let the festivities commence . . .

It's BIRTHDAY weekend!!  Hip, hip!!  The fun started Thursday evening when I pulled up and there were two beautiful planters of my favorite fall flowers . . .

MUMS!  Aren't they pretty?  Todd knows me so well!

Friday we hit the lake around 11:30.  Even the fish must have known it was my birthday weekend! I actually pulled out my pole (Todd was catching them hand over fist, so to speak) and I did well. 

I caught about eight (to Todd's twenty, but who's counting?).  Mine were GOOD sized!

The heron even squawked out a birthday greeting.  ;)

Saturday I pulled out that cute glow-in-the-dark fabric I found a month or so ago, and put it to good use!  I made these darling, lined trick or treat bags for the local grandgirls.

Then I realized I needed them to be able to differentiate them, so I decided to embroider the each little girl's name on them.  I finished Edith's.  Whew!

Sunday was my actual birthday.  Fifty-nine, if you must know!  Todd and I headed to lunch at my folk's house after church, and then we headed to Joc's house for [cookie] cake and ice cream.  

Edith was very happy to help me unwrap presents!  I'm particularly pleased to have that 16.5" square ruler from Creative Grids!  Todd got my the 10.5" ruler. Yay!

This was Todd's first time to hold Ezra!  Ezra's middle name, Paul, honors in part Todd's dad, Paul. Isn't that sweet?

Not nearly as sweet as this darling boy!

Look at that gas smile! 

I got in a good birthday pic with the entire crew . . . 

I think this is a first with the whole gang!  It's not a very flattering photo of me, but who's looking at me with all those cute kiddos surrounding me??!

This one is a little nicer . . .

Taken Monday at work (secret:  I generally wear the same outfit to work Monday that I wear to church on Sunday).  The first full day of my sixtieth year!  

:)

happy busy . . .

This is going to be another photo-heavy post; I've had lots going on!  We can only carry over 40 hours of vacation time into the new year, and I realized here it was late in October, and I had over 80 hours--I needed to burn some time!  And since we get two weeks over the Christmas holiday, I don't need it for then.  So I took Monday and Tuesday and enjoyed another five day weekend.  Bliss!

I did so much I'm going to have to split it over a couple of posts.  Don't laugh. Sunday was our Fall Festival at church, and the Merkel family joined us for the festivities . . . 

It was a fun afternoon, and thankfully, the rain cleared out (though the grey skies didn't) and we stayed dry!  And speaking of grands, I know the kids get SO much candy this week, but I wanted to do something fun for grandkids near and far, so I made these cute little spooky 'hand' treats!

Aren't those fun?  Just a little bit of trick and a little bit of treat.  And they whipped up real quick! ♥

Sunday evening, checking my facebook before bed, I saw someone had posted a photo of wool acorns that they'd made.  Don't you know that the first thing I did when I woke up on Monday, was to gather acorn caps and get the wool and the hot glue gun out?

These things are so cute and so addictive!  I'll do a tutorial post later, because they're so easy and fun!

I also made two kinds of biscotti on Monday.  

Double Chocolate Biscotti and my ol' standby favorite, Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti. Yummy! And since I was making two different kinds, I only baked half of the dough from each. That means there's prepared dough for another dozen of each in my freezer.  That makes me smile!

I thought I was finished with autumn stitcheries, and even got a winter/Christmas stitchery traced out (more on that one later, too), but realized I'm not ready to be done with Autumn.  So I traced out this sweet Crabapple Hill Studio's design . . .

I love Meg's designs; she's another of my favorites!  But I wasn't happy with the white linen.  It was too . . . bright.  So I decided (of course, after I'd traced the pattern) to tea dye it.

I pulled it out this morning, rinsed it, let it soak in white vinegar (to set the dye) and rinsed it again.  It should be dry when I get home, but from what I saw with it wet, it's a much more fitting color!

Yesterday was originally supposed to be the sunniest, warmest day of the week and Todd and I were going to fun around on the pontoon.  Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate with its forecast, but we decided to go ahead and go out. It was still foggy at noon!

Since it was a work day, all the barge-shipping industries were busy . . . 

Tug boats coming and going! I love the barge with the coal on it.  Coal is a big industry in Alabama. We were fishing around the banks near them, so we saw lots of activity! And I caught a nice stripe!

We were in new-to-us territory, too.  I spotted this old lighthouse that was fascinating . . .

We also spotted two clipper like ships, scooting down the river.  I mean they were booking!  

Earlier in September two replicas of Columbus's ships (the Nina and the Pinta) were in Guntersville, but I don't think these were them.  They were cool to watch, though.  I wish we could have gotten closer, but as I said, they were moving pretty fast.  It would have been cool to watch them go through the lock at the dam! I went back and looked at the schedule -- it could have been them traveling from Chattanooga to their next destination in Rogersville, Alabama.  That route would make sense.  So would their speed!

As Todd fished (and I read and stitched) our way back to the marina, we spotted some wildlife doing it's own fishing on the banks:

Isn't he cute?!  We saw four or five of these bandits fishing on the banks!

The grey skies made for a glorious setting for geese flying in formation . . . 

And for a colorful setting of the sun . . . 

I love watching the sun set over the water.  It may be my favorite thing!

Who am I kidding?  I have loads of favorites!

:)

weekend wanderings . . .

Busy weekends and busier weeks (gearing up for our annual meeting at work) make for longer gaps between posts.  But I am pleased to note that I've surpassed last year's number of posts by five, with this post.  It's the little things, right??!

Todd and I did make time to take the boat out this past Friday. It was the first time I'd been out on our boat since prior to the surgery. I'd missed it ... but I was a little anxious about it, too.  Turns out I had nothing to worry about . . . except how many hexies I could baste up while Todd fished. What do you know?  Sunshine on my shoulder really *did* make me happy! (Thanks, John Denver.)

You can just make out one of my four shoulder surgery scars ... he glued them closed, so they're faint and hard to see, which also makes me happy.  ;)

It was a lovely day, and Todd had launched in a place I'd never been before, below the dam (Lake Guntersville). 

You can see the dam from behind us. It's pretty impressive and the launch is fairly easy. We Todd wanted to fish the bluffs, so that's where we headed.

Easily 100' or higher. But you can see where the fish were running the minnows! 

It was pretty exciting. Todd thought so especially . . . 

His final tally of the day was about 26. Mostly strip and spots.  It'll make good eating either way.

My final tally of hexies was 24 . . .

So I guess he won!  LOL!

But I was the one spotting all the waterfowl (and friends) as we tooled around and explored . . .

These buzzards (sitting on the rocks) were all hanging out for something we could smell but couldn't see. LOL!

Caught this heron mid-flight.  They were all over the place

And then we sited not one, but TWO bald eagles! Pretty cool.

Mid-afternoon, a small summer shower came up fast on us . . .

We rode it out and then enjoyed a really lovely afternoon.

About as pretty as can be!

Saturday morning I had a guild workshop ... which I'll (hopefully) share more about later.  I got home just in time for second half of the Alabama vs. Texas A&M game. It was a fairly comfortable game by this point, so I could sit (relatively) quietly and prep my next set of hexies . . . the last set . . . my yellows!  Roll Tide!  :)

After getting them all clipped, I even got a few basted.  The rest were my slow stitching for today.

I've got about a dozen more to baste, and then it's on to whipping them together.  I've really got to decide how I want to go about doing this.  I'm thinking I'll whip up the individual flowers, by color, first, and then put them together.  And I've finally settled on a name for this piece.  FINALLY!

Linking up to Kathy's Quilts Slow Sunday Stitching and the HeLP post over at Sarah Did It!

Have a great week ahead!

:)

happy sighs . . .

What a great weekend we enjoyed! On Friday, Todd and I were able to take the boat out. The weather was just absolutely perfect for it! We launched at Honeycomb, which is a state campground . . .

Which was full for Easter weekend!

After a bit of cruising around, we finally (aka, Todd finally) found a spot that was very fishy! To the point that I put down my handwork and picked up the fishing rod!

Yup ... that's *my* first catch (to keep) of the day! We ended up catching about 75.  WOW! Yes, a very productive day!

And the ride back to the docks was pretty spectacular, too.

Easter Sunday, after church, my folks and Joc's crew came up to the camp for dinner and baskets and an Easter egg hunt . . .

The girls were both so cute and had a marvelous time. The camp is the perfect place to 'hide' eggs in plain sight.

Both Ellie and Evey were quite happy to sit with Neesey and Pawpaw to check out their haul!

And I even managed to do some slow stitching this weekend, too. I've done all the blanket stitching on my 'card tricks' -- now it's on to the decorative stitching.

I love all these colors!

And I worked on my pretty little orange hexie flowers, too . . .

In fact, I'm nearly finished putting together this second flower -- just six and a half more pieces to stitch down . . .

And I'll be ready to applique these to the runner! I haven't even thought about how I'll quilt this project. But I know where I'll put it!  Linking this up to HeLP at sarah did it!

I've had several folks show interest in our RV living space. I've taken some pictures and uploaded them to the RV Living page on my blog. You can take a little tour of our home, sweet home!

I'm on baby watch for the next week or so . . . so if things are quite here for an extended period of time, I haven't gotten lazy (again) . . . I'm engulfed in Neesey-ness!!

:)