Happy November!

Happy November!!

I feel like the last week of October was just as busy as the weeks leading up to the bridal show. I wish that today I could have just sat on the couch watching TV, but I had a BUNCH of errands to run today - more on that later.

Happy belated Halloween. My 31 day project ended up going to the wayside because of how busy October ended up being. Really makes me sad because I was getting some awesome shots. Maybe I'll finish it out anyway and do them all in a few days. *for fun*

We had our garage sale "estate" sale. We held it on Saturday at the Senior Center in Maryville. There were 18 tables of stuff. That doesn't include things that we sat on chairs, on top of tubs and a couple things on the floor. *seriously*


This is about 5% of what we had. (Yes I sold halloween crap in November)

Let me tell you, we're so sick of garage sales. I told Gene I was NOT having another one for a LONG TIME. People were lined up at the door at 7:30. Really. And we were still dragging stuff in and pricing. It was actually a dream garage sale. ppl around here rarely know how to have a good one, and I think we set the bar really high.

Anyway, we made quite a bit, got rid of quite a bit and then donated almost every single thing left over. I kept out a few things that I didn't want to get rid of if they didn't sell, or things that I thought were worthy of listing on craigslist or ebay.

You should see our storage unit now. I should have taken before/after pics. We had 2 units and one is about 3/4 empty now. I'm going to finish sorting through the holiday stuff. Donate a bunch and sell some shelving units that are in storage and then combine them all into one. Yay for reducing my storage bill by half!

I even sold most of my wedding stuff. The July 4 bride came and she loved all my things which really made me very happy! Hope I didn't take all the fun out of wedding planning for her. The funnest part for me, was making all the projects - she even took some of my floral arrangements so I got to help pick her flowers!

Here's how we all felt by the end of the day:

We celebrated by going to Applebee's for dinner.

Oh, and Kudos to Tanner for skipping Halloween with his friends because he wanted to stay and help. That was a huge help as we didn't get to bed until late and then was up at 6 a.m. on Saturday.

You know what sucks? I woke up at (officially) 6 a.m. on Sunday. UGH.

I did sneak out of the house tho, because there was tons of fog out. Which I didn't get great pics of the fog because it wasn't heavy fog, just misty fog... I did stop and get some pics of the cows up the road I've been wanting to photograph.

They were terribly interested in what I was doing and came right up to the fence. I wanted to get closer, but they were bulls and well, it was just 3 little pieces of wire separating us.

Friday I got my new 30d!

Whoooop!

I. Love. It.

It rocks the awesome sauce.

I've been lens shopping, flash shopping and tons of other goodies. All I've bought tho, was a cf card. I have a hard time committing to spending so much $$ sometimes.

I did NOT use it to take this pic:

I actually took this last week and keep forgetting to share. I took it with my XT. It's a puddle in our driveway that made this awesome pattern w/ leaves. I punched the saturation and lightness .... very abstract.

On the foundation front, it's pretty much done...

The contractor I think forgot to put our vents in, so we need to speak about that. We also are putting new trim boards all the way around the house to cover the seam. The old stuff was bad. We'd never noticed it until this other stuff came along, but there is a couple spots of rot that has to be taken care of. Nothing major, just something that we missed and it could have gotten bad, so it was good it got caught when it did. The caulking around the trim had not been looked after for *years* so that's where the problem came in.

The foundation will have to be painted at some point (or stained). Right now it's just concrete colored. At first it was dark dark grey and I HATED IT. Now it's turning light like real concrete so I'm happier. Anyway, but I don't want a cabin on concrete so we'll probably either paint it a solid color or put some stone treatment on it at some point.

Today was crazy. I had this weird thing happen. I literally had about 1/2 dozen errands to run and I added one onto my list. I ended up taking the test to become a census worker... which I didn't even know about until like 45 min before I did it.

Apparently they need help badly here, and they need a recruiter and clerical for the area. Both I can do. It also pays about double what the factories do. I aced the test. Which I wasn't shocked, it wasn't super hard but there were a couple questions I wasn't 100% positive about. Anyway, the regional lady seemed excited by that and said to expect a phone call with an offer. It's temporary work, but she said that the census is not until 4-2010 and if they have good workers they keep them on.

I'm considering it. We'll see what happens. I wouldn't mind stockpiling more cash. I've become quite the money hoarder lately. This Saturday I got my stimulus check (filed an extension so it came late), had the garage sale, got an insurance check and even found some cash I forgot I stuck in a drawer. LOL. woooo... hope god isn't telling me something bad is coming.

I sat up an account last night to start selling stock photos. It's something I've been thinking about for a long time. I take so many shots of random other things, that I will probably never print or use, so I thought it would maybe generate some extra cash to have a few stock photo accounts out there. I am going to try to add just a few photos every day to build up my stockpile. Even $20 a month would be better than nothing... BUT, you can make up to $60 per image that you sell. Minimum of .50 - better than a sharp stick in the eye.

And lastly, do not forget that tomorrow is election day! I truly believe that as a citizen of this country it's your civic duty to vote. You have no right to complain about the administration, if did not take part in the process to elect officials.

Now, my own personal statement about our upcoming election? As you can tell by my "old school conservative" banner on the right, I'm a republican. I personally thing that Obama is *not ready* for this position. He speaks about flowery "hope" for our future. Here's my opinion on the word "Hope"....

It's a reactive word. It's not proactive.

I "hope" things get better

I "hope" I can make a change.

I "hope" I do a good job.

Proactive word: *will*.

I got this piece of literature in the mail and I think it speaks volumes so I kept it.

"Casting a vote in the US Senate only 291 days, the equivalent of working 9.5 months, Obama is still new to the job.

If he was in the Army.... you'd call him a PRIVATE

If he was an athlete ... you'd call him a ROOKIE

If he was a plumber... you'd call him an APPRENTICE.

If he was a student... you'd call him a FRESHMAN

If he was your doctor... you'd call ANOTHER DOCTOR.

Can you trust Obama to make the right decision? Dangerously Inexperienced."

Political statement - off

OK. I have laundry on the line, I have to get it off!!

It was beautiful today, too bad I didn't have time to enjoy it!