My Weblog

Happy Halloween!

It's orange and black around our house this time of year!  Hope everyone has a wonderful, candy filled Halloween night!  Here are a few snippets from my house... I hooked this a few years ago and keep meaning to hook more pieces.  I'm always full of good intentions!  It just wouldn't be Halloween without Creepy Doll Head Girl.  I love how her eyes follow you as you move around the room.  Can't wait to decorate her for Christmas! I made these paper ma-che pumpkins a couple years ago.  I need to make more!I love my cheap Cracker Barrel soup tureen.  It gets a work out in the Fall as I serve all my soups from it!   The keeper of the candy! I always buy candy that I hate....until this year.  I don't think there's a single Reece's cup left in the bucket!  And last but not least.....my old kitchen blackboard....

  
 
 

Busy in the 'burg!

Busy Busy Busy around here getting this house ready to put on the market!  Our Baby Girl was home this past long weekend for Fall Break.....we kept her busy getting rid of "junk" in her room.  CraigsList is the best thing going!  I posted several items around noon on Saturday and by 4pm they had been picked up and paid for.....CriagsList is my new BFF!   My Beantown Boy is giving up his "crash pad" in Crystal City and moving back home during the week as of Nov. 21.  I've loved spending time in Northern Virginia with him each Wednesday night and we've done so much exploring.  This has given us the opportunity to really know the area we want to move to in Northern Virginia. So many new changes for us and it's so exciting.  I'm taking a break from my Blog until I get things under control here...oh and one more thing.....I have an appointment to test drive a Mini Cooper Clubman on Wednesday...hope it's a red one with a black top and black racing stripes and black leather seats and a kickin' stereo system.  Might bring that little thing home with me.

A Yard Sale, A Funeral, and A Wedding

What a whirlwind weekend this has been!  Saturday morning bright and early we participated in our neighbood yard sale....or should I say my husband did.  He did most of the work and I think he could sell ice to an Eskimo!  Our Jordan came home Friday night to attend the funeral of her BFFs brother whom Jordan was very close to.  He was only 19 and it was Jordan's first funeral so it was terribly hard on her.  She was a real trooper and handled herself well....I don't think she had any tears left to shed. Right after the funeral Bear and I changed our clothes and headed to Charlottesville for the wedding of one of my BFF's daughter.  It was an amazing wedding at Ashlawn(home of James Monroe)...260 people attended and the weather, food, and music were all just perfect.  The bride was stunning and wore pink hightops as she walked down the isle.  We sat with people we hadn't chatted with in  a while and it was so much fun.  I think my Beantown Boy and I danced almost every dance! Right after the wedding everyone was invited to a Pub just across from the hotel where everyone stayed.  More fun to be had there and a perfect ending of the day.

 We checked out of the hotel Sunday and headed to Sperryville, VA for some apple picking.  We ended up not picking apples but we had a great time having lunch in Front Royal at a huge grain and feed co-op that was converted into a restaurant and after hitting some great antique shops we then drove up one country backroad and down another.  The weather was perfect and the leaves are starting to turn.  We also found some great Bed and Breakfasts yesterday that we plan to book reservations at real soon........this was our favorite....it was amazing.... www.marriottranch.com . Peak Fall color is still about a couple weeks away.  We've seen bits of it here and there but nothing like it will be...still got some great pictures with  hints of red and yellow.  Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!     
 
 
 
  

 

Charlottesville via Culpepper

Last weekend was just wonderful!  Friday found me having lunch with my pal Linda in Culpepper at It's About Thyme.  Her daughter is getting married this Sat. and I have a feeling it will be the most elegant wedding I've ever attended....we just need to do the "Rain Dance" and make sure it stays dry on Saturday afternoon at Ashlawn!!!  My Beantown Boy and I worked on getting our house ready for "sale" on Sat. and then Sunday we bolted to the Virginia Fiber Festival and Sheep Dog Trials at Montpelier home of James Madison.  We had a wonderful time and then cruised the backroads on the way home.  As I always do I've taken some snaps of the weekend..............A chair crafted by my GGGGGGGGrandfather John Hoffman in 1735. Wonderful Alpaca and sheep at Montpelier...... I'll have my trusty camera this coming weekend and will snap lots of wonderful moments and will post when I return.  Hope everyone has a wonderful Fall weekend!

 

 

Mr. Sea Santa Needlepoint Ornament.....Done!

Finished Mr. Sea Santa this afternoon and heading to Waste Knot Needlepoint to drop it off tomorrow for their finisher to do her magic and make it into an ornament.  This is the 2nd ornament I've done this year and trust me I'm not proud of that lackluster number.  That said, I love to stitch and if I had to give everything I dabble in up...paper arts and primitive rug hooking and scrapbooking I could do that...but when it came to giving up needlepoint that is a line I couldn't cross.  I'm declaring 2010 my Needlepoint Year!! My goal is to complete 5 ornaments and have at least half of Maddie's stocking done...it will go on my 2010 Resolution List.  2010....it just sounds so foreign to this circa 1957 gal.  Here's a glimpse of Mr. Sea Santa before being turned into an ornament..........

 

A Perfect Weekend with Our Jordan

We spent the weekend at Ferrum College in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains.  Our Daughter is a Junior at FC and it was Parent's Weekend...and what a perfect weekend it was!  We left Friday and slowly made our way down stopping in Staunton, Va and doing some serious antiquing and then had lunch at a great restaurant called The Clock Tower.  The food was wonderful!  I jammed what I purchased in the small trunk of our Audi TT(who cares if my clothes are a wrinkled mess....I scored 6 1950's metal wire gym baskets for $5 each and a dozen horse ribbons from the Washington Horse show and Keswick Horse show from 1956 and 1957!!) and off we went to Rocky Mount, VA to the Claiborne House where we've stayed every visit we've made over the past couple years.  We had dinner in town Friday night with our Baby Girl and then met up with her on Saturday in her dorm Suite before heading first to the bookstore and picking up a long sleeved T and a couple FC cups and then off to the game. My Beantown Boy loves football and was in all his glory watching the game.  We arrived early and of course I started snapping pics....

This was a good 45 minutes before the game but we always arrive in a very timely manner....translated that means very very early!  

If you look closely you can see that Fall is nipping on the heels of Summer...the leaves are starting to turn........

 The team, especially #1, is certainly in Team Spirit....... or is he, perhaps, praying for a win...no....he knew they had the game sewn up...he was probably just happy that his girlfriend and her parents were attending the game!

After the game...won by, of course, Ferrum College...we gathered ourselves up and headed for Roanoke for a delicious dinner and some serious shopping. We had dinner at my favorite Mexican restaurant, Abuelos .  Jordy turns 21 next Sunday( Sept. 27th) and with that comes a special gift....one that she can keep and share with her own daughters and granddaughters....one that comes in a blue box with a white satin ribbon(this years gift was a Tiffany's charm and 24 inch chain, hence, two boxes).  It was a true blessing to have been able to spend such a wonderful weekend with our Jordan. 

 

Junk in the Trunk

Last Saturday we had an appointment with a Realtor who came to our house and for a couple hours went room by room prepping us to put our house on the market.  By the time she left my head was swimming from the number of items that had to be removed from the house prior to hammering the For Sale sign in the yard.  I wish I had a camera in hand when she walked into my Craft Room because the look on her face was a cross between sheer horror and amusement and I'm pretty sure it leaned more on the horror side.  Here's a couple pics of the room..... Now here's the bad part.....by January 4, 2010...less than 3 months from now...this room has to be turned into a bedroom!!!  Just those words makes me laugh!  I think my husband secretly thinks I'll blow it all off and forget the move but that's not going to happen...in fact I got up early this morning and took a load of "gently used merchandise" to Goodwill and came back and loaded another load into my car.     This house will be on the market on the morning of January 4th just in time for a nice lunch downtown at my favorite little bistro.  We will be celebrating two things...listing the house and our 27th anniversary.  Change is a good thing!

Stella Perfume and a Random Act of Kindness

A couple years ago while perfume shopping in Paris, my daughter and I fell in love with Stella In Two Peony perfume.  Stella McCartney crafted this perfume and it is an all time favorite of ours!   We are both finishing our second bottles since first discovering it and I've made little hints to my Beantown Boy here and there about how much I love it and how I was starting to "run low" on it....each time knowing that it was just that, little hints that once uttered from my lips, were gone forever.Well that assumption was certainly dispelled last evening when my sweet Beantown Boy came home with this.... This is Stella's first perfume, Stella,  and it's even better than In Two.  What a perfect way to start a weekend and after almost 27 years of marriage he's still just as sweet as he was when he swept me off my feet that cold Washington, DC January day back in 1982.

A Perfect Way to End the Summer!

What a perfect Labor Day Weekend here in Fredericksburg!!  A little dinner party on the back porch Saturday night....worked at Scrapdoodles on Sunday....and hit Kermit's farm stand on Monday and then worked in the basement clearing things out and loading them in our car for donation.  I love the free feeling I get when I drive up to Goodwill and empty the car of items that had cluttered my world and probably, if truth were told, shouldn't have been purchased in the first place! I also love the feeling I get when I step outside on September mornings and find it cool!  Fall is getting so close and it's my favorite time of year!  Hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day Weekend.....here's snippets of our's....

    

Seeing Red.....Mini Cooper Style!

I've been doing a lot of cruising around Northern Virginia lately and doing a lot of cussing.  My cussing doesn't occur so much from being cut off on I-395 by rude drivers nor from being tailgated on the Beltway.....my cussing comes from trying to park my mid-size Crossover in a parking spot sized for a SmartCar.  I was trying to parallel park last Wednesday in Old Town Alexandria and gave up and shelled out for underground parking....which was just a tad larger than the street parking space.  Since I'll be moving within the next several months to Northern Virginia I decided to approach my husband on the subject of my potty mouth and started brainstorming ideas with him.  I already had the solution in mind but wanted to give him an opportunity to help me out in the parking hassle department.  His solution is a smaller crossover....and a hybrid to boost.  This is my solution.........  I have a few months to convince him!  Oh and there's a MiniUSA dealership only a couple miles from Cameron Station where we plan to buy.  Now isn't that a sweet coincidence?!