::: six things I love and one I hate :::

One thing I love (of course) is my son Mike - and the help that he gives us. It's a beautiful fall afternoon and he's outside cleaning up the yard from all the debris that covered our lawn in a wind storm last week. Meanwhile I'm inside cleaning up my messy house after a big scrapbooking binge. Oh, and I'm posting those pics - but don't tell him.

I love Scott's far-away photos of the sky and sunsets. He likes to take pictures of clouds - I think it's the artist in him.

And he likes to zoom in to get pictures of everyday beauty - close-up. These little berries filling the cracks of the sidewalk are just sweet. Sweet little nature.

I love my Warren Kimble Folkart Landscapes calendar from Lang. I'm so relieved because I just Googled it, and there is a similar calendar for 2010. Each month has a folkart barn or schoolhouse - big and graphic, not cutesy. I like that. And Kimble uses a lot of blue so the pictures look good on my wall.


Yup - here's the 2010 version. I need to order it today. Right now, the calendar companies are offering things like free shipping and 20% off. Believe me, I've studied this for years as I've taught Cut the Crazy out of Christmas, and the deals (on most everything) are better in October and early November. If you think you'll save money by waiting until the the last few weeks of December, you won't. The stores creep the prices back up the closer they get to Christmas. And in December it will be snowing and you'll wish you could be home watching Project Runway or baking cookies or reading Christmas stories like Skipping Christmas by John Grisham. GO SHOP NOW. Oops, that's off the subject.

I love my plate that combines my favorite blue colors with the beautiful oranges and greens of fall. This plate belonged to Scott's mother, and it is a treasure.

I HATE this cover of the Sept. Country Living Magazine. I mean, come on editors. This is SO NOT CLASSY. You can do better than this. There are beautiful autumn images everywhere. I know, spiders are part of Halloween now, but this is a woman's magazine, not a horror show. I hate spiders, and if you know me, you know why I hate them - it was passed on to me from my mother who literally gets sick when she sees one. I just feel for her that she even has to look at these images all through October. The spider on this cake is particularly tasteless in my humble opinion.