Fishing Eye Candy

Now I really do not like that over-used term of Eye Candy but gosh I leave on Wednesday and I want a place to go and enjoy the cream of the crop of pictures of my time here.  Below are just a few.  I don't know if I'll go back and editorialize them so just know that they go in date order i believe.  We had a lovely Thanksgiving at Suncoast Grille in St Joe Beach and two are pics of the view we enjoyed there.  Some are of us at Toucans.  Lovely views, tacky tables, mediocre to nasty food, and ieah service. :(  And the fishing! oh I'm so all about the fishing!  I have some close ups of my fish, too numerous to count officially! 

Christmas Tree Lighting in Mexico Beach

Last night was the annual Christmas Tree Lighting in Mexico Beach at Sunset Park.  For your enjoyment I have put just a few cute pics below.  A couple talked to me briefly and he said, "cold enough" I told him "it only lacks snow to be a Norman Rockwell painting!"  it was a treat to do something so quaint and it could only have better if Neal had been there to hold my gloved hand.

Part of the festivities was the 2nd annual golf cart parade! I took only a couple of pics of the actual carts after the parade but I video-ed it on the camera and not sure if it will upload here or not.  As I mentioned, it was cold so one cart had a quilt laying in it, of course, I took that pic!

magical reversible holiday decorations!

storage here at the condo will be tricky if you want to decorate etc.  So i made my Christmas table runner have fall fabrics on the other side as seen in the pics below.  i have to sew the binding down by hand still but it is nearly finished and looks so nice on the table :) it was worth battling a 1/4" seam on the kenmore machine after being spoiled by my Viking Rose and flange foot all these years.

something sewing this way comes!

using this pattern
http://www.quiltbug.com/free/table-topper.htm

i'm making this

You gotta love Mexico Beach on a Sunday November morning

i'll editorial-ize later but for now a few pics from today in Mexico Beach, Florida  .... sigh the real estate market allowed me to be here.  along with dh's frugal-ness and how he paid for everything in cash and ran no debt.

now the pics

Sewing Addition lesson

Some Sewing Math for you today

ONE             +           ONE

1

1

EQUALS

 ONE

turkey potholder (well it is not finished needs a head and wattle) but my combining patterns plan worked!

25 weeks - a yahoo group of gift giving encouragement-ness

In one of my infamous bunnytrailing adventures I found myself a new member of the 25 weeks group at yahoo.  It is a smallish group 150+ members and they encourage you to work on a holiday gift each week for 25 weeks to meet your holiday gift giving goals!  And monthly too  from what I just dug around in the files and found there.  I told you I'm new :) Membership for 2011 is now open :)  Tell them denise/deBRAT sent you.

I know that I found one person's flickr link to pics of her projects throughout the year that kept me amused all of my internet searching day.  So in an effort to catalog my gift preparing (and other crafting adventures) this year I have created this page at my blog.

Hope you'll enjoy the pictures of my projects there.  I'm not sure how the page portion works but the plan is to post the picture and a link that takes you to the actual post on the main blog.  I might have this all wrong and then have to adjust to what I discover.

oh, and as of today Nov 16th (my dear mother-in-law's birthday) there are no pictures there!

Happy Birthday Dear mother-in-law!

Today is my dear Mother-in-law's 86th birthday.  Happy Birthday to you dear family member!

Flora, Fauna and Feeders

A couple of years ago dh invested in solar lighted bird feeder, which grew to this currently dedicated area of the yard complete with a bird bath!

 The plants in the circle grew from the wild bird seed fallen to the ground.  I have no clue what they are, but when they produced pods that looked like bean pods I thought i'd end up with some very nice free bird seed.

So I picked a bunch of them that were dry inside.  How did i know they were ready?  Well I shook them and they make a noise like a rattle snake!  Well what I've heard in movies of rattle snakes.  Luckily, I've never seen one in person and never hope to too!

Here is a picture of what i have not yet opened on the table on the lanai, along with the two little baggies of tiny black seeds from a pile of pods that numbered at least 4 times the amount on the table.  Each pod appears to contain from 30-50 of the tiny seeds and each seed is separated by a tiny membrane.  The drier the inside of the pod the more brittle the separating membrane.  thus if you see any off-white powdery substance on the table area it is from those membranes.

This is the new feeder dh had in storage to put out for this winter.

 I'm betting that once I put all of those seeds in the baggies, and all of the seeds in those pods on the table, AND all of the seeds on the pods still on plants in the previous picture.... I'll be lucky to have covered the bottom.  I already have hours of de-podding logged in for that pitiful amount you see in the photo.  So free grown seed is no longer on my want menu for the birdies.

And while I'm here, does anyone know what these white spots are allover the leaves of the pod producing plants?

And what these brown spots are on the bottom of our beloved Royal Empress Tree?

and because I took it.  a close up of the seed producing pods.  Which is a very cool picture if I do say so myself!

Fishing time in Florida

Okay so I know that i have just posted a fishing post, but gosh golly gee the weather is so perfect right now in Florida that we went fishing again! Now if you are expecting pictures of huge fish you are going to be sorely disappointed. But I do have two pictures taken from the multitude of fish caught yesterday.

Neal does very well with tiny bits of past leftover shrimp that we froze cut up on the hooks of a sabiki rig. I did manage to catch a few fish once i switched to tiny size 8 hooks with bits of shrimp on them.

what did we catch? lets see.... hmmmmm... i do believe Neal got three ladyfish (yes on the sabiki rig!)a bunch of (pinfish? baitfish?)a few grunts and some puffer fish.

I managed to catch a lot of puffer fish, some grunts, some of those pinfish, two weird soft bodied very lovely colors to them fish and one what i'm told is a cow fish! Now that was a strange catch let me tell you. I'm leaning towards perhaps the two lovely colored soft bodied fish may have been a member of the cow fish family too as their coloring was basically the same and when i tried to get the hook out of their mouth they would keep ending up on their bellies. That cow fish was shaped like a triangle with a narrow flat base and those soft bodied fish would lay on slightly flat belly too!

so the pics of two fish and one Captain :)

Colors of a slightly more northern Fall - Huntsville

I neglected to post pictures from my trip to Huntsville, Alabama
so here are some pictures from the area.

Now how many can say they flew one of these on their birthday?

SEE?

I did too fly it!  That is me in the CH-47 simulator and I had a good time doing the takeoff, flying and landing!  And got a compliment from one of the guys waiting for their turn behind us, who was a pilot.  Can you say swelled head?  Of course, Neal said those trees that look like an "X" with some green dots on them from the air look like a real tree when you are landing!  The flight instructor guy said "ummmm, watch out for those trees!"

This thing practically flies itself.  If they had shown me where the key was to start it, I'd be able to make a great escape in my next im-a-spy-daydream LOL

so much fun.

Oh and I took a walk around the pond there and snapped a few pictures of the ducks, geese and Koi, enjoy! Oh and the nighttime shot of the fountain too.