Seven Quick Takes

I thought I'd hop on here real quick and do a proof of life post!  :)  HA!

I am still alive and kicking but I don't ever feel like I have anything to post on the blog.  Since it's Friday. I thought to get the old blogging juices flowing I would do a Seven Quick Takes like I used to do back in the day. 

So, here they are in no particular order:

1. We have two maple trees in our front yard that we planted shortly after we built this house in 2006.  I'm guessing they were planted in 2007. When we got them from the nursery the name on the tag was October Glory! We were so excited to have tree with flaming red leaves in October.  But every October we would be disappointed.  The leaves would slowly start to turn at the END of October but were always a darkish brown red.  And most of the time, the tree would lose it's leaves before they had even turned.  Dan was always the most disappointed in this and every fall would bemoan the fact that our trees were never a bright beautiful red in October as the name had promised.

He has been in Ireland for the last two weeks and will hopefully be home next Friday.  And I know it's November but our October Glories are really beautiful right now.  I sent him this picture to show him how pretty they are:

I snapped this as I was backing out of the garage and thought the trees looked really pretty.  Perhaps they should have been named November Glories!

2. Both of the kids will be home for part of the weekend!  I'm so excited!  I love it when they are home. Even if they both have other plans and are in and out all weekend, I'll be content.  Having someone in the house with me other than the two cats will be a nice change.

3. Work is going well.  I think I'm finally getting the hang of everything I'm doing there.  And every day is different so it's keeping me on my toes.  It's a clothing boutique and all of the ladies that work there are real fashionistas.  I am not so it's a good thing I work mostly behind the scenes so I can wear my regular boring clothes.  I am hoping that some of their good style will wear off on me but  I've been there almost 3 months and it hasn't happened yet, so it's not looking good! 

4. If you know me, you know I am NOT crafty but about a month ago, I painted this after watching a quick tutorial on TikTok.

I loved how it turned out so much that I framed it and it's part of my fall decor.  Well, it's perched among some fake pumpkins...that's about as much fall decor as I have around here.

Anyway, I was so inspired by this (and my obvious talent) that I decided to paint an abstract angel. I had seen in our gift shop some abstract angel art and thought "that looks so easy! I'm sure I could do that and save myself some big bucks."

So I found a YouTube tutorial and got to work.  Y'all.  It turned out so very bad that I'm almost embarrassed to show you.  

But I can't mention it and not show you how horrible it is. So, here you go:

It looks like a child painted this!  It's so horrible that it makes me laugh and is currently being displayed in the kitchen until Dan and the kids can see it and we can all laugh at it together.  For reference, this is what it was supposed to look like:

I have since found several other tutorials of abstract angels that I like better but I am currently too lazy to attempt.  Maybe I will give it another shot next week.  

5. When I'm not trying to become the next Picasso, I've been watching Season 5 of Love Is Blind. It was released in September but Dan was home and knew I wouldn't be able to watch it.  Then he went on a trip and I forgot all about it.  Then he went on another trip and I was overjoyed when it popped up on Netflix.  This season is all over the place but I'm loving every minute of it!

6. I attempted to start my Christmas shopping. I've gotten two presents and have stalled out. I have been trying to get online after work to get inspired but inspiration has yet to strike.  Perhaps it's because it's been in the 80s here this week.  It's hard to get in the mood to shop for Christmas when you are literally sweating. We have our work Christmas party on Sunday evening so I'm hoping that gets me in the Christmas spirit!

7. It's now Saturday morning. Sarah came home while I was writing this post.  She and I went to Chipotle for dinner (I don't have a lot of groceries around when Dan isn't home.) Then we came back and watched quite a few episodes of Schitt's Creek.  So it was the absolute perfect Friday night if you ask me!  

I woke this morning to a text from Dan to the family group chat.  Some times when has to spend the weekends in Ireland he has to work but this weekend wasn't one of them. So he headed to the town of Derry to explore and he sent us this:

He said it was a beautiful day in Ireland and he's not sure what he's looking at.  :) 

He's gotten very lucky with the weather in Ireland this spring and summer.  It's been very sunny and dry.  This fall though is a different story.  They've had massive amounts of rain and lots of flooding where he is and many of the roads and have closed and quite a few people haven't been able to make it in to work due to all of this.  I'm happy that he's got nice weather for the weekend!

And with that, I'm out.  Have a great weekend!