Mom birthday, dinner and started decorations last week

Mom turned 104 November 23rd.  We celebrated at a restaurant with her wanting pizza. 

Still beats me at checkers and loves to play scrabble.   Her jumble word find books are a favorite also. 

Looking good and we are all so blessed to have her.  God has blessed all of us but especially with Mom still able to get around with walker.  

Bingo is fun for her too. 

Two days later at the place Mom stays put on a wonderful Thanksgiving feast. 

Turkey and all the trimmings.  

Green beans just the way I like them.  Little bacon flavor, vinegar, onions.  

My tree in living room is up.  I  am slow this year as my knee bothers me more now and am scheduled for a TKR in January.   Never thought I would say I look forward to it.  It will be robotic assist. Smaller incision, more perfect placement and will come home same day, well that is if everything else looks good.

I will have some type of bicycle brought to home with a screen that monitors my movement on it and will adjust to give me the right stride and work out.  This is new and looks like just the thing for exercising the joint. 

Living room tree.

Wreaths hung in windows.  All 10

I will be adding more decoration updates on my Christmas blog.

I still have shopping to do. 

More later

Apple muffins, breakfast and getting tree up

Made some apple muffins and they were so good with fresh apples from a Virginia farm.

I went by a recipe I use for fresh cherry muffins.  Used self-rising flour instead of regular flour. In place of milk, I used apple cider for extra flavor.  2 T of dry milk I always keep on hand was added to my dry ingredients.  

Fresh chopped apples I added after combining dry ingredients with wet. They turned out so good.  Sprinkled white sugar on top.  Husband had two at a sitting. 

Fresh Apples instead of Cherry.

Instead of all purpose, I used self-rising plus addition of dry milk. . Omitted baking powder. I used apple cider instead of milk.    

Whisked oil, cider, and egg along with vanilla extract as I didn't use almond extract. 

This morning, I made Beignets.  I love these sweet treats with coffee. 

Sausage, scrambled eggs toast and beignets. Steve takes his on tray to watch the news early.

We eat well here.  Too well. 

Exercise is needed after breakfast

Got my tree up a few days ago and have since decorated it which I will post soon.  It's not looking too good at this point in front of that picture. 

Fluffing small trees 

Happy Saturday

Looking ahead to Thanksgiving and Christmas

 All of our Halloween decorations are down as of yesterday.  Little late getting them down but glad to do so to focus on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  

I did enjoy sitting out late on our sidewalk bench with hot chocolate in quiet at night with the pumpkins lit. These took no time for me to carve. 

We got maybe 10 trick or treaters.  I have two baskets of candy left of Hershey bars, mini cheese balls in individual packets, mini muffins, skittles and two in a pack of cookies and smarties. I always over buy the trick or treats.  Muffins can be good for breakfast as they are individually packaged.  The other stuff I will push on anyone who comes to visit.  

I put back my fall wreath 

Leaves are still turning here.  

from office window

Husband just about finished painting trim on Lavender cottage aka grandchildren playhouse

Nice grey stain on decking.

After a while we will refresh the lavender color on the cottage.  

Thinking about adding on to the rear and of course new prettier door also.

I will purchase or make possibly a little sitting arrangement of some kind in there. 

I purchased a rug from Wayfair to put on floor.

Wiring for electrical is next.  Be a nice little retreat. The grandchildren will put their spin on it as it was originally purchased for them, and they had a good time playing house in there with their little table and chairs along with make believe refrigerator and stove.  They used it to do schoolwork in the nasty covid years. 

Only good thing that came out of that is seeing that school as I knew it growing up is somewhat obsolete.  Going back to school, they stayed on computers to do all their work any way so why not stay home and do it?  There are outside classes or get together with other homeschoolers at science museum and classes offered within the county for art and other activities.  

Throw back to a cute little playhouse at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens we used to take the grand girls to.  This was in 2015

The bay window on this little cottage is so cute and lets in lots of light. 

After taking them here, we had to get one.  I think ours needs a dormer. 

Well enough of memory lane and back to getting my act together for Thanksgiving.  I would really like to rent a place near mountains with fireplace for Thanksgiving maybe next to a little lake. I think it would be a nice little get away somewhere different. 

It's possible.

That's all for now.

Betsy 🍂🍂

Almost Halloween

I will be glad when it's gone actually so I can get my wind beaten decorations out of the front yard.

We have had some wind in the past two weeks off and on.  Just enough to blow things down and around. 

My cats

I light him up at night

I made this man in the moon two years ago. I didn't put my little bats up around him this year.  Maybe next year.

ChatGPT, I altered this picture

I took this a month or so ago at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond Va. and added the ghosts.

Another of a church I took in Bath County Va.

with and without ghosts

This castle in Heidelberg Germany I took in 2007 looks ghostly on its own without being altered. 

another view

It was a rainy evening there as we walked back from the Castle.  The camera I had didn't take the best pictures, but I got this one on that evening with some rain drops and a little snow.

I had to add a ghostly figure rising up from the street. 

 

A tree in Bath County Va and no alter here.  I can see a face in the tree.

Happy Halloween