Hello and happy Monday!!! I started a new coffee share on the blog yesterday. If you missed it, check it out here. I think it will be a lot of fun.
The temps here have been so warm and dry. There are burn bans everywhere. We desperately need rain.
It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving is Thursday. Mark and I are going to my nephew’s house, but I will be making a few things to take with me for the dinner. I will tell you it won’t be a pecan pie. I made one last week for Mark. I forgot I had the oven set high and it burned. It was terrible. Poor Mark tried to dig it out to eat it, but I wouldn’t let him. It was just too bad. I threw it out and promised him another one soon. I don’t know why pecan pies are always tricky for me, but they are. Sometimes good sometimes bad.
I did make a blueberry cobbler that turned out pretty well. I gave half of it to my nephew.
We put up our Christmas tree over the weekend. Someone at work just ask what colors I used and if there was a theme? We have had this tree for about thirty years. I put clear lights on it, and it is decorated with the ornaments that we have collected over thirty plus years of marriage. I love it!!! Every year when we start to decorate it, we pull out all of our ornaments and talk about where we got each one. It may sound boring but to us it is a treasure. I do change the topper out occasionally. I haven’t decided for this year yet.
I have been working on these Christmas ornaments for a week. My friend Annie from work sent me a TikTok video on them and I just loved the idea. I bought clear ball ornaments from Walmart. You can get them just about anywhere this time of year. I used double pointed needles size 5 US. It doesn’t take a lot of yarn so this is a great way to use little bits of yarn from previous projects. I cast on 23 to 24 stitches depending on the yarn weight. Leave a long tail when casting on. I knitted a little pouch about 3.5 inches long. You then thread a darning needle and run through the loops on the bottom and pull together. Do the same thing at the top but put your glass ornament in first. Weave in the ends on the top and bottom. They’re so easy and knit up really quick.
This is some cotton yarn, and it is thinner. I had to cast on 25 for this one. I am a relaxed knitter so that means my stitches tend to be looser. The best thing to do is just knit a few inches, before you get too far, and see how the glass ball will fit into it. I had a bit of trial and error.
This yarn and the one below was thicker, and I only had to cast on 22 stitches for this one. However, don’t knit beyond the 3.5 inches in length for a regular sized ball or you will have a pouch that is too big.
This is what it looks like before you put the ball in and pull the top to make it tight.
I plan to make a few more of these and put them in a bowl on my table.
So, Thanksgiving and Christmas are definitely in the air around here. Have a wonderful week!!!
Last week was a bit of a whirlwind. I worked on Monday and then on Tuesday I left with two of my coworkers and headed to Gatlinburg TN for the annual gift show. It is actually two shows in three cities, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sevierville. All of those are very close to one another. We go to the shows every year to shop for souvenirs for our gift shops. It is so tiring. It is three days of shopping for things that may or may not be of interest to you personally. Also the vendors can get quite aggressive jumping in front of you to show you their products. It is a lot of sensory overload with hundreds of booths set up with so many different types of displays. As always I feel like we get a good selection and variety of products for the coming year. It is a fun trip but after three days we are always glad to get back home. I will give you an idea of some of the different vendors that were of interest to us.
There are lots of food vendors and lots of samples that is definitely a perk to the show. This particular booth had corn flake chewy candy and it was so yummy. Often it is the different unexpected things that people are looking for when they are traveling.
I thought this booth was very interesting. This was a flower farm. They dried their flowers and made postcards, photos and larger pictures. The flowers were beautiful and I love the concept of using the dried flowers. I am not sure if this is something that would work for us. The price point was pretty high.
One thing that we always look for is rocks and different types of stones. People expect to see that when they visit a cave. I thought this Rose Quartz was beautiful.
O.K. I don’t know if this is popular where you live but here it is. Freeze Dried Candy. I am not a fan of it myself but all of the kids at work absolutely love it. I think we saw more of this at the show than anything else.
More Freeze Dried Candy
Aren’t these hearts adorable I loved them and actually wanted every single one of them. I love hearts!!!!
Lots of plush animals. We sell some of the smaller plush but the larger animals are not great sellers for us. I love all of them look at this adorable lamb.
These small punchkins are something I think will be a good seller for us. They are so cute.
We bought several of these water bottles which are also a hot seller right now. I can’t wait to get them in because I am going to buy the “Great Women of Science” bottle.
We also have a Sweet Shop on the property and we sell Ice Cream, Candy, Fudge and Drinks. I think these mugs will do very well there.
And more rocks. I love to look at all the different types.
Just to give you an idea of all the different vendors. This was taken at the Gatlinburg show. We were upstairs looking down into the ballroom.
One of the perks of the show is that we get to eat at a lot of really fun places. The first night of the show we ate at Little Tokyo Hibachi Grill & Sushi in Pigeon Forge. It is a very unassuming looking restaurant with only a few grills and a few tables. We got there really early and at first I wasn’t too sure about the place. We were seated at one of the grills quickly, as I said it was early, and we were joined by a few of our other cave buddies. About fifteen minutes after being seated I stepped back to the front part of the restaurant to take a phone call and it was packed with a line out the door. The wait time was approximately one hour at that time. After we had our food cooked, and served right in front of us, I could see why the wait to get in was so long. The food was amazing. I got chicken and shrimp and I think it was the best I have ever had. I will definitely return with my husband. He would love it.
The next day we ate at Cookie Dough Monster. This place has some of the best burgers you will ever eat. I was a little confused about the burgers, which I had heard people rave about, and the edible cookie dough. What was the connection. Obviously there is no connection. They just happen to sell the best burgers and the best edible cookie dough. Oh and milkshakes too.
There are about sixteen different types of burgers, Betty White, The Island, Mac Daddy, Bleu Bae and BBQ Bacon and Bacon Bomber are just a few of the burgers that are offered. I got the BBQ Bacon and it was delish. Just a little messy.
We also tried some of the edible cookie dough. I have had some of the cookie dough in other places and I never found it too appetizing. This edible cookie dough was delicious. We got, White Chocolate Macadamia Nut, Brownie Bite, and Heath Caramel.
But I have to say the highlight of the trip was being able to visit Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort. It is located in Pigeon Forge. Every year several of the vendors sponsor a dinner for some of the different groups attending the show. On Wednesday night we were treated to a wonderful dinner with our cave friends from several different caves. The resort is so beautiful. They have it decorated for Christmas, inside and out. If you are interested in a stay here just visit www.dollywood.com and click on the resort. I will warn you it is pricey. We didn’t actually stay here we were just here for dinner.
We arrived just before dark so we had a chance to look around outside.
The dinner was very nice and delicious. We shared different things we had found at the show and got some good ideas from others that were there. And we also got a very nice swag bag.
The lights outside were so beautiful.
Enjoying the lights with my swag bag.
The last day we were in Gatlinburg and we ate at Jason Aldean’s Rooftop Bar and Restaurant. The food was pretty good but the view from the second floor was great!!! We had a seat overlooking the strip and then a beautiful view of the mountainside. Lots of fall colors still going on here. Oh and a real “Big Green Tractor” inside the bar.
Look at this fall color still hanging on. Of course this is the smokies and the temps here are cooler than in the valley where we are.
We got home late Thursday night and it was back to our regular work on Friday. Over the weekend I worked on these knitted yarn ball ornaments. I will show you more about those in a later post. But I will tell you I am loving making them.
Well here we are the beginning of a new week and almost the end of another month. October, where did you go???? I love October and it went by so fast. I love the leaves falling it makes me feel like I am in leaf globe instead of a snow globe. What a week and month this has been.
I fully intended to post a Friday Favorites post on Friday evening after I got home from work. But when I got home I realized our internet was not working. Remember I live in the boonies in the woods so no internet service means no phone calls or anything. I tried a few things around the house like unplugging everything and resetting the router, you know all the troubleshooting things to try. Nothing worked. It was almost time for Mark to get home so I drove to the top of the driveway where we do have touch and go internet. I called and told him what was going on. He has an app for our internet service. He checked and sure enough it was a wide spread outage. Internet should be restored before 6:00 AM the next morning. WHAT???? how would we survive?? Just kidding I can survive very well without internet it just makes me nervous not having a phone. I was hoping it wouldn’t be that long and it wasn’t. The internet was back up within a few hours but not enough time for me to post my blog. I will save the Favorites for next Friday and have even more favorites to share.
There are a few things I will go ahead and share about last week. On Tuesday I had quite a surprise when my nephew and his wife and their son stopped by my work to visit me. They are from Jacksonville Florida and had been near our area over the weekend for a wedding. I was so happy to see them and it was a total surprise. I hadn’t seen them in over a year. We had a short but very nice visit.
On Wednesday we had Sister Lunch. If you haven’t read any of my posts about Sister Lunch you can catch up right here: Sister Lunch. My sisters and I started this about fifteen years or so just by going to lunch and then we kept adding people and saying “see you next Wednesday” We always go to a little local restaurant at noon on Wednesday. Through the years the number of people who are able to attend changes weekly. Not only sisters but nieces and nephews and friends and cousins have been to Sister Lunch. We hadn’t met for a few weeks because of sickness, doctor visits, vacations etc so it was great to get back to our old tradition.
We have had very warm days here but the cold weather is coming this week. A ton of leaves have fallen. The leaves have been beautiful but they are really starting to come down.
Look how colorful my driveway is. I just love all the different colors of the leaves. A time to say goodbye to Summer and hello Fall let’s regenerate.
Turkey crossing on my way into work last week.
We have been busy cleaning my father in laws house and getting it ready to put on the market. I know it is hard for Mark to be there and have to clean it out. It’s something that most of us have to go through at some time in our lives.
On Saturday I decided to clean out some of my bookcases and get rid of a lot of old magazines. While I was going through some old books I found a notebook that my mother had started. I am not sure how long ago. She always kept journals but this seemed like a “book” she had started about her and our family. It is hand written in a plain yellow notebook with lined pages. It starts when she is a very young girl and goes until my oldest brother left for the military around 1969. I’m not sure how we missed it when we were going through her things. I have saved several of her journals through the years but this one, if possible, is even more special. I would like to have it printed and bound and give copies to my family. If you have any ideas how to do that or if you have done that I would be interested to hear about it.
I went to visit MIL in the assisted living village. They have it decorated for Halloween and they are giving out candy and treats to the area children and children and grandchildren of the workers and residents. All of the residents get such a joy out of seeing the children dressed up.
I didn’t decorate a lot this year for Halloween. I out up my Spooky wreath that I made last year.
I painted the little orange pumpkins a couple of years ago. They are actually rocks.
How was your week and weekend? I worked my second full week of work at work. This hasn’t happened in a few weeks because of vacation and work travel. For some reason I think being at my work place all week has been even more tiring than all of the travel. Go figure.
Last week we celebrated my nephew Caleb’s Birthday. He turned 20. It’s so hard to believe he can be that old. We had dinner at our local Mexican restaurant that we all love.
His favorite gift was these orange and white overalls. He loves University of Tennessee Volunteers. He is such a fan.
Saturday morning I walked down to the lake and took some pictures. It was quite chilly and a fog was coming off of the water. The temperatures here have been chilly in the mornings and then warming up in the afternoon. I think that later this week the daily highs are supposed to be close to 80 degrees.
A few weeks ago this long beanstalk looking thing started to grow from one of my succulents. I have had this one for several years and it has never done this. It looks like it is going to bloom any minute. There is a close up view of it below. I posted it on FaceBook a few nights ago and several people responded with pictures of their own. I am eagerly waiting to see if it will bloom.
It looks like it will bloom any second.
I have been trying to get outside as much as possible to enjoy the fall colors. Because we had such a dry September our colors haven’t peaked yet. We usually have much more color by this time of the year. Hopefully the next couple of weeks will bring more color.
On Friday after work I met my friend Lorie for a margarita and some Mexican food. It was so yummy and we got some to catch up on some much needed girl time. Saturday and Sunday was the usual laundry, groceries, cleaning and etc. I need to make plans to attend a fall festival or something fally. Fall is my favorite time of year and it passes so fast.
What things have you been up to? Join me on Wednesday I have a wonderful display of fall colors for Wordless Wednesday.
Southern Patches 