Naked Trees

You can definitely tell that winter is on its' way. All of the beautiful leaves that were hanging on the trees last week are now scattered all over yards and streets and the poor little trees are so naked. Here are 2 pictures I took last week looking out of my craft room






Beautiful, huh? Look at how colorful those leaves are. My intentions last week when I took these pictures was to run up the road to the state park on the weekend and take lots of pretty pictures. Of course that didn't happen because someone whose name I won't mention (ahem, Will) wanted to paint instead. And now I'm regretting not going because all the leaves are GONE! Oh, our Weeping Willow is still full of leaves, but I suspect those will just fall off without any real color change. Here are 2 pictures of the same part of the yard I just took a second ago. See the naked little trees?





I'm going to miss looking out the windows and seeing beautiful colors everywhere. Buuuut, I'm also excited about winter. I love winter, really. The cold, crisp air, snow (man, I *REALLY* love snow!), all the yummy soups we make for dinner, ice skating, frozen waterfalls. LOVE.IT. Some people hate winter but I really like it. Perhaps it's because I grew up down south, where "winter" is anything under 45 degrees. Y'all think I'm kidding, don't you? Haha Nope. It was a "cold day in Hell" if the mercury dropped below freezing!

And snow. We hardly ever saw snow. Maybe half an inch every 5 years. And the entire 3+ years I lived in Charleston, it never snowed once! Now, where I grew up in SC it would snow maybe .5" every 5 years and then every 10 years or so we'd get a "big" snowfall, which in SC terms means anything over an inch! If the forecast predicted any sort of frozen precipitation, the entire state would shut down. Down south we just aren't prepared for any sort of frozen stuff. The grocery store shelves would be empty, people would be stock piling like they were preparing for Armageddon. Of course if you live down south, you know I'm telling the truth. But people that have never lived down there don't really believe that the entire town/state will shut down until they experience it for themselves.

Back in 2001, my boyfriend moved to SC from New Hampshire, a state which is frozen and covered in snow for something like 10 months out of the year, and he didn't believe me when I told him that if it ever snowed while he was living there that the entire city would go nuts, stockpile like lunatics and then the city would shut down until all traces of snow melted. Luckily for me, within 3 or so months of him moving down we had a HUGE snowfall. Now, huge by SC standards is probably a lot different than say, South Dakota. Or New Hampshire. But it was HUGE to SC. I remember the day like it was yesterday. It started snowing one afternoon around 3:00 and when we got off of work, I took him to the grocery store to show him the pandemonium. He couldn't believe people were acting like that. We took pictures to send to his friends back in NH. The bread aisle was completely empty, no lunch meat, no canned goods, no milk, even the fresh meat section was almost empty. LOL I'm telling ya, people down south ain't playing around when it comes to snow. We ended up with 7 or 8 inches of snow, the town was shut down for 3 days and that was the last time there was considerable snow in SC.

So, now that I just went off on a tangent, lemme get back on track! Yeah, I love winter. Especially winter up here in Maryland, because we actually get a couple of snow days each year. Last December, I was home alone because Will was overseas in Africa, and it snowed a good 6" one day. It was beautiful! Of course the next day it all melted. Boo! Then a day or two after that, some jackass decided to drive a little too fast down a very narrow road leading into our neighborhood, hit a patch of ice, took out some utility poles and we lost power. So, there I was in my old house, freezing, pregnant, no friends or family anywhere around, my husband halfway across the world. It SUCKED! Each time I called the power company, I kept getting the runaround. Oh, the power would be on in 2 hours, then 4, then 6 and finally I spoke to an actual person, explained my situation and told him I needed a straight answer because if the power wasn't going to be on for several days, I needed to know so I could pack my crap and drive down to SC. Yeah, I drove to SC. Ugh!

And the year before that, on Valentine's Day no less, we had a terrible ice storm. Terrible. Like a good half inch or more of ice coating every single surface. We lost power then too, but Will was home that time. Although I was very sick with a terrible winter cold and thought I would surely die. That storm saw us sitting in a old drafty house for HOURS, then trying to find a pet-friendly hotel for the night, finally driving all the way over to West Virginia to stay with Will's aunt & uncle, driving all the way back home the next morning because the power company said the electricity was back on, realizing it wasn't, driving 70 something miles down to Virginia to a pet-friendly motel....on and on and on. It was insane.

Wow, I guess it probably sounds like I don't like the winter very much after all! But I do. When we still have power! And I'm excited that it's only 2 weeks until Thanksgiving. And Christmas is coming too and I love decorating for Christmas! We usually go all out but I'm not sure what we'll do this year. Looks like Will is going to be back in Wyoming for 2 weeks during the holidays so I'm not sure if I'll stay here or fly out there. I don't want to decorate as much as I normally do if I'm not even going to be at home to enjoy it. But, I don't want to sit around a naked house either. Hmm, decisions, decisions.

Oh, here's a picture of my cute little coat I bought at the VV on Monday. It's actually dark black but I had to lighten the picture in order to show the detail of the trim. And check out the brooch. That's the one I won a few weeks ago over at Lisa's Retro Style . Looks fabulous, doesn't it?



Ignore the ugly pink price tag I've yet to remove!

Anyhoo, I suppose I've rambled on enough for one day. I need more coffee, I need to figure out if my 5 year old camera is going to live to see another day so I can take more pictures of stuff for Etsy and I need to let the puppies outside. Oh, and catch up on some of my favorite bloggy pals! Have a great weekend, y'all!

Fall decorating

Man, I have really been out of touch lately. Every day I remind myself I need to come and blog, and more importantly, come and read some of my other favorite blogs but I just haven't found the time to do that.

So, the husband was off of work Monday, which was nice. But it also cut into my thrifting! Instead of going to the VV for 25% off day, we went to Home Depot where I purchased HUGE mums that were "damaged" and thus, dirt cheap. We came home and planted them, I deadheaded the ones that needed it and now they look fabulous again and I'm so glad we didn't pay full price!

Last weekend was spent much the same way as Monday. We did some work in the yard, decorated the porch for Autumn and pulled out some of our Halloween decorations for the yard too. Of course we'll have to bring all of this stuff back inside next Wednesday when we leave for our little trip down to the mountains of Tennessee.

In addition to trying to get all of my stuff ready for our trip next week, I also have to go shopping either today or tomorrow and find something to wear on Saturday, when we go on our little WHITE HOUSE TOUR! Evidently it's some sort of "Friends and Family" tour and not just the regular old tour the average Joe gets to take. And we have to get sort of dressed up. And I don't really own anything "dressy" so I need to go shopping and buy something. I'm hoping the weather cooperates and it doesn't rain and it isn't hot. We were supposed to take this tour in July before our trip to Wyoming but everyone was so busy that it got pushed back. And I'm glad it did because I didn't want to be schlepping around DC in July with 100% humidity, trying to look "dressy".

Well, that's about it for now. Here are some pictures of the fall decorations.







These pictures are CRAP but I haven't gotten around to taking better ones yet. Maybe I can do that today!

I can feel Autumn in the air...

..and I freaking LOVE IT! It was definitely crisp outside this morning when I let the dogs out. Now, I will admit, crisp to me probably means something different than it does to you. Well, if you have lived in a place with 4 seasons your entire life anyhow. See, I spent 26 years of my life in SC where we only had 2 real seasons. Summer and almost summer. Haha! There were numerous times where it would be Christmas and still be warm enough to wear shorts. So, having moved to Maryland two years ago, I am thoroughly enjoying having 4 distinct seasons. I wish winter was a little more, well, winter-y with snow and whatnot, but it's still a very pleasant change from SC. I swear I can see some leaves starting to change color too. It's very slight but I can see it!

Fall is my absolute favorite time of the year. I wish I could just live in a place that was fall all the time. I have started putting out some of our Fall accessories around the house and I hope to get some mums planted soon. I think I need to call Merry Maids to give the house a good once-over because I am just not motivated at all to clean my house lately. I need to give it a good deep cleaning though so I can finish putting out all of the fall decorations.

Lately, I have been OBSESSING about a house Will and I put an offer in on last spring that we didn't get. I think about this house at least several times a day and I am feeling kind of heartbroken. I do like our current house but I really feel like we just settled because we were getting down to the wire as far as our lease was concerned and we'd already put offers on a couple of houses and didn't get them in the end. So, when we saw this house, we kind of jumped on it because we were just so burned out with looking and this place would work. The house I keep thinking about needed a lot of cosmetic work, but it was so huge and was on a couple of acres and I am just sad that we didn't end up moving in there. I do like the conveniences in the town where our current house is located. We're very close to a lot of things, including downtown Baltimore, so that's a nice perk. But the other house was out in the country and had so much room and I think that's the part I'm missing the most. I still feel like this house we're in now is just too small for us.

Now that I'm done having a pity party, I'll let you know about my fabulous time at the thrift stores yesterday. I was planning on going to the Ghetto Thrift on Tuesday but I forgot that we had to take the dogs to the vet for their yearly check-up that day. So, after the vet appointment, Will and I had to drive around and try to find matting for some prints we needed framed. The first AC Moore told us that if they had to order us any matting it would be over $100! They are obviously outta their freaking minds, especially considering I can buy it at Hobby Lobby for a couple of dollars. Never mind that we don't actually *have* any Hobby Lobby stores around here but I would rather wait until I'm back down in SC to pick some up at the HL in my parents town than to pay over $100 for some cardboard!

Anyhow, we drove to another AC Moore which is up above Baltimore and as we were leaving the first AC Moore, I found a new (to me anyhow!) thrift store. YAY!! It's a Value Village which is the name of the thrift store across from the base that I used to go to every week but is now too far away to justify driving to. Well, imagine my delight in seeing one that is only a couple of miles from my house!! Unfortunately, we were in a hurry and I didn't have time to stop but I knew I'd be back before the week was over.

And that's exactly what I did yesterday morning. I got up at a reasonable time and headed out to the Value Village. I should start using VV instead of having to type the whole name out. Man, how's that for lazy? Anyhow, this store is huge and so organized but the prices are kind of ridiculous on some items. I found a fabulous little wooden sewing box for $5 and saw a ton of milk glass stuff that I passed on. I think they have a sale on Monday's where everything is 25% off so that's going to be my regular day there!

Then yesterday afternoon after the husband got home from work, we had to run a couple of errands and I asked if he'd ride with me to the Ghetto Thrift (hereafter known as GT!) and bribed him into saying yes by offering to buy him a snowcone along the way! He agreed and even came inside with me! I get 25% off everyday at this thrift store so which day I go on doesn't really matter. I managed to spend 23$ and came home with two huge bags of stuff. I picked up 5 or 6 Blue's Clues VHS tapes for my niece. She's 19 months old and obsessed with Blue's Clues and it's impossible to find anything related to Blue's Clues in regular stores anymore. So, I bought those for her and they were only 75 cents each. Much cheaper than the ones my sister found on Ebay that had shipping costs of $40!! I also picked up the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown VHS for myself and I'm going to have Will burn it onto a DVD for me and then I'll send the tape down to my sister.

I also bought a cute little juice pitcher, one of those little chopper jars, a package of vintage napkins/coasters that have the Esso/Exxon Tiger on them but that tiger looks a lot like the Clemson tiger so I'll probably send the napkins to my sister since she's a huge Clemson fan. How come I never find any vintage Florida Gators items anywhere?!?

Well, the husband is gone for the day. He flew down to Tennessee for a couple of hours and I've been staying busy around the house. I'm currently sipping on some apple cider and trying to decide if I want to go back to the GT or not because as I was leaving yesterday afternoon, I noticed quite a few books that needed to come home with me but I could tell Will was beyond ready to leave so I didn't get them.
I'm thinking I need to go back, what do you think??