Thanksgiving

 

As the sunsets on the last of the pumpkins, it's time to embrace the fact that spooky season will be taking a brief pause for Christmas.  

One year we didn't get together with friends and relatives, so we tried to skip the usual Thanksgiving trappings and just treat it as any other day. That threw me off so much I barely got the presents wrapped in time for Christmas.

Now we make Thanksgiving Dinner - no matter what! 

Besides turkey and pumpkin pie the other menu requirement (for me anyway) is cranberry sauce. I like that it's colorful and smells good when it's cooking. Someone must actually eat it, or is it one of those dishes you take a tablespoon of and just push around on your plate?   

This year His Madness also made some pumpkin bread. It was really made with butternut squash but nobody cared. These little pumpkins were hard as rocks and only good for decorations and future compost material. 

 

During the frenzy of cooking, The Skeleton Crew decided to put together the playhouse I ordered for Spenser back in October. It seemed like it would be a good place for him to hideout during the hours of Trick or Treating. 

As these things go, the "universal" directions scared us off and Spenser spent Halloween under the bed, as usual. Once they got started it went together quickly, although Kib was right there to point out all the places where they screwed up.

It's okay, it holds Burt, and that's good enough.

Spencer likes his new hiding house so much he may not come out until Christmas.

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates.

 I'm always thankful that you stop by, see you soon!

Happy Halloween

I hope everyone had a very spooky Halloween.

We had a bit of a challenge in our neck of the woods although we did know it was coming. One of our Trick or Treaters told me "so what if it's cold and snowing, we couldn't miss free candy day".  

This is what was left of seventy-two candy bars after two hours of Trick or Treating at 30°F.  through an inch of snow. They were awesome!  

Our front porch decorations were heavily influenced by a couple of botched jobs the electricians left us with after their visit last week. The Jack-'O-Lantern lamp post did a good job of covering up the missing light fixture and we found enough extension cords to stretch to the back of the house where there is an actual working outlet. Half of the lights on the garland that goes around the door were out so we skipped putting that up. It was kind of a mess but I doubt if anyone noticed.

The one thing I've learned from all the mishaps and annoying problems we've had this fall is to take the time to appreciate it when things do go well.

It's easy to take good luck for granted.

Now, it's probably time to start preparing for next Halloween.

Right after the electricians come back.

Sadly, this was as close as anyone in our household came to a costume this year. The sun came out for awhile yesterday morning, just long enough to cast some pretty bizarre shadows on Spenser. He could almost pass for a monotone Cheshire Cat.

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon!