thanksgiving and family friday

 Reviewing our Thanksgiving begins with this beautiful picture of our carrots: our final garden harvest of the season. After peeling and trimming, there was a full pound of carrots which we roasted and added a maple glaze...mmm, yum. We hosted this year's Thanksgiving dinner, with 11 attending.  I didn't get a good picture of "the bird" but you can imagine it: golden brown deliciousness. My secret: Reynold's oven bags, and cooking the "stuffing" outside the bird. Below is our tablesetting, with a runner and tablecloth I sewed up this week. The girlie made a full complement of handprint turkey place-cards. And we rejoiced and gave thanks, and ate too much.

 Friday, instead of joining the throngs doing "Black Friday" shopping-frenzy activities, we spent a family day together! We went to the B&O Train Museum to see Santa arriving on a steam engine (pictures turned out terrible, but it was fun). They also had a big Lego train display for the fans in my family:

 The decorations at the museum were wonderful, with a pair of these giant nutcrackers, and all the lit-up snowflakes hung from the rafters:

 And it was a sunny and fairly warm afternoon for a little play outside the museum:

 This is a nice view of the trains and roundhouse as we arrived back in the station after our train ride while we were there, and a view of the inside of a caboose they have on the train-yard:

Then! In case we had not had enough trains, we drove out to the Ellicott City Station (after a stop at Chick-fil-A, which was also very important), where our train museum membership also allowed us to visit, because they had ANOTHER large Lego train set-up as well as several other model train displays. I loved the wreath on the red caboose, so festive:

 And we got to see Santa! He had been hard at work on the railroad, and was dressed appropriately. It was good to have the kids get to tell him what they wanted and to at least have this one visit to count on, in case we don't get to see him somewhere else this month:

A fun family day. A good Thanksgiving holiday. We truly have so much to be thankful for, and we look forward to the coming season of joy as we prepare to celebrate Jesus's birth.

christmas cards are on their way!

 

Stationery card

View the entire collection of cards.

Here it is...your very own preview of our 2012 Christmas card! Coming soon to a home near you!

knit:: hurricane sandy capelet

There is nothing like a good storm with a real (or threatened) power outage to get me knitting!  Thankfully we weathered the storm without any real issues. As others gathered toilet paper and milk and batten down the hatches, I made sure that I had a simple pattern (i.e. can be done in near dark) and yarn! Last year's Hurricane Irene Vest was the first of these projects, and now I proudly introduce to you, the Hurricane Sandy Capelet!

It's made from 100% Peruvian Highland wool, and it keeps me toasty warm. I have received so many kind compliments on it this week (and I've only worn it twice, really!), that I decided to knit it for friends and aquaintances as a fundraiser for the hurricane relief efforts, because so many in NY and NJ are still suffering in so many ways. I am knitting it for the cost of yarn plus a donation to the hurricane relief efforts, and donating 100% of my time and proceeds. So over the next weeks and months, I will be knitting and knitting lots of these! (10 so far...yikes)  It sounds a little silly to say that God told me to do this, but it is absolutely true. I have been praying and praying for ways to use my creative talents to further the Kingdom of God, and He showed me that a compliment can be turned into a project that brings great good. I would love to tell you more of this story, if you would like to hear it.  And if you are reading this and want your own Hurricane Sandy Capelet, let me know. It may be a couple months before I get it to you, though!

Hope you are enjoying some happy knitting of your own...

a haunting we will go...

A fun day of school parades and parties! It was made even better by a 2-hour-late opening (due to recovery from hurricane Sandy): I don't think they did any work at school at all yesterday!  We had a chilly but dry evening for trick-or-treating and both kids enjoyed showing off their costumes.  "Optimus Prime" ( from the Transformers) and "Izzy" (from Jake and the Neverland Pirates) both collected full baskets of sweets from around the neighborhood. And a good time was had by all.