The house is decorated for Christmas!  All the snowmen and Christmas trees are up.

My tree is decorated with the ornaments Mom made for the kids.

 

I made raviolis again - all by myself this time - AJ was too busy to help.  I think these will be a staple in my menu planning - as long as I make them on the weekend.  They take a bit of time, but they are wonderful!!

 

James is an idiot.....there's not much more to say than that.  I keep a towel (and have for a long time) by the water bowl, and for some reason, it scared James the other day....

 

Some of my fall foliage from raking leaves:

 

I got new glasses!  I  got two new pairs actually - one pair are progressive - and I love them!  I was cautious about trying them because I had heard they were hard to adjust to, but I had no problems at all! 

The second pair are computer glasses - the top section is set up for reading vs. the normal bottom section.  They also work great for working on the computer - I don't have to tip my head to read the screen!  I just have to remember to switch glasses when I walk away from my desk - the computer glasses are hard to drive with.....not impossible, lucky for me, after I has halfway to Kent's when I realized I had the wrong glasses on....

 

The sunrise was beautiful the other morning!

 

 

I smoked one turkey yesterday, and will cook the other one today. Last night I made the cranberry parfaits, fixed and fed Alli dinner, tried a new recipe for rolls (and ran to Kent's last night at 9:00 to pick up some pre-made rolls because I realized I would only get a dozen rolls from the recipe - not enough!!!), baked a pumpkin cheesecake, put the second turkey in to brine, pre-mixed the filling for the salami and chees appetizers  - all before 9:10 - because of that 9:00 run to Kent's....whew!  I have dinner planned for 1:00 today - we'll see if the turkey cooperates with that time....Happy Thanksgiving!

Fall is here!!  And by that, I mean the falling leaves are here....and it's just the beginning, I'm afraid.  Sunday AJ and I raked and blew leaves around.  We had a thunderstorm come through Saturday so the leaves were wet and heavy.  I probably had more leaves, but the storm blew mine into the neighbors, and blew the neighbors into mine.  (Theirs are prettier - bright yellow leaves, not dull brown like mine...and their tree is smaller, so I had less leaves than usual.)  

The before pictures:

The after pictures:

My pile to be shredded - since the leaves were wet they were not shredding well, so they will wait until the weekend to get shredded.

I put some in with the chickens, and they had a blast digging through them.

 

The garage is getting better!  Here is the "shop" area - in the past, you could barely walk through it.  I have a ton of stuff to go through still.  AJ is making three piles as he goes through things - "obviously keep", "obviously junk", and "let Mom decide".  This time around the "let Mom decide" pile was bigger than the others.  We still need to go through the right hand side of the shop - it is full of tools - many that belonged to Ralph's dad, and most are ones that I will never use - honestly, most are tools I have no idea how to use!  Jeff is planning to come up and make sure I'm not getting rid of anything "good" though....

 

The new chickens are beginning to look like real chickens - they have real tailfeathers now!  My babies are growing up!  One still has the single tail feather she came with, but at least others are growing in around it now.  They also seem to be getting along with the two Wyandottes better.  In the beginning, there was no way I would have gotten a picture with both in the frame.  Now they are hanging out together and last night was the first night I saw one sleeping on the roost with them, and a couple of nights ago I found one of the Wyandottes in the same cubby snuggled in for the night.  Of course, the pecking order is real - the Wyandottes are in charge and the black ones know it!

 

Last weekend, I tried my hand at home-made ravioli, and was very happy with the results.  I made a sausage/mushroom/ricotta filling and hand-made pasta (okay - full disclosure - I used my stand mixer and a hand pasta-roller....but that's hand made enough for me!).  I underestimated the amount of time it would take to do all of that, so about the time I got the second batch of ravioli started (making 10 at a time....) Alli decided she was ready to eat.  AJ finished up making the rest of the ravioli, and also proceeded to eat most of them.  What is shown below are the ones that went into the freezer.

 

I was watching TV the other night and got a phone call so I paused the TV.  The screen eventually went into sleep mode with "Samsung" floating around on the screen....James was very concerned......

 

I was dog-sitting Cooper over the weekend, and he and Ripley curled up in matching beds while I was working - twins!

 

I'm trying to finished up a few projects that I have started - one of which was a crocheted potholder.  James had to help....

 

And this quilt top is done!  I really like how this turned out (but then again, I like most of them, don't I???)

 

One completely finished project!!  The only thing left to do it pack it and ship it!

 I still need work/practice on my quilting, but it's getting better!

 Thank you for your service!  You  are always in our thoughts and prayers.

One reason housework is never done....too much help!  Both of the cats LOVE to play in the sheets when I make the bad, and I make Allis' bed a lot...

This one was just looking for something to get into....

 

And the blocks are pieced together!  Just a few more strips to add and the quilt top will be done.

 

AJ was out of town this weekend, so I took my own vacation and did the minimal amount of housework yesterday.  (I already have laundry started today....)  I'm getting closer on my newest quilt top - this was yesterday morning - all the light grey blocks were done.

And this was last night - all the blocks are done!  I'm hoping today to get the blocks put together and get the borders on, and then off to the store to get backing and binding fabric...

I got Margene's quilt fully quilted yesterday as well, so all that's left to do on it is hand-sewing the binding down.  I went to start quilting Kirby's quilt, and I don't have enough of the backing fabric (I bought it all together as part of the kit....) so also need to get some backing fabric for it as well.  (I did email the company that I got the quilt kit from, but don't have high hopes of getting more fabric - I bought the kit 6 months ago, and they may not still have that line of fabric available.)

Some more fall foliage photos from the back field - I almost face-planted in the dirt after taking these - unbeknownst to me, there was a strand of barbed wire in the weeds, which I managed to trip on after walking over to the tree to take the pictures.  AJ is gone for the weekend, so it was just the dogs and me out in the field.  In one way, it would have been nice that no one would have seen me crash and burn, but in another way, only the dogs would have been able to help me up after a fall, and they aren't really good at that.  They do come see me when I'm on the ground (yes, previous experiences of tripping and falling....) with the whole "Hi Mom!  Did you want to play?" expression, but they aren't much help actually getting me back on my feet.  I didn't used to worry about things like that - getting older sucks!!!