It is lovely having a few days off of work!!! Had a good Thanksgiving with some of my immediate and extended family. The only thing I don’t like about vacation is how fast the days go. Faster than a speeding bullet …. sludging through peanut butter.

The other evening I learned a new photoshop trick: how to make a damask pattern. And all night long I was designing them in my sleep, only I could never actually get anything finished. In case there is anyone out there who doesn’t know what damask is, it is an offset repeated decorative pattern. Learning this will be handy for cardmaking. Once I come up with some actually good patterns, that is.

Here is one I made that I affectionately call:

And antoher one I threw together called:

And

wherein the pattern looks like it’s embossed. So many options, so little time. Right now I have a dozen things I need to be doing including but not limited to: packaging the rest of the fried hamburger for the freezer, folding and putting away laundry that’s been in the basket for 2 days, trying out the new dvd/vcr player, making enchilada soup for supper, editint the J Overholt family pictures, going for a walk, working some more on the church calendar. Well, you get the picture!

Don’t you love my creative names?? It’s good I don’t have kids cause they’d end up with names like Junior 1, Junior 2, Junior 2b or something like that.

Here is a snowflake one I put together:

Oh, yeah, you can angle the pattern at any degree.

Change the effects and colors.

And that’s just the beginning. In the mean time, I’ve things to do. Hope you’re weekend is fun (and going slower than mine.)

 

So tell me, what do these two pieces of furniture have in common?

 

Maybe more than you think:

1. They both are furniture. (Duh.)
2. They both have drawers. (Another Duh.)
3. They both belong to me. (Maybe Duh but you didn’t know if I just borrowed it or not.) (Duh.)
4. This list is really Duh.

See, I’ve been wanting a nightstand to add to my bedroom. I’ve never had a complete matching bedroom set, and that’s really not a problem with me because I’m more of an eclectic person anyway. But I’m afraid my furniture is probably too eclectic to even be eclectic. It probably plain long clashes.

While we were in Tennessee for a family reunion …. did I even tell you we were in Tennessee? I bet you saw my header up there ^ and thought we have beautiful fall leaves here too. You didn’t think that?? Good! Whew!

Well, let me just tell you, it is still green here. We should be getting a hard frost in the next couple of weeks or so. I just picked 6 lovely jalepeno peppers from our garden the other day plus several green bell peppers. And we have ornamental corn that has tiny ears on it although that probably won’t actually have time to ripen before the weather gets cold.

We live in the semi-tropics I tell you and we just don’t have hardwoods that turn brilliant colors. The Bradford pears usually have spectacular color once a hard frost comes. If they haven’t all defoliated (?) by then.

So while were on our way to Tennessee I openly drooled over the brilliant colors and was sad that I couldn’t take more pictures. Surely at the campground there would be lots to photograph. We ate a picnic lunch at a lovely rest area.

 

 

Once we got to the campground west of Nashville, we noticed most of the colorful leaves were already on the ground so I gave up that dream.

And I only took 2 pictures at the reunion. Here is one of them:

My uncle Harold bravely striding back toward the main meeting room. He is a used car salesman and would be very happy to purchase a car for you if you need one. I’ve purchased the last 3 I’ve owned from him.

Anyway Lois and I went junk/antique shopping while were were there and I found a nice little night stand that someone had done a shabby-chic job on it. And I wanted to find one that I could paint and since this one had already been painted and I could just paint over it. Nice. $35. That was nice too.

And I found a tree:

But they had a No Trespassing sign so I didn’t go inside the fence.

So anyway, this past Saturday I finally had time to paint the nightstand. It is far from perfect but if you see it hopefully you’ll be far enough away to not notice the blemishes. I found antique gold paint at Walmart in the crafts which came pretty close to matching what was on the chest of drawers. And get this … the pulls on the chest of drawers are pewter. Pewter with antique gold?? It looks okay on the chest but the night stand (Yeah, the pulls are kind of odd here. They were left over from Lois’ bathroom when she decided she wanted black pulls after all.).

So now what do they have in common?

 

You probably don’t want me to start another list. Mine are kind of dumb.

And we’ve been to Tennesse and back.

And my bedroom furniture is still eclectic. See the footboard there? I’ve been wondering what that would look like painted black…..

This is the third year in a row for this particular campground and it has more memories attached to it. The bathroom/shower houses are still as spiderwebby, the one toilet still rocks, the cabins are no more insulated than before, the commercial ovens still take long to heat up, but each year we add to the bank of memories.

This year seemed a little more laid back than usual. Could be a variety of reasons. This past year was a big one for our church: the loss of a beloved minister’s wife, saying good-bye to husband and son who moved to Ohio, 2 ordinations for ministers within 2 months of each other, as well as other individual ups and downs. God is faithful through it all and our service Sunday morning service was another reminder of who He is.

I decided to go with all b&w for this slide show. I tend to stick mostly to color so this hopefully will give a different twist to the slideshow. When you eliminate color, you eliminate some distractions and hopefully focus better on the subject. For some reason I have more faces that activities captured here.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!

The random number generator chose #26, the number of the comment left by Theda.

Congratulations, Theda! Hope you enjoy your picture! I will send you a message for more information.

Thanks to everyone who participated!! You all found many lovely things about fall. And you made me hungry! I happen to love everything pumpkin and apple as well.

May your fall continue to be lovely!

Free to a good home:

11×14 of the following print

(you will be able to pick a different verse or choose no verse/saying at all)

What you need to do:

leave a comment and tell us what your favorite part of fall is, or a favorite seasonal food.

 

How long is the contest open:

from now until midnight on Sunday night

 

You should be able to leave a comment even if you don’t have xanga site. If you leave a comment as an anonymous commenter, please leave your first name. For those of you with facebook, I will only be choosing from the comments left here, to keep it simpler.

A random winner will be chosen on Monday.