I love this time of year!

A full weekend ahead....

SAFF for me in all it's fibery, yarny goodness.

The Corn Maze

Where the Wild Things Are

Dinner with friends

and a trip to the Halloween store to get what we need for next week's festivities :)

I'm going to need a nap....

Wordless Wednesday

What $10 will get you at the tailgate market

Weekends are usually reserved for sleeping in ... drinking coffee at your leisure while listening to the birds wake up.

Not today - I set the alarm early and met mom & dad at the tailgate market. I am so glad I did!

Here are my treasures from this mornings adventure:

12 ears of corn $3
4 giant red bell peppers $2
1 huge head of cabbage $1
6 apples (2 yellow delicious & 4 gala) $1
Yellow tommy tomatoes $1
dried red peppers $.25
Fresh corn tortillas $1.50

Grand total $9.75

(Little) Phil Mickelson

This is my new favorite photo of the boy.

Such concentration - this is the day he shot 41 on the front nine at Maggie Valley.

I am so proud!

13 years ago today

Well, really really early this am (4:32am to be exact)
I became mom to the greatest kid in the universe.

I never knew I could love someone as much as I love him.

He never ceases to amaze and frustrate me
(come on he's a TEENAGER).

I have been blessed, lucky, whatever you want to call it.
I'm one proud M.O.M.

Let Me Take You to Funkytown...

Okay, mom snapped this in the grocery store parking lot.

Only in Asheville would you find this bumper sticker on a car :)

Life on the Farm

This year everything seems to have clicked just right for our little garden venture. We have a huge bed of lettuce and spinach... lots of blooms on our squash, zucchini and cucumbers. The okra is taking it's time (but that's ok with me since David is the only one who eats it). However we have broccoli (ok, they are the size of a floret, but STILL :) we have broccoli. I also harvested these beauties Sunday and had them for dinner - sugar snap and snow peas - they are so sweet and yummalicious.




A few nights ago I kept hearing a soft little squeal - like something was stuck - I thought something (a bunny maybe) had gotten into the raised bed where the veggies were but couldn't get out... so at 4am (yes, 4am) I took the flashlight and went out to investigate. About the time I passed by the outdoor dining table - this guy flew over my head and landed on the garage roof. Amazing! He and his mate were calling back and forth to each other!




I love living this close to the parkway and all it's wildlife :)

This is why everyone should have a dog

They make you smile no matter what.

They give you unconditional love and will follow you anywhere.

How Does Your Bookshelf Look?

I found this very interesting. I was raised by an avid reader. Every Saturday my Mom would take my sister and I to the library on the island where we would pick out 2-4 books that we would read over a 2-week period (the average time you were allowed to check out library books). So we read - a lot. Now I came across this over at Red Bird Knits' blog and took the quiz (answers beside the titles) and I find it sad that the average person has only read 6 books from the list.

My number is 71

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - yes
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien –
Read them in middle school and again before the movies came out.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - yes
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – yes - thanks mom :)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Yes
6 The Bible - yes, but I've never read it cover to cover
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - yes
8 1984 - George Orwell - Yes
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - no
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - Yes
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - Yes
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy – Yes
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller – Yes
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – I haven't read all of them, but I do have them all
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - Yes, see #2
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - no
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - Yes, and more than once
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - it's on my bookshelf
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot- Yes
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Yes
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Yes and I have ALL his works
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens- no
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - Yes, but I loved Anna Karenina more
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - yes
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - Yes
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - no
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - Yes and read it again last year, just because
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - Yes - one of my all time favorites
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - Yes, Yes, Yes
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - Yes
33 The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - like Tolkein, once in middle school
and then again with David
34 Emma - Jane Austen - Yes
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - yes
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - Yes - see above
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - No, and I really have no interest in it
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres- No, why is this on the list?
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - Yes
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – Yes -
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -Yes
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Yes, Angels & Demons was a better book
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Yes, and HATED every page
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - Yes, Yes, yes
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - no
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - Yes
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - no
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - Yes
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - Yes
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - no
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - Yes
52 Dune - Frank Herbert- Yes
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - No
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - Yes
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - No
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - No and haven't heard of this one
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - Yes
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Yes
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - No
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Yes, and LOVED LOVED it
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck – Yes.
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - No
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - no
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold – it too is on the bookshelf waiting
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - Yes, and ALL his works are on the shelf
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - No
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - No
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding - Yes
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - No
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Yes, and again with David
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - Yes
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - Yes
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - Yes, may be my all time fav book
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - No
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - no
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - Yes
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - No
78 Germinal - Emile Zola - No
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - Yes
80 Possession - AS Byatt- Yes - No
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - Yes
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - No
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - Yes
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - Yes
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - Yes
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - No
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White - Yes, multiple times
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - No
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Yes
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton – No
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - No
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery – Yes
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - No
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - Yes
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - No
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - No
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - Yes
98 Hamlet – Shakespeare – Yes
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - yes
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - Yes

So where is the Hemingway? Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises - Why not The Grapes of Wrath, No Ayn Rand or Carson McCullers? ...all missing. Puzzling

By going over this list I found that I used to read a lot more than I do. I'm going to try to read 3 from this list this year - wonder how I'll do?

How did you do?

Fall is here and it's time to get serious about some knitting

Wow, there is a snap in the air. I'm baking.
I'm jonesing for some soup. It must be fall. Yay!

I've got my projects all lined up and ready to go.

I've been saving some money for SAFF (Southeast Animal Fiber Fair) and to visit the Knit Witch for a knitting bowl...OMG have you seen those - awesomely coolness. Oh and I need some Potion Lotion and sock yarn...

It's Official!

The launch is this Saturday at the Mars Hill Heritage Festival.

Stix n Scones is a real business.

Please visit www.stixnscones.com to learn more about this new venture!

Bend it like Beckham? Well...not quite

So you're in 7th Grade now. School sports are encouraged. So you and a couple of your buddies get together and decide to go out for the school's soccer team. Might be fun - right?

Well you ALL make the team. Fun times are ahead. New cleats, shin guards, uniforms and you are well suited for left midfield.

First game of the season... your opponents came out strong, but you totally shut them down in the 2nd half - way to go rockets!

I'm in the mood for a melody...

Saturday night.

Robert Plant and Alison Krause. Man, it's hard to believe he's as old as my parents. He can still rock it out. And be darn sexy while he's at it.

My generation was a bit too young to be able to see the Zep on their last tour in 1977... now we probably won't be able to afford too. Ah well, nights like these are nights well spent.

I will say that I had to pick my mouth up off the floor when he sang a gospel song - holy crap - what was that all about. Seriously he seemed to be having a great time. Alison was a little too reserved, but all in all a great show.

/review

Smile time

So we have begun our journey into orthodontics.

David was a model patient for the initial xray, moulding, photo visit.
Of course the dental technicians are all so nice and help make everything go smoothly. (They even held his hands down so mom could get the picture!)

A straight beautiful smile will soon be his.

Spring is here

Our flowers are blooming out.

The birds are nesting. The leetle baby snake keeps hiding in the front flower-bed (shudder). And we are enjoying our dinner on the porch - al fresco - each evening.

Of course the prettiest thing in the garden is the Princess Izzy Belle, who holds court on the swing, in the bird bath (when it's empty) and generally anywhere she wants.