I love Halloween. Not the grossly scary or deep, dark Halloween, but the happy, bright, candy filled Halloween of my youth. When we cobbled an outfit out of old clothes and things we found around the house and took paper grocery sacks door to door where we were questioned who we were and given candy, usually large bars of candy, not the tiny ones that are given out now.

October is so much more than Halloween. It’s beautiful foliage on the trees, crisp, foggy mornings when you have to put on warm clothes. It’s fires in the firepit and toasted marshmallows. It’s a bright moon shining down in the chilly nights when you look to see if a witch is flying her broom past it. My mother told us stories that made us believe we actually saw the witch flying by and it was scary, but fun at the same time because we knew we were safe. I would look up at the moon floating there in the sky and I was sure I saw a witch on her broom.

I do love Autumn so much. I have grown to look forward to it when the Summer days get so hot and my body does not want to do much of anything. As soon as it begins to cool down outside, my energy goes up. To prove it to myself I have finished three quilts in the past couple of weeks where I was not sewing at all before. I have played more with the dogs outside throwing Lucy the ball over and over until I grow tired. Lucy never grows tired of it. I believe she would place all day if I would play with her. I have done major cleaning that wasn’t being done while it was hot. Yes, we do have air conditioning, but it’s not the same as a chilly Autumn day.

We took a drive to Nashville, where our daughter and her family live. The leaves are turning now and are so beautiful. It was raining a little bit which made it even cozier in the car as we drove. See the little ducks? It’s a thing with Jeep owners that they give each other ducks. David will go out to the Jeep after work and there will be one on the door handle with a note saying, “you’ve been ducked.” He has quite the collection now. Every once in a while he will put one on another person’s Jeep. You can go online and read about it.

Anyway, we hadn’t see our grandsons for a while so we took our cotton candy machine with us to make cotton candy at their house.

We do have handsome grandsons and they are very nice people besides and fun to be around. The one in blue gets his driver’s license in a couple of months and the tallest one is our youngest grandchild. Ack! How can that be? They were just babies a short while ago. But time marches on and none of us is getting any younger.

As I said, we made cotton candy. Our daughter is a sugar addict and loves cotton candy.

Our son-in-law taking his turn at twirling the cotton candy on a stick. It really is fun to do. Pour the sugar in and immediately the cotton candy comes out and you have to work fast to get it all.

And here is the finished product.

And here is our daughter enjoying hers. I am not ashamed to admit that most of us had two sticks of cotton candy that day. It is sooooo good. I have been really good about having the machine and not making the candy every, single day. In fact, this was just the fourth day we have used it since we got it and we have shared with others two times. Yes, we did.

We also visited our granddogs, too. They have two Golden Retrievers and one Husky.

I didn’t get a picture of the Husky, but he is a beautiful, sweet dog. He came to me right away and just laid his head on my. He is so cute. A nice addition to their family. They also have a cat, but it made itself scarce for the day.

We so enjoyed our visit and our drive that day.

These are called the Hills of Brown around here, but now they are bursting with color and next weekend the trees will probably be at their peak so David and I plan a drive through southern Indiana one day. We do have a beautiful state. Maybe not as forested as some, but more than others and it is beautiful to drive through anytime, but especially in the Autumn.

I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the trees. This is a winery on the way to Nashville if you are so inclined. it was busy that day.

Trees as far as you can see and a beautiful sky. Yes, I use the word beautiful a lot when I am looking at scenery.

This was a hilly road we took home. Back roads, of course.

Pumpkins stands dot the countryside. I remember one year there was a blight on pumpkins and it was hard to even find pumpkin in cans that year. Thank goodness, this year we have a huge amount of pumpkins on the market so there will be pumpkin pies this Thanksgiving. This little stand is just at the bottom of the hill where our daughter’s family live and where we have some acreage. We still talk about building a house over there. I have it all planned in my head. A dogtrot house, if you know what that is.

This is supposed to be the most beautiful view in Brown Country, but this photo does not do it justice. It’s a big valley that spreads below and is wonderful to see in any season, but in Autumn it is grand. I wish I had gotten a better picture. I try every year and every year I fail to get the full view. Mainly because there is really no where to stop and there is a lot of traffic on the road.

So that was one day. The next day we traveled up to my old stomping ground where my sister lives. We drove over to the city and got some pizza to take to them from one of our favorite pizza places.

My sister and brother-in-law. I’ve known them all my life!! She is eleven years older than me and she always told me when I was born she was so happy to finally get a sister because she was living in a family of boys. She was like a second mother to me growing up and we have always been close. I would stay at their house quite often and she would give me advice about things and he would tease me. I remember when they were dating and I would sit in the window of our bedroom that I shared with her and listen to them talk and giggle on the porch that ran right alongside the bedroom. I don’t think they knew they had an eavesdropper listening to them!

We had pizza and she had made raspberry pie, my very favorite kind and she sent the leftover pie home with us and David and I fought over the leftover pieces because we both love it! Clyde has a big garden and gave us a couple of pumpkins and some squash to take home. They both are hard workers and give a lot of their produce to other people. I love them both to pieces.

Then we drove home the back way, of course and saw some pretty interesting Halloween decorations, but there was one house that really took the prize.

There was a big, old two story house and you could hardly see the house for all the decorations. I will just let you look at it.

This was in their backyard. The decorations went all around their house.

Yes, this was all in one yard!

This was a huge spider.

Even bone dogs playing with the bone children with a bone man in the firepit!

They even included a Santa boneman holding a sign saying, “Christmas is coming.” I got most of it on the camera, but there was so much to see. There were two young boys walking by and one of them got into the scenery and was posing for me and I asked him if he wanted in the picture and he continued to pose so I took the picture, but won’t put it on here because maybe his parents would not want his picture going all over the world. But it was cute.

We continued home.

Still looking at scenery.

When we saw these two. They seemed to pose for us. Such beautiful animals. We have seen a lot of them lately which means the hunters are going to have to cull them or many will starve to death because there will not be enough food for them all. Sad fact, but true. I just hope these two make it through the year.

As I said, I have begun quilting again. I decided I needed to finish the twenty or more quilts I have pieced, but I did make three new ones for Christmas and I did order more fabric for a sampler quilt I want to make. It will be out of Kathleen Tracy’s Sampler Quilt book that I used to make two other samplers, one of them being in Christmas colors. But here is the fabric I just bought which I didn’t need, but I am a fabriholic so there is that.

It is from the line called Hibernation. It is such pretty browns and blues, two colors I love together.

I am going through my fabric stash to find blues and browns that will go with it and will use it in the sampler quilt. I probably really should not start this quilt until I get some Christmas gifts done.

I hope you are enjoying Autumn as much as I am. Old Farmer’s Almanac is telling us we are going to have a cold, snowy Winter in our area so I will enjoy every day I can get outside and I will try to stay warm until next Spring, but I won’t guarantee that because I am always cold so I will buy some long underwear soon. Happy Autumn. Bye.