Hello, Friend: Candy, Laura and Totem

You've heard of mushroom rings. How about a candy ring?!! Two boys and bags of candy can make one that's pretty impressive.

Silas found the sucker bag I had stashed, and then things got out of hand.

Before we knew it he had two, and then those multiplied into four!!

It was quite the binge fest.

Trash pile at the end. Sheesh.

Goodbye, Halloween. So glad to see you (r candy) go. Oh, the rotten pumpkins won't be missed either.

Here's Laura, a friend of Diane's. Originally from Romania, she flew down from Wisconsin to have a mini vacation and see what it's like down here. We had so much fun! It was so pretty we took a trip out to the Dam and threw rocks and picked up stuff and generally just messed around.

We shrunk the kids down, and then Silas turned into a statue, lol.

Driftwood treasures.

Israel had just talked about yellow grits when I found these on clearance at Food City. Laura got excited about them too. So we planned a meal to include them.

One night we made fried catfish with greens and grits. Laura was excited about our home-cured bacon - said it was like back home in Romania! She also made some killer grits, which are a popular dish in their culture. Yumm. We had all sorts of yummy food discussions - the making of their traditional cabbage rolls, which we will try to make when they come back - and talk of eclairs and tiramisu. Oh man. There are going to be some good times in the kitchen. I can't wait!

Here are some brown linen pants I made for Gable out of repurposed fabric. Finally getting some made after several years! I lined the pockets with green seersucker, so fun.

This Lil Man looked so cute in his jeans and boots we put on a hat and had a mini photo sesh.

So cute and funny.

Then we went out and swept some leaves off the porch.

At some point we stopped to see Papaw's totem that he's been working on for a while. Making great progress! It's really fun to watch his skillful carving. You can tell he's a master at work with years of experience.