Hey There Monday

Good morning friends. We have a full full calendar on tap here this week with lots happening, including houseguests, meeting new neighbors, and a granddaughter celebrating a birthday. This morning though, I'm joining Holly and Sarah for their weekend recap link up. Here's how ours looked-

Backing up to Thursday because Thursdays are when I think the weekend should start. I volunteer on Thursdays and felt productive in dropping off both dry cleaning and a library book before 8:30 AM. My volunteer stint lasts from about 9-1, then I made one more quick stop before heading home. 

Hubs and I met up with Daughter1 and her family at Max's soccer match a little bit later. His team just keeps on winning and it was fun to watch them advance yet another day in the playoffs. After the game we all went to a local brew pub and had pizza and wings to celebrate. On our way from the soccer pitch to the restaurant we passed this field of cotton in full bloom. 

I'm not usually on this road so have never seen it before, but it was so pretty in the setting sun. I tried to snap a picture as we whizzed by, which isn't the best but it's all I managed. 

We had our first 'table fire' Friday morning. The weather has been absolutely spectacular, and we are spending as much time outside in it as we can. I stayed busy all day with phone calls, meal planning, grocery shopping, and laundry. Hubs played golf. His tee time wasn't until after one and he was playing an hour away so he was out pretty much all afternoon. 

I made a chicken pot pie for dinner and we watched a movie we thought we might have seen, but since neither of us could remember for sure, it was fine. Welcome to 'the third act'-ha! 

Saturday I washed all the slip covers for the chairs in our keeping room. Not gonna lie here...it's a job, but they come out beautifully, so it's worth doing from time to time. These chairs are where people naturally gravitate when they come in to my house, so they get a lot of use.  

There's a seat cushion, a seat back, and then the chair cover itself, all of which zip snuggly around the cushions inside, so it can be a wrestling match getting them off and especially back on. Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day. I like to set the covers outside on a drying rack so wanted to take advantage of the sunshine.

We have company coming Monday and I'm glad this is done. Hubs washed his truck because that's what he loves to do on a sunny Saturday morning. 

Saturday afternoon we went to a party at a friend's house. So much fun! They had BBQ catered and best of all (aside from the glorious weather I mean) was the live music. Two local musicians who are both super talented, played for three solid hours, no breaks. We've seen them around town in one of the breweries and  some of the dining spots that feature live music, but this was in someone's back yard and felt extra.

The musicians performed on our friend's dock and then the party go-ers sat on the hillside above them. It was a great set up. 

Several boaters came by too, and listened in from the water, and we were kind of wishing we'd come by boat because it was a great night for it. 

Sadly not as great a night for football. We got home and caught most of the Tennessee-Alabama game. Ugh. The hometown team also lost so a double whammy. 

Sunday we woke up to rain, which we haven't had in a long while. We heard an excellent message at church, and hubs and I went to brunch right after. Then it was home to clean bathrooms and do some vacuuming so everything would be nice and tidy for our friends arriving Monday. Hubs and our houseguest worked together for a couple of decades+ and we haven't seen one another in a number of years. We're looking forward to showing them the lake and catching up in person. 

Have a great week everyone!

Hodgepodge Questions-Volume 625

Here are the questions to this week's Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here on Wednesday (October 22nd) to add your link to the party. See you there! 

1. What do you like most about your family? 

2. What's something nice that's happened to you recently? 

3. Do you like the color orange? Besides a pumpkin and an actual orange, what's something orange you love?

4.  What's something you have now you couldn't have imagined having five years ago? How does that make you feel? What's possible now because of it? 

5. Let's wrap this one up with an October this or that...

• pumpkin bread or apple cider donut
• cozy sweater or cozy hoodie
• apple picking or pumpkin picking
• scary movie or Hallmark movie
• hay ride or corn maze
• twinkle lights or candles
• autumn hike or autumn bonfire

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Everyday Images Mid-October

I'm joining Kym at A Fresh Cup of Coffee today for her Everyday Images link up. She posts new photo prompts every two weeks (on Thursdays) and leaves the link up for the whole two weeks, so lots of time to make it happen on your own blog. 

I got a new phone for my birthday a few weeks ago and the camera can do a lot. I need to spend some time learning all the bells and whistles but I enjoy these bi-weekly prompts to encourage and remind me to take more pictures. The most recent prompts are-

listen~matching~clock~current season (quarterly)~dishes~orange

I found a couple of these to be somewhat challenging, but that's part of the fun.  

Listen-

I've mentioned before that hubs and I are reading through the Bible this year, and we're actually listening as opposed to reading. We use the Bible app and we're in awe of the narrator and his ability to pronounce long lists of seemingly un-pronouncable names and places. 

After the daily reading we listen to Tara Leigh Cobble's podcast called The Bible Recap where she helps bring clarity to whatever was read that day. 

Every day looks different here and sometimes we sit with our coffee and listen. If we have somewhere to go that's a bit of a drive we'll listen in the car. I actually like that because there are fewer distractions. Last week we listened on our drive into the mountains. Day 284!! So happy we've stuck with it. 

Taking the word listen in a different direction...we are loving our backyard waterfall. 

The sound is bliss. 

Matching

I had a hard time with this one and resorted to taking a picture of two matching catalogs we got in the mail this week. They arrived on the same day too, and I have no idea why they're sending us two???  I have ordered from this company several times, but I never order via the catalog. 

Do you still get magazines? How about catalogs? Do you ever order from a catalog, or are you like me and you go straight to the website? I suppose the catalogs remind me of companies I don't think about on a regular basis and that's probably a good thing. I do enjoy browsing catalogs of all kinds and sometimes find gift inspiration there. 

In case you're wondering this company's Kringles are yummy. Not a paid endorsement, just an opinion. Carry on. 

Possibly a stretch here, but I also took a photograph at the restaurant we ate in last weekend, that I thought might work with this prompt. We ate at the bar and I liked the symmetry of the matching glass hangers on either side of the bar. 

I spy dishes on the counter, and now that I look at it, those bartenders kind of match too. 

Clock-

There's a clock in front of an old hotel downtown and while at the fall fest I snapped a picture as we walked by. Jogged by? The streets were packed with people and I was trying to keep up with hubs and friends who were on a mission to get to the next stage. (I wrote about the fall fest here-The Weekend Roundup)

Current season-dishes-orange-

I'm going to combine these three prompts because I feel like my pictures suggest that. For instance, is this our current season or is it orange? You decide-

Here's another-

We belong to a wine club that meets once a month and I snapped this picture at the October dinner-

I hit the trifecta with this next picture. These jars sit in a corner of my kitchen and I change them out seasonally. Right now they're saying fall. And orange. And dishes. 

I got this mug last year when I was Boo-ed by a neighbor. Does your neighborhood do this? You find a bag of fall/Halloween goodies on your front porch from an anonymous neighbor and you take the little ghost out of the bag and hang it on your mailbox so everyone knows you've already been hit. 

Then you put together a bag,  pick up a ghost from the neighbor who organizes it all, and leave the bag you made on one of your neighbor's porches. It has to be a neighbor who doesn't already have a ghost on their mailbox because the ghost is how you know who's been Boo-ed and who hasn't.  I love this mug and have my afternoon tea in it this time of year. 

Also, everyone has doorbell cameras so it's not as easy to be anonymous as it used to be lol. Still fun though. 

Happy fall y'all! 

A Freshly Painted Hodgepodge

Welcome to this week's edition of The Wednesday Hodgepodge. If you've answered today's questions add your link at the end of my post, then leave a comment for the blogger before you so the hop keeps hopping. Here we go-

 

1. Do you make an effort to see/hear live music? Last time you went somewhere for the live music? 

We love live music and I'd say we make some effort. Tickets to popular well known acts are ridiculously expensive these days so that's a factor in who we see perform live. We enjoy live music at several local venues where local artists play, some of whom are very talented. We have tickets to see one of my favorite bands in December and I'm looking forward to that. 

Last time we saw live music would be this past weekend. We went to the Fall Festival event in the nearby city which featured three days of all day music on five different stages. We heard some good bands. 

 2.According to HGTV the colors of the year for 2026 are mostly decided. Top paint companies declare a color of the year, and decorators will incorporate that into their new year home and room designs. Here's what's on tap in terms of paint trends for 2026 (check out the link here to see photos)

• Sherwin Williams-universal khaki (inspired by heavy canvas and outdoor gear)
• Behr-hidden gem (a confident shade of teal)
• Valspar-warm eucylyptus (a warm sliver tinted green)
• Dutch Boy-melodious ivory (a honey tinted beige)
• Glidden-warm mahogany (a classic brick red)
• Krylon-matte coffee bean
• Clark and Kensington -Hazelnut Crunch (warm reddish-brown)
• Graham and Brown-Divine Damson (cherry red with a subtle violet undertone)
• Dunn and Edwards-midnight garden (the green that works everywhere) 

First question-did you know there were so many different paint manufacturers? 

I'd heard of more than half of these companies, but two or three were new to me. 

Which color on the list most appeals to you in terms of your own decorating style? 

The walls in my house are mostly a soft neutral-Sherwin Williams Canvas Tan. It's very livable and we still like the color. We have a lot of windows and you see the lake out of most of them so we purposely chose a wall color that wouldn't compete with Mother Nature. The Universal Khaki is a little darker, but similar so maybe that one. I like the matte coffee bean too in terms of a neutral. 

I love dark dramatic paint but it doesn't feel right in this house. 

Do you have plans to do any painting in your home in the coming year, and if so might you choose a color from this list? 

We need to repaint some rooms more than others, but one room moves in to another then another and before you know it everything has to be painted or it looks funny. Maybe in the coming year. Maybe. Hubs says the exterior needs painting too and this would all be a huge project so we'll see. I see it as a two year project-interior one year, exterior the next. Hubs probably sees it more as a two-week project because once he gets hold of a home improvement project he's like a dog with a bone. I'm still recovering from the backyard re-do. 

Now, forget painting walls, which color name appeals to you most? 

Do the same people who come up with nail polish names also weigh in on paint. It seems so. I like the sound of warm eucalyptus. 

3. What's something in your life you have to do-watch-or participate in that's about as exciting as 'watching paint dry'? 

Taxes and insurance. Either and both. 

4 . Tuesday, October 14th is/was National Dessert day...did you/will you celebrate? Tell us how? What's your absolute favorite dessert. Yes, just one. I know!! 

I'm answering these questions on Tuesday morning and probably won't celebrate because I have book club Tuesday afternoon and play Mah Jong Tuesday evening. I did have dessert on Monday night at our wine club dinner...a very light cheesecake with a strawberry topping. It was yummy! 

I have a sweet tooth so choosing just one favorite is hard. I'm going with crème brûlée. 

We make it at home occasionally for dinner guests, and if I'm dining out and see it's on the menu I'll be ordering. 

5. Perhaps today is the day I will __________________________________. 

Organize that out of control cabinet in my laundry room. Except probably not because both my Tuesday and my Wednesday are already pretty full. The question did say 'perhaps'. If it doesn't happen Wednesday it's on my calendar for Friday so it will happen this week. 

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Are you familiar with something called a Day In The Life post? I've wanted to try one and I invite you to try it too. In a nutshell, you chronicle your thoughts, activities, and experiences throughout a single day. Any day. Nothing big needs to be happening, just everyday ordinary life from the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed. 

Most of the bloggers I've seen do this take a picture every hour or two and then add some words to go with. They're fun to read and you really see how, although our lives are our own, there is much we have in common. I'll be setting an alarm to remember to snap pictures on the day I choose, because that's usually my downfall. 

I'm going to host a link up for anyone who wants to play along on Thursday, November 13th, which is almost a month away. You can pick any day between now and then to blog about, then come back here and share your post on the 13th. See you there! 

And also here because like I said, it's a month away. 

Day Datin' Episode Two: Highlands NC

So good news. I've talked hubs into 52 dates in 52 weeks. More or less. Probably less but we're going to try. I'm going to try. I'm not sure I actually told him the exact number, but whatever...he'll go along with it because that's what you do when you're married a long time. You zig and he zigs with you. Something like that. 

Also he loves together time while I'm a person who craves space. 

See? Zigging and zagging. 

Let's define the word 'date'. We're retired so we naturally spend a lot of time together. We dine out at some point every week and I guess technically you'd call those 'dates'. Except we don't. We just call it grabbing lunch or dinner. I'm going to use the word date here in a more intentional way. As in, we're going to put a literal date on the calendar. We're going to plan ahead. 

Well probably I'll be the one planning but that's okay. I told him we'll snap a picture every week too, because it you don't snap a picture did it really happen? 

Not in 2025. Plus how do I make a 'date book' if we neglect to photograph it in some way? 

Date number 2...

We like to drive into our favorite nearby mountain town every fall and last Wednesday was the day. You might have thought I was kidding when I said we were going to write these dates on the calendar, but we had this one written on our calendars. 

There was a little bit of rain in the forecast but we woke to sunny skies, and ended up having lovely weather the whole day. We wound our way up the mountain to the charming town of Highlands NC for lunch and shopping, and we thought maybe a stop at the waterfall. Construction was ongoing there so we didn't get to hike. Western N. Carolina is still recovering from Helene in so many ways.

We remembered to snap a picture this time. 

That's  Old Edwards Inn behind us, a very well known beautiful hotel, spa, fab restaurant. We arrived close to lunchtime but visited a couple of shops before heading to our lunch spot. Which was not Old Edwards, but still is one of our favorites-Wild Thyme Gourmet. The cuisine is American with an Asian flair. 

We shared an order of their spring rolls to start, then we both had their crab cake sandwich. 

I've said before we're crab cake snobs and these were excellent. All crab, no filler. We didn't have dessert because a pastry shop that's on the way out of town was on my agenda. 

We spent a leisurely afternoon browsing shops, holding hands, designing our mountain house (kidding!) and enjoying the beautiful day. 

We left the town square and started for home around three, but first! pastry. 

I want to come back here when that hydrangea hedge is in full bloom. 

The pastries here are works of art and after we got home I googled the shop and learned the pastry chef, Oksana Shchelgachova, is on the current season of Food Network's Halloween Baking Championship. 

I haven't been watching but will tune in now.  

I'll vouch for her too because her pastries are delicious!

We finally made our selections and took our dessert and coffee out to the big front porch. They serve their coffee in real cups and get bonus points for that. 

Hubs had the key lime tart...

 and I had the pavlova. 

We brought the pumpkin home to have the next day.

On the ride back down the mountain we stopped for the requisite photo of the lake. Never fails to make you exhale and be grateful you live in a place with so much beauty all around....

...and your favorite date to share it with. 

Linking today with Joanne for her Talking About It Tuesdays blog hop. 

The Weekend Roundup

Good Monday morning friends. Stating for the record the weather here has been spectacular and I'll take more of it please. Seriously perfect. 

Today's the day we chat about our weekends, and if you'd like to add your link to the party hop over to Holly (Pink Lady) or Sarah's blog (Sunshine and Books). Here's how ours looked-

Did I mention the weather? Oh my, so pretty! In fact it was so bright and sunny the tiny handprints on my sliders were extra clear lol. I tried to snap a picture, but it truly does not do them justice. The kids stopped by Thursday afternoon and left their mark art. 

Friday was pretty low key. Hubs had a zoom call then washed his truck which is his new favorite hobby while I grocery shopped. We were home Friday evening and I cooked. Whoohoo! I have not been in the mood to cook lately and needed to shake things up.  I'd seen Ina Garten make a recipe online that looked good and it was (Chicken With Shallots).  Do I have a picture of said dinner? Nope. But if you want to see my grandkids handprints on the windows I've got that.  

Saturday we went into the nearby city for their fall fest.We didn't get there last year as we were in the UK, plus Helene made a mess of things, but we have been in years past and it's always a fun event. 

They close off the downtown streets and there are five big stages set up at various spots around the downtown with music on every stage beginning Friday night, all day Saturday, and Sunday afternoon too. We got to town about noon and stayed all day. 

So many great bands and the weather y'all! Did I mention the weather? 

There are bands playing on each stage simultaneously so you have to figure out which ones you want to see. We started with one that's a hometown group and they're terrific. I like a band that plays their own music, but mixes in some covers too because everybody wants to sing along. 

Besides music there are beer stations and food stalls galore. Almost all the local restaurants set up under tents and you have your pick of whatever kind of food you might want to sample. We got a taco and churros as we walked to the next stage, and both were really good. 

We watched a couple more bands before calling it a night. Because everyone is eating from the stalls the restaurants aren't as busy as they normally would be on a Saturday night. Before heading home we popped into one of our absolute favorite Italian restaurants that you can rarely drop in on without a reservation. 

We ate at the bar and we each had pasta. Hubs had the Fusilli al Nero de Sepia which was lobster, black truffles, sundried tomatoes, and breadcrumbs-scrumptious! 

I had their spaghetti with garlic, roasted tomatoes, basil, and grana padana-also scrumptious! 

Plus our server was so personable, a local college student, and hubs told him to call him when he started his job hunt and he'd offer him some resume and interview coaching. 

Sunday we went to church then to Waffle House for breakfast after. Are you pro or no on Waffle House? I couldn't eat it every day, but every now and then it's just right. We were seated beside a veteran and hubs quietly bought his breakfast which made me so happy. 

We came home and I worked on my blog and tried to finish up my book for book club happening on Tuesday. Hubs met up with friends to watch the Steelers game and I went back to church for the evening program-week two of our study on C.S. Lewis's book Mere Christianity.

And that was the weekend. Hope yours was full of fun and sunshine too.