Although my garage has never been particularly messy and certainly not dirty, I did have a lot of things lined up along the walls as there were no storage cabinets. Finally got tired of looking at all that stuff and had some cabinets built in. Wish I had thought to take a “before” picture, but you can see the results in the “after” picture. Now I just need to rearrange and rehang the pictures and paintings I had up. I love having everything tucked away.

I used Halloween-themed paper to make simple flowers for this bouquet. The “vase” is actually an electric candle filled with clear glass pebbles so that it still flickers when turned on.

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We were having lunch at the clubhouse when this beauty showed up. He is on the putting green right next to the golf cart garage. If you look at the far left you can just see two kids on the green; the ram is very unconcerned.

And here’s a closer look:

As usual we are spreading her birthday celebration out over a week or more. Here are some pics:

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Tomorrow the official holiday season begins here in our household as I put up the Halloween decorations for one month. Then one month of Thanksgiving and one month of Winter holiday decorations. I really look forward to the fall!

Meantime, today I finished up some more flowers. Someone asked me if I could make her some Sterling roses and this is my best shot at it. Sterling roses are lavender but with a pinkish tone. I made these by using a pink and blush double-sided crepe paper covered with lavender Pan Pastel. I’m very happy with the way the color turned out.

Happy Fall!

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I have been playing Microsoft’s TriPeaks solitaire for many years. It’s a great game when you just have a few minutes to kill, as it is untimed and can be played in a minute or two.

I play on the random setting, so some of the games are easy and others not so much! And some, no matter how I try, I just can’t get to work out. If you’re not familiar with the game, here’s the starting layout:

The idea is to clear the board by playing cards that are either one higher or one lower than card from your reserve pile. The Ace seen here is the starting card, I could play either a two, if there was one on the board, or either of the Kings. When I play a King, I can then play one of the Queens, then another King, then another Queen, etc., etc. As you uncover the cards below, they turn up and are then available for play. Suits don’t matter at all. If one of the deals defeats you, all is not lost, you have 2 more “lives” before the game is over.

The fun part is that you can redo each deal as many times as you want, trying different moves to see if you can clear the board. Some boards, however, just seem impossible which is the point at which you give up one of your lives and move on to a new deal.

In the screen shot above, I have a score of 268,500 with both of my additional lives left and I have cleared 15 boards. Years ago I would have considered this to be a fairly good score, but I have gotten better at the game. I began to hit 400,000, then even the occasional 700,000 before I would call it quits and give up on ever solving a game. Since it’s a random deal, I figure there have to be some deals that are just not doable and after ten tries or so I would just move on.

Early this summer I hit 800,000 with both of my extra lives left. Ah ha, I thought, I should be able to get to 1,000,000 with no problem. That, of course, is when I hit a wall and no matter what I did, I could not get past 960,000. Well, I couldn’t let that stand and have been working all summer to reach 1,000,000 (spending lots of time in waiting rooms is a great help).

So here I present to you the proof I finally hit my goal:

No matter how I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to get rid of that pesky Six. When I turn up that last card from my reserve pile, the game is over as it is not a Five or Seven. It’s been a good run, but I think it’s time to turn to some other game when I’m sitting in the waiting room later today!

Here’s a coyote I spotted while driving down to the gym yesterday:

And here are pictures of the luncheon show put on for us today outside the clubhouse restaurant:

Although these are only still shots, I can tell you that there was a lot of running around being done.

Hope all of you are having entertaining weekends as well!

Brindy hasn’t made much of an appearance on this blog lately, so here are a few pictures. Generally she is perfectly content to be in her bed at the far end of the couch while I am on the other end. This evening, though, she has snuck down to my end and is slowly working her way out of her bed:

Here, she has made it all the way onto my lap and is hoping I haven’t noticed!

And here she is staking claim to mom’s bed:

Here are a few shots of my latest flowers. Turned out well, I think, but as you can probably imagine, they are an incredible amount of work! Thankfully, my Cricut machine did all the cutting.

Here’s what each piece looks like straight from being cut:

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but many of my flowers, including this one, are from Lia Griffith’s web site: liagriffith.com