Happy Friday!!! With Monday being Canadian Thanksgiving, it was only a four day work week for me – and it feels like this week has just flown by! I still feel like there is so much I need to accomplish. Do you ever have weeks like that? That you feel like you’ve done a lot but when you look back there is still lots to do?
Before I rushed out the door this morning, I wrote out a “to-do” list for tonight of all the things that I want/need to get done (like calling our internet provider, ordering new cheques online, etc) – what a wild and crazy Friday night, right? As of right now I’m all pumped up to be productive when I get home, but I KNOW that the second I see Garrett and the pups, it’s going to be so hard to do anything but crash on the couch with them. I wish that my 10am “go get ’em” attitude stayed with me right until bedtime. It’s times like that makes me wish I drank coffee!
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Halloween Necklace: Last year Garrett gave me this necklace for Christmas, because it reminded him of one we’d seen on our road trip to Salem last October. It’s unlike anything that I’ve seen before and I absolutely love it. The twisted tree design and harvest moon are so symbolic of our trip together.
Salem Revisited: Wearing the necklace today made me realize that it was exactly a year ago today that we were making our way to Salem. I can’t believe that it’s already been a year!
We had such a fantastic time scoping out the town, doing our own Hocus Pocus tour and visiting some of the historical locations too. If you ever get the chance to go to Salem around Halloween, I definitely recommend it!
(Side note – my hair is so long here! I know I only chopped it off in May, but I can’t remember it being like this.)
We also made a quick detour on the way home to see the Keene Pumpkin Festival in New Hampshire. So very cool…and made me wish that we had something like this closer to home.
And then we rounded it out with a stop into Wilmington, Vermont. It was the only B&B that wasn’t booked between New Hampshire and making our way home, which is why we stopped there, but in the end it was one of my favourite things we did on the trip. I’d love to go back and explore Vermont some more.
Talking about the trip this week got Garrett and I thinking about where we’d like to go next. I would LOVE to take him to New York City someday (he’s never been!). I went one summer and loved it, but I think it would be fun to go in the fall or around Christmastime. It always looks so beautiful in the movies. We’ve been brainstorming ideas for either another mini weekend getaway before the holidays or right afterwards. Just 3-4 days where we can get lost somewhere. Any suggestions for something in the Ontario/Upstate New York/Michigan area?
Apple Picking (or just Picking Up): Over the Thanksgiving Weekend, my mom and great aunt headed out for a drive along the lake and when they mentioned the possibility of stopping into an orchard to grab apples, I hopped right in.
We got a couple of baskets of Gala apples for munching and McIntosh for baking, and divvied them up between everyone. It made me think of all the years that my grandfather would bring us apples from Thornbury at Thanksgiving…including the year I took a whole suitcase of them back on a greyhound!
On the way back home, we saw eight wild turkeys walk across the road – didn’t they know that this is a bad weekend for turkeys to go trotting about?
And I finished off the Thanksgiving weekend with the last sliver of mom’s pumpkin pie. So so good.
Mini Cleaning Bursts: I’m sharing this because I know that there are probably others out there in the same boat. When I’m really busy (like I’ve been this week), I try to do all the cleaning/tidying up in the apartment in little bursts. Instead of just coming home and trying to amble my way through my list, I set the timer for 15 minutes – and in that time I can ONLY be doing that one task, instead of getting distracted by other things that need to get done.
I might set it for 15 minutes and then only be picking up and putting away stuff around the apartment in that time. Then the timer goes off, I reset it for another 15 minutes and in that time I take care of the kitchen (whether it’s cleaning out a cupboard, washing down the stove or doing a load of dishes). Another 15 minutes will be cleaning the bathroom, replacing towels and quickly going through the medicine cupboard to get rid of anything we don’t need anymore. The last 15 minutes might be doing another cleaning task, like vacuuming and sweeping all the floors. If I still have time on the clock, I’ll use our spray mop to go around the place.
Sometimes I’ll do it all within an hour, but other times I might just set the timer for 15 minutes in the morning before I leave for work and see what I can get done then. 15 minutes seems like nothing, but it can make a huge difference to my sanity in our crazy little apartment.
Technology Fails: I fully intended to have the Holiday Guide up and running yesterday, but we had a bit of a mishap this week. My beloved iMac, where I do all my graphic design work and page formatting, is on the fritz. We had a power outage last weekend and it seems to have fried the computer’s power source. I’ve been looking up solutions online and tonight Garrett and I are going to attempt to open it up to take a look. If that doesn’t work, it’s going to the computer doctor tomorrow morning : ( In the meantime, I’ve been able to download all my design programs onto the laptop so that I can keep this engine rolling.
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I hope you all have a lovely weekend
…also, any suggestions for some good Halloween movies? What are your favourites?
I’m like you — I love the movie Hocus Pocus! Growing up, I also loved the Olsen Twins’ ‘Double Double, Toil and Trouble’ and ‘Casper’ (with Christina Ricci). My sister and I were just mentioning Edward Scissorhands too, even though it’s not exactly a Halloween movie, we still get a Halloween “vibe” off of it (is it just me, or do I remember reading a post you made about that from a previous Halloween? lol).
The other night, “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” was on TV; always a classic!
…that’s about all I’ve got for now. Lol, happy weekend to you guys!
I LOVED Casper growing up – the house was just so spooky and fun. I forgot about that Olsen Twins one too, haha. I still think of Edward Scissorhands as a Halloween film (along with pretty much anything by Tim Burton). Thanks for all the suggestions!