Chris knows how to blog?

Time to breathe. The past few weeks have been a bit crazy. Self-imposed craziness. A friend’s blog has links to other blogs listed in the sidebar and it tells you when they were last updated. At first mine said one week, then two, then three…. You get the picture. It now says “one month ago” but it’s actually been 7 weeks. Yikes! I keep meaning to update, but the longer you go, the harder it is. There are just too many topics that you want to cover. Sorry if it reads a little disjointedly. It’s taken me over a week to write this, and I’ve kind of been jumping around.

I love Halloween, and at times I’m a bit of an overachiever. I guess you saw that already when I made 18 mobiles with 54 witches. And I had to use the good beads on them. I couldn’t use just some cheap plastic ones. I try not to think about how much I spent on those. More about Halloween later.

So one topic that I seemed to overlook, was a trip that we took over Labor Day weekend. LL Bean offers free concerts during the summer. We looked over the schedule and saw that Lonestar was going to be performing. Rather than making a 2-3 hour drive back home after the concert, we decided to camp in the area. This was a week after we returned from camping in Acadia, and a week before camping at Hammonasset. Lots of camping!

We found a state park right next to Freeport. Pretty quiet place. Might have been nicer to spend some more time there. We had plans to hike some of the trails at the park, but never got around to that. Too much of the “normal” activities for us to do- Land’s End, Freeport, etc.

We arrived up on Saturday afternoon. Got into Freeport and spent longer than usual trying to park. We wondered why many of the entrances into the LL Bean parking lots were closed off. Finally we found a spot and started to head over to see how many seats were claimed already. Yikes! Now we know why parking was so bad. When we’ve been to concerts here in the past, it’s usually just seats on the grass. This time there were LOTS of bleachers set up! Luckily we found a spot fairly close to the front, although it was off to the side. After putting down a blanket to save our spot, we headed off to do a little shopping. As it turned out, mostly window shopping. I guess that’s good though, right?

Then it was time to head back to the concert area. Wow, it had filled up with lots of people in the short while we were gone. The concert was a lot of fun. I wasn’t that familiar with their songs before we went, but it was still a fun time. Certainly not bad for a free concert. I got a video of their finale- it was a montage of a bunch of covers. Started off with Van Halen’s “Jump” and as soon as I heard that, I grabbed the camera that shot video. Not online at this time. Actually, the quality of it is pretty horrid. But it’s still fun. Maybe one of these das I’ll add it to YouTube.

Sunday we headed off to Land’s End. It was at Land’s End that Chris proposed to me, so it will always be a special place to us. Of course it was cold and miserable that night so we had to stay in the car. And then I called Andrew in my excitement to tell him that I was engaged, and his response was “no you’re not”. Thanks, bro!

We took our pictures with the Land’s End Lobsterman, and then I waded into the water a bit. There were lots of little crabs there. Hard to walk without stepping on them.

And the cribstone bridge. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places and is the only bridge of it’s kind. And we’re afraid that they will be getting rid of it. Ok, truth be told, we have no idea what’s going on. But there was a bunch of construction work going on right next to it, and it looked suspiciously as if a new bridge was being built. This makes me sad. I just did a bit of googling and found this. I didn’t read into the 402 page attachment, but it seems as if the state gave them some money for repairs.

Monday we headed home. And on the way, while Chris was driving, he ran out of gas. Fun. Sitting by the side of the road, roasting. Broken AC. Waiting for AAA.

Besides going to the James and Gaelic Storm concerts that I previously blogged about, I got a new car in September! We decided that my Echo was a bit on the too small side. Plus, with the broken AC it was fairly miserable driving around. So, after doing a bit of looking, we settled on a 2009 Subaru Forester. Unfortunately, this means we now have a car payment again and are further into debt, but things are still going pretty well on the debt reduction front.

September also provided me with the chance to meet another Tally friend. Jan and her family were up from South Carolina vacationing in Newport, RI. Tami came down from NH and we headed off for The Ocean State. We had lunch and then did a bit of walking around and poking into shops. While we were walking we got surprise calls from both Minda and Christine. How fun to say hi and pass the cell phone around.

In September/October knitting news, I knit some eyeballs. Super cute. Unfortunately I had them in a candy dish at work, and I guess some people thought the eyeballs were something that they could take, rather than as a decoration like I had intended. I’m now down to only 4 eyeballs. Guess I’ll have to knit some more next year.

The last concert of my month of concerts, was New Kids on the Block. The concert was on the 26^th, the same night as the Glass Pumpkin preview. Mel sent me my ticket so that I could try to be in two places at the same time. I went to the preview, scouted out some that I liked, grabbed some dinner while I waited for Chris, conferred with him briefly about ones I liked, and then headed off to The Garden. I missed the opening act, but I was ok with that. I got there not too long before the concert started.

I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in a while. I found it very funny how so many women were still so enamored with this band. It was fun, but I certainly wasn’t screaming for them. (Sorry Mel.) I was glad I went, but I think I’ve moved on.

I’ve blogged in the past about MIT’s Great Glass Pumpkin Patch. It’s an annual fundraiser that they have and we’ve gone for a number of years now. This year we knew we wanted a certain style of pumpkin, so we saved a little bit every month to be able to afford what we wanted. Now that we have it, I’m not sure if I’ve fulfilled my pumpkin wishes or not. I’m still saving, so I guess that means not. Or at least this way we’ll have the option to get another if we so choose.

This year it was raining for pumpkin weekend. They always say that if it rains on the Saturday (the traditional day of the sale) then the Sunday will be the rain date. But what do you do if the forecast calls for rain on both days? They put up a HUGE tent! Luckily when the sale started it wasn’t raining and they were able to move some of the pumpkins out into the daylight for better viewing. As we were headed back to the car the sprinkles started. Perfect timing!

Rather than putting lots of photos here of pumpkins, here’s a link to a layout that I did about this year’s pumpkin patch. You can click on the image to see it bigger.

Glass pumpkin day happened to be Chris’ birthday. He gave me lots of crap about making him get up early, but I think I made up for it when we got back to the house and I gave him his birthday gift- a Wii. He opened it up and started playing, and I took a nap. Later that evening we invited people over for cake and an impromptu Wii party. In recent weeks it hasn’t been played as much, but I think in a few weeks life will quiet down a bit and we’ll play some more.

So as I mentioned earlier, I am an overachiever when it comes to Halloween. This wasn’t completely apparent at home- I pretty much had my standard decorations, although I did add the Yankee Candle haunted mansion tea light thing. Finally! Only took me 3 years. They’ve always sold out so quickly that I had to buy it in August.

My Halloween overachieving transpired at work. In an effort to make the work environment more fun and to encourage interaction between departments, we had a Halloween party. And since it is known that it is one of my favorite holidays, I was asked to help plan it. Ok, go ahead twist my arm. And the best part? All of the stuff that I bought for the party- I get to keep it

So not only was there a party, but as one of the activities there was a cube decorating contest. I decided to bring in my apotheScary from last year. I had seen online vinyl sheeting stuff that I mentioned to Chris I would use as a backdrop. He had something even better! Turns out that Brandeis had overbought some vacuform brick wall for a show. So we took a sheet of that and then Kristin painted it for me. It looks fabulous! So good, in fact, that people have said that I should keep it up year round. (I foresee a fireplace for the winter months, and then in the spring and summer maybe some ivy and flowers?)

But since I’m an overachiever, apparently just having the wall and the apotheScary bottles wasn’t enough. I had to go and get a streetlight. And a bloody/rusty lantern to hang from the ceiling. And then people were commenting that I was really only decorating one wall, and not my entire cube, so then I went and got some of the vinyl sheeting stuff and decorated outside my cube and put in a little cemetery.

I guess it was worth it, since I won, but I spent a lot more than my $50 prize. Good thing I can reuse everything!

Remember how I said I’m an overachiever? The cube decorations are only part of it. I also had to carve the company logo onto a pumpkin and then bake and decorate 4 dozen cupcakes. Yup, self-induced stress.

There also was a costume contest. I was completely blown away by how many people got into the spirit of things and wore a costume. It was fabulous! Funniest was “Super Garbage Bag Man”, Best costume was a lion (fabulous mane!), and scariest was a witch. I went with the Ice Princess costume that I made for Linda 7 or 8 years ago. People weren’t quite sure of what exactly I was, but after I told them they all seemed to get it.

Back at home after the party, I added my new tombstones to the yard, scattered some bones, and hung up the skeleton. (The bones and skeleton had previously been party decorations.) My pumpkins- I kind of took a quick approach to these and very roughly had carved “trick-or-treat” into them. And a few days later I think a squirrel absconded with one of the pumpkin lids. Not really sure where it has disappeared to. Better the pumpkin though than my newly planted bulbs.

And so that brings us to what’s going on now. There’s a craft faire that is going to be held at our church on the 22^nd. Chris is going to have a table. I’m going to have a table. I’ve been crazily working for the past week or so knitting, sewing, and making other items. Here are pictures of cupcakes, toadstools, and sachets that are awaiting the lavender that I ordered. Lots more to do. Hopefully I don’t stress myself out too much!

I’m also insanely behind in my scrapping, so in an ideal world I would manage to get a bit more “caught up” with that. Yeah, I know, I should stop dreaming. If only work didn’t get in the way!

Congratulations on having made it to the end. Hope you’ve enjoyed, and maybe I’ll be better about updating more regularly. I’d like to have once a week be my goal. Maybe every other week.