New look.

I finally took some time today and sat down and figured out how to customize my blog, instead of whining about not knowing how. What a concept, eh? It took longer than I wanted it to, mainly because Blogger seems to have been designed by teenage boys who probably snicker in their cubicles, thinking of all the middle-aged women out there shrieking in frustration. Not that I'm bitter--I could have been wasting those two hours cleaning toilets or something.

The fall picture I found for my header above is one I took almost exactly a year ago, on the Wilderness battlefield in northern Virginia, one of the loveliest, quietest, most blood-soaked spots in the U.S. We were there last year to celebrate my 40th birthday. This past weekend, although I liked the nice round shape of 40, Mother Nature decreed that I must move on, to 41. I dislike odd numbers very much. They seem so jagged and don't fit neatly into slots.

Case in point: 2011, an odd number for an odd year. I'm not sure what has happened to me this year. There have been plenty of normal days, a few really pleasant days, but more dismal, bad and downright crappy days than I ever really wanted. Some of that has been from forces beyond my control...much of it has been self-inflicted. I feel like I've gotten crankier, meaner, more negative--more jagged, if you will. (I never did fit neatly into slots, so I'm not too concerned about that. )

So I woke up on Sunday, the day after my birthday, and decided 41 needs to be different if at all possible. I did great being positive on Sunday--I didn't leave the house all day and I watched old TV shows and did a bunch of research online. Easy peasy!

Monday I did great till late afternoon, when I got a big disappointment and then in the evening, had an anxious conversation with a friend. Suddenly I was feeling snappish and angry again. Todd said, "It's easy to be positive when there's nothing challenging you." So I stomped on his big toe. Kidding!

Today has been a mixed bag. I might have yelled at the neighbor across the ravine that they needed to keep their dogs quiet. In my defense, one of their dogs sounds exactly like a very loud, very hysterical squeaky toy. On the other hand, I said a few nice things to a few friends, and had a couple nice things said back to me. Plus, I got a bunch of laundry done. Tomorrow I'll go for an unmixed bag of positivity, I swear.

Here's a picture of me on my 41st birthday, enjoying a blissful cup of morning coffee at our neighborhood dive, which serves the best and cheapest breakfasts in town. I look pretty positive here, but then--I'm holding a cup of coffee, after all.

November.

November is such a great month--cool temperatures, leaves at their peak, Christmas things popping up in the stores, stews in the crockpot and cookies in the oven...love it. This November is proving to be more active than I'd planned. Yesterday my father-in-law John and my brother-in-law Tony (two of my favorite guys in the world) came down to spend the four-day weekend fishing with Todd. Last night was too windy for them to get out and catch anything, but they're out today and I have all my fingers crossed (except for my typing fingers) that they're having fun.

Next week Todd has a training class at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and he asked me to go along with him. So I am getting to spend all next week in Cocoa Beach, Florida. I'm excited! I've never been to Florida, and it will be fun to explore a new place. Todd will have all his evenings free, and we're hoping to go over to Orlando one night and go to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at Disneyworld. I hope so much that it works out! I feel like a little kid, I am so ridiculously excited at the thought of walking through Disneyworld at Christmastime.

We're also planning to make a quick trip up to Washington DC for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. And after that I'm going to be painting my dining room and living room in preparation for having new carpet installed. I'm beside myself with excitement about this, too. (Not the painting--the carpet! Still hate to paint, but it seems like a good time to get the walls touched up before the carpet goes in.)

And then it will be Christmastime before I know it. The last bit of the year always goes so much faster than I want it to!

Halloween.

Hope everybody had a fun Halloween! We sat on our front porch and handed out candy for a couple of hours to the usual assortment of princesses, ninjas, aliens, superheroes, and a whole class of wizards from Hogwarts School. And the most adorable, tiniest Yoda I have ever seen--I wanted to put her in my pocket and keep her forever! (She's our neighbor's daughter from across the street, and she's somewhere between 18 months and two years old; I can't exactly remember how long ago she was born. Unbelievably precious.)

I carved two jack o'lanterns on Saturday and was happy with how they came out. It's been so long since I've done anything like that, I forgot that you have to make a silhouette and you can't draw lines across anything that you're going to keep, so my first jack ended up toothless because I'd drawn lines across all his teeth!

I saved all the pumpkin seeds and fully intended to roast them, but after rinsing and rinsing and rinsing them, and finally finding one stuck to my right boob, I decided to chuck them and make Chex Mix instead. I hate food you have to work for, like pomegranates and lobster, and apparently, pumpkin seeds also fall into this group.

I have these enormous white mums growing right by the front porch steps, and last year a few kids commented on them. This year they're bigger than ever, and I also have some purple and yellow potted mums on the steps themselves. I was tickled by how many of the kids complimented me on my flowers--and how many of them were boys! One little boy was petting the flowers on one of the giant white mums like it was a dog. Kids are so funny.

Fall day.

While having a post-lunch cup of tea, I was looking out the patio doors and enjoying the beginnings of fall leaves in the backyard...thought I'd share them.

You can see we're getting there with the fall color, but not completely there yet. I was up in Williamsburg on Tuesday, which is only 20-30 minutes north of here, and the leaves there are much prettier. That bright blue sky is sure gorgeous, though.


And we are loving our wind chime!

It has an almost plaintive sound, very subtle, very beautiful. Today is breezy, so there's a constant series of tones playing softly from the deck. I can even hear it through the closed door. Closed because it's too cold to have it open! With what glee I type those words!

While I have the camera out, here are the Halloween ATCs from the swap I hosted in October. I put them up in the foyer, and they are just too cute to take down yet.


They look nice with my Halloween sampler. Which is also too cute to take down yet.


I guess I need to whip up something Thanksgiving-related to hang in that spot, since it's too early for anything Christmas-related. I am thinking about putting up the Christmas stuff in a couple weeks, though, so Halloween can hang around till then. We are traveling for Thanksgiving, and I would really like to come home afterwards and have all my Christmas decorating done already. It would feel so nice!

Doings.

Well, I certainly didn't intend to vanish from my blog for days and days. There hasn't been too much going on here as of late.

I overdid it with the organizing and sorting and hoisting of boxes, and had a small setback in my surgery healing process, so I have been taking it easy and reading a lot of books and finishing my unicorn needlepoint along with the boring necessities of laundry and cooking and whatnot. No big projects for the last little while.

I really didn't anticipate weeks and weeks of soreness and restricted activity after this surgery. I can do most things, it's just lifting heavy stuff and reaching up high that has proven too much. Also I think I started sleeping on my chest too soon, so I have had to get very strict with myself about sleeping on my back again.

Anyway, that has all proved as dull to live through as I'm sure it is to read about, so not much blog inspiration there.

Last weekend we headed out of town to see my brother's family and go to the Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale in Harrisonburg. All the money raised from the auctions and food sales goes to Mennonite Central Committee.

The big money maker at the sale is usually the handmade quilts. Todd and I have attended the relief sale several times in the past ten years or so, and have always wanted to buy a quilt, but the ones we really liked always went for more than we were prepared to pay.

I didn't realize it, but Todd was bound and determined to buy a quilt this time. So we did! It's a gorgeous Lone Star quilt in dark blues and greens. It was all very exciting.

Natalie and Marissa could not stop talking about riding with "Sonny and Cher," the horses who pull a wagon around the small county fairgrounds where the sale is held. You can see the anticipation on Marissa's face as the horses come up.

I don't know how many times they rode the wagon Friday night and Saturday, but it was a lot! Here they are riding with their friends Adam and Luke.

I wish I had a profile as cute as this. Love the way her nose turns up at the tip:

The sale serves dinner on Friday night, which we all partook of, and breakfast on Saturday morning, which Todd and Jeremy and I went early to enjoy. We had to stand in line a bit (the line runs far into the big barn:)

But it was fun. Here's me and Jeremy after omelets and sausage:

Yet another ride on Sonny and Cher...that's my sister-in-law Tracy, our little friend Luke, Marissa, Natalie, and me:

I got to catch up a little bit with my friend and cousin Trina:

My cousin Dan and his wife Lynley were there too, but I didn't get much time to talk with them, as I had to go off on another horsie ride.

Here's Marissa getting her face painted:

And Natalie and Tracy enjoying some homemade potato chips:


I'll post a picture of our new quilt once I get our bedroom all neat and tidy. I also bought homemade apple butter and stone-ground cornmeal. The donuts, alas, sold out before I could get to them. Just as well, I suppose.

The girls have a new kitten named Luna, who is the sweetest, most laid-back kitten I have ever met. Case in point:


She will sit and hang out on a four-year-old's lap.

She likes my brother, too.

In fact, she likes everyone, and the feeling is quite mutual. How I do love kittens!

Pumpkin scones.

We've had a nice Labor Day weekend. Todd's done some fishing and some working on our new mantel. I had a yard sale and did laundry and went on an excursion with my friend Beverly. And today was cool and rainy, which was kind of nice. It felt cozy, even though we still had the air conditioning on to keep the damp out.

A friend gave me a recipe for pumpkin scones last week, and today felt like a good day to make them. Talk about delicious!

Starbucks Pumpkin Scones

Scones:

* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 7 tablespoons sugar
* 1 tablespoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
* 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
* 6 tablespoons cold butter
* 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
* 3 tablespoons half-and-half
* 1 large egg

Powdered Sugar Glaze:

* 1 cup powdered sugar
* 1 tablespoon powdered sugar
* 2 tablespoons whole milk

Spiced Glaze:

* 1 cup powdered sugar
* 3 tablespoons powdered sugar
* 2 tablespoons whole milk
* 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1 pinch ginger
* 1 pinch ground cloves

1. To make the scones:

2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly oil a baking sheet or line with parchment paper.

3. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices in a large bowl. Using a pastry knife, fork, or food processor, cut butter into the dry ingredients until mixture is crumbly and no chunks of butter are obvious. Set aside.

4. In a separate bowl, whisk together pumpkin, half and half, and egg. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Form the dough into a ball. (Lizzie's notes: I refrigerated the ball of dough for thirty minutes before patting out and cutting)

5. Pat out dough onto a lightly floured surface and form it into a 1-inch thick rectangle (about 9 inches long and 3 inches wide). Use a large knife or a pizza cutter to slice the dough twice through the width, making three equal portions. Cut those three slices diagonally so that you have 6 triangular slices of dough. Place on prepared baking sheet.

6. Bake for 14–16 minutes. Scones should begin to turn light brown. Place on wire rack to cool.

7. To make the plain glaze:

8. Mix the powdered sugar and 2 tbsp milk together until smooth.

9. When scones are cool, use a brush to paint plain glaze over the top of each scone.

10. As the plain glaze firms up, make the spiced icing:

11. Combine the ingredient for the spiced icing together. Drizzle this thicker icing over each scone and allow the icing to dry before serving (at least 1 hour). A squirt bottle works great for this, or you can drizzle with a whisk.

I used my largest round biscuit cutter and got ten scones from the recipe, so the amount varies depending on how you cut them.

These would be good with some Pumpkin Ginger Tea from Republic of Tea. Or some milk. Or coffee, Starbucks or not. Or you could just not wait for any beverages at all.

Quite, quite good.

In a Hallo-weenie mood.

I have done ZERO crafting since Christmas, but like clockwork, our heat and humidity blew away on September 1, and like clockwork, my brain gears turned toward "making stuff!"

So I'm throwing a line out to see if anyone would like to do a vintage Halloween Artist Trading Card swap. Artist Trading Cards are little pieces of cardstock measuring 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches (or if you have a brain fart like I did last time I participated in one, 2x3 inches...oops) that you make art on. Then you sign the back with your name, the date, and your e-mail/blog address if you wish.

I would like to have at least five people in the swap...so if you're interested, let me know. What you'll do is make an identical card for each person (actually, I don't even think they need to be identical, but sometimes it's easier that way) and then mail them to me with a SASE enclosed. Then I'll divide them up and you'll get one of yours back, plus one from every person in the swap.

You can use absolutely any technique or combination of techniques you like on your ATCs: scrapbook supplies, stamps, markers, paints, colored pencils, inks, textures, vintage pictures, you name it. The only rule is that they have to look "old" in some way and they have to be Halloween-themed. The deadline for getting these in the mail to me would be October 15, that way I would have time to send them on and get them to everyone by Halloween.

Here are some ATCs from a swap I participated in a year or two ago, for those who aren't sure what they look like. You can see that anything goes, and that these are all completely, wonderfully different from each other:


And here are a couple I made just for fun a while back:

ATCs are quick creative fun because they're small and manageable. The canvas you have to fill up is so small that before you know it, you're done!

Drop me an e-mail (jscrappy(at)cox.net) if you're interested, with your full name and address. If I don't hear from at least four other people by this Wednesday, I'll scratch the idea and find something else to make!

A few fall pics.

We went up to Williamsburg on Saturday to do a little shopping. We ended up in the downtown area--Duke of Gloucester Street has shopping at one end, and then you can stroll down the street and into Colonial Williamsburg.

Shopping district:



Buildings in Colonial Wiliamsburg:

Insert clever title here.

Well, I was in a cranky mood yesterday, wasn't I? I'll try to be nice today and spare you the rant on horrible Christmas music I was composing earlier today in a store which shall not be named. (Let's just say that if that was indeed Aretha Franklin, then she needs to retire. Now.)

Speaking of Christmas, I actually used a new scrapbook line right away, and not two years after it comes out, after everyone else has seen it eleventy-billion times, which is my typical creative arc. This is Basic Grey Wassail, for those to whom that means something:


I got it all scanned and stitched (yes, I scanned! I stitched! And it worked!) and then realized I forgot to put on the journaling. So there's a little sticker with journaling attached over the three small squares. These "home decor" pictures are so pathetic, I thought I should really snazz up the page...the whole lipstick on a pig thing, which has far more uses than merely in American politics.

See, almost every year, we go out of town for Christmas, and last year we were seriously gone for three weeks, so this is the only decorating we did--a few bows on the windows and a swag and wreath by the door. No tree, no nuthin'. And I suspect this year will be just as bad. I know someday I'll look back from the old folks' home and long for the exciting holidays when we traveled all over creation and never got to have Christmas in our own home with family visiting us for once...but till then, let me hold my seasonal grudge!

We went out to get Halloween candy last night and I jokingly told Todd that we had to go, before all that was left was Bit O'Honeys. Does anybody really like Bit O'Honeys? Or those caramel things with the "creamy" white centers that were actually flaky and gross? We got Tootsie Roll pops--delicious, but not pig-out-able in case there are any left over that we have to dispose of. You can't really pig out on lollipops.

I am holding out on turning the heat on...shivering in bed at night, sticking my hands in my armpits and holding them under hot water, layering on the clothes. I have no compunction in turning on the air conditioning as soon as the temps go over 80, but when it comes to heat I decide to get frugal. I figure I have to be frugal to make up for the wild, abandoned a/c use from May to September.

The nice thing about the early cold weather is that the trees are turning earlier, too, and drives around town have become opportunities to enjoy lone beauties here and there among the strip malls. Makes the time at red lights pass faster! The tree in our side yard (it's not an oak, it's not a maple, and there my knowledge stops) is just starting to turn burgundy and I can see the leaves against the blue sky from my desk--so gorgeous.

You know, I spent the whole fall of 1985 collecting, identifying and pasting leaves into a huge collection for tenth grade biology, and what was the use? I suspect if I had kids, I'd have a very hard time enforcing the homework rules, knowing how little I remember of anything I learned from K-12. My brain is the kind that latches onto random, useless facts and completely ignores vast patches of the kind of knowledge school is made to impart, like quadratic equations and what rocks are made of.

It was a peaceful way to spend the evenings after school, though--I had a table set up in the room off our garage, and I'd go out every night and paste leaves to big sheets of cardstock with rubber cement. The pressed leaves all smelled like tea, kind of sweet and mossy. My mom finally got me to take the leaf collection back with me when I was home in July (after about 15 requests) and now it lives under our bed. I just can't throw away all that hard work, even though the rubber cement has probably completely disintegrated the leaves by now.

I guess I should pull it out and find out what the tree in the side yard is.

Wed. stuff.

I'm afraid I need to clarify something from my last post...I don't want the zombie bear for Angelo. I want it for ME. Yes, I am a shameful excuse for an aunt. He can have a zombie action figure or something--I want the bear!!! I want to pull out its intestines and stick them back in. Plus, it could keep me safe at night from the zombie squirrels and rabbits that assuredly prowl the back yard.

We went to an estate sale last weekend and I picked up a couple of things:


This pin box (love the prim little lady) which leaks tiny pins all over the place every time I pick it up...and...


A McCoy planter and a vintage Christmas tree cookie cutter, which is one of the few vintage (handled) cookie cutter shapes I didn't have, yay, and...


This light green wool blanket which I fully planned to felt and chop up to make little stockings and tree ornaments, but which now seems too nice to do that to--decisions, decisions...

The Raggedy Ann doll sitting on the blanket, I found at an early spring yard sale--she is exactly like my own much-loved Raggedy Ann that I got for my third birthday, except that she's not filthy dirty and she still has all her clothes. Poor old dirty naked Raggedy Ann is tucked safely away in a box with other childhood treasures.


I took this picture for an album of fall pleasures I am contemplating adapting from a Two Peas class, since spicy candles are a big fall pleasure of mine. These are from Wal-Mart and some of the Peas were raving about them, but so far I'm "eh" on them. At least they were cheap! I like the Glade candles a lot...they have a pumpkin one that's really great, and the apple cinnamon one is nice, too.

I've probably mentioned this before, but my chronic Ohio homesickness gets worse in the fall. Ohio is very blustery, apples-and-pumpkins, gorgeous leaves--it's the perfect place to be in the fall. We have a few pumpkins here and there, but no good apples, the leaves don't get really nice till Thanksgiving, and it's supposed to be 85 degrees tomorrow.

So I'm racking my brain trying to think of some pictures I could take to illustrate fall pleasures. Maybe I'll just concentrate on making Halloween cards instead--time is getting short! How I love Halloween!

Enrichment.

A couple more backyard pics...the red leaves of our little dogwood tree, and the view from our dining room. The picture doesn't half do it justice, but anyway.

I am a window-looker-outer. We had a second-floor apartment when we lived in Idaho that had huge almost-floor to ceiling windows in the living room and dining room. They looked out over the street and the whole neighborhood, and I could sit on the couch or at the table, and watch the cars and the dog walkers and the kids coming home from school and the clouds and the trees...it was fabulous.

I think this house may have the best window views of anywhere we've lived, though. Out the back, it's trees and more trees. Out the front, it's a view of the corner on one side, and a long sweeping view down the street on the other. All the houses lined up like those little squat milk cartons we used to get in grade school. I love walking past a window, looking out idly, and seeing something that pleases my eye.

We went to see Stranger Than Fiction tonight, and we both really enjoyed it. Some semi-deep thoughts about death and its inevitability, and about looking around you and making the most of the time that you have. Will Ferrell was quietly vulnerable and adorable.

One of the things Will's character does to try to enrich his life is go to the guitar store and pick up a vintage Fender Stratocaster and learn to play it. I was tickled by this, because this afternoon I went and bought an Alvarez acoustic guitar and am going to start lessons later this week. I guess I'm trying to enrich my life, too.

I got my December/January Paper Crafts today and my book journal is on page 73. It's super simple, but I really love it. Maybe the bold graphic look is where I should head next....

And finally, I read a quote last night that made me snicker: "My rock 'n' roll fantasy is that occasionally, every now and then, a song I like comes on the radio. It's a simple dream, I know, and every so often, once or twice a year, it actually comes true." (Sarah Vowell)

We have the lousiest radio stations down here, and they have the lousiest playlists! I spend my time in the car punching from station to station and then giving up in disgust and either shutting it off or going to NPR.

Tonight I actually heard, from opening note to closing note, "Our Lips Are Sealed," by the Go-Gos, so I'm not due for another good song for at least another month.

Thursday night musings.

We're in the glory days of fall down here, and I'm loving the gorgeous trees. Our backyard keeps getting prettier everyday...I need to take a bunch of pictures and figure out how to stitch them together to give the scope of it. Here's a glimpse, though.

Soon the leaves will all fall and the houses across the ravine will magically be revealed again. And soon we'll have been here for one whole year. Amazing.

I get so impatient to overhaul this house and get things exactly how I want them...it's easy for me to forget that we've already done a lot and that it will just take more time to get to the rest.

I was poking around on Ali Edwards' blog last night and she had a list of books she was reading. I checked out one of the books on the list and found a link for another book that sounded like just what I need. So I went to Borders and picked it up today.

The book is The Creative License by Danny Gregory. It appears to be a book where you draw your way toward a more general creative renewal. Tons of drawings and hand-lettered text. I brought it home and read on the back deck in the last few moments of daylight tonight, and I'm already inspired.

I used to draw. Not a lot, but I took a couple classes, and I had a knack for it. Then when I was doing paper-piecing patterns for a company, and teaching my own classes, I had to do simple drawing for that, too. But it's been years and years since I just sat down and drew something.

There's one book that taught me how to draw, and one book that taught me how to write. The drawing book is Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. Right brain/left brain is a more familiar concept now than it was 15 years ago when I first read the book, but her descriptions of the right-brain shift still inspire me. It's bliss, sheer bliss, when you're cruising along comfortably in right-brain mode. It's Nirvana. It feels like ages since I've been there!

The book that taught me how to write was the classic Writing Down the Bones, which is actually a book that can teach you how to live if you let it. I encountered both those books at about the same time, when I was newly-married, newly dropped from college, and trying to pull myself out of a depression. They helped.

Anyway, this new book is one of those books where you read a little, do an exercise, read a little more, do another exercise. I'm terrible about just reading the whole book and not bothering to get around to the exercises. (The Artist's Way is one of my guilty books...such good stuff but such a feeling of failure for not trying the system!) I am really going to try not to do that this time!

I've mentioned here a few times that scrapbooking and paper crafting has lost its pleasure for me, and that trying to forcibly re-capture it is not enjoyable. If it were only that one thing, I think I could just move on, but the fact is that I seem to have lost much of my creative impulse. I used to decorate for holidays, decorate my home, switch knick-knacks and pictures around, write for myself, make cards, make gifts...that impulse just feels dead inside me now. When I think about doing anything, I get very anxious and just go turn on the TV or come to the computer and lose myself in reading about other people's creativity. If I do finally accomplish something, it's after weeks and weeks of putting it off, studying it, doing a little bit, putting it off some more...I used to just plunge into stuff! I don't know what's wrong with me.

Some of it is laziness, for sure. Some of it is that I don't want to make any kind of mess that I'll have to clean up...I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of chaos a lot of days, and I fear that a mess will push me and the whole household over. Some of it is money--I am terrified to spend it and feel guilty when I do. That definitely saps the pleasure. Not that spending money is always essential, but a lot of ideas require at least some outlay.

And I think some of it is that wayward part of ourselves--a part that seems especially well-developed in me--that resists doing what we know would make us feel better. Why are humans so contrary?

Gregory puts a brutal quote in the beginning of his book:

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses."--Henry Miller.

Why do we do that? Why do I do that?

So I'm going to draw. I'll let you know how it goes.

Cold.

Halloween was great...we had about 75 trick-or-treaters, and the glow sticks were a big hit with everyone, from the tiniest toddler to the tallest teen! Todd had to miss most of it, working late...he's having a rough final week at work, so any prayers or good thoughts y'all could spare, he could use.

I felt it coming on last night, and sure enough, the fall cold is here. Not the cold outside, although that came on last night, too, but the cold in my throat and head! It's like clockwork, every spring and every fall, I get this sore throat that slowly moves up into my nose and sinuses, hangs out there for a while, goes back down into my throat and then finally leaves, usually about a week later. So this will be fun!

I did another double-page spread the other night, here it is. These are pics from May of last year, when my brother's family came for a visit. This was about six weeks before their second daughter joined the family.

Left page:

Right page:

And here's the one I did the other day...these are pictures of my niece Evelyn when her family was here in June. She is such a treasure.

I don't know if the journaling is legible on this...it reads, "Evelyn (title)" and then the blocks say,

...is almost four.
...is a terrific big sister.
...adores Barbie.
...loves to color and draw.
...asks lots of questions.
...wants to be a ballerina
and a doctor
and a princess
and a "car-fixer"
and a soccer player
when she grows up.

The quote about what she wants to be is verbatim...we were playing on the lawn one night and she told me all that, and I wrote it down as soon as I could. Love that kid!

Thirty-six.

Sunday was my thirty-sixth birthday. I had a low-key but fun weekend...Saturday we went to the Poquoson Seafood Festival, which is just a town fair with craft vendors and games for the kids and lots of fair food. We met up with a couple of friends and walked through the whole thing together. Then our friends left and Todd and I re-visited the craft booths just to make sure there was nothing we'd missed. There wasn't--most of the crafts were less than inspiring. Todd bought me a garden gnome, and that was all we bought, except for crabcake sandwiches, fries with vinegar, a funnel cake, and hot cider for the long walk back to the car.

It was a perfect day to be outside for hours and hours, just strolling around--cool but not cold. When it got dark, all the vendor tents in the trees were lit up and it all looked so cozy. Just a very relaxing good time.

Sunday it was still cool, but rainy, and we went to see Flags of Our Fathers (good but sappy ending) with another pair of friends. After we got out of that movie, Todd and I decided to live on the edge and drive to the other theater in town to see Marie Antoinette (not good, but great eye candy). Then we had dinner at Red Robin. It was a super weekend, and we had a great time being together.

I copied this list from another blog...here's who I am at 36:

I AM: A wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend, a history lover, a reader, a thinker, a crafter.
I WANT: To do a lot more traveling, and to be able to see my family more.
I MISS: Ohio and my family.
I FEAR: Todd dying and leaving me alone. Having health problems. Global warming.
I HEAR: The hum of the fan in our bedroom and the hum of my computer. And the tapping of my keyboard.
I WONDER: If we'll ever be able to travel through time.
I REGRET: Not finishing college. Friendships that have ended or never got started.
I DANCE: Badly. I'm Mennonite.
I SING: A lot. Singing is my never-fail mood-picker-upper.
I CRY: At the drop of a hat. Everything makes me teary-eyed--I hate that!
I WRITE: Well. And not as much as I feel like I should.
I CONFUSE: Left and right. Just in my head...I know which is left and which is right, but when I have to say "Turn left," for some reason it always comes out as "Turn right." And vice versa.
I NEED: Less needless anxiety. More positive thinking.
I SHOULD: Get back in touch with my creativity. Get a paying job.
I AM NOT ALWAYS: Open with people.
I MAKE WITH MY HANDS: Scrapbooks, cards, paper crafts.
I AM NOT: Extroverted, good at reasoning or debate, a follower, or patient with stupidity, hypocrisy, and cruelty.

Lovin' fall.

Late last night I was sitting at the computer with the window cracked, and I could hear owls hooting to each other up and down the ravine in our back yard. I've never heard them before! They went on for a few hours, and it was so pretty and unexpected and perfectly Octoberish, to hear owls hooting.

Since I was right at the computer, I checked and there are four owl species native to Virginia. Based on what their call sounded like, I'm thinking they were great horned owls, or bubo virginianus.

[How amazing is this wonderful Internet, that I can sit at my desk and find files of owl calls to compare with the ones outside my window?]

Just as I'm not a dog lover but I like Scotties, so I'm not especially a bird lover, but I'm fascinated by owls. They look so supercilious. Sort of British.

I found more Halloweeny fun stuff today: pumpkin carving templates at AllRecipes. I think we may carve us up a couple jack o'lanterns for fun this year. Not having kids, we often miss out on some of the more kidlike holiday fun, but it doesn't have to be that way, does it?