Coffee Chat: Time to Put Your Feet Up

(Started Thanksgiving Eve)  Hasn't it a been a long while since our last chat?  And a long day today for many of you I'm willing to bet.  Some worked outside the home and have been hurrying about this evening to put the house to rights and start as much of tomorrow's great feast as possible.  Not so in my home...No, not at all.  I've a tiny turkey breast roast thawing in the sink which I'll pop in the crock pot tomorrow morning for sandwich meat for supper.  And that my dears is the big Ta-Da! for Thanksgiving in my home.  Don't think that sounds too sad, please.  I've had a perfectly lovely two months of time with my husband which culminated this past weekend in an early Thanksgiving dinner at my eldest son's home combined with a celebration of one year of life for the twins.  So no sad tears here for what I've already had and enjoyed thoroughly. (And now I'll wish you all Happy Thanksgiving. I'm sure many of you ARE sitting with your feet up about now.)

I know it's been a while since our last chat.  I've done so very much since then!  So much that I must share in increments all that we did. So consider this part 3 for October and then next I'll share all about the most wonderful November ever!



On the first really cold morning we've had (it was a Sunday in October) we headed north to visit with Katie and Samuel.  Our kids had planned a feast for us.  It was a gloriously sunny morning for a journey.

We passed through some really beautiful country along the way and lovely little old small towns with beautiful houses before we arrived in Athens.  I took a memory card full of photos that day and there's so very much to share about the past six weeks that I can't possibly show ALL the photos I've taken over these vacation days.  So we'll just have to be satisfied with a FEW from each special trip, okay?  And I promise in the future weeks to come, I'll share more of these glorious days.  For all the beautiful scenery that day here are my absolute favorites.

Mist was rising on the ponds when we left home...but the sun was soon shining brightly.

Countryside and town...

Here are faces I love much.  And good food (my son and daughter are both awesome cooks).  Today was Samuel's day to shine with grilled steak, Rosemary potatoes, Broccoli and salad (that was Katie's contribution).  We brought dessert. 

We had a great time!  Can you tell that John was much amused at this point?  He laughed a lot that day.

On the way home, we stopped at a farmstand and bought Winesap apples.  Oh those apples were so very good.  So sweet and crisp.  We ate one right away and it left our fingers sticky with the natural sugar in it.  Of course there were views on the way home as well. I won't share but one of those photos with you though.

You may have to view it in another window but it's a field of sunflowers.  Sunflowers make me feel happy.  How can you not smile when faced with acres upon acres of these sunny yellow flowers?

Here are a few of the other sites that I saw that day.  I love old courthouses and church steeples and old houses and crops in the field and probably I am just a sightseer at heart:

Well that was pretty awesome in and of itself.  I think John went to work for a week after that visit and then...He had more off/vacation/off time!  Katie came home one weekend somewhere in there and made us a delicious meal of Chicken and Dumplings.  Very good!  Halloween doesn't come to our home.  We live  too far off the roadways to get any trick or treaters here, but I enjoyed viewing the grand children in their costumes.  We had a lamb, a tiger and a fireman in one home.  In the other there was a fairy, a construction worker, and a punk rocker.  It was fun to see the photos of the grands.

There was a bit of the standard stuff, you know, like grocery shopping and bill paying and housekeeping that went on too, but not so much as you might think, lol!  I noted that autumn really made itself known  but a few trees put on a show in October like this lovely Gingko across from the post office here in town:

That inspired me to finally give in and do a bit of decorating here at home.  Nothing like in the past this year.   Just a simple arrangement of the brown and black transferware pieces with some silk autumn leaves on one side of the room and this arrangement on the buffett:

I kept it all simple this year because I'd thought I'd be doing a bit more decorating for Thanksgiving but I was too busy to go dig about in the shed and try to find the rest of the autumn things.

Now I shall send this off and in a day or so I'll share another of our adventures with you...and isn't it high time I posted about my frugal weeks once more?  I hope to be blogging a bit more often now that we're back to a normal routine.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all and happy shopping to those of you brave souls who have a love of Black Friday.  For myself, I did my tiny bit of shopping today at CVS.  I spent $29, used a $4 off coupon to bring my total to $25 and earned $26 in ECB to spend between now and December 22.  I was pretty happy with the outcome of that transaction.

And a heads up.  I'm having a dickens of a time with s*p*a*m comments of late.  One post in particular triggered so many that I've put it in permanent draft form for now.  I noted that Rhonda from "Down to Earth" blog mentioned the same in one of her posts recently.  If I should go word verification you'll know why but for the moment I'm going to hope that putting that particular post in draft will help reduce the traffic flow of those pesky folks.

Now I am off to bed.  I find that these mornings with John coming in from work seem to go best for me if I'm already up, showered and had a cup of coffee before he comes in.  Otherwise I just piddle about getting nothing accomplished at all and tomorrow I have plenty of things I want to get done.