Halloween is Just Around the Corner . . .

So, finally had a full weekend at home! I couldn't be more excited. I just love weekends in the fall (so to speak!). My kids have been anxiously waiting for Halloween so after much hounding from them, we decided to put our decorations up! Yeah!! Now my house can legitimately have spiderwebs hanging from the chandeliers and dirt on the windows and look "perfect"! I LOVE this time of year. I have to say, I take pride in my mantle every year. It is the main focal point when you walk into my house. This year, I hung a cheap mirror from Marshall's (the mirror itself is a little wavy). I added a red gel decoration on the mirror that reads "Stay Away" and looks like blood dripping down. I hung red cluster lights and then draped stained and torn cheesecloth over them. I also put some on the mantle like a mantle scarf. On top of that, I had some candleabras that have skulls on them. I put two dark red pillar candles on the top. I bought a HUGE bag of cheap plastic spiders. I put them all over the cheesecloth. It's so easy, the legs just go right though and attach. I think I am going to make an egg sac like I saw in Martha Stewart to hang from the fireplace screen. I just love the outcome. Cheesecloth stained in tea and torn up is a great and cheap decoration. I put it just about everywhere and apparently I am rubbing off on my kids. After they put their decorations up in their rooms, both wanted cheesecloth. I guess I am off to Jo-Ann's tomorrow to buy more for them! It's an exciting time of year for adults and even more so for kids. I truly love the fact that my kids love the holidays as much I do!!

Tailgating is NOT for Amateurs . . .

Just got back from a great weekend of college football - Go Gators! Yes, it is still ridiculously hot and muggy here even though Fall officially starts tomorrow. However, I have decided to build a bridge and get over it! So what did we do, throw a huge tailgate for a huge SEC game! Who know tailgating could be a competitive sport in itself!?!

Our tailgate consisted of a small RV, with tons of storage! Thank goodness because we did bring a lot! We found a great spot in the shade and right next to a bathroom. It's in a church parking lot and the $20 charge goes to help adopt orphans. What could be a better cause than that?? Our tailgate rolled out the red carpet. It wasn't literally red but it was a carpet. A good-sized TV to watch other games and College Game Day. Lots of tables for all the food. We bought plastic covered material from a local fabric store and cut to fit our tables. Perfect tablecloth with our team's logo. These are easy enough to wipe clean. Of course, all the serving dishes were themes as well. My favorite was a hand-painted chip and dip platter in the team's colors (orange and blue) painted for the mother by her kids. They dipped their fingers in the paint (they are young) and put their fingerprints and their signatures on it. It looked great and was loved by all the moms! We also brought all our goodies in a really great Gator picnic basket as well as using Gator platters. A couple platters were plain white but another favorite was a white plate you could put a ribbon through. I added a Gator ribbon found again at a local fabric store. The food was good and the presentation was flawless! The prize for the most creative food/drink goes to the Jell-O maker! She took small Celmentine oranges and hollowed them out. Filled them with blue Jell-O and vodka for some seriously styling Jell-O shots! Kudos and delish!

The men were fun to watch and very stereotypical, I might add. Three different guys, brought three different cooking contraptions, and cooked three different types of meat! I could hear them growling across the parking lot. Lots of testosterone, lots of flames and lots of meat!

All in all, it was a really fun weekend, topped off by a great Gator victory and an even better tailgate! One last tip, always bring extra food and drinks for after the game. We love to sit and visit once the game is over to recap the game and relax. This way, once we are done, pack up and leave with no traffic! Would you rather sit in traffic for an hour or sit at one of the best tailgates going on with good friends and great food?? That's what I thought!

Learning to Let Go . . .

Ok, this weekend we had my youngest daughter's 8th Birthday party. I was trying to talk her into having an American Girl Tea Party. I thought we could have a hair station for the dolls and girls, they could decorate a shirt for their dolls, paint a tea cup, fun, fun, fun. Well, my daughter, exercising her own opinion, decided she wanted a bowling party. Quick flashback to the 1970s watching my dad bowl in a league. The smell of stale cigarettes, the cardboard food, the matching polyester shirts and watching Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. Good times back then but I now liken the alleys with the "Big Lebowski" and "Kingpin". Is that the image I want to portray to my daughter's friends???? But the truth is, it's not about what I want but what my daughter wanted . . . after all, it was her birthday. So I learned to let go. I had a really cute idea for a homemade invite. She said she wanted to make her own so she whipped up a flyer on the computer. I learned to celebrate the fact that she has really mastered the computer graphics with an adorable invite and not the fact that it didn't have a certain look or meet certain standards I put on myself. When we picked out her cake, I let go that it didn't "match" the bowling theme but looked like a giant hamburger (and by the way, it was THE hit of the party!!). And after we all bowled, ate bowling alley food and cut the hamburger cake, my precious little daughter gave me the biggest hug she could muster and thanked me for one of the best days of her life! With cardboard pizza sitting like a brick in my stomach, the biggest smile on my face and the warmest feeling in my heart, we left the bowling alley, hand-in-hand. Sometimes, learning to let go is just what a mom needs to do.

Still hot . . .

I actually think I may have the "vapors" (said with the most Southern drawl!)!! I need to find a fan, a glass of sweet tea and go sit on the front porch. In reality, I am drinking a Coke Zero, in air-conditioning while getting ready to clean the toilet! How I miss the "good 'ole days"!

A Southern Girl Yearns for Fall

Fall is in the air!!! Fall is in the air??? What air are you breathing? I am currently breathing a hot, muggy, dense air here in sunny Florida! Yes, I love going to the beach (a real tan rocks but not the wrinkles and fear of skin cancer). Yes, I love the Gators (the ones who wear orange & blue on Saturdays and not the ones in the sewers). Yes, I love wearing shorts in winter (but not looking at Northern tourists' pasty legs in shorts in winter). While there are many, many things to love about Florida (I can see Cinderella's castle from my backyard), I still need that taste, that smell, that look, that feel of fall.

So what's a Southern girl to do? Normally, we pack the car or jump on a plane to go where the leaves are changing. This year we can't. We are taking a Thanksgiving pilgrimage (more details in a future blog and not relevant to this one!) so our traveling dollars are spent and our weekends are accounted for (darn work and those pesky Gators again!!). So we hit the grocery store! We hit Yankee Candle! We hit JoAnn's! And we jacked down the air-conditioning! So while the rest of Florida is dealing with frizzy hair and make-up running down their faces, inside my humble abode, Fall has arrived! It's not much but it will get me through! We've got a pumpkin (not real, remember this is Florida!!) sitting on some books, a beautiful fall floral arrangement on the dining room table, pictures up from vacations of Fall past and the smell of fall in all the rooms (thank you Yankee Candle for the Buy One/Get One coupon, you saved my marriage!)

So while I won't get to see Fall happening this year with my own eyes (when our Palm Trees's fronds "turn" and fall to the ground, it just doesn't have that same look/feel and could really put an eye out!), I will think of all our Northern friends taking hikes in the brisk air and having outdoor fires and I will wipe the condensation off my heavily air-conditioned windows, drink my apple cider (with ice) and relive the Fall season this year with my Mac screensaver! The real beauty about Fall is there is always next year!