Package Sent!!!!

I have sent my All Hollow's Eve swap package out! I had to mail it from the hotel I am staying at but it's all good. Here's a teaser pic....
I was happy with the way everythig came together so I hope my swapee is too.

Week 5's topic

If you could go anywhere at all to enjoy a wonderful fall vacation - where would you go and why? Somewhere you've been? Somewhere you've heard has amazing fall colors? Somewhere that's LESS fall-like than where you are?

I have heard that Vermont is beautiful in the fall and I would love to see it. As hard as it is to believe, I like IL in the fall. I live along a river and there is nothing prettier than driving along it with the trees changing. Not to mention being in the corn belt you really get a sense of what the season is all about, Harvest time.

Week 4 a questionaire

Q1: Where did the idea of Jack-O-Lanterns originate?
A) Scotland


Q2: Halloween is the 2nd most successful commercial Holiday - what's the first?
B) Valentine's Day

Q3: What is the intense fear of Halloween called?
B) Samhainophobia

Q4: The mask worn by Michael Meyers in Halloween (the Movie) was actually a mask of who?
D) No one - it was an old hockey mask

Q5: In 2004, what was the most popular Halloween Candy?
B) Snickers


And finally - tell us what YOUR favorite Halloween Candy is! I love that I have a kid who trick or treats! I try not to buy a lot of candy but she is great about sharing her loot. My favorite Halloween treat is popcorn balls. Especially homemade ones. Chocolates come in a close second with those Reeses pumpkins topping that list.

My Package Came!!!!

I received a wonderful package from my secret swap partner. It included a green cloth plus super soft mittens, Puma shower gel and cologne, nail polish (which my daughter loves!), hot cocoa mix, chicken soup mix and fabulous alpaca blend yarn in a lovely dusty blue.



The only problem is I can't figure out who to thank. I think I have read every ones blog and either I am really obtuse or I missed someone. So if this package was from you.... THANK YOU!!! I am a very happy spoilee.

Week three's topic a day late

What's the oddest/strangest/weirdest Halloween decoration you have ever gotten for your home? Or, if you've never had a "wow, did I REALLY buy that?!" moment - what's the strangest Halloween decoration you've seen somewhere else?


I don't think I have anything too odd (but that doesn't mean that someone with less refined taste might not find something ;) )! I do think the vintage grinning black cats and pumpkins are a bit creepy. They look more maniacal than happy to me. I am into the black silhouettes and apothecary jars for Halloween right now. Hallmark had a line out a couple of years ago that I loved (Hauntington).

This weeks topic

- What are your favorite parts of fall? How do you know it's truly arrived where you are?

I love fall! The crisp cool air, the smell of the damp earth, the brilliant colors.... What's not to love? There is something comforting about fall. It invokes images of curling up in a sweater with a good book or wrapping a fantastic hand knit scarf around your neck and taking a stroll. The thing I don't like is that it is fleeting. For me summer lasts too long and winter seems to never end but fall is like a "blink and you miss it" season.

The Big Read

I found this on the blog of AmberF. while working on this week's assignment for the All Hollows Eve Dish Cloth Swap and thoght it would be fun. If you've only read 36 of the 100 are you really well read?

The Big Read is an National Endowment for the Arts program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.

*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we LOVE .

Share this list in your blog, too, if you like.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas in French
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery in French
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo in French