The Weekend

After a hot Halloween, it's finally turned a bit colder again.  The leaves are now falling quickly now, and Paul's been having lots of fun with the leaf blower/mulcher.  

He loves to run this machine.  Last year he ran it for what seemed like forever without making any dent in the leaves, but this year he actually is able to mulch them up, which is pretty cool.

I spotted these red trees, Crepe Myrtles, I believe, at a local shopping center and had to stop and admire them and silently thank the landscape architect who planned how the burgundy in the ornamental grasses would pick up the burgundy in the leaves.   Genius!

I had to laugh when I stopped to gas the car and realized that a bloody hand was stretched across the back seat.  How this creepy leftover from Halloween ended up there, I don't know.

Last night my friend Sara and I were partners at the school's 50th Anniversary Gala, which turned out to be a fun event with both live and silent auctions as well as dinner and dancing.   The theme was "All that glitters is gold" so we tried to look properly glimmery.

We enjoyed the special Blue Hawk Martinis in the school's colors of blue and gold,...

…I (easily) won the silent auction for the quilt my advisory group had made last spring...

…and I went home with three other successful auction bids, including two hours of house cleaning and private knitting or crocheting lessons.  Fun!