October wrap-up

It's hard to believe we're already at the end of October. Lo and behold, it's finally feeling like fall here in my corner of Texas with our most recent cool front. Yesterday's high in the upper 40s was the lowest recorded temp for that date since 1925. Darn this global warming! Sorry, couldn't resist.

Last week I did my civic duty, standing in a not-so-long line at 8:10 am to vote. Thanks to covid, I had to wear a disposable glove on my right hand. The upside is that I got a free pencil out of it since that's what we were all given - a brand new pencil - to use on the touch screen instead of our gloved hand. Which seemed a bit redundant, but I followed instructions.

With cooler temps finally arriving, I pulled out our thermal blanket and washed it to add to the master bedding. As soon as it came out of the dryer, I tossed it on the duvet where our old cairn Ollie was lounging. He immediately rooted up underneath the blanket to enjoy its fresh from the dryer warmth. And I can't blame him since I haven't turned on the house's heating system for the winter yet. By the weekend, we'll be back into the 70s with the ceiling fans running. That's how it goes this time of year in the deep south, temps that can fluctuate wildly on any given day.

My battle with the annual fall leaf drop has been much less stressful this year with our bedecked pool. We relocated some of out patio furniture up there and now it looks much more inviting. I can't wait to see how it looks once the Christmas lights are installed out there next month. It's gonna be fa-la-la-la-la festive!

The tree rats have gotta go

Last weekend, the husband and I were at the lake house. We rounded up some supplies on a Walmart run and did a bit of yard work, but the main reason for going was to wrap the lone oak in the backyard with white Christmas lights in advance of the holiday season. I had already purchased 1200 lights, thinking that would be sufficient. It seems I'm becoming a bad guesser as I age. So 2100 lights later, we had wrapped the entire trunk up to where four main limbs branched off it. Then we wrapped about three feet up each of the limbs with more cool white mini lights. That evening, we turned them on and I was really happy with the results because the lighted tree reflects off both the lake water and our pool. 

I know what you're probably thinking. That sounds like a whole lotta lights. And it was a bit of a Clark Griswold decorating job, as in roll out the water hoses in case the tree catches fire. Maybe take out a loan to pay the electric bill for the month of December. But I really loved how it looked... truly the most wonderful time of the year when we celebrate the birth of our saviour with friends and family. 

So this weekend, a friend and I went up to the lake house because she hadn't seen it yet. When we walked out on the back porch and I glanced at the tree, it was readily apparent that the local squirrels, aka tree rats, had been busy harvesting acorns off the oak all week. Sure enough, there was a big eighteen inch gap in the lights where they had been scurrying up the tree, thus shifting about fifteen rows of lights down on top of each other.

When we wrapped the tree last weekend, we contemplated using staples or tacks to hold the light strings in place. But we wrapped it pretty tight, never imagining what would happen to the strands when the tree rats ran up and down the trunk. My friend and I made a trip to the local hardware store for Christmas light securing options and found something that will work. Now the husband and I will just have to haul out the ladder to undo the mess made by the squirrels. Maybe put out a live trap. Electrify the whole tree. Leave a big bowl of antifreeze for the furry little trespassers to quench their thirst. I'm just kidding about those last two options, of course. Mostly. Unless Chip and Dale make any more messes or do any more damage. Then I'm declaring war on their bushy little tails.

Making a decorating list, checking it twice

The stores just can't help themselves. It was only the first week of October and they already had Christmas decor on the shelves. Not that I'm complaining. In my book, it's always a good day to add more santas to my collection. 

This year I'm focusing my Christmas design efforts on the lake house since our primary residence has been decorating itself with my large santa collection for years. There will be lots of creams and blues, santas as well as some other fun winter odds and ends. I like to mix it up with various textures and designs, vintage as well as modern. I've got everything I need for the inside. Now I just need to figure out what to put on the front porch. I'll have to get back to you on that because I've had lots of different ideas bouncing around in my head.

Cook your own birthday meal

To celebrate my birthday, I told the family I wanted to hit our local fondue restaurant. We haven't been in many years, so it was kinda fun to recall past visits when the girls were younger and jazzed about the steaming pot in the middle of the table. Unfortunately, our younger daughter who attends college out of state wasn't able to join us, so maybe we'll have an all-in stroll down fondue memory lane over semester break when she's home for a month.

 

My favorite is the cheese course. I actually have a fondue pot and am quite good at whipping up their cheddar cheese recipe I found online. It's honestly really easy. All good recipes start with beer and garlic, right? The meat course is my least favorite, but I could eat buckets of their green goddess dip. By the time we roll around to the chocolate course as the big grand finale, I'm too stuffed to really enjoy it. But I give it a go anyway!

Trick or treating myself to candy corn

I do this every year. I buy the little baby halloween candies and think I'm doing so much good, eating that rather than the usual adult sized candy bars. But then I eat three of the smaller ones and boom, it's the same amount/calories as the one I was trying to avoid. Sigh. If only sugar tasted disgusting. Or kale tasted like a Butterfinger.

I recall there was some survey taken about halloween candy in recent years that had candy corn coming in at the bottom. But by golly, I just love the stuff. I discovered this lovely combo above recently, and now need to have my jaws wired shut for the rest of October.

We were at the lake a couple weekends ago, enjoying some cooler temps, and I had to laugh at the dogs. Our older daughter is always a magnet for them when she's catching a bit of sun on the loungers next to the pool. 

Ding dong, the tree is dead

We made a flying trip up to the lake house this weekend, spending less than 24 hours, in order to do away with the nasty old tallow trees in our front yard.

Back in the summer, they weren't a nuisance. But I knew where we were headed with this type of tree. The little green berries that fall all over the place. The messy green catkins. Not to mention the large roots of the tree up next to the house that were undoubtedly slowly undermining the slab. 

Thanks to a family friend, who had experience safely killing tallow trees without harming any of the surrounding landscaping, we poisoned them about five weeks ago. Saturday afternoon, we chopped them down and cut them up. Since our local brush recycling center was closed, we had to wait until this morning to haul it all away. Now we'll just let the stumps and root systems continue to die off over the winter so we can grind them out in the spring and replace with some sort of shrubbery.

I swept up lots of dead leaves and twigs, enough to fill three large contractor bags. It's nice to have the trees gone because they were neighborhood eyesores and the shedding leaves were an ongoing mess to deal with.

Santa-fying the lake house

I started collecting Santas back in 1992, and thus decorating for Christmas has basically taken care of itself for the past 15ish years. The trick is that 99.9% of my Santas are in the traditional Christmas colors of red and green. Unfortunately for me, this won't work with my shades of blue and cream lake house color scheme. Drat! My original plan to borrow some St Nicks from my 28 years of collecting came to a grinding halt when I realized that amounted to maybe two or three Santas in my many bins full of the man in the sleigh stored out in the workshop.

Sooooo... I've spent the past several weeks on eBay, looking for good deals on used Santas in shades of blue and cream to decorate the lake house. After quite a bit of haggling, I'm proud of the Santas I've found to use at the lake. Oh sure, I've paid regular price for several new Santas that caught my eye on other websites. Because seriously, Christopher Radko makes THE most adorable Santa themed ornaments for display. Fitz & Floyd is another personal favorite peddler of holiday Santas that I love. My husband bought me my very first F&F Santa cookie jar the same year I decided to focus on Santa for all holiday decor. Poor man had no idea about the Santa collecting frenzy that would ensue once he opened up the door to the fabulous ceramic St Nicks they produce every year. 

When I was snooping around on the internet, I ran across this 2020 Santa ornament. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw it, but this thing absolutely tells the tale of this crazy pandemic year.

 

I've never been a big fan of the beach, but it turns out there is a lot of beach specific Christmas decor out there. I found this cute plate on eBay that made me temporarily reconsider my thoughts about a home that would always have sand tracked across the floor.