first snow of the year

Well, we had a little bit of snow last night - it is still on the ground, but since tomorrow and Saturday are supposed to be plus 9, I don't imagine it will stay. At least I HOPE it gets up to plus 9 - I've got sheets on the clothesline!

We had a nice weekend with brother Phil and his wife, Janet, up on Friday night. They left their much-loved VW Rialta with us for the winter. They brought their lovely dog, Tasha, with them. Tasha is a very calm, easy going doggie - but as usual our 4 cats vacated the downstairs until she left. Funny, none of our cats get along particularly well (other than Nibbles and Buddy who are mother and son) but when there is a dog in the house, all internal battles are temporarily set aside while they all retreat to the safety of our bedroom - where they sit on the bed - one on each corner until the dog leaves. Nothing like a common threat to bring a family closer together - hahahaha

Then on Sunday we had our final NASCAR race of the season. Bill and Andrea came up and much to our disappointment our driver, Carl Edwards, failed to hold off Tony Stewart who wound up winning the championship by just a point or two. Oh well - it's been a good season - we're all looking forward to next year.

Guess it will soon be time to get the house decked out - I don't like to start much before early December, though. If I get the stuff up too early, I'm sick of it by Christmas. I would like to try my hand at some new Christmas-y recipes this year. I've been watching Martha Stewart and I'm inspired! (I did feel she went TOO far in turning turnips into candle holders.....)

Today's picture is taken from my front door this morning - just a bit of snow!

busy weekend

we had a busy enough weekend. Showed some houses yesterday afternoon and again this evening.

Today Kris took our old queen size mattress and box-spring into Jamie and Julie's. They've been using an old double bed we bought Jamie about 7 years ago. I think they'll like the newer pillow-top queen size. They moved into their 2 bedroom apartment last week - no fun for Jamie lugging stuff up 3 flights of stairs.

Although it is quite mild (for November) we saw a couple of deer around the house today. In fact, Rick walked into the living room to find one starring in through the window! We'll have to keep a camera handy!

Last week we picked up a used pellet milll - this will enable us to make our own pellets to burn in the pellet stove - the only way to go!!! I don't know if Rick will get it up and running to make many pellets before the winter, but next year we plan to make our own. Apparently one can make them out of paper, leaves, sawdust etc. Sawdust isn't too hard to come by as there are several lumber mills out here and our neighbour has a lot of it in his barn - and paper and leaves - well that's just lieing all over the place! We're hoping to make at least half or more of our own pellets next summer.

The pellet stove is working out very well - we don't have it running full time - just putting it on low in the evening to run at night - generally, we shut it down during the day - but as it gets colder, I'm sure we'll have it going all the time.

Last week was Halloween and we had about 25 - 30 trick or treaters - we're still eating left-over candy and chips! hahaha - we still decorate the house for the kids - they always look for my giant pumpkin - quite visible from the road.