Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving, we celebrated with lots of family at my brother & sister-in-law's house. We had so much food and family fun.

The girls were silly, as usual... I like this picture, with my sweet grandma in the background:

Keith was considering a career in farming...on his first John Deere tractor...

Grace is taking piano lessons - fascinating for the other kids...

and I couldn't resist taking a picture of all these wonderful desserts! we had two kinds of cheese cake, a couple of chocolate pies, a couple of pumpkin pies, pumpkin cupcakes, pumpkin bread, pumpkin mousse, a jello/whipped cream dessert, and a coconut cream pie... I had a terrible time deciding which ones to eat!

dino stuff

For Christmas this year, I made my nephew a dinosaur scarf and hat. so fun. I can't wait to see him wear these!

sweater hat

one of my co-workers was throwing out this old sweater the other day, so i grabbed it...and made myself a hat out of it. i really like this hat! and it is warm! i've been wearing it around the house this weekend...my husband likes to make fun of me for that... :-)

a quick get-away

We went back to the Hocking Hills for an overnight get-away. I took a long weekend off work and we went back to Thunder Ridge cabins. We took 2 pretty long, hilly hikes (I'm feeling it in my legs a little still!) - the rim trail at Conkles Hollow and another long up-hill trail at Clear Creek park. We couldn't have asked for nicer weather or more beautiful scenery for our time!

hats and scarves

This year is going to be a home-made Christmas. I've been working on things and looking for ideas for several weeks and today I finished hats and scarves for 2 of my nieces. Thanks to some amazing creative bloggers, I found a great tutorial for a hat....

and then another tutorial for a scarf...

and then I added some of my own embellishments...flowers and butterflies and buttons...

I thought it turned out pretty cute :-)

birthday silliness

My dad and my sister share a birthday (a few years apart, of course) on November 9. This year, mom & dad came to columbus to celebrate with everyone. I didn't get any pictures of the birthday people, just of the kids being their silly selves (well, mostly Caroline... and Ben in his fireman hat).

birthday slippers

my newest experiments: pajama pants and slippers. i sort of made up my own pattern for both, and gave them to my sister for her birthday. i haven't heard any updates from her on how she likes them, so hopefully they were as comfy-cozy as i was hoping for!

i appliqued a kitty on a t-shirt for her too: