Early Christmas Decorations

We didn't have taekwondo tonight, but I did make it to the grocery store and while there I saw a sale on pumpkins - just $2.49 a piece for some pretty decent-sized pumpkins.  Let's just say we've got plenty of pumpkins now... I usually pick up a few in case someone doesn't have one for the upcoming pumpkin carving party.  That price is nearly half the price of the next highest price at Wal-Mart, so I feel like we got a pretty good deal!

Like I said, Maddie didn't have taekwondo tonight.  This is because of belt testing week, something she used to be a frequent part of on her journey to the black belt.  We used this time to watch some movies and just basically chill.  Maddie wanted to see "Tower of Terror" again, and after that, the rest of us were watching the Paul Lynde Halloween Special as Maddie was getting ready for bed.  We're tearing through these seasonal specials this year.  We still have a few big ones left, but we've watched most of them for sure.  We have time for some new ones too.

Speaking of seasonal activities, on the treadmill, I was doing a POV treadmill journey through a corn maze, which was kind of fun to start out with.  Although it was pretty repetitious!  I had a podcast on the headphones though, and that was a story that I've been listening to lately, a Christmas story from 1918 called, "Campfire Girls of Allegheny Mountains, or a Christmas Success Against Odds."  The title of that one is pretty long!  But I finished this one up today, and I can say I rather enjoyed it.  It was for younger readers at the time, and even in that short time how our English language has evolved.  As for the story itself, there were heroes and threatening characters and an ongoing mystery, all set in the time of coal mining strikes and a world at war at Christmas time.  It was a pleasant read, or at least a pleasant story to listen to, and it's just a little bit of Christmas starting to seep in early this year, and I'm okay with that.

In that Christmas spirit early, Mom has been getting her ornaments ready for the Christmas tree she's been planning at the botanical gardens.  She got some ornaments - these red cardinals - and some black and white ribbon as well. She's also making these heart-shaped ornaments of white clay.  She cut the shapes out and then baked them in the oven.  After that, she painted a cardinal on the ornament and wrote "Merry Christmas" on it as well.  The prototype looks fantastic, and the idea is to make a several more of these - she has at least a dozen of these heart-shaped ornaments ready, each complete with a little hole at the top to put a ribbon through.  But that's not all - she and Nana collected pine cones from the back yard, and got quite a few of them.  She put them in the oven this afternoon, slowly heating them in such a way that they opened up.  Afterwards, she put white paint on them, not smothering them, but putting it on in such a way to make it look as if a frost or light snow had fallen upon them.  The tree is going to look wonderful.  Mom is super creative!

So it was raining a lot today, but at least there's hope of it clearing out.  We're supposed to get rain tomorrow, but it's supposed to go away, and we might even get a good weekend.  Our hummingbirds seem to be moving on - maybe they're sick of the rain too.  But we have chipmunks and squirrels and cardinals and all kinds of birds.  The cardinals are funny in the front yard's bird feeder, tossing aside all the seeds they don't like so they can get to the sunflower seeds.  Mom and Nana sit there on the front porch watching the show, a variety of usual suspects dropping by for a free meal.

It was a quiet day, and that's okay.  We'll have some bigger days upcoming, certainly tomorrow and the weekend.