Long time, no blog

The last two weeks:

1) a terrible cold and cough just in time for thanksgiving
2) providing turkey dinner for 10 RCMP and friends
3) throwing a pre-baby arrival shower for a friend (which involved blowing up 72 orange balloons)
4) an all day Christmas Card making extravaganza (i'll save the pics for another post)
5) 2 bombs going off in Dawson Creek= no see husband
6) hosting my book club meeting
7) planning a halloween party
8) getting my costume together
9) the first early morning snow (the grass is still green though)

In more detail:

Needless to say, the past two weeks have been busy. It started out with a nasty cold that hit a hight point during thanksgiving dinner. I couldn't stop coughing for about a week, but still managed to enjoy the dinner with friends. I was complemented on my decor, which was very Martha Stuart, I must say. Here are a few photos. I made cranberry/pear pie, chocolate fudge and pumpkin cheesecake squares, and Mike took care of the turkey etc. It was good food all around.






My friends little girl, Arianna.



Table decor.




Then, Mike's schedule finally got around to having days off over the weekends, and someone decided to set some bombs off on the oil pipeline and put Dawson Creek on the news! (We had a whole 5 minutes on Global National one night). But, bombs equals extra overtime for husband, so we didn't see much of each other for a few days or nights, as he slept all day and worked all night. On the bright side, the 36 hours of double time and 18 hours of time and a half means we can afford to come home before Christmas. There's always a bright side to everything.

Then, it's babies galore as 2 more of my friends delivered their babies, and two more are soon to be due, so I've been buying tons of baby gifts lately. Who knew there were so many gadgets for moms and babies? But, I'm learning lots of the mom/baby lingo so I figure I'll be prepared when we finally have kids!

Lately I've found myself playing hostess quite frequently. I'm not sure if I'm good at it, or if it's just that my living room is 27 by 19 feet (that's huge if you can't picture it--I can easily fit a piano, fireplace, two couches, two loveseats, entertainment center, chair, and tons of people). I love entertaining though so it's okay. This month alone, I've hosted a dinner, thanksgiving, a baby shower, a bible study and my book club meeting.

For this month, we read "The book thief" which was a young adult novel about a German girl during WWII. It's an amazing read and I highly recommend it. My book club gave it 8.5/10. Now, we're reading "The thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield, which is supposed to be really good. I'm only one chapter in but it's very well written so far, and I think I'm going to enjoy it. It has a ghost in it, so it's appropriate for Halloween. But, Inkdeath, the third book in the Cornelia Funke series just came out, and I'm dying to read it, but thinking about saving it for a really good time, like Christmas holidays.

So, here I am now, two days to Halloween, and I just finished putting together my costume. I will post pictures of the different parts of it tomorrow, but I'll tell you a bit about it now. For years I've been wanting to go as Holly Golightly, (Audrey Hepburn, in Breakfast at Tiffany's) but haven't got the pieces together in time. About a week ago, I found the perfect dress at Sears, fake pearls at Wal-mart, a tiara which I craftily transformed by removing the purple sequins and glueing on the pearls from my scrapbooking kit, as well as black gloves, fake eyelashes, and black flats. My classes are having a party and costume contest, so I told them I'd dress up. I'm very excited. Now I just need to buy a good bottle of hairspray and tons of bobby pins to get my hair that high on friday!

I'm also excited to hand out candy in my house for the first time. Afterwards, myself and a few friends are going to the haunted house at the Pioneer Village.

Here is the dress

Happy Halloween!

Who to vote for?

Voting will take place in just over a week, and I find I've seen more about the American election that the Canadian. Being new to Dawson Creek, I was having a hard time deciding what party to vote for. I voted for the NDP last time, but I don't really think I want to vote for them again. Basically, I'm hoping that the Conservatives don't win, but unfortunately, I just discovered what a Conservative stronghold I live in. According to the Vote for the Environment website, the Conservatives won with over 21 000 votes last election, with the CLOSEST being the NDP, with only 7000 votes, and surprisingly, the Green Party came third with just over 6000. Apparently the Conservative member in the Peace River has won the last three elections in the Northern riding, and he just switches parties to whoever happens to be winning.

So, I'm pretty torn now. I know I won't vote conservative, but there is virtually no way any other party will win in the Peace, so does it even matter? I put my postal code into the Vote for Environment site and it even said "You choose", do whatever you can for the environment because no party can beat the conservatives up here. Arg. Well, that wasn't very helpful, was it?

So, now I'm wondering, what do you think? Any insights into politics?

If you haven't seen the site, (I found it on Ciboulette's blog--thanks!) here it is:

Just when I'd put away the summer sandals...

How nice is it to have summer weather with fall leaves? Very nice. Especially when at this time last year, it had already snowed once and I was sporting my fall coat + gloves + scarf ensemble.

This week has been beautiful up north. We had 26 degree weather today, which is warm even for July or August. And it's October! I layed out in my backyard with shortsleaves and read a book and ate chips. And gazed at the lovely yellow of my backyard tree. Dawson Creek is so yellow in October and it happens so quickly too. A few days and my tree goes from green to bright sunny yellow.

I've been going for walks and drives to see the lovely leaves. There is nothing prettier than blue sky against yellow leaves. And I also know that soon it will be white against white so I am getting my fill while I can.

It is strange though, as the last week of September was cold. I know there must have been at least one frost. Not because I was up early enough to see it, but because my flowers in the backyard turned black one day. And my sweet peas--which took until September to bloom--started to shrivel up too.

But, we had one last mow of the lawn, and now it is time to wait. Wait for snow and minus 40 degrees. Fall is definitely the time of waiting up north. Of getting your furnace working, your boots out, the extension cord ready to plug in the car, and your spring bulbs pulled out of the ground.

A tour of fall from my backyard: