This is November, right?

I went to pull the dead petunias from my planter the other day and noticed the entire top of the planter was covered in new petunias ...

and this one is even blooming. The Black-Eyed Susan I found in the yard still has a few blooms too. We've been having very mild weather but they're saying snow is on its way.

Hard Halloween puzzle

I have a few Halloween puzzles and started this one in mid-October. Surely, I thought, we'd have it done by Halloween. It's cookies. How hard could it be?

Well, this guy doesn't help. Neither does that there are several very similar cookies.

This was our progress about a week before Halloween. Some of the designs came together fairly quickly, but those spider webs are hard. And I had a scrapbooking crop to go to, then we left for Jamaica (yay!) but B was home after he returned from a work trip to Des Moines. I asked him if I should tear it apart if it's not done by Halloween and he said to leave it there, maybe he'd work on it. He did, but it didn't get finished.

We finally finished it yesterday morning and it's missing one piece. No more puzzles for us until after Thanksgiving.

E and D in town

E and D flew home this weekend for his niece's baptism and first birthday. They came to visit us on Sunday so we out them to work and put up our Christmas lights.

It was 60 degrees today so it was perfect weather to get the lights up. We won't turn them on until after Thanksgiving.

We all went for lunch at Lou Maknati's and watched the Bears lose in the very last minute of the game to the Packers.

Later in the day we drove them to O'Hare. Traffic was insane. The lights in the trees were "falling." Very pretty.

It was nice to see the airport all decorated for Christmas. I'm not sure how to describe these lights - maybe they were snowflakes? They had a lot of them. We didn't go inside the airport but it was decorated inside too.

These trees were so cool.

So many lights and each tree in a different color. I was able to get decent pictures since we were stuck in traffic.

Recycled Christmas

Allison and I were out and about early Saturday to get to an Arlington Heights church for its annual "Recycled Christmas" sale. We went last year and it was huge.

They did have some interesting things. This scary Santa has part of a Clorox bottle as its backing.

I got all of this for $5.50. Hard to beat that - a winter Crate and Barrel coffee mug, three sets of twisted taper candles, two clear candle holders, two Christmas tree votive holders, three buffalo check ornaments, a cranberry Christmas tree candle and one snowflake ornament.

Lights at Lincoln Park Zoo

Zoo Lights at Lincoln Park Zoo opened to the public Friday, but we got exclusive access on Thursday night because our friends are zoo members. As it's said, membership has its perks. It wasn't crowded so that was nice.

Tim, Betsy, Andy and I posed for a selfie at the zoo entrance. We went with them to Zoo Lights in 2020 when we were all wearing masks and it was colder. We had nice fall weather on Thursday.

These lights were synced to music.

The lights and music doing their thing.

We all agreed we haven't seen tree lights like this before. They changed colors too.

We took a ride on this Ferris wheel.

We got these glasses before boarding. Andy's made the lights turn into gingerbread men, Betsy and I had candy canes and we couldn't figure out Tim's.

I was trying to get a picture of downtown but this was the best I could do. It's looking a bit west of downtown.

Looking east, I saw Lake Shore Drive and the lake is out there.

Enjoying the ride even though the kids in the next car were screaming that they were so scared they were going to die. It wasn't even a tall Ferris wheel. Geesh. (Kids, stay away from roller coasters).

Here's Tim in an interesting chair in the outdoor lounge. The lounge also had swinging chairs, see-saws and other wobbly chairs we thought if we sat in someone would need to help us get up again.

A vintage Santa was nice to see.

The skyline in lights near the entrance. We did see a few animals - penguins, polar bears and sleeping lions.

These pretty lights were all over the children's area.

We walked back to their condo through Oz Park. Some of the streets along the was had beautiful multi-million dollar old row houses and huge modern houses. It's a beautiful neighborhood.

Pretty night

Pretty sunset as I was keaving work today.

I like how the sunset was reflected in these windows of the building adjacent to the museum.

When Andy got home we went grocery shopping. This was the moon from the River Forest Jewel lot.

And another shot when we got home. The moon looks so bright.

An enlightened text

I was texting with L the other day and she sent this. I'm pretty sure I literally laughed out loud and rolled my eyes. I guess she thought fairies were keeping our house clean when she was growing up.

Not vintage, maybe old

For 99 cents I couldn't pass up this Easter tablecloth when Cindy and I were thrifting on our way to the recent scrapbooking crop. At home, I found a tag and finally looked it up. I thought I had a vintage find. Turns out it's from Kohl's. Maybe a few years old?

Let’s start baking

I volunteered to make two to three dozen cookies for the preschool's upcoming Cookie Walk. It's a good chance to try out a new recipe! These are Chocolate Andes Mint Cookies. B gave them his approval (and August looks like he'd like to try one). The recipe said it would make 24 and I made at least six dozen. Guess I made them smaller than I could have.

L’s story

I took this picture of the shelves in L's room before we took them down to paint, thinking I would put them back up and get everything put back just as she had it. We're not sure we want to put them back up and all of her things are in a box for safe-keeping. Looking at the shelves, though, you can get a good idea of what L likes: lots of Disney (of course), a Care Bear, Hello Kitty, cups from Starbucks (which she's given up for political differences), Dr. Who, treasured things from both grandmas, Japanese items and a couple of interesting soda bottles. It's like a time capsule.