It took me several hours, but my offerings for the family Thanksgiving dinner are finally finished. I’m tired and my back hurts, but they all look and taste great. I’m assuming the pie tastes great, of course, because I haven’t tasted it, but the filling was good and the tiny bit of it I tasted when I took the foil shield of the edges of the crust were good. I’m a little concerned about my cranberry sauce, because it doesn’t seem to be getting very thick, but it’s not completely cool yet, either, so I still have hope for it.

I think I’m going to need a vacation after the holidays this year. I’ve been looking into weekday packages in Las Vegas in January & February, trying to figure out if we’ll have enough extra money by then to get away for a couple of days, or not. If we needed a vacation and medical travel Mexico would be the way to go, since they really seem to have a lot of really good hospitals there these days, but I can’t afford a Mexico vacation, let alone medical treatment on top of it (not that I have any pressing needs, anyway!), so I guess that’s out. I’d love to go to Mexico someday, or back to the Caribbean, so I’m actually looking at those options for our 20th anniversary, but for the coming months, Las Vegas or Mesquite will have to do, I’m afraid.

I’m in the middle of making all of the things I’m taking to my mom & dad’s house for Thanksgiving. The pumpkin pie is in the oven & just about ready to come out. I tried a new recipe with cream cheese & cream in it, and it smells heavenly. It has a whole cranberry sauce topping that I made from scratch, with orange juice and such, I think it’ll be really good & somewhat different from our usual pie. I’ll be making an apple cranberry sauce & some pumpkin mousse, too, but I need to let my pie cool for awhile before I can make the mousse, since it’s cooling in the space that I use my mixer. I think I’ll do my cranberry sauce in a few minutes here, just so that’s done, but I need to rest my back a minute before I start peeling, coring and chopping apples.

My mom made my all-time favorite carrot cake, which I haven’t had for many, many years & can’t wait to have tomorrow. She said everything was done except the turkey, gravy & mashed potatoes, I swear, I’m going to need an appetite suppressant just to get through the day somewhat sanely. I’ll be okay, but I’m starting to feel just a little panicky right now. I imagine I’l get a grip of that before we eat tomorrow, even though my main source of support won’t be there. Troy has to work and won’t be able to get there until after 7:30pm, so I’m a little bummed out about that, and Erin will be missing, too. It’s going to be a strange holiday for me, honestly.

I’ve been thinking lately that it would be really nice if I could accept credit cards during faire. I know it would really increase my revenue at that event & then I would maybe be able to afford to do one or two more after that, or even before, as a little warm up. I know that POS systems are out of my range, but I’m pretty sure I can get a credit card machine fairly inexpensively, and I could handle all of that with Quicken or some other accounting software.

I really do think I’ll look into all of this stuff at the beginning of the year and see what I have to do to get squared away so I can do that. I still may not be able to, since I don’t currently have a checking account, not even one I share with Troy (I have a judgement against me over a credit card). I’m hoping it can just go off of his account, if so, I’ll be all set. I’m excited about the prospect, since there are people who come to the park with no cash, have to leave & get it, and then get sidetracked at other merchants and never make it back. I want to be able to get a jump on those potential customers.

We finally got my craft room cleaned & organized & I’ve been using it to sew lately. I made Dawn & I few Cool Ties for next faire, hoping that they’ll help keep us a little cooler. They turned out really nice, but I need to test one out to make sure I used enough of those water bead things in them. I two different batiks I bought for the project and a nice tie-dye fabric, too. I think I need to make us both one more, although one each would probably be plenty, really. I’m going to order some more of the beads and make up a bunch for the volunteers and maybe even some to sell in the booth, too. They come together very quickly and they’d been pretty inexpensive to make, honestly.

I have a few more projects I’ll be working on in there are the winter sets in & I start to get bored, but there’s a funny thing about that room. It has a horrible smell in there in the morning, like old cat urine (and no the cats can’t get in there, at all), but it’s gone by afternoon, every time. I think I need to get one of those machines with the air filters in it & just run it in there all the time, and then hopefully the smell will go away. I’m sure it will with time anyway, I just hate to take chances with my inventory, you know?

Well, not the jealousy that kills your insides or anything, just slightly envious, I guess. My mom & dad are getting themselves a Wii for Christmas & I want one so bad! I had a choice when we were deciding what we wanted to get each other, and I had said I wanted one, or a netbook. I decided on the netbook in the hopes that Troy would get a bonus again this year, but that was before his company started laying people off. Now, we’re pretty sure it’s not going to happen, and I’m wishing I had maybe chosen differently. Oh, well, I imagine we can always save up and get one later, right?

I’m happy for my parents though and I know they’ll get a lot of use out of theirs and have a lot of fun with it, too. My mom was always better at video games when I was a teen that I was. She would stay at home while I was at school and practice, then when I got home, she’d kick my butt at whatever game it was! It was a lot of fun & all of my friends were jealous because their moms never played video games.

So, have any of you started your shopping yet? I have and am actually almost finished. Troy & I are done with each other & I just ordered Rhi’s and am waiting for it to get here. I still need to get Erin’s, but we’re waiting to see if what he asked for will go back on sale between now & then. I will have to buy for the family, but we won’t know who we have until Thanksgiving, when we’ll draw names (or we hope too, at any rate). I am starting to get things for my niece, but she isn’t making things any easier by not telling me what she wants.

Anyway, I’m almost done shopping for the people who live in my house.

I’m kind of sad that I won’t be going out shopping on Black Friday this year, but Troy will be at work & it just isn’t fun without him, you know? Getting up super early & heading out with him is exciting and special, so I’ll miss it. I don’t even have any idea what will be on sale this year, so I don’t know what I’m missing yet, so I may change my mind between now & then! What about you? Are you planning to?

I’ve started planning my crafting for faire, even though I haven’t started actually making anything yet. I will pretty soon, I just need to get back to the bedroom and get on my desktop so I can use my printer. I plan to make several “dammit dolls” and put them in cute matching canisters. I realize they aren’t really “witchy” but I do look at them as a form of sympathetic magic and so I’ll sell them. I need to start buying my fabrics for the booth walls & roof, so I can get that done way before July. I have great ideas for them & hope they tun out really nice.

Troy & I were working on the dresser in our bedroom the other day & wandered into one of the big hardware stores to get some woods and drawer pulls. While we were there, we went over to check the price on Christmas lights for our windows. I went to look at the pretty artificial christmas trees and found a couple of really cute little ones. They came in the nicest, heavy pots & were all prelit & predecorated, they’d be perfect for our table & the cats couldn’t steal the ornaments. I may try to convince Troy that we need one (we seem to buy a new tree every year, I swear), I’m sure he’ll agree because he liked them, too.

It’s sad to say, but it not the world we grew up in anymore. What’s worse, it’s definitely not the world our parents knew. When looking for a place to live, you factor in a lot of things; neighborhood, school, and shopping, to name a few. More and more people are looking at home security systems supported by commercial security companies. A commercial security company is one that monitors your home via sensors and that handy dandy keypad that you see in peoples homes on television. It’s kind of sad to think that we’ve come to that place, where there is a need for this, but at the same time, it’s nice to know that the commercial security option is available for the average homebuyer/owner.

Most homeowner policies make allowances for a commercial security system, and lower premiums are always a nice thing. Really, when you think about it, most businesses have commercial security protecting their assets, so why would it be such a stretch to employ this proven method to protect those things that are valuable to you? It might also up the resale value of a home in a tight market. In the end commercial security systems might just make a property seem more attractive to a potential buyer, while making that same property seem less attractive to potential evil doer.

This was about the closest I could get to what I was looking for, I guess. I like it, it seems cozy & I only generally drink coffee when the weather starts to cool off, so it’ll do for November, unless something else pops up that strikes me more. I spent a long time looking for a new layout for my MySpace earlier, because I didn’t save my old bookmarks before I upgraded to Windows 7 a couple of weeks ago, so the one I had picked out was lost & I had to find it again. I ended up choosing something different, but now I’m in the middle of trying to find what I want to use for Yule & Christmas.

I really need to activate the free online backup I got with my laptop when I bought it, but I always forget to, until it’s too late to change anything. I should write myself a sticky note for desktop & just keep it there until I actually do it, that way I can’t blame my memory anymore.

Anyway, I’ll be changing the layouts on all three blogs as the evening progresses & I find what I want to use. I’m hoping to not be disappointed in what’s available, since I couldn’t find anything that had a Thanksgiving theme at all.

I seriously need to get some sort of motivation to get my craft room finished. I can’t do anything in there at this point in time. I need the space in there to keep my booth inventory, which is stacked up in my bedroom, blocking my dresser right now. I can’t use the half of the dresser that isn’t broken & I desperately need the space. I can’t find any of my shirts right now because I have them all crammed into a big plastic bin. My dresser top is holding the excess, so I have nowhere to put anything else in there either, so it all ends up on my computer desk, which I also can’t use, because I can’t pull my chair out far enough to actually get into it.

I’m thinking that tomorrow, Troy & I are going to go on our walk first thing in the morning & then come home, have breakfast & clean the rest of the house until it’s finished, and then on Tuesday, we’ll walk, have breakfast & finish that room, so that I can get my grandma’s sewing table from my mom & then on payday, go look at office furniture and see if I can find a comfy chair to use while I’m sewing. That way, we’ll get the craft room done, have as clean house and make more room in the bedroom, too. I’m actually really looking forward to it.