Odds 'n Ends on a Saturday Morning

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Odd 'n End #1 - upcoming weekend
Happy Saturday - the weekend has shown up and it will be a busy one here for us. Both boys have a lot of hockey this weekend and it is Halloween, which has brought in some good business at both stores for the weekend. I am up early (yay! gotta get in my workout to start the day) so I can go into *Store #1* to warm up the chocolate and start dipping the pineapple ghosts, bats and cats that make up a lot of the Halloween arrangements - if interested you can go to http://www.ediblearrangements/ and see what I am talking about.

Thread, needle and fabric have been absent from my hands and activities since I have received the iPad for my early bday present. That thing is addicting - between the games and the free ebooks and all the different news downloads, it definitely can keep one busy. But off in the distance, I do hear the call of the needle so I am sure that it wont be too much longer and Family Sampler or another ornament project will be in hand.

Odd 'n End #2 - Grimm's Fairy Tales
Speaking of reading...have you ever picked up and read any of the Grimm Fairy tales? Like Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel? Well, with the new TV series - Grimm - which premiered last night it has peaked my interest. These are not totally the warm, fuzzy bedtime stories that many of the picture books painted, for it one does think about what they are reading they can be disturbing. For example, take Hansel and Gretel....not a lot of food in the house, the step mom cons the father to ditch his kids in the woods. Can you say - child neglect? When the children find the Witch's bread house in the wood, she locks up Hansel to fatten him up - child abuse? She enslaves Gretel to fetch wood - underage child labor? And all because she wants to eat the children - cannibalism? Anyway, I wasn't able to watch the first episode of Grimm last night because we all decided to utilize a night home w/o any evening activities as an excuse to go to bed early. So by 9:30 all the lights were out and there was a lot of snoring. However, as I am spinning and typing this post right now, I see that it is on indemand on the cable box, so I will probably try and find sometime to watch it over the weekend...and maybe pull out Family Smapler to stitch...perfect Halloween weekend activity, don't you thing?

Odd 'n End #3 - Conversation with Robert
Yesterday afternoon, as Robert (older son) and I were driving home from his school, he informs me that Saturday (today) is "Take a break from Technology" day. You are suppose to take an hour today and take a break from technology. Sounds simple, huh? Immediately I was thinking turn off the TV and turn off the computer games...get outside and enjoy the weather. But being the great debator my son is (don't know if he is a budding lawyer or just a cocky teenager),

he asks: "what do they mean by 'technology'?"

I reply: "TV, computers, maybe lights...any think electronic probably."

He says: "well, maybe we have to take a break from everything that was created in the technical age - besides the electronic items there are the cars, bikes, telephones anything that wasn't around prior to that age."

I reply: "so, basically things that really weren't present 100 years ago."

He looks and says to me, "mom, 100 years ago was 1911 there were cars, there were phones, there was electricity."

It took me awhile to think...for when I was growing up, I always referenced the late 1800s as my "100 years ago". When did the early 1900s become 100 years ago? Isn't that a strange thought?  When you hear "100 years ago" and you don't put much thought to doing the math - what time frame  POPs in your head?

Odds 'n Ends #4 - Pumpkin Carving
I need to come up with an idea for my Pumpkin. I have entered the pumpkin carving contest at my part-time job and am somewhat stumped. I thought it would be fun to come up with something where I can incorporate either the chocolate covered pineapple shapes from our stores - either ghosts, cats or bats. Some ideas that have surfaced are:

• Cut the pumpkin to resemble Ms. Pac Man and put 4 which chocolate covered ghost in front of the pumpkin...might need to come up with a back drop that looks like a PacMan screen
• Cut the pumpkin to resemble a bell and then have chocolate covered bats coming out of it...you know the old saying: "bats in the bellfry"?
• Or scrap the pineapple shapes and ... stack 3 pumpkins on top of each other to create a snowkin or a totemkin.

Anyone have any ideas? or what do you think about any of the above? Well I need to decide really quick because I have to work in the pumpkin carving into the busy weekend. Ugh!

I hope you have a great Saturday! Until next time, remember...

Live, Love, Laugh and Stitch often!

Lisa