Halloween Night

Hi all my dear ones! Guess you're all either going with your kids trick-or-treating or answering the door. I'm answering the door tonite. Princess was home last year and she loves Halloween. She loves seeing the little kiddos all dressed up. Scuse me..... A little two-year old glow-in-the-dark skeleton! Very cute~~~ Princess and some of her friends are having their own Halloween party tonight at their townhouse. She's going to be a safari hunter (who'd have thought...)

I have Twix, Snickers, Bubble Gum in ooky colors that slimes you when you bite it, candy Dracula fangs with blood oozing out (I tried to get what my kids would have liked), Skulls & Bones tart candy, and some other Chocolate stuff, oh yeah, Tootsie Pops. The kids so far LOVE the Dracula teeth! One of my best Halloween memories as a kid was - my friend down the street, well, her daddy worked at Sunbeam bakery. On Halloween, he'd bring home little tiny loaves of fresh bread in tiny little wrappers. They were so cute and they smelled heavenly! We had to go to the Biggs' house FIRST to make sure they didn't run out of bread before we got there. Then we'd hoard our bread loaf and just take a bite or two at a time to make it last!

It's been a long week at work. Since we now have a new office manager, he's keeping me pretty busy re-organizing, re-arranging, re-filing, you name it. I have to admit that he's doing a really good job - very kind, upbeat guy, and he's going to get our office whipped into shape - it's just making me have lots more work to do. I guess when we get all the kinks worked out and it's running like he wants it to, then things will settle down and we'll operate like a well-oiled machine. I've been swamped. Almost too tired when I get home to do anything to my house. I just wanna fall down on the couch and not do anything.

Margo and I wound up at a neat Estate/Barn sale last weekend. I found a couple of cool items, and she did, too. As we went into the house, there was this neat arbor all grown up with different ivys. It was pretty neat, still had some flowers on it.

Tomorrow, we are going to my sister's house a couple of hours away. Her son is about to go into the Navy and she's having a combination Going-Away, Thanksgiving, Christmas party for him and we'll all be there. She's even doing a Thanksgiving dinner. THat's what he wanted. Hope to show you some photos of our get-together later. I think Mom and Dad are riding with us.

My DH is beginning to have problems with sciatica. He's never had any health problems at all since we've been married. It's really bothering him, not sure whether it's the pain or the thought of actually having a health problem. I think THAT is what is really bugging him. He likes to brag to people that he's been so healthy all his life and that he never even had childhood shots. (Of course he did - he just likes to mouth off). He's always accused the rest of us of being sickly weaklings. Guess I can tell him he's joined the ranks of sickly weakling now!

Doin' Girlstuff...

Hi, I'm back from visiting my daughter at her college town. I don't have any photos for you tonite, but let me just say we had the best weekend. Of course, we spent the entire day Saturday shopping, eating, and visiting. I am so impressed with the growth I've seen in her in only a couple of months. She seems to be the most mature one in her townhome she shares with 2 other friends. She does the shopping, the organizing, the cleaning, etc. She shares in the cooking. Unfortunately, her friends are slobs, to put it mildly. My girl is becoming more independent and self-reliant and isn't that what we all want?

As we crawled up in her bed Saturday night to watch a movie, she laid her head in my lap and said "tickle me, mom". That was always our "thing". I tickle her neck and play with her hair, and arms and back. She loves to have her feet tickled too. Over the years, no tellin' how many hours I've tickled. When she was little she would curl up by me in the pew at church and I would tickle her during the sermon. Even now, when the sermon starts, she'll lay her hand across my lap at church for me to rub her arm and the palm of her hand.

As we were leaving church this morning to go eat lunch I was telling her how much fun I'd had this weekend with just me 'n her doin' "girlstuff", she smiled and looked over at me, and I said "you miss me" like she does to me sometimes. She grinned even bigger and said, " OOOOO-KKKKKay, I miss you."

I think she was glad to have me there in her world for a couple of days. I know I was glad to be in hers. I miss her, too.

Giving Back Give Away

I won!!! I actually won something! I've never won anything
in my life! (Actually, I did win some free tickets to see A Capella once...) I'm so excited! Connie at Magnolia Street Style did a Giving Back Give Away.

I was excited to get my package today. I opened it very slowly so I could enjoy the surprise. First off, there was a beautiful card with bird art on the front and a sweet note from Connie on the back.


Then, I opened a little brown box and inside were 3 little net bags of old vintage buttons! How cool is that?

Then I unwrapped carefully a beautiful crystal relish tray. It's very pretty and Connie had a photo on her blog with the buttons in the tray. I could do that, or I could just leave the buttons in their little wraps and snuggle them into the tray.




I like to set a pretty table on occasion, too, so I can use it for that. It's a good size to use for all kinds of things! What a sweetheart - Connie started this Giving Back Give Away, so, when I decide what to Give Back to someone else, I'm going to pay it forward. I'll be on the lookout this weekend at the sales I go to for some goodies that I hope my winner will love!

Thanks so much Connie - go visit her site. She has such a good eye for decorating and finding just the right things to "cozy up" her home for each season. Tune back in to find out what I'm going to give away!

Tennessee Color

This photo is for Sher -in Tennessee. I enjoyed the beautiful trees so much up there. She had commented on the fall color and posted a great picture of the changing trees and so I had to follow up with a Tennessee shot of my own- Just for her! These trees were changing up on top of the hill. We saw lots of color in the area! These trees actually were alot more colorful that what I can see in the photos. Sher lives in a beautiful place!

Happy Fall!

I guess I'm getting into the fall spirit now. I made my husband pull over so I could photograph this cute punkin' patch in Nashville on Monday. This isn't half of the pumpkins they had!

We had such a blast in Nash-ville (emphasis on both syllables equallly), as we Texans say it. Adam says the locals say "NASH-vul". He told me to say it like I was from Texas. We ate way too much, stayed up way too late visiting, spent way too much money, and listened to music way too loud! But every second was worth it! We got to take in Adam's show at the Full Moon Saloon on Tuesday night. Of course, he had to introduce his parental units, but instead of being embarrassed, I stood up and waved at all the people there - I was so proud of my son - the entertainer for the evening. The saloon was full, the music was loud, he played country, but the crowd wanted to hear more 70's R&R - which was exactly what he did. They loved it, and my DH and I loved it even more! Here's a little shot of him playing...

Of course they were awesome!

Monday morning, we visited Bell Meade Plantation in Nashville. It was begun in 1807 as a thoroughbred horse farm where the horses became the backbone of some of the present day racing winners like Secretariat and many others. It was so interesting. We had a tour of the inside of the 3-story plantation home complete with columns, parlors, grand staircases, and faithfully restored with period furnishings. It was beautiful. I've always been a fan of the civil war era, and if you looked closely, you almost imagine Scarlett O'Hara come bursting out the doors with her skirts flying in the wind. Here's a couple of photos from the Plantation...

The slave quarters and a little garden area still sit on the property, as well as an old two-story smokehouse, gardens, a dairy made of stone, and a family mausoleum. Here's a photo of the carriage house, too. They had about 6 carriages there. It must have been very nice to be a horse that lived there!

Well, I got tons to catch up on at home tonight, but just wanted to check in. I'll have more to show you later - I promise to have only a couple more pics to post of our hometown Festival in my next post. I hope you all are doing well, and I'll be visiting very soon! Take care -

Gone to NASHVILLE

The parade was wonderful this morning. We had fun and it was a perfectly beautiful day! Tonights the ball, and I'll try to get lots of pics, and maybe some of Me and My Hubby! We don't have much of a chance to dress up and so it will be lots of fun!

We'll be out of pocket for a few days - we are going to see our oldest son, Adam, in Nashville. YEAAAAA!!!! I miss him so much. His 27th birthday is this coming week and we are anxious to see him. We'll also get to hear him play TEXAS COUNTRY at the Full Moon Saloon Tuesday night! I'm excited. I haven't gotten to hear him sing and play in about a year.


Our middle son, Josh, and some of his buddies went to Nashville during the summer and they had a ball following Adam up and down Broadway. Josh said "mom, they know him in all the clubs and saloons and they wanted him to come up and play everywhere we went". Hope we get to do some of that, too, and see him in his natural element!



So, all that to say that I will be gone for a few days and probably won't be posting. I may take my computer and I may not. Don't know... So you all have a wonderful week, and I'll look forward to hearing from you and checking up on you all when I get back! I'll have Nashville pics, too! (can you tell I'm crazy about my kiddoes?)

I'm a Doofus!

WHAT A COMPLETE DOOFUS I AM!!! You won't believe what I did! I was fooling around with the blogger choices and I decided to moderate my comments. Well, I turned that feature on and promptly forgot about it. I've been so busy with the Princess's pageant stuff that I've only had time to check my blog and look at a few favorites. I only saw 1 comment on my last post, and I thought, ' pooh, nobody's looking at it anyway, so what difference does it make?'

Well, I stumbled back on the 'moderate comments' feature tonight while surfing the blog, and WA-LA!!! 14 comments!!! Yea! I AM, too, being read!!! Oh joy, I'm not quite so boring after all!!! Thank you all so much for your comments! It makes me feel so good for you all to stop by to say hi and leave your encouragement and your thoughts! The comments are all posted here now and also I WON TWO GIVEAWAYS!!! That's a first for me, too! Can you believe it?? Here I was about to miss out on that! I'll post about the giveaways later when I figure out what I gotta do. I won Grinnin Gramma's drawing and also Connie (Magnolia Street Style) presented me with her Give Back Giveaway. How exciting!

I also wanted to thank you for your nice comments about my new header. I took this photo myself, and now that it's fall, I wish I had something a little more in keeping with the season. I'll see what I can do, and maybe keep this one for spring..... I need to get me a cool-lookin' background like some of you have, too. I need to "keep up with the blogger/Jones' " so to speak.

Well, anyway, we've been so busy with the pageant last Saturday and THIS Saturday is the parade and the ball. I'm tired and ready for this to be over. It's been fun, tho. I'll leave you with this little photo from part of the pageant. It was really a nice pageant and P and all her little court were so pretty. She had 6 little maidens and 6 little pages. Her escort was cute and a little nervous about the whole thing. It's not really a "guy" thing ya know - this whole deal is really a girl thang.

Well, I'll bid you adieu and good nite. I've had a sinus headache all day and only sleep will help it go away!