Around Here

Around here....

The leaves are falling off the trees, making gleaming pools of gold and red on the streets.  Here in Boulder people either rake their leaves into big brown paper bags that the city picks up and composts,  or they mulch them with a leaf vacuum/mulcher, or they hire a crew to rake them and take them away --to the city compost piles? -- in a pickup truck.  So far we've seen no swarms of activity related to leaf removal.  Instead, everyone seems to be out enjoying the beautiful autumn weather by hiking and biking, not raking.  

 I've decided that one of the best things about being retired is being able to schedule your day according to the weather forecast.  Today dawned cloudy and cool, with temps in the high 50's.  But the prediction was that the clouds would be gone by noon, the sun would come out, and the temperature would climb into the high 70's or even the low 80's.   So when Paul headed off to school, Ben and I headed off to hike before it got too hot.  We hiked up near Shadow Canyon off the Homestead Trail, which gave us great views of a rock formation called The Maiden.  

On the way back we had lovely views off to the eastern plains.

It was a great way to start the day! 

The sumac leaves are off the bushes now but still looks striking on the ground. 

We've been watching Halloween Wars on TV with Paul. The incredible pumpkin carving we've seen there has got us interested in doing some carving of our own and last weekend we bought a pumpkin gutter drill attachment that makes gutting a pumpkin a whole lot more fun than scraping all the innards out with a scoop.  

We didn't have any carving tools except a kitchen knife which Paul used to make this scary dude.  But yesterday I found carving tools at JoAnn's and trying them out will to be the family event of the weekend.  We're told that the gray squirrels in the neighborhood eat any pumpkins that are set out for spooking, but the little critters didn't bother Paul's.  

After I posted about rearranging my studio a few weeks ago, my quilter friend LeeAnna in Maryland made the excellent suggestion that pull-out baskets would maximize the use of the space in my built in storage closet.  She was right!  I've been having fun this week going through my fabrics and getting them organized into the new baskets.  

I found a couple yards of nice white linen I had bought, oh, probably twenty years ago (!) for some kind of garment which I never made, and decided it would make a perfect curtain for the big closet.  It did and it really improved the view towards the closet.  

And a big tick was finally getting a little photo gallery up over the sofa to display some of the photos that Ben and I have been taking.  It's not been easy to find modern looking, thin-edged frames that are robust enough to withstand taking photos in and out every couple of weeks, which is what I had in mind.  Most of the ones I found easily looked too bulky with their thick heavy frames and the thin ones I found in the photo store here in town were way too expensive.  I was thrilled to find these at a "Super Target" for $20 each.  

We should have a nice weekend of warm weather before the temperatures drop into the 60's next week.  In addition to pumpkin carving and some leaf raking, Ben and I are going out to dinner in Denver with friends.  Looking forward to it!