October is here and it’s officially Spooky Season!!!!! His Lordship is ready with his new haunted scratch pad!

The last quilt in the finished quilt parade this week, is another Christmas gift.

Though I’m going to have to give it a good de-furring, becaue Lemmy REALLY took a liking to it while I was sewing the binding.

It’s a super simple pattern – Just large HSTs in really fun, fruity prints.

On the back – more fruit, but in flannel

And that’s another present off the list! And the last of the sewn items. I’m about 40% complete which isn’t too bad for only October!

The next quilt in the quilt parade is one I’m keeping… and I think the boys knew it!

They gave lots of extra “help” with the binding.

This one is my Christmas quilt (because believe it or not, I didn’t already have one). It used the fabric line :Merry Little Kittens, which is made by the same company that made the fabric for my Halloween quilt, and it features the same vintage-style kitties.

This one is quite colourful with red, green, aqua and pink throughout the fabrics.

I love using black in Christmas quilts. It’s like Christmas lights shining bright at night!

For the back I found a nice cozy flannel covered in snowflakes, and a candy-cane inspired striped binding wraps it all up!

Now I’m not rushing Christmas by any means… but I do look forward to snuggling up with this one in December!

As you know, I was at Mom’s for most of the weekend. In that time I got three of my four tops quilted (I left Relic’s Wildflowers with her to do some ruler quilting)

The first is one of the quilts that will be a Christmas present.

Isn’t it beautiful. And the pattern was so simple. But those gorgeous prints just come together to create something magical.

On the back, there’s that stunning butterfly floral, amping up the coziness!

And now this one is tucked away until December! I can’t wait to gift it!

One thing the last of rain hasn’t affected is the raspberries.

It’s raspberry overload over here. We get this many just about every day. So there’s only one thing to do…

Make jam! It always amazes me how quickly jam comes together. I can do a batch in under an hour. And most of the dishes go in the dishwasher, so clean-up is a breeze.

And the end result is seven jars of summer perfection!

While the flowers are still going strong, things are drawing closed in the veg beds.

I’m still pulling carrots – I’ve got about 1/4 of the bed left..

The first few years I grew carrots, all were pretty long and straight. I don’t know if it’s the lack of rain this year but…

We’ve started to get some rather interesting ones.

Throught this last week I’ve harvested a lot of the last bits of veg

I picked the last pepper. None of them got any bigger than that, but Dave said they tasted great. On the right is the ONLY zucchini I got. I kept waiting for it to get a little bigger, but it never did so I picked it.

This year wasn’t the best in the garden – probably due to the drier-than-normal summer. I could have watered more, but I guess I was just too used to the beds taking care of themselves in previous years.

Next weekend I’ll be pulling out old plants and wrapping most of it up for the coming winter. I’ll do a proper wrap up post then

…is a beautiful time in the garden

Today, on this most auspicious Friday Felines.. Lord Burton and I would like to wish a very happy birthday to Mom!!!

Over in the corner of our diningroom is a small metal table. Dave calls this my “Rage Crafting” table.

Dave calls it “Rage Crafting” because many of these projects (especially the ones that require me to paint details) usually end up with me swearing at some point. They usually work out fine in the end, but in the middle it can seem a little dicey, especially if you’re on the outside just listening to me… well… rage.

Anyway, as you can see, the table is a little over-loaded. It’s been collecting projects/pieces of projects for months. I decided Sunday, after my chores were done, was a good day to try to get at least one of them done.

I bought this pair of fabulous skellies from Michael’s, as soon as they put all their Halloween stuff on Buy One Get One Free. You may recall, I painted a craft like this two years ago, and was pleased with how it turned out. I feel in love with these two when I saw them online.

In the end, I was only able to get Lady Skellington done.

Or mostly done anyway. I want to get some metalic paint pens and some plastic gems/cabochons to dress up that frame a bit.

So I’ll wait until I have them to tackle Lord Skellington.

On the weekend I shared a pic of the Goldfinches that have been visiting the garden on the daily.

They absolutely fascinate me. They aren’t big birds… but they still look like they should be too heavy to hang off the stems and heads of the sunflowers.

But they aren’t!

The other day, there were several of these Ruby Meadowhawks flying about the yard.

I even captured a pair of them mating!

I caught this lovely lady admiring herself in the reflection on our big front window.

And it’s proved to be a popular resting spot. I got this shot from inside a couple days later.

All this critter watching this summer has been exhausting! I think this guy has the right idea!