Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Hope you were all able to get together with family and friends and enjoy the day!

We went to have Thanksgiving at my sister's house - and had a lovely time! Only one downside, oldest son wasn't able to come home and join us. This is the first holiday we haven't all been together. He was well taken care of though - he was invited to friends, had a great time, and had three or four other invitations also. He was even sent a package of his favorite Pumpkin Cookies from his friend's mom back home here in St. Joe.

Lovely dishes aren't they? My hubby made those! On his pottery wheel! Very talented guy if I do say so myself!

And here is my dear sister, the host. (mmmm just look at those sweet potatoes!)

Oh, and can't forget an actual craft I did. See the banner I made? I couldn't pick which one was better (neither one is too in focus), did that after seeing all the lovely banners done on other blogs. Come to think of it, mine are pretty plain looking! Oh well, it is a beginning!

Thinking about Christmas?

I don't know if this is going to work or not, but I was out with my Birthday Lady Friends tonight - and heard about this video. It is GREAT! Altho I should add I haven't been able to LISTEN to the video, some kind of glitch with my laptop, where is my son when I need him???? But I sure liked the video part! I always struggle with the giving and getting part of Christmas, and trying to teach my kids to really grasp what Christmas is all about - altho they really do understand very well already! And you don't hear much either these days about only giving something hand-made, but oh well, can't change the world I guess, but I can at least pass this on: So hope it works, check it out and let me know what you think, would you please?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVqqj1v-ZBU

All the best,

Diane

Fall Fun

The picture below, with the leaves is a good one to click on to get the full effect!

Aha - we did this last month, but I am so behind in blogging, I just have to start somewhere I guess! The more behind you get in blogging the more daunting the job seems, so you (I) just keep putting it off and pretty soon the snowball is HUGE! Maybe I will try and blog a little bit at a time.

Anyway - last month, on a beautiful 70-ish fall Saturday hubby and I did something we have wanted to do for years and years! Instead of finishing up the raking, and other yard work, we went camping! To make things as easy as possible, and since it was 6 PM when we finally decided to do this (maybe it was 5) we rented the little "cabin" at the local state park, Warren Dunes, along Lake Michigan. The trees were right in their height of colors, and we knew the campground wouldn't be crowded (always a nice thing!) and the temperature was unbelievable! So we grabbed some hotdogs, some marshmallows, graham crackers some wine and our sleeping bags and off we went. It was lots of fun - it was nice to be able to be somewhere where you CAN'T do any jobs around the house! We don't do this too often, and besides it is such fun to do things spontaneously! A friend came to sit around the campfire with us for awhile, and then we stayed up till very, very late enjoying the campfire with just the two of us! There is something magical about campfires, and they become quite mesmerizing. Of course I took lots of pictures, and will try to hold it to a minimum here, and somehow the vivid colors that you see before you don't always show up on the photo. I will have to check and see if when you click on them to enlarge them it helps or not. And I think I have a million pictures of campfires by now, but of course I took quite a few this time too. (surprise, surprise!)
Can't you just hear the fire crackling in the picture above?

Oh dear - everything froze on the computer when I tried to put the pictures in, and I am afraid it lost the last half of my post!!! Doggone it - and it was said perfectly too! I wonder if there is anyway to get that back????!!!!! Anyone know? And I will have to add the pictures tomorrow night - see you then!

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Trying again---- so last night when I tried to add pictures to my late night post my computer froze, and I tried doing several things to get it unfrozen,, but finally had to resort for a "force quit" and I was hoping it would still be in the automatically saved draft form, but only a small portion did....oh well..... I think I was talking about campfires..... I was also telling about how there was a family near us, with several boys, and they kept coming closer and closer to us and our campfire - I think they were wanting to chat! But hearing them also reminded me of when we would go camping with the kids when they were little. It was always lots of fun. And then there were the campfires we have at home too......lots of good memories......we didn't have a family room, so we would encourage our kids to have their friends over for a campfire where there was plenty of room. We would supply the marshmallows 7 graham crackers, brownie sundaes, root beer floats or popcorn. This way we could keep going out there to check on everyone - pretty sneaky, huh? But we all loved it and a couple of weeks ago when Emily was home from college, she had a couple of long time friends that were also home from college for the weekend, come over to have a campfire - it was like old times! And I love it when they would let
me join them!!!

So we are supposed to be getting a lot of snow tonight, but so far it is only a dusting. But before winter sets in, I wanted to reminisce about this great fall weekend. Thank you God for wonderfully unique seasons, and the beauty each one has!