My Recent Days - Colorful, Fun, Challenging, Relaxing!

COLORFUL

My SIL (Jodi on right) and I spent a fun and relaxing Sunday afternoon at a local park taking pictures of the Fall foliage.  In all honesty the colors this year are not as plentiful as past years but if you look at your surroundings through a lens you can get some wonderful shots.  Interestingly enough I thought the greens were quite vibrant as well.  The pictures below were taken at two different parks  - Yellow Banks and Ewing.  

FUN

My BFF (Rene' who you can see in the next picture checking out the Halloween display) and I managed a day long outing to a town East of us called Oskaloosa (Osky).  We've known each other since the 2nd grade so let's just say a lot of years!  We talked, we laughed, we bought!

I couldn't resist taking a photo of their display of Topsy Turvy mugs.  They are so adorable.  It was close but I managed to leave the store without one. 

Instead I spent my money on a pair of "pricey" ice skate ornaments for my Christmas tree.  You all know I have accumulated over 30 pairs of ornaments for my tree.  Amazingly no two pairs are a like!

Rene' wanted to try one of the new restaurants from the Iowa's Best Bite Restaurant Challenge called On The Green.  We chose to have a lighter lunch of Chicken Tortilla Soup (delicious) and Risotto Tots.  OMG the Risotto Tots were amazing!  When I commented on this on the Challenge Facebook page, they responded that this particular dish was what put them over the top in the challenge.  I can definitely see why.  If you get a chance, you should check out one of the restaurants in the challenge as they are all pretty amazing.

On our way back to the city we stopped long enough to take a couple of snapshots of this Bed and Breakfast along the highway.  Just a beautiful old house!  They don't offer tours but I bet the inside is amazing!

CHALLENGES

I've experienced a few challenges this week.  While some were taken care of pretty easily I'm afraid there will be some carry over to next week for a couple.  

1

My central vacuum just needed some new parts in the components that were transportable and at very little cost.  I was pretty happy about it.

2

I'm afraid my computer crash was a bit more time consuming and costly but still not drastic.  This is one that will carry over into next week.  You wonder what happened - well my computer when you turned it on brought up the Apple logo and just went to a white screen and never changed.  I finally made an appointment at the Genius Bar and an hour into the process I found out that my hard drive was too full.  Who knew you needed to have a certain percentage of your hard drive available based on your storage for your start up software to work.  Apparently I did not!  Another hour later I was able to delete enough documents (freebie cross stitch patterns), movies (just video I took to share what I had done during the day with my son) and photos (did not know that once they are in iPhoto they can be removed from the downloads section as they are duplicates at this point) to get my computer to actually start up.  

It was suggested and as I had wanted to do this for some time I bought an external hard drive to put my photos, music and movies on.  I bought the one with the most storage (2 terra bite) to allow room for growth.  Here is where the carry into next week comes in as I did manage to transfer my photos and home movies but can't quite figure out how to move the iTunes stuff.  Also, before I delete anything from my hard drive I do want to make sure I've really moved it to my external hard drive and how to access.  I'm thinking this will be a much shorter appointment.  Thankfully I did not lose my photos and video of my mom during her last year of life!

3

My dishwasher is making a strange noise when it runs these days and seems to take a bit longer to run through.  The good news is we have time to shop for something new and if worst comes to worst I still know how to do dishes by hand!

4

I was out on Friday enjoying a little shopping and thinking my luck might be turning around.  I've been on the hunt for new jeans as I've lost so many inches exercising I have none that fit.  I was so excited that I actually found a pair that fit and a sweater to boot.  I should have known I was pushing my luck as they only had one pair in my size among all the colors and when they checked online in their computer there were no more to be had.  Grrrr!

5

To end my week of challenges I was eating lunch and all of a sudden something felt different in my mouth.  Yep, you guessed it a piece of my tooth chipped away and is now gone forever.  I was able to talk to my dentist and he gave me tips to keep that tooth safe over the weekend but staff will be calling me with a time to come in on Monday to start the process of repair.  It appears a crown is the fix for this particular problem.  I see $$$$$ flying away!

RELAXING!

Through it all I did manage to find some time to stitch, read and rake leaves to keep my stress level down.  

I did reach my goal of having the Halloween Cubes by Primitive Hare stitched entirely 2 days before Halloween.  Unfortunately, I did not have time to do the finish work.  At least I can take my time and do them up right before next year.

I have now picked back up my WIP  July by Prairie School to continue working on.  It is moving along very quickly and expect a finish before the new year.

Well, I think that is enough for today as this post is rapidly approaching short story stage.  Hope you all are still enjoying some lovely Fall weather and not the early snow I've seen in some regions of the USA.