'Tis Near Halloween

~Tonight the Great Pumpkin will rise out of the pumpkin patch. He flies through the air and brings toys to all the children of the world.
     – Linus in “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”

~ Beautiful orange pumpkins ~  Towering corn stalks ~  Misty fall days ~

When the wind begins to shift and the scent of fall can be caught in the air, I cannot stand myself until we take the little people in our lives to a wonderful pumpkin patch. 

This year we choose Bob's Corn and Pumpkin Farm in Snohomish, Washington for our outing. It had everything you could want in a pumpkin patch ~

*Lots and lots of pumpkins

*A ten acre corn maze

*Pony rides

*Cow train

*Misty, foggy farmland

*Hot wonderful corn-on-the-cob

*Delishious pumpkin pie

*Hot tasty chili

and best of all

*Noah and Mazzy!

We had the best fall day, ever!  Come on, pull on your hat and join us~

~ When witches go riding and black cats are seen,

the moon laughs and whispers,

'tis near Halloween.

~Author Unknown

May you all be blessed with the most wonderful day at a pumpkin patch.  Be careful, don't get lost in the maze...

(oh - and while you're out wandering around, stop by my sister Stacey's house for a walk in her haunted wood.)

Autumn Dreams Table Runner

I actually got to spend some time in my craft room this weekend with this gorgeous fall fabric.  I found this pattern on the Moda Bake Shop blog and decided to give it a shot.  I really like how it's turning out and think I may make another one when I get a chance, as well as the table topper. 

Making bias tape always kicks my butt and this is the look you'll get if you interupt me while I'm getting my booty kicked...

~Hope you all had a wonderful autumn weekend~

Turn the Page....Tuesday

It's time once again for Turn the Page...Tuesday, hosted by the incredible Adrienne of Some of a Kind.  Turn the Page Tuesday is a time to share what you have read in the last month and to see what other's having been turning the pages in.  It's a really fun way to start the month!

The old, dusty book that I chose to pull off of my shelves and finally read this month is The Best Known Works of Ibsen, by Henrik Ibsen.  Mr. Ibsen was a playwright from Norway whose work has been turned into several "made for television" plays and is known worldwide.  He is one of Norway's favorite sons.  I was surprised to find that Ibsen's plays, written many years ago and based in Norway, deal with so many issue's that had to be taboo at the time.   His works were known to by quite scandalous, written in an era when family life was portrayed as perfect, Mr. Ibsen instead choose to write about some of the harder realities of life.

In "Hedda Gabler", the main character, Hedda, has married the wrong man though continues to see the "right" man through business dealings of her husbands.  She actually convinces the "right" man to shoot himself and the play ends with Hedda's suicide. 

In Ghosts, Ibsen deals with arson, a child born out of wedlock and sexually transmitted diseases. 

There are nine short plays in this book;  I haven't finished all of them yet, but they all deal with equally hard topics.

Henrik Ibsen - 1828 to 1906

A friend of mine gave me this book and I'm so glad she did. Written from the perspective of Kimberly, a young Chinese girl who along with her Mom has immigrated to America via the help of her mom's older sister, Paula and husband Bob. Aunt Paula and Uncle Bob own a clothing factory in Chinatown where they immediately put Kimberly and her Mom to work to pay off the large debt of bringing them to America. It takes many years to pay off that debt, years where the mother and daughter live in an otherwise empty apartment building that should be condemned, left to the rats and roaches that run rampant. During these years, Kimberly keeps her home life private, exceling at school and earning a scholarship to a private high school that she focuses on as a way out of the life of poverty her and her mom are living.

 I believe this book may be a bit autobiographical as the author immigrated to Brooklyn as a young girl and also worked in a sweatshop. This background made for an excellent telling of the story right down to the translation of words that sometimes got so confusing for Kimberly as she tried to understand the speech of her teachers and classmates. Slang and accent's sometimes made the words quite hard to understand and the author really did a good job of descriping the words that Kimberly thought she heard.



This story was both uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time. One of the passages that stayed with me the longest was the one in which, not long after Kimberly had started school in America and met her best friend, Annette, she was trying to tell Annette that she worked in a clothing factory with her mom until late in the evening after school every day. A few days later, Annette told Kimberly that she must have been making up excuses to not do anything with her because when Annette had told her dad about Kimberly working in the factory, her dad had told her that things like that didn't happen in America. Amazing how we sometimes bury our heads in the sand when we hear things we don't want to accept.



I highly recommend this book. Pick it up and read it if you get a chance!  It's one of those books, that for me, the characters stayed with me for quite some time after I was finished turning the last page.  I miss Kimberly and wonder what she's doing now!

Pop over to Adrienne's to see what others are reading.  For October, I plan to pull a dusty hardback copy of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe down to read.  It's just a small book with only a few of his stories in it, but quite appropriate for an October read I think!

Stitchin' Weather

Fall time is in the air - the scent is strong - and with that my fingers are itchin' to be stitchin'.

At work fall time for me means inventory season.  (Yes, that IS a season and not one that makes me grin!)  The days are long and dusty and weekends are pretty much non-existant.  The company I work for has seven retail stores up and down the Pacific coast line and three warehouses in three different states.  Being the inventory control guru, it's part of my job to make sure that the stores are in good shape and ready for their counts as well as going back to the stores on the weekends that their actual counts are scheduled.  All of that to say that even with the blustery fall weather, my stitching time is very little right now.  I have managed to squeak out a darling little pumpkin hat for Mazzy Kaye and have started a Working Man's Beanie for a Christmas present.

Last night I was wandering around etsy and came across this super sweet Alphabet Tree Girl embroidery pattern.  I instantly fell in love with the little girl reading in a tree;  picturing this darling pattern on a canvas bookbag.  The pattern found it's way to my shopping cart and I checked out.  When my pattern came in my email box just moments later, I read all the notes from the seller with glee which led me here to Nicole's blog, Follow the White Bunny, which in turn led me to Feeling Stitchy where I came across a super fun embroidery contest.

Covered in Stitches is a Feeling Stitchy contest that involves embroiderying a piece of art based on the cover of a book.  You can make your piece to look just like a favorite book cover or you can interpret that cover with your own imaginings.  The sky is the limit and what a wonderful contest for those of us who are not only book lover's but embroidery lover's as well.  Pop over to the Feeling Stitchy contest post for the rules and to see what the wonderful prizes are! 

I love to embroidery in the evenings and haven't done it nearly enough the last couple of years.  I'm super excited about this and have a couple idea's kicking around in my head.  It'll be so fun plus the finished pieces will make great Christmas presents for some other book lover's I know!

Sew tell  me - do you have any fall projects going on?  What are they?

Super Hero's to the Rescue

Super Noah, Guardian of the Galaxy, just turned 4!

Super Hero's were flying all over the park in the fight against evil.

The smallest Super Hero has the power of cuteness~

Not a single bad guy would have dared come near this bunch!

Happy Birthday, Super Noah!

Turn the Page...Tuesday

Where the heck did August go and how is it possibly time for Turn the Page...Tuesday again?  Sheesh!!

August was full of our daughters wedding and an eleven day work road trip, so reading wasn't top priority or even possible some days, but looking back, I am surprised to find that I still managed to finish a couple of books.  One of them was wonderful and one was painful.  Below are my reviews -
The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw


My rating: 1 of 5 stars


Hmmm...what to say about this book. It sounded interesting and I was looking forward to reading it - the plot was a seven year old murder that somehow was tangled around the lives of two different families, a clandestine love affair and summer on Cape Cod. Sounded intriguing. What I found was a disjointed novel describing the events that lead up to the murder, interspersed with present-day drama from the families involved. I felt that the author didn't do a good job of jumping from one time frame to another or from one character to another. It seemed very abrupt.

Betsy was the woman murdered; I felt nothing for her as her character was not given any time or depth. Marcella, the woman having an affair with the murdered woman's husband, is now, seven years later, having an affair with the murdered woman's son since his father had died of heartbreak after the murder. Can you say yuck? I kept reading, thinking the plot would redeem itself, but towards the end, I found myself just skimming so that the pain would end.

View all my reviews

Thankfully my next choice was wonderful!

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I loved this book! I usually mark my favorite passages and quote them in my review, but it would be simply ridiculous to tap out all 451 pages, now wouldn't it?




This book grabbed me right from the beginning and kept me turning pages long into the night. I'm really impressed with the writing style and the ease that the author takes us from one persons perspective to another throughout the entire story. I really felt that the characters all had a lot of depth to them, letting the reader either connect with a character or loathe them. Not being from the south myself, this isn't a lifestyle that I am familiar with, but Kathryn Stockett wrote the stories so that I feel as if I was there. She picked such a hard time in the south to set her story in. A time when racial tensions were running extremely high and horrible things were happening to both the blacks and the white "sympathizers". We meet Miss Skeeter, a young woman who was raised and loved by her family maid. Skeeter wants to find out what happened to the woman who raised her and she wants to make some changes that will make life easier for the black families in America. Being a writer, Skeeter sets off to interview as many maids as will talk to her, telling their stories about the hardships, and pleasures, they have found working for white families. Jackson, Mississippi is one of the most dangerous places at this time and Skeeter and the maid's that finally agree to talk to her for her book are in great danger everytime they meet. Emotions are high when the book finally goes to press. Will the people of their community read it? Will they know who the people in the stories represent, even though names have been changed? Was it worth the risk?

Okay - I'll do it. Here are two of my favorite passages-

Minny is one of the maids that Skeeter is interviewing. It took awhile to talk her into it, but she finally decided to do it. Skeeter has to be really careful with Minny, making sure that she doesn't scare her off. In this passage, Minny is talking to her friend Aibileen, who Sketter is interviewing as well.
'"Oh, fore I forget, Miss Skeeter wants to come over early Tuesday night," Aibileen says. "Bout seven. You make it then?"

"Lord," I say, getting irritated all over again. "What am I doing? I must be crazy, giving the sworn secrets a the colored race to a white lady."

"It's just Miss Skeeter, she ain't like the rest."

"Feel like I'm talking behind my own back," I say.


In this next passage, we are listening to Minnie again, after a tough run-in with her mean husband.
' "I guess I got to go," I say, even though I'd rather spend the rest of my life right here in Aibileen's cozy kitchen, having her explain the world to me. That's what I love about Aibileen, she can take the most complicated things in life and wrap them up so small and simple, they'll fit right in your pocket.'

If you haven't yet read "The Help", pick it up. You will be so glad that you did!
Today I took myself to a matinee showing of The Help.  Like all movie's, they left out a few important parts, but all in all they did a really good job of following the story line and I really enjoyed the movie.  Yeah!

Pop over to Adrienne's Some of a Kind to find out what others have read this month...Where had your reading taken you?

The Bride Wore White

September 3rd and a hint of fall in the cool breeze blowing this morning reminds me that summer is almost over and has gone so fast.  Fall is my favorite time of year, so I'm not sad, just looking back in wonder of where the time all went. 

(Riff walking Brittany across the footbridge to give her away)

Much of it was taken up this year with wedding preperations for our daughter, Brittany. August  13th found much of our family gathered on Puget Sound as Brittany and Chris promised to love and cherish each other for the rest of their lives.  Chris' Aunt Karen and Uncle Sam's house provided the spectacular setting for the perfect wedding day.  The weather was absolutely perfect, the flowers divine and the guests charming.

(The happy couple shortly after the ceremony)

Chris' Aunt Diana did an incredible job taking wedding pictures.  What a talented lady. 

Thanks so much to all who made the festivities.  It was such a wonderful day!

"Dance Little Jean a prayer that you had was answered today;  your Mama's marrying your Dad."

~Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Waiting Room Friends

While sitting in the waiting room in Internal Medicne at OHSU waiting for Shilo today, a son wheeled his Mom into the room, parking her in the empty spot next to the chair I was sitting in.  We said our "Hello's", me making the assumption that she was the patient and her son was bringing her to her doctor appointment. 

Soon a nurse popped out of the patient room doors and called out a name.  As the son, in his 50's, got up to follow the nurse through the swinging doors, his Mom called out, "David?  Do you have your list of questions?"  "Yes Mom", he answered holding up a notebook.

David's Mom, probably in her 70's,  now looked at me and said, "It's a Mom thing."  I chuckled knowingly, since Shilo and I had just had a similar conversation when she was called back.

I then continued to read my book.  My new friend, glancing over, stated, "Darn!  I forgot my book today."  I asked her if she would like me to find her a magazine.  She just smiled and good-naturedly said, "No thank you.  I'll just sit here and pout." 

Very shortly, Shilo emerged from the nether-regions of the clinic, I said good-bye to my waiting room friend and we were off.

Heading to the car, I told Shilo about our conversation.  She laughed and said that it sounds like a picture of us in 30 years or so. 

Sometimes those short moments with strangers can add so much to our lives.

Have you made a waiting room friend lately?