Gobbler, gobbled.

I fell off the blogging horse again! I think I'll blame it on a tryptophan induced stupor that prevented me from posting for a few days. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! My parents and my two brothers drove over from Salt Lake City to spend the weekend here. This was the first time I've ever hosted a holiday at my home and it was such fun. They drove in on Wednesday, we did the big dinner on Thursday, hung out on Friday and then they left yesterday morning. A quick visit, but we had a wonderful time!

Here are a few photos of Maren taken right before the big dinner on Thursday. The first isn't a great photo technically, but I love it because you can see my brothers and husband on the couch watching football, the beautiful sunset as we sat down to eat, the only shot of my table (duh! how did I forget to take a better picture of that?) featuring the tablecloth sent to me by Lisa-Gabrielle, and Miss Maren performing the time-honored Thanksgiving ritual of eating black olives off her fingers!
Maren had an adorable dress for Thanksgiving, also courtesy of the lovely Lisa-Gabrielle. You can see it better in the second photo. It's smocked with the most darling little squirrel and fall leaves and acorns around the collar. Seriously the cutest thing ever, and unless she goes through a sudden growth spurt I think she'll be able to wear it once more next year. Thank you again, Lisa-Gabrielle!

Tomorrow morning we leave for San Diego for the week. Quin has to go for a work conference so Maren and I are tagging along. He'll likely be in meetings during the day Tuesday-Thursday but there is a trolley stop near to the hotel so I'll just strap Maren in the stroller and we'll go exploring! I need to do some serious walking to work off the ridiculous amount of Chocolate Trifle I've eaten this weekend. We're also hoping to take Maren to the San Diego Zoo, and Sea World has a deal that lets military families in for free so we're hoping to take advantage of that as well! Quin will have his work computer so I may be able to blog from the road! Gotta get back in the habit.

A Thanksgiving turkey, all right

So the turkey I'm referring to in my title? That would be ME. Ugh. Let me explain:

Back in October I signed up on Pink Trees to participate in a Thanksgiving decoration swap round robin. I made and sent off my package to Shanna (the ribbon garland). The blogger sending to me, Heather at Scarlet Tanager, posted back in the first week of November that she was sending my package. So here it has been weeks and no package and I have been getting a little worried that maybe it got lost in the mail.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon. On most days, my front room looks like Shipping & Receiving in a small warehouse. DH has a small side business and is constantly getting packages, and my eBay crapola is usually piled up as well. I've actually had people come into my house for the first time and ask if we just moved in! I'm not proud of this fact, but it's just where things first land and tend to stay. However, we have family coming to visit this weekend so in an attempt to clean up the disaster and make it look more like a front room than a mail room, I cleaned up the boxes. That's when I found one in the way back addressed to me!

I knew immediately it was my swap, and felt just terrible because I had no idea how long it had been sitting there--it was in the back with the address facing the wall and I just assumed it was one of DH's boxes. By checking the Delivery Confirmation, I found that it was delivered on the morning of the 9th--the day I left for NYC. I'm fairly certain that I asked DH when I got home on the 13th if anything had come for me (since I was expecting my swap package) and he said no. So I'm including HIM in the Turkey category, too!

Once I opened up my package and saw what Heather had made for me, I felt even worse! She made the most darling pillow with a fat wool felt gobbler appliqued on the front. He is just adorable! He adds a lot of life to my otherwise boring neutral couch. She also made the cutest little tissue holder (which I've turned around in the photo so you can see the precious fabric better) and a really cute banner using those big round letters that I just adore! She included a sweet card as well with a wee quail on the front.

I've already apologized to Heather for my total idiocy and supremely bad swap manners, and I hope she'll forgive me! I really do love what she made for me and was just tickled to open the box. Moral of the story: keep the front room clean!

Gobble-cakes

Tore this out of something a while ago and it's stashed in my files should the occasion arise that I need Thanksgiving cupcakes. It looks like they used those wide, flat candy corns for the tail but I think regular ones would do just fine. Cute!

Back in the saddle

Boy, when you've slacked off on blogging it seems really hard to get back into the swing of things! I've been gone for a week and a half and suddenly I feel like I have nothing to say. Part of my absence was for vacation and part was just sheer laziness.

My mom and I spent 5 days in New York City as a fun "girls' weekend" and we had a blast! Neither of us had ever been there before and neither of us have husbands who'd be the least bit interested in going, so we decided to jet off and have a little adventure of our own. We talked about it for months, finally started planning and before we knew it we were getting off the airplane at La Guardia!

We did and saw as much as we could possibly pack into those few days. I was the trip planner and my sweet mom was game for anything. She let me drag her up and down that island and never complained! She's a fun traveling companion because she's usually up for about anything.

We saw three Broadway shows: "The Lion King," "The Drowsy Chaperone," and "Hairspray." Chaperone was definitely my favorite, although the others were definitely entertaining. It was my favorite because it was everything I would imagine a Broadway musical to be. It was hilarious, there was a tap dance number and even guys in vintage aprons. Perfection, I tell you.

We shopped, of course! My favorite places were Pearl River Mart in SoHo and Tinsel Trading Co. in the Garment District. The former is basically a department store filled with Asian imports. Neatest stuff! I bought Maren two pair of satin brocade slippers and a string of the prettiest little paper lanterns with peonies on them. The latter is a store that I've seen featured in Martha Stewart for years now and it did not disappoint! If you have the December issue of Home Companion, that's their stuff on the cover and there's a big spread inside. It was magical! I spent a bundle there and could have spent much more! Can't wait to decorate for Christmas with my goodies.

Anyway, there's much more but I need to go make my grocery list for tomorrow. I'm hosting Thanksgiving here at my house so I need to figure out what we need for the big dinner & the rest of the weekend. Hopefully the commissary won't be a total madhouse tomorrow; I'm going as early as I can in the week because I know things will just get worse as the big day nears. Tomorrow I'll share some of my recent thrift finds! It's good to be back!

Ribbon, Ribbon, everywhere

I participated in a Thanksgiving decoration swap over on Pink Trees and Shanna received my package on Monday! Here is what I sent to her--her photos are way better than the ones I took before I sent the package, so head over there to look! I made a ribbon garland that I found in the Making Memories Ribbonrie book--the same book that has the ribbon topiaries that I made earlier.

This garland is made by cutting a whole bunch of ribbon into 3.5"-4.5" lengths and sewing in on both sides of a longer piece of ribbon. It's super easy and comes together really quickly. Then I used those curtain rings with clips and tied them onto the ends of the garland and one in the middle, and made little painted mat boards with Thanksgiving-themed rub-on words and little jewels. I also found some chandelier crystals at a lighting store and just clipped them on in between the other stuff. I love how it turned out! I even made one for me and one for a gift for someone else. I also did a couple of hot pads, and I'll talk more about those in another post.

I am so pleased that Shanna liked my swap, and even more tickled that she took the garland idea and made this darling Christmas garland and a door hanger to match! So, so cute! I love the ribbons she used and the snowflake ornaments instead of the little plaques. And I LOVE the door hanger version she made! I have some ribbon leftover from the garlands and I was thinking of doing a wreath like the topiaries, but I may be changing my mind and doing this instead. LOVE IT!

And speaking of the topiaries, look what Lucy did! She made her own ribbon topiary, and it turned out beautifully! I love the different colors and textures she chose--gorgeous! She's right--those things do take a lot of ribbon, so watch for sales. Lucy has some simple instructions for the topiaries in her post, so be sure to take a look in case you missed them the first time around. Check out the super cute cornucopia centerpiece she did as well!

I'm just tickled pink that someone liked what I did well enough to do it themselves. Not that I can take credit for the original ideas--I got those from the book. But I love seeing the spin that both Shanna and Lucy put on their projects. Beautiful work, ladies!

Sweet & Sticky

Well, it's all over for another year. As predicted, I'm completely sick of my Halloween decorations and am looking forward to packing them away. I have a few things for Thanksgiving so I'll get those out--better hurry, Thanksgiving is only 3 weeks away! Michael's has big feathered turkeys for sale and I'm trying to decide if I really need one.

The cold kept most of the trick-or-treaters home last night. I could swear it was warmer when I was a kid but perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me. We gave out most of our candy at Trunk or Treat and had enough left over for a few groups of kids at home, and that was it. Fine by me as I don't want that stuff hanging around anyway.

One of the things we gave out were Tootsie Roll Pops. Last night Maren got hold of one and immediately jammed it into her mouth. It must have been instinctive as she's never had a lollipop before. Normally I would have taken it away but in the spirit of consuming too much candy, I let her keep it. She got sucker everywhere--her coat, her hair, my pants--but she really enjoyed it and her sweet, sticky little face was worth it.