POKEY PEAS REFUGEES CHALLENGE for November 2016

Happy Saturday! I hope you are all staying nice and warm this weekend. Even our weather is getting cooler. My dh and I are feeling better after that little cold got us last weekend.

nylene - I knew your cupcakes would turn out great. How many did you make? Oh and your layout of your dgs is so cute! You said you weren't crazy about it but I loved it.

scrapincin - Glad to hear you are up cooking even though your legs are bothering you. I hope your drs can figure out how to make you feel better. Hang in there!

maribeth - Happy you are enjoying those Hallmark movies. I plan to jump in maybe next weekend. How is the decorating coming?

grammadee - Oh boy you are making lots of goodies for the holidays. Like scrapincin , I have not heard of butter tarts either. Sounds good. I think I am gonna try a pumpkin pie this week. I gotta stop by the store and get a few things.

justjac - Congrats to ya! We heard your play was a success! Was it just one performance or multiple shows?

Well another weekend of decorating! So far the little kitty has not bothered a thing. Making good progress, and I may actually get done before the end of my Thanksgiving four day work break. Usually it takes me all four days to complete the job, but we started a bit earlier. Hopefully I will actually get at least one of those days off in order to enjoy my time off.

Mission of Thanks Catch Up

Day 18 - Humor - Not really know for my "sense of humor" but I love to be able to find humor in things that could otherwise be embarrassing or awkward. Without Humor in my life I could easily end up making everything too serious to dark to dramatic. I love a good laugh. So I am thankful for Humor.

Day 19 - Community - I wish I had more of a community in my life. I admire those who have established community with their church families, neighbors, through clubs and other organizations. I have always been working and just really never had the time or the opportunity to be a part of a community. I am thankful for the community I live in as it is a small town, and although we don't socialize with each other as on might think living in a small town, there is a friendly vibe that exists here and I am thankful for that.

Day 20 - Heath - I am so very thankful for my good health. I have been blessed thus far to have not suffered any extensive health problems or issues. I do hope and pray this continues as I get older, but I can not complain, I have had good health.

Now for today - Day 21 - Weekends - Oh Yea! As you all know I am so very thankful for weekends. Of course right now with Holiday Home Decorating I work all weekend, but I am thankful I am able to do that as well. It makes be happy when it is all done. I love the weekends during our camping seasons so that we can go and explore and be a part of nature. I love the weekends the rest of the time for the opportunity to be in my home and with my husband. I sure wish I had more weekend days then weekdays.

Go forth my Pokey friends and have a wonderful Monday!

I think you are an AWESOME host, nylene, with that house full of crafty grandkids! We will still be here when they have gone home again. Bet you and scrapincin are really honed in on preparing the holiday meal. What do you usually serve?

Glad your decorating is going well, and kitty is cooperating, maribeth. I want to start that next week. Hoping to keep it pretty simple this year, but that is what I say every year! This week I am focusing on baking. Got my ginger snaps baked and in the freezer. Almond crisps will be ready to bake tomorrow, and gingerbread people the next day.

How did your pumpkin pie baking go, kellyr21? And did you get your cards made?

Just got home from card playing. Time to post my 30 Days of Thankful prompt, and then I am off to bed...

Sorry - Superstitious - I could not stay at 666 post for the entire day, so..........as a bonus post for you today here is and OLD layout of an animal that I think are one of the prettiest animals around - the Tiger - this is from a trip we took to Arkansas to Turpentine Creek Refuge



Okay, I think I can go on my way now, I should be at 667 posts now!  

A quiet day here today in contrast with the frantic preparations most of you are doing. Dd and the little man will be here for the weekend, but I am waiting until Friday to clean house in preparation for that. She has promised to help me get my Christmas tree and decorations upstairs while she is here, so I want to clear the beginning of next week for decorating (the last half of next week will be spent in Calgary with a couple of little boys), so I want to focus on baking this week.

I rearranged my freezers to free up some room for the baking containers. Have to store what I made yesterday--almond crisps and choco-cherry bells--and then I need to roll out, cut, decorate and bake my gingerbread people. I use baked on icing, so once those little guys are out of the oven, they are FINISHED!

Yesterday I started some cards for my deceased brother's family. I didn't think it was fair to send them all the "Merry & Bright" ones I had already created. Found a SU! stamp that says "Thinking of you this Christmas", and decided to design their cards around that. Finished thoose cards this morning and when I get some light I will post a pic of one.

Here it is:
2016 Thinking of You by Gramma Dee, on Flickr

Wishing you all a wonderful Wednesday! Hope your sister is doing better this morning, scrapincin .

Happy Thursday and Thanksgiving! Wishing all you usa gals a great day. I did cook and decided to make a turkey breast instead of the whole bird. So this is my first time making a breast so I hope it comes out good. I used the dry brine method with salt and it is supposed to make the meat moist and well seasoned. Fingers crossed. So my menu is turkey, cornbread dressing, green beans, sweet potatos, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. I didn't get to make the pie but I do plan to make a pumpkin pie soon. But for now the store bought one will have to do.

nylene- Your Sammie sounds like a "mini Nylene"! LOL! How cute! I hope your cousin's camp went well and your dinner.

grammadee- Your baking sounds wonderful! Also, that is a great idea to bake lots of things ahead of time to share over the season. I still have to get back to my Christmas cards. Are you done with all yours? Not sure how many I will make. I usually sell some and then have some to use with my loved ones. So gotta figure that out.

scrapincin- Oh and am glad your sis is better. Hang in there! Looks like you got a big family dinner coming too. Glad your dgd was able to help. She is a great little helper and I know she will remember these moments for a long time. Hope you enjoy all the football today and this weekend too.

Wow I am really tired! I have been up and going since 5AM. Dinner was nice and I enjoyed spending the day with my family. I wanted to hop in here to let you know they have moved my sister out of Critical Care onto a step down unit. She is still sick but is not requiring the same amount of urgent care. I just know that to me it means she is doing better! I hope you all had a wonderfil holiday and that our sweet Canadian friends enjoyed their day too. grammadee i left you some love in the gallery.

Akellyr21- I glad you got to cook your special meal today and spend it with Ron. Also when you get around to that pie you will really enjoy it.

Ok closing for now but will be back later.

I hit edit as heres a pic of Maggie's surprise for dinner

Maggies cheeseball 2 by Cindy Blair, on Flickr

Hey ladies! I have been lurking lately. I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. Since we had ours last month yesterday and today are just regular days. Except that I got home from work yesterday and discovered our furnace was not working. Since the temperature has been hovering around freezing this was a concern. DH tried to fix it himself, but realized it was a bigger problem than the last time. Fortunately, a repairman was able to come fairly quickly. $750 later we had heat again which I was very grateful for.

kellyr21 thanks for asking about the play. It went really well. We did 4 shows: Wednesday night, Thursday afternoon, Thursday night, and Friday night. We usually do a Saturday show, but the theater was already booked for an event. It was so nice that grammadee and her DH were able to attend.

scrapincin my head is fully recovered. It was just a bit sore the next day, but that was it. I'm glad your sister is doing better. That cheese ball turkey is so cute!

Have you done any Black Friday shopping? I ordered some Izinks inks that I want to try and a few digital kits.  My LSS is having a sale today and tomorrow, so I will probably head there tomorrow. Have a great day!

Hello all and Happy Thanksgiving weekend,

grammadee, I really love your calendar cover page. I wish we could have all went to see justjac's play. I'm so glad you were there to support her in person. I LOVE your winter scene card so much. I need a holiday like how you celebrate boxing day - letting everyone fix their own and do their own thing. Actually I could use a month of that.

nylene, Your Lighting speed title is fantabulous! The layout is adorable too. I laughed at Alex wanting flames on him too -- so cute. Your typewriter cards are adorable as well. Your cousin camp just sounds like so much fun. I want to come join the kids for crafty fun.

scrapincin, so sorry to hear about your sister. I'm glad she is doing better. I will keep her in my prayers. I hope changing your meds helps your legs. Cute Halloween page. I actually have a Thing 1 & 2 page to do as well. Maggie's cheeseball turkey is so festive. I'm sure it was the hit of the day.

maribeth, I'm so enjoying reading your Mission of Thanks posts.

kellyr21, I usually do the wet brine, so I'm very curious as to how dry brine worked?

justjac, that so stinks about your furnace. I feel ya'. I had the chimney people in last month and the inside lining had fallen in (probably last year when the leveled the house). So no fire for us this year, which worries me as we frequently lose electricity in the winter with the snow buildup. Before it was no big deal, just keep the fire burning and I could cook on top of the wood burner if I really needed to. Now I need to get the furnace serviced since it will be our main heat source this year. Glad you were able to quickly get yours back up and going.

I enlisted the help of my family for Thanksgiving dinner this year. I threatened no meal. Since they wanted one, I told them it wasn't fair that I spent all day in the kitchen while each one of them lollygagged around. I made it super easy on them though. DD made the pies with me the day before. I brined the turkey and made all of the appetizers which was our lunch and the stuffing. DS made the rolls. Don cooked the turkey and made the sweet potatoes, potato dumplings, and the cabbage. We played a board game called Talisman. It is the LONGEST GAME EVER!!!! We started around noon, because that's when I served appetizers, we broke to walk the dogs once, and during the finally prep stages of cooking, and for the meal. I died somewhere between 7-7:30. One hour later dd had won the game. It's ds favorite game and I have thus far avoided playing it. Way to long. lol. It was fun though.

Friday, I did order some of my presents from Amazon. I wanted to get Don an ice auger for Christmas and it was the only thing I was really looking for on black Friday sales. But I wanted to get a top rated one and the deals were on lesser quality ones that I'm sure are just fine. But I still purchased one of the top rated ones from my research. It'll probably go on sale next week. Yesterday was reserved for the Netflix Gilmore Girls Year In The Life Episodes. The whole family watched with me.

Today, I took in the king size comforter that doesn't fit in my washer and the rugs as I don't like to put them in my washer. Then I ran errands. The family cleaned off the back wall of the living room. I'm going to start painting tomorrow. It has had ugly purple colored walls since we bought the place. I never want to scrapbook any pictures I take. I realized that it would be at least 2 years before we really tackle that room, so I told Don it had to be painted before Christmas décor could go up. So that will be my week.

Oh, and my computer died. Like will not turn on - died. I was going to order a new one. I'm very particular about my computers. I'm using Don's laptop now. So if you see multiple typos, like a letter thrown in that obviously doesn't go, it's because while typing on the keyboard, the cursor just jumps to another spot. Very annoying in my first world issues. Don's going to take the computer in and see what's wrong with it. Maybe they can replace what's wrong.

One more thing, I think I'm at 107 layouts for the year which is amazing for me and I can thank Calvinball and then our own Calvinball styled event here at 2psRefugees for that number.

Sorry to write a book, but I've been MIA for over a week. I hope to be better, but no promises.

Good evening, Ladies! Nice of you to drop in, nicolep !

Good to hear from you, LisaDV . Thanks for your comments on the cards and pages. Glad you had such a great family centred Thanksgiving, even if the game was a long one. These are the experiences your kids will remember: both the sharing the workload and playing the game.

Those are darling cards, nylene . Left some love in the Gallery. I'm with Lisa on this: would love to join you and the dgk's for Cousin Camp. Sounds like a hoot. It's so cool that when you add an activity, they decide it needs to be added to EVERY cousin camp. Hope you are recovering in your quiet house!

How is your sister today, scrapincin ? Sending healing vibes her way.

How is the home decorating going, maribeth ?

Glad you got the furnace fixed so quickly, justjac . Way too cold to have no heat! It was good talking to you today. Glad you are finally getting some down time after all the work of the play.

We were in town twice today.  This morning, dd & I took the little man in to the function at the school that included pancake breakfast, a book fair, petting zoo, and craft fair.  He was nervous about the mascots (the Grinch and Clifford the big red dog) so we didn't get any photos taken.  Dd & I took turns entertaining him and taking him for laps around the unused hallways in the school so we each had a little time to check out the craft sale. 

Home for nap time (all 3 of us LOL), then back into town for a pizza supper and to watch the Christmas parade.  He went down to sleep really quickly tonight, and dd has gone upstairs to watch Gilmore Girls on her laptop.  So I will be posting the gratitude prompt and then off to bed myself, I think.  Tomorrow the plan is to deep clean the living room and set up the Christmas tree.  That should be fun with help from a 3 year old!

Will let you know how it goes...

Just stopping by to give you an update on my sister. She is doing better everyday but they still do not want to release her. She is still nauseous and having iv antibiotics. They said if this comes back again they will have to remove her entire colon. That would not be a good thing. She is allowed to start back on solid foods but slowly. So I keep praying for her to get completely better and no relapses.

I am going to be in my scrap room later working on a layout and maybe make some tags for Christmas gifts. May be back on here before the evening is over.

Hey everybody! grammadee it sounds like you had a fun day! We got our outside decorations up, but our tree will have to wait until next weekend. I haven't watched the videos yet, but I did finish my layouts for lesson 1. I am linking them in a Your December Story thread. scrapincin I'm glad you and your sister are doing better. nylene your cards are so cute! LisaDV I hope your furnace makes it. It sounds a little nerve wracking to lose your back up source of heat.

My DH and I joined our friends for games night last night. We had a lot of fun. Today we got our grocery shopping done and then I went to a home party selling tea. I sampled quite a few and spent more money. This has been an expensive weekend. I'm off to make my lunch for tomorrow and pick out my clothes. Sleep well.

Good afternoon everyone. Stopping by to post a layout I finished last night at about midnight. But I was having fun with it so had to finish it. Then I was up for another hour and back up at 6:30. I am a little crazy you know. I have been busy today doing chores. I actually had one of the red-tailed hawks in my flower bed this morning and them he went after a bird at the feeders I just put up. I may have to take the feeders down as I am not going to use them as his hunting grounds. I know that it is nature but I am not going to make the birds free grabbing. I was shocked when I heard about the attack at Ohio State today. They are still trying to figure out if it is related to Isis. I just do not understand what is going wrong with this world.

Anyway here's my layout. It should make you smile!

maggies gobbler by Cindy Blair, on Flickr

I will be back later