Random Thoughts

deep dish pecan pie waiting to be baked

Today's sky. Click to enlarge.

1. I want to take a sleigh ride just like in my header picture!

2. I never leave the house on Black Friday. We sleep in, watch football and eat leftovers.

3. I bought 2 Christmas gifts today. I guess that means I've officially started the shopping! I remember a time before we had any kids, when my goal was to be completely done with the Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving! My, how times have changed!

4. The leftover turkey is now in the freezer. Isn't it funny how there is never leftover dessert that needs to be frozen? Maybe that's because I eat pecan pie for breakfast. ha.

5. Today I baked the Halloween pumpkins, which had been upgraded to Thanksgiving pumpkins, ran the flesh through the food processor and froze it for future pumpkin pie, bars and bread. I even roasted the seeds with garlic, worcestershire sauce, butter and salt. Yum.

6. Why is it that fingernails can look nice at a long length but toenails never look good long? haha. I'm only thinking this as I just trimmed the triplet's nails...all 60 of them! :)

7. I have 15 very large gourmet food Christmas gift baskets to make this week. Although it's a lot of work, I look forward to this annual order from an attorney friend. It's an opportunity to be creative and shop for all those fun, beautifully packaged festive goodies which I love.

8. My jeep told me today that my tire pressure was too low. Sigh. I love that...he's so smart and helpful, too! Mmm.

9. I plan on putting the Christmas tree up on Friday when the gift baskets are all done. But I can't find a spot! Mr. Monster Fern is taking up more than his share of the living room!

10. I'm craving popcorn and a Diet Coke. :)

The Orient Express Heads to Scotland!

Well, I'm all dolled up and leaving for Mr. Toast's Christmas Tea!

The tea is next Sunday, December 5th and it is a virtual blog party.

Everyone is invited! Have you signed up yet?

You can do that by clicking HERE.

All you have to do is sign up and visit Mr. Toast's blog on the 5th,

leave a comment and you're there! It's that easy! If you want to

pick out something fancy to wear and show it on your own

blog, you can do that, too. It just adds to the festivities!

I'm leaving early because it will take me all week to get to

the Isle of Mull as I'm traveling by the Orient Express. And since

it's a virtual trip, the Orient Express travels from Ohio straight

across the ocean! Just as magical as the Polar Express!

My bags are packed and I'm ready to go! And be sure to check back each day this week. I'll give you updates on my travels from my sidebar! I'm sure there will be fine dining, luxurious comforts and fun people to meet on the train! All aboard!

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly #10

Because some days you need more than others! And in the spirit of keeping it real,

here is a peak at what's been going on in my world lately...

• Spencer has faked sick at school before. Not only faked sick, but he's poured water on himself, made himself throw up...all sorts of crazy things and then points to the nurse's clinic which means.."Oh, I'm sick and you should call mom!" Well, here's a new twist that I was not expecting. Spencer acted sick at home! He would not get out of bed! I asked if he was sick and he nodded and threw the covers over his head. "OK," I thought, "maybe he is!" I got the other two boys ready. When they left, I saw Spencer tiptoe out to watch them leave! When he saw me, he ran and hid in bed! A few minutes later he was dancing around the house giggling! Hmmm. So, I got him dressed and took him to school! ha. He seemed alright with it and smiled when I left him with his aide. Although, later they told me that he stripped his clothes off and laid on the bathroom floor in protest! haha. They just told him to get dressed and get to class. I told The Mister that if he was not autistic, Spencer would certainly be our black sheep! I could see him sneaking out at night, skipping school, fudging grades on tests, etc, etc. Then we agreed that Alex and Harry would tattle on him! LOL!
• I was in the grocery the other day and was reading a label on a bottle of shampoo. I happened to touch the bottom of the bottle on my stomach, only to find that the bottle had leaked...leaving a circle of shampoo goo on my shirt. Ugh. Unfortunately I had about 5 errands to run that day...and this was my first stop! ha.
• I had a my annual mammogram last week. Everything seemed fine...until they called me back for a second screening! Ugh. Of course, everything imaginable goes through your head...like, "Is it cancer? Why do I do these things right before the holidays? Will I loose my hair with chemo?" Etc, etc. Well, 5 x-rays and 2 sonograms later and they said it was nothing...absolutely nothing and I was completely healthy. Whew! And, "Thank you, God!" Still, I did not need that stressful day! Oh my.

• The Mister had done his last round of yard work last week...raking leaves, one last cutting of the grass and trimming up some things. I didn't pay any attention as I was busy inside...until I was sweeping off the front porch a couple of days later...and noticed that he trimmed the hydrangeas AND the clematis down to the ground! After staring at them in disbelief for a few minutes, I calmly emailed him at work and said. "Hydrangeas and clematis plants do not get trimmed. They look dead, but they come back in the spring." He emailed back and simply said "Oh." LOL! Hmmm....he hadn't trimmed them the other 6 years they had been growing. I guess he was a little too happy with the clippers...which I've since repossessed. :)
• Alex, who loves to put things away, especially trash and laundry, has of course taken that obsession to an extreme. He had begun to compact the laundry so tightly in the bottom of my vintage wicker hamper that he finally stretched it and the seam came apart in the back. The Mister, who insisted he could fix it, repaired it one day while I was off working at an auction. I admit that I was pleasantly surprised at how good it looked! ...until....I began to do laundry the next day and cut my hand and snagged several sweaters on 3 nails...nails that were sticking out in plain site on the inside of the hamper. Oh dear.... The Mister and his "Jimmy Rigging" again! I calmly returned it to him that evening for a little tweaking. The second repair is much better. :)

So, there you have it! Just another week in the Brock house. :) Some times you just have to laugh! So please laugh with me! Oh my. Sigh.

I'm Thankful For You!

Yes, you! All of you fellow bloggers!

Thanks so much for your friendship! You have no idea

how much you mean to me. Some of you are like mothers,

sisters, fathers, brothers and more. You've shown me love

and encouragement and I'm so very thankful for all of you!

While I'm rolling out pie crust and watching rolls rise I

thought I'd take this picture...(don't look too closely as I

have flour in my eyelashes! LOL!)...and just show you how

much I love you, too!

So please accept this kiss and a hug from me to you!

And Happy Thanksgiving!

xxoo

Crescent Rolls

It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without these rolls!

If you want to make them, start today...the dough has to

rise in the refrigerator overnight.

Click HERE for the recipe.

I wish you could smell them!

Off To The Turkey Farm

My favorite part of the prep for Thanksgiving Day is my little trip to

an Amish free range turkey farm, Bowman and Landes in New Carlisle,

Ohio. Their turkeys are "grown in the fresh air and sunshine",

as they advertise! The cutest part is hearing all the turkeys as you

walk in. I always imagine that they are cheering that they made it

through one more day! LOL! Hide Mr. Turkey! :)

Tuesday, I'll go for a little drive and bring home the bird!

Don't forget to count your blessings this week, dear friends!

Holiday Sights and Smells

click to enlarge

Well, for our Creative Tuesday theme of "heaven" I thought I'd do something besides my

regular black ink and colored pencil sketches. A collage sounded fun to try!

I got out a few old magazines, scissors and rubber cement.

I sketched a rough outline on a piece of printer paper and glued

scraps to the paper. It's that easy!

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The holidays are filled with heavenly smells, aren't they?

Especially Thanksgiving Day, with the turkey in the oven..homemade rolls,

stuffing and pie....the house really does smell heavenly!

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And in case you can't quite make out the food on my dinner plate,

we have mashed potatoes and sliced turkey with some gravy over both

green beans, cranberries and a crescent roll. Mmm. :)

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If you'd like to join in on this theme, entries are due on Tuesday, the 23rd.

Click HERE to visit Mr. Toast's blog to sign up or see all the entries after

the due date. Now...I'm off on Tuesday to my favorite free range turkey

farm. They've reserved a little bird just for me. Driving through the

country to pick it up is one of my favorite traditions of the week!

A Weekend With Rhonda Vincent

Do you know her? I must confess that I've never heard of her! And unless you love bluegrass or country music, you might not have heard of her either! Since 2000, Rhonda Vincent has been named Female Vocalist of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association 7 times. The Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music named her Contemporary Female Vocalist of the Year 5 times, Traditional Vocalist of the Year 5 times, and Entertainer of the Year 4 times. She has performed and recorded with Dolly Parton, George Jones and Faith Hill. She has been featured at the Grand Ole Opry more than 100 times as well as making numerous appearances CBS, ABC, NBC and PBS.

*****

Taylor and his good friend Daniel left Friday afternoon for Nashville to stay in Ms. Vincent's Nashville, Tennessee home! Daniel's family just happens to be good friends with her and he comes from a long line of bluegrass singers and performers. Taylor isn't a bluegrass fan, but he's a fan of staying in a celebrity's Nashville mansion for a few days! ha. They have tickets to the Grand Ole Opry. I'm sure they'll have a super time!

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Any Bluegrass fans out there? Blogger must not be...their spellcheck didn't recognize "Opry". LOL!

Evening Beauty

click to enlarge!

No two snowflakes are ever alike, right? I wonder if that principle could be applied to sunsets!

I bet no two are identical. How could they be? With the clouds, weather and time of year, it seems they would always be unique. Here's a nice one from my little front porch in Ohio.

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To see other gorgeous skies from all over the world, click HERE for Sky Watch Fridays!

Evening sun on the backyard fence.

Roasted Carrots

I could eat the whole cookie sheet full!

Anna at Pleasant View School House was talking about

roasting carrots and I thought I'd give it a try. They were

a big hit...and actually addictive. What a yummy way to

get your beta carotene!

Just cut carrots into equal sized pieces. Toss in a bowl

with olive oil, kosher salt, garlic powder and thyme.

Spread in a single layer on a greased cookie sheet

and bake at 400 for 1 hour.

They should be soft, caramelized and even a bit

crispy on the edges.

Make extra! :) Yum.

On another unrelated note, Tuesday the 16th is

my dear friend's birthday. Click HERE to wish

Silver Fox a happy, happy day!

Typewriter Words

I chose this photo for my post because I had one of these IBM Selectrics on my desk when I worked for General Motors in the 1980's! It was top of the line with it's golf ball rotating key cartridge! And those wonderful updated ink spools that snapped in. And the really amazing part was the correction tape! See the white tape spool in the orange cartridge? No more liquid white-out! Yes, life was good with such an awesome machine! haha. I could type 80 words a minute with zero errors! Not any more! I'm afraid I've lost my touch! LOL!

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But enough reminiscing! How about a little trivia? Do you know what typewriter words are? They are words, 10 letters or more, which can be typed completely from one row on the keyboard, or a similar restriction.

Typewriter can be typed using only the top row of keys! Some other words with this property are pepperroot, perpetuity, pewterwort, proprietor, and repertoire.

Shakalshas is the longest word which can be typed using only the middle row of letters on the keyboard. Others include alfalfas, haggadahs, flagfalls, galagala, and galahads.

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The only word which can be typed using only the bottom row of letters is ZZZ, to indicate sleeping, since there are no vowels in the bottom row!

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Stewardesses, sweaterdresses, aftercataracts, and tesseradecades are the longest words which can be typed using only the fingers of the left hand.

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Using only the fingers of the right hand, one can type the word johnny-jump-up, lollipop and also phyllophyllin.

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The first typewriter word that ever caught my attention was the name Teresa, which can be typed completely with the left hand on the keyboard. And since you are all dieing to know what phyllophyllin means, all of the online dictionaries claim that the word "isn't yet defined". Hmmm...then how is it a word, I would like to know!? LOL! And another interesting fact...my blogger's spellcheck highlighted all of the typewriter words above except stewardesses. :)

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For more word trivia, click on my label "word games".

Info found on fun-with-words.com

Setting Sun

Happy Weekend!

Alex, Alex, Alex!

Alex has a fetish. He loves to put things away! And he

loves to put things in order! He stands in the bathroom to

grab his brother's clothes as they come off at bath time so he can

put them in the hamper! He lines up shoes in rows inside the closets.

He turns the shampoo bottle so the label faces him while he's in

the tub. Then when he gets out and dries off, he turns it so the label

faces out into the room...every night! It's all a little quirky and a

little cute and funny.

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But the one that gets my eyes rolling is his

obsessions with trash. He LOVES to throw things away!

He searches the house for trash! Every day he comes home from

school and looks in my purse for used tissues to throw out!

He even comes running if he hears

me pull a tissue from the box or sees me wipe my nose. He's

right there...even taking the tissue from me before I'm finished

using it! haha. When he has the itch to throw out trash and can't

find any ...well, he creates some! I've seen him unwrap suckers

...not to eat...but to throw away the paper! There is even an organized

way of pitching the stuff, too...he rotates

through all the trash cans in the house so each one has equal

amounts inside. One time we couldn't find a stack of insurance

papers that we needed to sign and put back in the mail. We searched

the house for a couple of days and then it occurred to us that just

maybe Alex threw them out! Of course being nonverbal and not good

very many yes/no questions, we couldn't just ask him. So we sorted

through bags of garbage out in the garage and sure

enough...the insurance papers were there!

So when I couldn't find my paycheck from my auction job the other

day I immediately thought of Alex! It had been laying on my desk

and Alex uses my computer every day after school. It was in the

second bag I searched through out in the garage! Thankfully it wasn't

after the garbage had been collected that week!

It was a little crumpled and had some raw meat juices on

it, but I was still very glad to see it! LOL!

Tiny Tree

The Mister serves on the board of our local hospital and

attended a construction tour this week of a second hospital being

built in our county. The construction company is Scandinavian

and they have a tradition of placing a live pine tree on the highest

steel beam during construction as a symbol of blessing.

You local readers, look across the street from Sam's Club in

in Beavercreek and you'll see it! :)

Everyone in attendance was given a little

tree to take home. Isn't he cute? He's only about 10" tall.

Presently, he's enjoying the indoors with my houseplants.

I've been watering it and talking to it. Think that will help it grow?

He looks happy so far! :)

Maybe he could stay inside and be part of the

Christmas decorations!

You have to enjoy the mums on University Drive one

more time with me before the frost gets them! :)

I live just a block away from here.

That funny spaceship-looking building houses

my dentist and eye doctor.

Thanks for riding along!

Bird House

click to enlarge

The theme for Creative Tuesday is 'little house' and here's

my interpretation... Mrs. Bird and her sweet, tiny house.

An English Tudor nestled in an oak tree. What a cute

place for her 'home sweet home'! :)

To see other takes on the theme or to join in yourself,

click HERE!

♪♪♪♪

"East or west, home is best"

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

1834-1892

♥

The Round House

I drive by this odd looking house on my way to the grocery.

It's completely round except for a regular looking garage

attached to the side. It's completely covered in roofing shingles!

I wish they would cut their grass ..or um..weeds...so I could

get a better picture! LOL! And did you notice those windows?

All different sizes and randomly placed...they remind me

of one of these preschool toys...

I think of these puzzle boxes every time I drive by! :)

I'd really like to see inside!

Say Cheese!

I couldn't tell you the last time The Mister and I took a picture

of the two of us together. For one thing, we're rarely home

at the same time...usually just to eat dinner and he's off

to another meeting or something work-related! So, just

before we left for a wedding Saturday night I snapped

a few of us. I think I took 8 pictures. The ones where I was

smiling, he wasn't looking at the camera! The one where

he was smiling, I look scared! haha. This was the closest

one to being half way decent. Needless to say, neither

of us are photogenic. Here we both are

with our half smiles. Sigh. But there you go!

I've been told more than once that he looks a bit

like Russell Crowe. He does, doesn't he? BTW...

this was the wedding that I made the cookies for!

They looked beautiful at each place setting at

the reception. Beautiful wedding, too!

I remember when the bride was born!

Now I'm feeling old. :)

Train in the Sky

Do you see it? A little steam engine pulling a train?

She looks like the "little engine that could"!

(taken 11-4-10, Xenia, Ohio) click here for more amazing skies!

Seeing Double

Alex! Alex, look at the camera!

Alex! Hey, Buddy...look at mom...look! Now smile! What? What is that you are doing? You look like Spock! Oh wait... It's a double finger cross? How in the heck did you do that? LOL!

Crazy kid!

I'm off to work an auction on Thursday. It's suppose to be

an extra large one full of nice antiques and all kinds of goodies.

Unlike last week, which was all escavating equipment!

Needless to say, I wasn't tempted to bid on a single thing!

I wonder what the boys would have thought if I brought

this big scoop home! No..I'll stick to driving my Jeep

Commander. It's more my style, don't you think?

I bet this thing doesn't even have heated seats! ha.

Even so, it was a gorgeous day and watching the bidders

try out the equipment was very entertaining. :)

Autumn Wedding Favors

I've been working the last two weeks on a wedding order ~

chocolate oak leaf cookies...265 of them!

First you roll out, cut and bake the leaves.

Then you frost with one color and drizzle a contrasting

color in the middle. Run a toothpick through while wet

to get that marbleized look.

Next, using a pastry bag and tip, pipe a thicker

icing around the edge. Wine and gold colors are beautiful wedding colors for November, don't you think? After they are dry, give a little sparkly gold dust detail. Wrap in cellophane bags, tie with ribbon and tags.They will be laid at each place setting at the reception. Fun! Yum!

We're getting around to the last few outside chores of the

year. The morning frost has been nipping at my herbs so I

trimmed off the damage, added more soil and a few

more seeds. Cilantro, parsley, dill and chives

have come in for the winter!

View From My Windows

Remember my desk?

Here are the autumn views from those windows this week. You have to appreciate them now! In a few weeks they will be gone! Awesome autumn. :)