at BSHS for the lady who replaced me. So, today was like old times. I got to catch up with the teacher I used to work with, which was nice, and I got two lessons of my Bible study completed and several chapters read in my novel. Quite productive...ha! It was nice though...some "alone" time and I got paid for it.

Today is also my good friend Harmony's birthday. I won't say how old she is, she might not appreciate that. So HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you, Harmony!!!

This weekend I will be doing A LOT of cleaning for my Bunko party on Tuesday night. Other than that, I don't have much of an agenda. Next week will be a pretty busy week. Other than my Bunko party, I will be subbing on Wednesday and Friday and working at Dakota's in the afternoons every other day of the week. I will also probably have to work on the Ladies Newsletter for November quite a bit. Ahh! Why does everything seem to pile up at once? That's just the way it goes, I guess. I hope you all have an wonderful, blessed weekend...Until next time...

Back in the Saddle

The working world has beckoned me back, folks. That's right, I am going back to work part-time starting Wednesday. I am going back to the flower shop where I worked for two years (2002-2004). My former boss (and current, I guess) and I remained friends since I left and she called me and asked if I would be interested in coming back to work some. She is hiring and wanted to see if I would be interested so she could hire around my schedule if I wanted to come back. I really loved working at the shop and only left in 2004 to get benefits. Scott and I really thought about this a lot and decided the extra money would be nice.

So, I am going to work Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons and Wednesdays from 10:00 til 2:30 while Will is at Children's Day Out. I think I will enjoy it. I like having something to do (not that I don't have enough to do at home!). Christmas is right around the corner and it's time to start decking the shop out in lights, trees, and garland, and that is always fun :) Please pray for my new venture and that it works out for our family.

More from the Fabulous Fifties

Here are some more pictures of our party from Harmony's camera...

The Soda Shop

The Stage

The Doo-Wop Babies

Singing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" while wearing our cowboy hats.

"Elvis"

Me, Abby, and Harmony

Fabulous Fifties

Today was the big Fabulous Fifties party for the ladies at church. It was so nifty and we had a rockin' good time! Here are a few pictures that I got before the batteries in my camera gave out. Hopefully I will get more from friends sometime soon.

The finished product...my "poodle" skirt!

My full outfit

This is an real outfit from the Fifties...look at those shoes! Vickie was one of the few who opted for the "fancy" look of the Fifties. When she entered, you would have thought she was Marilyn Monroe...everyone wanted her picture!

An authentic autographed picture of Elvis Presley

Shirley, Trissa, Me, and Harmony in our poodle skirts. There were about 15 total people that wore poodle skirts.

Weirdest Thing I've Heard All Week

Yesterday I was catching up on some ironing while Will was at Children's Day Out. I set up my ironing board in the den and turned on the TV for background noise. The Rachel Ray Show was on and she was introducing a guest/story about a woman who was about to turn 50. Well, that in itself isn't too fascinating; women turn 50 every day. But this woman was different. She had never been married, nor even engaged in her life. She was very satisfied with who she was as a person, though, and had decided earlier in life that if she wasn't married by the time she turned 50, she was going to marry herself. Excuse me? What?? Yes, you heard me correctly. The woman is going to marry herself in a "personal commitment ceremony." She is having a full blown wedding complete with the white dress, bridesmaids, reception, et al, except one very obvious factor: a groom.

Okay, I understand that this woman is proud of herself and secure in her own femininity and choices for herself, but is this not creepy weird to anyone else? Why not just have a huge 50th birthday party and go all out in that? No, she wants to commit to herself that she is going to take care of herself in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, in good times and bad, etc.

This is very strange to me. What do y'all think??

What's Going On...

I finally have some time to sit and write an update of what's happened in the past week. As I said last week, I got lots of things accomplished before my mom got here on Friday. Her plane came in at 10:30 on Friday morning and we picked her up from the airport. While in Midland, we went to Home Depot to get some new hardware for our kitchen cabinets and drawers. Since our house is so old, our cabinets are very outdated...I'm thinking at least 70's, so we decided that it is time to update it a little. When we got home, Scott went to pick up a piano from one of our member's homes. They called him a couple of weeks ago and asked if he would like to take it off their hands and of course he said yes. So he and a former youth group member went to pick it up. The piano has taken up residence in our "formal" living room. Yea! That room has always been a big temptation to Will, who loves to go in there and bang around on the glass chess set on the glass coffee table. Now, he has even more reason to want to venture in there...a whole big instrument that makes cool noises when you touch it! Thus said, we keep that room closed off almost all the time.

The rest of the time Mom was in town was mostly spent watching the second season of Lost. My dad got hooked on it last year and got the first season on DVD for Christmas. He got us hooked on it, too. A couple of weeks ago when the second season came out on DVD, they bought it, so I asked her to bring it with her if she could. We ended up watching the entire season in three days! That makes it sound like all we did was watch TV, but we really didn't. I promise. But, it was so good. That show is so crazy. I just can't believe all the questions they keep posing and the lack of answers. My big question is, how are they going to tie all this stuff together/how will it all resolve?? Well, Scott and I are completely caught up now because we watched the first show of this season on the Internet. So, yea, we know everything that the rest of the world knows about what's happened thus far.

On Monday, we ate lunch/dinner at On the Border for Mom's birthday. We shared a chocolate ice cream pie that was very yummy. After we dropped Mom off, we got Will's Halloween costume from Target. He will be going as a puppy this year and he looks so very cute. I also got some face paint because I am going to attempt to paint his face (we'll see how that goes over!). I will definitely post pictures of him on Halloween when he is all done up.

Yesterday I got my hair dyed. Again. But this was a redo, since the last time didn't work. So now my hair really is brown again. Whew. I'm so glad to get past all the dyeing...now when my hair grows out, no one will be the wiser :) Last night, I went to Harmony's and we worked on the appliques for our poodle skirts. After we got them all cut out, we started pinning them on and thinking about how to sew them. I decided to cop out and try fabric glue. I am still waiting for everything to dry to see if it actually worked. I hope it did. That's a lot of hand-sewing if it didn't work! We still have to attach sequins some how, so we'll see...but it seems to be going well so far. The big "Fabulous Fifties" party is this weekend; I will be sure to take pictures of everyone all dressed up. Fun!

That brings us to today...have a great rest of the week!

Busy Mama

I have accomplished so much today. I won't bore you with all the details, because that's what I normally do. So, just know that I have been one busy mama on my "day off" (Wednesdays are the days that Will goes to Children's Day Out). My own mama is coming to visit us in just a little over 24 hours, so I am trying to get my house half-way decent.

Okay, I will tell you of my biggest accomplishment today...I cleaned my closet. I didn't just pick through clothes to throw in the donation pile; I mean I actually cleaned it. Vacuumed, etc. You can actually see the carpet now! It's truly amazing.

My other "fun" adventure of the day was to take both of our dogs to the vet. Yes, at the same time. It was interesting to say the least and we did survive :) Cracker is slightly overweight, but we knew that. So, he is going on a diet. I'm sure he's so thrilled. We are also going to have Frank neutered soon, I think. I am sure he is even more thrilled than Cracker at that prospect!

Yea for productive days. I hope yours was great and that you have a wonderful rest of the week. Now, I'm off to relax and watch Star Trek. Live long and prosper, my friends.

Sew Fun

Here are pictures of Harmony and I sewing our poodle skirts...and their cat attacking me as I am trying to cut the fabric :)

Wow, What A Weekend

It's been full and busy, that's for sure...

On Friday morning, I finally interviewed that sweet little old lady from our church and her daughter for our Ladies' Newsletter. I came home and took over Will duty from Scott for a while and as soon as he went down for his nap, I got started writing the article. I finished it and sent it to my "co-editor" by 12:30. At four, we went to the BSHS homecoming parade (to see pictures click here). As soon as it was over, we went and ate dinner at one of our favorite barbecue places--which is now smoke-free thanks to the new city ordinance (yea!). We went home for a quick rest before the big game. Since Will hadn't been sleeping well at night (or for his naps) we only stayed through half-time. Even though they eventually lost, it was fun.

On Saturday morning we slept as much as possible. I got up with Will from 9:00 to 10:30 and then went back to bed after putting him down for his "nap." He decided to start making noise about 15 minutes into it, so Scott got up and played with him until 12:00 when he woke me up to eat breakfast/lunch :) We spent most of the afternoon trying to get Will to take a nap, which he fervently refused to do. During one of his screaming bouts, I finally saw the two little culprits...two little teeth (pre-molars) were peeking through his poor little gums. We had suspected this, but it was nice to have confirmation and a reason to all the sleepless nights and screaming fits he's been having the past few days.

At 4:15, he finally went down for a nap. We were supposed to go to the Malletts' at 6:30 for supper, but we didn't dare wake him up. Thus, we didn't arrive until a little after 7:00. When we got there, we still had to finish cooking supper and eat it. The main reason for going over was so that Harmony and I could work on our poodle skirts for our the Ladies' Fabulous Fifties party in a couple of weeks. Everyone is supposed to "dress-up," but we figured we'd have a little fun since we are singing in the Doo-Wop group. After a little sewing-machine/brain malfunction, we began the process of actually putting the skirts together. By 10:30, we had the skirts rudimentarily sewn together. Leland got some comical pictures of their cat trying to help me cut the pattern...hopefully they'll send them to me so I can share.

Today, we went to the St. Lawrence Fall Festival after church. St. Lawrence is a little "German" community about 30 minutes south of Big Spring. Every year they have a sausage festival at the Catholic church (really the only thing out there). It was a pretty fun excursion. The sausage and brisket were delicious. There was so much food on my plate that it didn't even really look like I'd eaten anything when I finished. They also had a little petting zoo, so we just stood on the outside and let Will see the pigs, sheep, goats, and llama. Yes, they had a llama.

Before evening service, I had singing practice for our 50's party; then, after church, our preacher and his wife had a bunch of people over for supper and fellowship. It has been a very good weekend, but a long one. I'm looking forward to sleeping (I hope!) tonight and resting tomorrow :)