Spooktacular HodgePodge

 

1. What does/did Halloween look like at your house this year? Did you decorate? Pick pumpkins? Carve pumpkins? Expect trick or treaters? Wear a costume to a party or event? Make a costume? Feel glad you didn't have to come up with a costume? Cook a Halloween themed treat? Eat all the leftover candy?

LOVE Halloween!!  Yes, we decorated.  Yes, we have pumpkins!  No, we didn't carve any this year. Yes, we expect between 1000 and 1200 trick-or-treaters.  Don't have a costume this year unless I wear the witches hat that is a decoration on my kitchen island.  I made chicken pot pie last week for our young adults and I used the pumpkin cookie cutter to cut out the top crust!!  I'm going to try very very very hard not to eat any candy at all.

A few friends to help hand out

candy - including Belle!!  The kids

loved her!

You can see the sheer number of trick or

treaters!  If one person took a picture

and commented on Mark's bamboo ladder . . .

at least 100 people did! They also comment on the smell

of our rosemary bushes!

what is this? the day Mark cut the bamboo and

we drove from Homewood to Hoover with

two giant bamboo poles tied to the side

of our car . . .what can I say?

He made the best bamboo ladder ever!

It was SUCH a fun evening!

2. What are you waiting for? Elaborate
I had a hard time narrowing down this answer.  I could be waiting on our trip back to Israel at the end of January.  I could be waiting on our daughter's wedding in May. I could be waiting on Saturday - we will celebrate our daughter-in-law's birthday and our daughter and future son-in-law will be home, too.  There is nothing like having your children back in your home.


3. Do you wish you were friendlier, braver, more creative, more athletic, or something else? Explain.
I often wish I were the kind of person who can ALWAYS see the bigger picture - I'm blessed to work with people who have that vision.  I CAN see it but sometimes it takes a tiny explanation.  Would that be that I wish I were more visionary? more strategic?


4. When it comes time to paint are you a do-it-yourselfer or do you hire someone? What was the last paint job completed at your house? What room most needs painting now? How do you feel about wallpaper?
I guess it depends on the size of the job.  We recently had our eaves painted and they are really high up so we hired a professional to paint those.  We keep paint for each room in a mason jar (in a cabinet in the kitchen) and we touch up paint every couple of months.  This tiny step keeps us from having to paint whole rooms quite as often.  Wallpaper was in back when we bought our first house and actually, some of it was already on its way out (back in the mid 80's).  I remember steaming grasscloth from the dining room walls and it was a nightmare!  I know that wallpaper is either back in or coming back in but I'm not ready to jump on the bandwagon yet.

5. What is one specific thing you felt gratitude for in the month of October?
I'm so very thankful for so many things - it would be hard to narrow it down to ONE specific thing.  I was just writing in my prayer journal and I could list line after line of Thank you's to our creator.  One of the things I'm grateful for is gainful employment for all of our immediate family.  In this crazy world, we can still make a living!!   I'm so very thankful for Scott, our daughter's fiancé.  We have prayed for the right man (I would write in my prayer journal - not Mr. Right but THE right man) for our daughter - someone to love her and cherish her and take care of her.  Scott is an answer to prayer and it is such a bonus that she loves his parents, too.  I stole this picture from her facebook page. They were at his college homecoming game on Saturday (and it was COLD!).

6.  Insert your own random thought here.
For the last two Sundays, I've taught Sunday School lessons from a book by Bill Hybels - Live Wisely. In Sunday's lesson, he talked about goals for the second half of life. (Bill Hybels was actually quoting from a book called Halftime: Changing Your Game From Success to Significance).  ONE of the things he listed was that he wants to be a good friend to 10 people.  That has stuck in my head.  Life has been so crazy busy that I feel like I haven't been a good friend to even one person lately. Mark and I talked about it on Sunday afternoon and for the new year, we are coming up with a plan!  I've always heard that to have friends, YOU have to be a good friend first.  I'm hoping that 2018 can be the year of friends!  The problem is that we are all beginning to have grandchildren, etc. and life has seemed to escalate rather than slow down. We are going to try to be intentional in 2018. Do you have lots of friends? Are you a good friend? What are some of your favorite ways to hang out with friends?