Taking life as it comes.....

I have been using this week to catch up on some projects! I had quite a few swaps to get ready for Swap-bot, tomatoes to bottle, apples to dry and tomorrow I will be making applesauce and apple pie filling! I have two food dryers running as we speak, full of apple rings.

This is what my kitchen table looks like right now!\

A huge square dryer and a smaller round dryer.

Nice looking apple rings.

Here are a few photos of some of the Swap-bot items.

Book page and postage stamp ATC.

(ATC= Artist Trading Card)

Christmas ATC #1

Christmas ATC #2

A spoon lady with extra items to hold in her arms.

I don't know if you can tell but she's made from a wooden spoon.

Christmas tag #1

Christmas tag #2

Christmas bookmark

I also started decorating the house and yard this week. I know, it almost Halloween already, but a lot of the decorations I do outside are more Fall than just Halloween. Hehehe.....except for the headstones I'm making. This is the first year we've done this, but we are going to have a little mini-cemetery in the front yard. And we'll probably add more headstones every year. This is what we're starting with:

The lighting in our kitchen makes everything look yellow!

The cornstalks are actually from our own garden!

This is the first year I didn't have to buy them.

This big spider web lights up.

I'll post more photos when we get the "cemetery" done. Well, that's it for today! You can see that I've been busy. And it's not all done yet, either, but I will keep on pluggin'.


Thanks to all who are still reading and didn't give up on me. Life sometimes gets in the way of living, but I'm still here and plan to be for a long time. After all........either you run the or the day runs you!
Until next time,

A new month...

November heralds the beginning of the end. We all start to look at our lives, our families and all the things we're grateful for. Its a time for reflection on the past year, on the good and the bad, and even more on the in-between. My life has taken a few unexpected turns since this time last year, and I've decided that I need to take a lot closer look at how it has affected me and how I've handled it. Or maybe NOT handled it. I think I may have stuffed some things in my mental closet so I wouldn't have to face the end results. I know I have been having to force myself to go to church every Sunday, and that doesn't happen to me very often. I love my church and my religion. I love my Savior and I'm very grateful for everything he did for me, so that I might have the opportunity to make my own choices, good or bad. My week is just not the same when I don't go to church, but lately I've had a hard time going. I'm going to have to take a good, long look inside me and find out what the problem is.

My husband's heart attack opened my eyes to something else.... my horrible lifestyle. Maybe not horrible, but not great, that's for sure. I eat too much fried food, too many chips and too many snacks. I snack way too late at night. I stay up too late and I don't get enough hours of sleep. I don't get even a smidgen of the exercise I need, and I spend too much time on the computer (Imagine that!). There is a lot more I could add to the list, but you get the idea.

So, what am I going to do about these things? And how am I going to express my thanks to my Heavenly Father for all the good things in my life? (And there are plenty of them!) I am going to keep a gratitude journal for the month of November. I realize I'm a few days behind, but I'll catch up. I am going to recognize and list and discuss and doodle and glue and rearrange, whatever my little heart needs to do to be able to express my thanks for my life and all the blessings I receive everyday. I am going to focus more on the positive and less on the negative. I will keep you posted (no pun intended) on my progress, and if this works for me, I may do it for the whole year, starting in January. We could make this a regular thing. How does Talk to Me Tuesday sound? I'm going to think about this and maybe we'll start a new feature. But for now....

Spider S'mores

Its time to move on to other things. I know Halloween is over, but I have just one more idea to show you. I found these on the Rhodes Bake-N-Serve weekly recipe email. I thought they were so cute that I just had to make them. They were super easy and my family loved them. Just one little secret....don't use those new HUGE campfire-roasting-size marshmallows. They take so long to melt, that my mixture turned to caramel! So here's the recipe, and if you want more really good recipes and fun things to make, go to rhodesbread.com and check it out. And sign up for the weekly email, while you're at it. You'll love the ideas and recipes.

Spider S'mores

Ingredients

6 Rhodes Warm-N-Serv™ Soft Dinner Rolls
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
marshmallows
1/2 cup coarsely crushed graham crackers
chocolate frosting
chocolate sprinkles
M &M’s
licorice laces cut into 4-inch lengths

Instructions
Bake rolls following instructions on package. Place on rack to cool. When cool, slice off tops and hollow out to make a small bowl. Place butter in a saucepan and melt. Add 40 marshmallows and continue cooking on low until completely melted*. Add graham crackers and combine well. Quickly fill each hollowed out roll with the marshmallow filling while it is warm (over fill just a little). Replace the roll tops. Frost each one with chocolate frosting and cover with chocolate sprinkles. To make the eyes, cut slices off of a marshmallow, using a hot, wet, sharp knife. Add M&M’s to each eye and one for a nose. Make holes with a wooden skewer where legs attach and poke in the licorice pieces.

*Can be melted in the microwave using a large microwave safe bowl. Use 20 second intervals until completely melted and then add your graham cracker crumbs.

We had very colorful spiders. I couldn't find black string licorice, so our
 spiders had red legs. And I ran out of chocolate sprinkles and had to use what
 I had....multicolor!

That's it for today. I have rambled enough. Hope you all had a good Halloween. Here are a few photos of our pumpkin carving adventure. They turned out pretty good.

Kristen looks like she's having fun, doesn't she?

Cameron and Halena dig out the pumpkin guts.

Eeeeeeeeeew! We saved some to plant next year.

Yes, this is me with my arm in the pumpkin.

My son and husband waited until everyone else was done.

The first four done. Left to right: Kristen's evil face, my Frankie, Hally's witch and Cameron's ghostie-ghoulie.

Chuck's really evil face.

Andy has always loved Scooby Doo.

We couldn't get them all in one photo. but this was how they looked on
 Halloween, all lined up on the fence posts, waiting for the trick-or-treaters.

Have a good day and remember....to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the pumpkin patch Saturday and it was fun! My daughter-in-law had never been to a real pumpkin patch, so it was fun to watch her as she wandered around, looking at all the stuff. And trying to pick a pumpkin! I think she changed her mind at least three times, but that's what its all about, right? We bought over 200 pounds of pumpkin by the time we were through! We couldn't even fit it all in the trunk. One of them had to go in the back seat with me and Halena. Next Saturday will be the great Hall Family pumpkin carve-off. Stay tuned for photos. For now, here are some photos of our search for the perfect pumpkin.

Part of the pumpkin patch.

Hiding in the corn stalks.

Two down, four more to go.

That's four....

The wagon is getting more and more full.

My little pumpkin girl.

Taking a little rest.

A good time was had by all, that is until we got to the scale and the register. WOW! 200 pounds of pumpkin at .26 a pound...you do the math.

Now I have a quick and easy project. I call them Spooky Spoolies. I have a whole collection of wooden thread spools and I'm finally ready to let go of a few of them. They are pretty hard to come by nowadays, so I hang on to them pretty tightly. The pictures will be pretty self-explanatory.

My little spoolie family.



Sorry its blurry. The mummy is wrapped with plumber's
 tape, or pipe tape, or whatever YOU call it.

A stick for the stem, wrapped in jute. Curly raffia and some leaves finish it off.

A green pom-pom for her nose.

The mummy and the witch have yarn hair. Wrap the yarn around two fingers about 15 or 20 times and tie it really tight. Cut the loops and trim to the length you like. Put some hot glue on the edges of the hole and stuff the middle of the yarn hair down inside. All the black lines are made with black fabric paint. Googly eyes for the mummy and you're done! The kids will love to make or receive these cute little spoolies, so make a dozen or two!

That's it for tonight. I'm so tired, I can't hold my eyes open any longer. Oh, yeah...my husband got home today, so maybe I'll sleep a little better. After all, my future awaits me. C.S. Lewis said, "The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." Have a great Monday. Gramma G.

Decorating for Halloween

How do you like the new look? I decided it was time for an overhaul. I needed something bright and upbeat. I love everything red, white and blue, but finding backgrounds is hard. I don't want just any run-of-the-mill background. It has to be something that speaks to me. I know, sounds kind of half-baked, but that's me....the half-baked gramma! Anyway, I really like this design and the swirlies make me want to take action, so its all good.

I have been reading the series over on Funky Junk Interiors about improving your blog, and I am finding it totally useful. She's calling it 31 days from blog to biz and so far, I have used something from almost all of them. If you want to partake of her wisdom, go to her blog and check it out. So far I have taken off the word verification, turned off the comment mediation, put my signature on the blog post page, linked my email to my profile, and a few other things I can't even remember right now. Oh, yeah! and how to put the link within icons at the bottom of each post! How cool is that?

Well, we hung our pumpkins and made some alien spiders to go with them. They are just handmade pom-poms with smaller commercial pom-poms for eyes with googly eyes glued to them, and long pieces of yarn for the legs. They turned out pretty cute. I kind of goofed when we made the pom-poms and we made them too long and not full enough, so they are kind of floppy-mop things, but that actually just made them cuter!

Any child will have a blast making these, both the pumpkins and spiders, but the spiders most of all. I put the biggest googly eyes I had on mine and we all love her! She was hanging from the pull-chain on the fan, but her legs kept brushing my son's head when he walked through the living room, so he moved her. Isn't he funny?

So, this is just a short post, but I will be back soon.  And in case you didn't know it, the pursuit of truth will set you free, even if you never find it!  'Night, Gramma G.