Skywatch Friday

This is kind of an experimental Skywatch Friday entry. It's seagulls flying around near the Lakewalk area in Duluth Minnesota, but you can imagine they are bats in honor of Halloween. This isn't my best sky picture, but I wanted to give it a try. I'm getting together with the girls to do some serious sewing tomorrow morning. I'm hoping to get all 12 blocks from last year's block of the month set together or at least framed. After that, it's off to work. All of the kids at the school I work get to go to the nearby Rec center every Halloween to spend the afternoon swimming, skating, or playing ball. It's usually a fun day to supervise. I would rather have a good old-fashioned Halloween party, but that's not PC anymore unfortunately. DH and I are invited to a party tomorrow evening, so that should be fun since I haven't been to a Halloween party in years.

Comment Fishing

I like comments on my blog as well as the next person, I'll admit that. After blogging around a little more than usual this morning, I really don't like what I see. I can't decide if some of the outrageous material I'm seeing is "for real" or "for comments". Many of the ones that I think are "for real" really scare me. I see the terms "Christian" and "praying" thrown around with reckless abandon by people who are not acting like Christians in my opinion. I see racism thinly veiled as political belief. I see greed portrayed in many ways. Here's an interesting exercise that I suppose many bloggers have tried before me. Read the comments on a blog about any particularly divisive issue-lately it's been the election of course. Follow some of the particularly vitriolic comments back to their home blog. There you'll find that hate filled person blogging about babies and flowers and friends and puppies and kittens, etc. , etc. and they're often also mentioning God and how much they love Jesus and are praying for a particular issue. Give me a break! Here at Sew Many Days I'm sticking with the "fluff", family, friends, sewing, pictures of pretty things, etc. I'm not the kind of person who wants to "stir things up" for the sake of getting comments. I'll continue to be extremely careful about my comments to others, usually re-typing many times to get my meaning across without causing offense or portraying myself as something I'm not. If that means I'm stupid, apathetic, un-American, or un-anything, than so be it. That's my election platform! Of course I may change my mind once elected. Ha

Fire and Wine

Last night after a long, tiring, and super busy weekend and a busy first couple of days of the week, I enjoyed a few of my simplest pleasures. In thinking about it this morning, I realize that I'm very lucky to be able to enjoy any of these things, much less all in the same evening. Yesterday was our coldest day so far this fall, starting out in the low 20's. It was also very windy, but the temp improved as the day went on. I pulled some leftover soup out of the freezer for supper. We also had several kinds of leftover salad from the weekend. Later on, we had a fire in the fireplace for the first time in a few months. Then we had a little wine, a little Halloween candy, and watched "Chuck" on Tivo (no political commercials). If that wasn't enough, we got into the hot-tub later and soaked all of the soreness out of our muscles before going to bed. Oh yeah, and I had just washed the sheets and put on my electric mattress pad for the winter. It was so great for DH and I to have a night completely off with no meetings, no company, no practices, and no place to drive anyone to. I think I'll make it a Tuesday night tradition.

Politics and Families

Can I just say how much I hate our political system? All of these advertisements are about ready to make me scream. If I didn't have Tivo, I wouldn't be able to watch TV at all. What does it say about a person that they will subject themselves and their families to all of this? I think it is so tacky that most of them are using their families in TV spots, trotting them around to talk shows, or just neglecting them for that matter. My kids don't want to be identified or even mentioned on my blog. Of course I mention them, but I don't use their real names and I've tried to maintain some level of privacy. I know it wouldn't pass much scrutiny, but I don't think my three or four readers are really scrutinizing anyway. I would have liked to know the types of conversations that the candidates are having with their teenagers/spouses to convince them to go through with all of this. Here's my take:
"Yes, everyone, I'm talking millions of people will know that you are pregnant. They will probably start saying all kinds of bad things about you, but you'll just have to deal with it. Oh yeah, can you babysit for about the rest of your life? I'm going to be busy, at least looking busy, and I don't want to be bothered with all this kid stuff."
"Remember that ad you made for me the last time I ran for office? I want to run it again and have you say how great I've been in office, etc. I know you were 13 then. You looked fine, most teenagers would love to show old pictures of themselves on tv."
"Remember how I didn't divorce you for being an alcoholic? I want to make an ad where you say what a great husband I am and how I didn't leave you and stayed by your side. It will make people think I'm going to be great in office."
Wake me up when its over!!

The best picture

My best picture got totally cut off in my last post, here it is again. Aren't the colors wonderful?

Our Trek to Duluth

We had a wonderful trip to Minneapolis and then to Duluth over the last weekend. I'm pretty proud of some of the pictures I got. The weather was great the whole time and the fall colors were spectacular. I forgot to carry my camera with me in Minneapolis, but here are some from Duluth.
We visited Glensheen Mansion pictured above. It was built in the early 1900's by the Congdon family. It was lavish at the time and worth millions today. Unfortunately, the youngest daughter and one of her nurse's were killed there in 1977 and that has become one of the reasons for it's notoriety today. It is now owned by the University of Minnesota Duluth where we were visiting with SD. She won't be going to UMD, but I''m glad we got the chance to check it out. The mansion had a beautiful little garden with many varieties of Dahlias. I was surprised to see them blooming so beautifully so late in the year. They must have been about 8" across.

Here are a few pictures I took while on the lakewalk in the downtown area. They still have a lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor. The sailboat had just sailed from the harbor under the aerial lift bridge and out into Lake Superior. It was very windy that day, so I'm sure they were moving fast once out in the lake. The city has developed the lakewalk in the last 15 years or so and it provides many beautiful vistas of the lake. I had a little trouble arranging my pictures the way I wanted. The statue below is of Leif Erickson, true "discoverer" of America. The sandy walk was at the end of a skinny island on the south side of the lake. We traveled the length of the island after driving over the lift bridge. All in all it was a great get-away and we spent a lot of time just relaxing at the hotel too. It was so great to not have to worry about work, cooking, the dog, or being anywhere on schedule.

Coffee-A good investment

I met some friends for coffee this morning. I'd love to do that more often, but holy cow, $3.79 plus tax for a medium vanilla latte?? Sometimes I economize and just have a "coffee of the day", but it's just not the same. I can have coffee of the day at home for pretty much free, so what's the point? Anyway, I think someone has got to be making a lot of money on my special treat latte. I doubt it's a poor coffee farmer though and apparently it's not the owners of the coffee shop as the place is for sale. I noticed it wasn't as full today, maybe the coffee regulars are taking a break due to the economy.

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I don't know if I'll get around to posting tomorrow. We have a couple of days off from school this week, so we are heading out Thursday to do some college visits with SD. Our main destination is Duluth. I love the area and I hope the weather will be good enough to do some walking around. The have a beautiful lake walk and lots of fun shops and restaurants. It's quite a bit further from home, but I won't be surprised if that's where she ends up going.

Leaf Therapy

The fall colors are at their peak right now here in southeast Minnesota. This one red leaf outside my back door caught my eye. I wonder if the rest of the vine will turn red too or just this one brave little leaf. Yesterday I bagged 5 huge bags of leaves, but with today's strong winds you can't tell. I find it rather therapeutic to rake leaves. You can always tell what you've accomplished, having a clear lawn and bags of leaves to show for it, but it takes no real mental effort, so the mind can wander to other things. I was teasing SD, that I came up with a theme for her grad party. I'm really getting ahead of myself with that one since I should be thinking about TB's confirmation in a couple of weeks. Besides that no one really has a theme for their grad party. I was thinking more of her invitations and something to do with rock-climbing. Last night at dinner we were throwing around some ideas...Scaling New Heights...Climbing Towards the Future...etc. etc. Any other ideas? After dinner we went to a choral concert and really enjoyed it. Our favorite piece was "Agnus Dei" arranged by Barber if you're familiar with it. It was really beautiful, especially with the strings accompanying it.

A Super Easy Fall Project

I have finally gotten most of my fall decorations out, but I still needed some kind of a table runner for under my fall leaf candle holder. I got this leaf at a Partylite candle party a few years ago. I had intended to make a lovely quilted table runner for my dining room table, but it hasn't happened yet. Last night while I was in a cleaning flurry, I decided to look for the fall leaf fabric and came up with this little project that took about 15 minutes. I think it looks nice and it would be a good use for any large pattern fabric and could be made by anyone with a sewing machine and an iron, so I thought I'd post directions. First cut two pieces of fabric the same size in a square or rectangle. Then iron on some Wonder-under type fusible webbing to one of the fabrics on the wrong side. Peel the paper off of the backing after you've ironed it on. Pin the two squares together right sides together. Sew a 1/4 to 3/8 in. seam around all 4 corners leaving an open space a little larger than your hand on one of the sides. Turn the whole thing right side out and push out the corners and seams so they are flat. Lay it out on your ironing board and pat it out flat checking to see that the side seams are even and the opposite side fabric doesn't show. Start ironing on the side opposite the opening and use a hot iron to get the fusible webbing to stick. When you get about 2/3 done, fold the ends in on the opening making sure that side looks "square", pin if necessary and finish ironing. I used a little iron on hem tape to close the opening after I had ironed everything else. That's it, you now have a little table topper that you've created yourself. I put Christmas fabric on the other side so I can flip it over when the time comes. I may still get that runner made, but this will do until then.

Weekly update

Here's what I've been doing lately...

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I started a new block of the month group on Friday. It's at the same shop I did BOM at last year. It's a really good deal, you pay $5 for the first block and each month you return with a finished block, the next one is free. I was the only one from my group that got the whole top for $5. Of course I spent money on other stuff at the shop, so it's not like they lost money on me. The new series has applique, I told myself I can't do it (it costs extra) unless I get last years top all put together by next month. We added another friend this year and we all do breakfast afterwards, it's really fun and I look forward to it each month!!

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We had the last home football game and the after party at our house on Friday. It was pretty chilly here Friday night. We lost the game, but the band has really improved since their first game. The band will be doing an indoor concert later this month. They travel to Disney World over Thanksgiving and will be in one of the parades there. I wish we could have gone too, but there wasn't enough extra cash around.

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We got Senior Daughter's senior pictures taken last week. We got the proofs back and they turned out really good. Another thing to cross off the list. She has already applied to three colleges and we're doing some more college visiting in a couple of weeks, so we may have a college decision soon too.

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DH and I are both a little over-committed when it comes to church activities. I'm in two choirs, women's group, helping with confirmation class, funeral coordinator, etc. We have a funeral this week, so that adds a little extra work. DH is helping with a lot of carpentry work for a renovation project and has spent several evenings at church. It may be nearing completion this week, we're ready for a break.

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Meanwhile, I have not done any sewing since I got SD's dress done. I should be down there right now, but it's not going to happen tonight. I'm going to be putting in a few extra hours at work this week, so I will be happy for a little larger check next month, but it pushes everything else aside. Things have slowed down a lot for DH. He's a realtor and the uncertainty of the financial system is keeping people from the housing market. Hopefully it will settle down soon.