I’m participating in my very first eBay auction.
I read a magazine titled “American Patchwork and Quilting.” Last year, they asked their readers to donate a 10″ square block of any pattern made in pink and white. The aim was to sew the donated blocks into quilts and auction them on eBay, to raise funds for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
The readers rose to the challenge, and the magazine has received more than 25,000 quilt blocks! Hundreds of quilt guild members, quilt designers, quilt shop owners and others volunteered to assemble the blocks into quilts. Batting, backing, setting fabric and time were all donated, and nearly 500 quilts will be put up for auction.
In the few weeks that the auction has been running, they have already raised $25,000. The auction runs until December 31st, with new items being listed every week. ALL of the money raised through the auction will go to research. None of it will be kept for administrative expenses.
I have never participated in an eBay auction, but I think this is an exceptional place to start. I’ve bid on two of the quilts, and I have about eighteen hours to go to find out if I’ve won either or both of them. I have a five year old niece who is addicted to pink. I can’t think of a better Christmas gift for her. She will be cozy, snuggled into her own pink and white quilt, and when she is older, I can tell her the significance of the gift. It’s definitely a Win-Win situation!
This is an exceptional way for women to show solidarity. Women pieced blocks, women quilted the quilt tops, and the result of their efforts may one day save women who are facing breast cancer. That doesn’t mean we discourage men from participating. We hope everyone will help in some way to wipe out this dreadful disease.
If you’d like to participate in the auction, or even if you’d just like to see what is being auctioned, go to www.ebay.com/apqqfc.
Wish me luck!
UPDATE: YEEEEEEEEEHAWWWWWWWWWW!! I WON my first quilt!

My mother will be 88 very shortly. I’ve probably said that fifty times in the past six months. It’s amazing to me that she will be EIGHTY EIGHT!
About six or seven years ago, Dear Husband and I went to New Orleans for a few days rest and relaxation. We had dinner in a fabulous restaurant called “The Courtyard of the Two Sisters.” We enjoyed our elegant dinner so much, we returned for lunch the next day. Ever since, I have been trying to persuade my mother to hop a plane for two days and a night in the Big Easy to celebrate her birthday at the “Courtyard.”
This year, she announced that if she made it to ninety, she wanted to celebrate in Paris! I like a woman who thinks BIG! *G*
Since we are not going to Paris this year, Mother has decided to do an open house. Two of my nieces work for a major grocery chain, and they are organizing trays of finger food from their deli and bakery departments. One of my sisters and her daughters will be coming for the weekend, and she’ll organize the flowers and give me a hand getting ready. I’ll be adding things like shrimp trays, beverages, and holiday decorations.
To that end, we will begin decorating tomorrow. I have ornaments to hang from the chandelier, and I’ll swap Christmas themed wall hangings for those that normally cover our walls. I have evergreen swags and bows to put up on the carriage lights, and I plan to buy garland to drape at the front door.
I have one wreath, but I need four more. I use a lot of dried flowers and weeds when I make up wreaths, and sometimes I add silk flowers to the mix. Most of it is pretty understated and mellow. We’ll put up a tree in Mother’s sitting room, but the tree in our living room will have to wait until closer to Christmas.
I’ve tried for years to get Dear Husband to trim the roof line with white lights, but it’s never going to happen. We finally resorted to hanging the icicle lights in the front windows, and some years an angel made of grapevine, covered with tiny white Italian lights, greets our visitors.
So, tomorrow will be the start of our decorating season. Just call me Martha.

Dear Husband earned his halo today. He took the day off. I think this is the first time in 18 years that he has not gone to work the day after Thanksgiving. Since it was raining, it was a wise choice. He was spending a lazy day until I came back from my errands.
“Sweetie, could you give me a hand bringing up the Christmas decorations?”
I bet he made a dozen trips. I’d go through a box or two, and hand him what needed to be taken up the stairs, and he’d make the trip. I need to spend a morning downstairs repacking the Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations for the year, so that when the Christmas stuff goes back down, it won’t be so difficult to reorganize it.
Dear Husband has been muttering that he shouldn’t sit and watch TV after dinner. My solution to that is to have him join me in the basement, organizing what needs to be saved, and collecting what needs to be thrown away. I think he’s delayed that chore because he knows that he will get to carry the trash upstairs.
Wait until he discovers that I have five or six boxes of mismatched mugs downstairs. I’ve been saving them incase we should ever open a coffee house. Maybe it’s time to learn to make coffee.
We need a conveyor belt! I think I’ll go browse on e-Bay….

Friday morning, I went to my computer to check my mail, and discovered that it wouldn’t boot up. It would get part way into the process and then stick, beep a signal at me, and then start all over again. I didn’t have the faintest idea what had happened since the night before. When I’d closed the computer down and gone to bed, it was working.
Luckily we were expecting number three son to visit, and he’s been given the IT position in our household. So, I practiced my patience. His first question was, had I added any new programs, or had I deleted anything the night before. Nope. I told him that I was having some problems with the computer recognizing my DSL line, but otherwise, there was nothing I could tell him that might guide his search.
He tried booting up, and noticed that an error message was being displayed for one second. He rebooted repeatedly, getting one word of the error message at a time, until he could determine that the problem had to do with the keyboard. We swapped keyboards and, sure enough, it booted right up.
I contacted Dell, and they were willing to order a new keyboard for us, but they needed several pieces of information. It took me until today to supply all the information, and I can expect a new keyboard in five to seven business days.
Their response was very timely, but five to seven business days if the keyboard is in stock, seems to be pretty slow service. I’m lucky that we have several computers in the house, both new and old, so that we can swap parts.
It’s a bit awkward, having to go back to an older keyboard, but it works. I’m relieved that I was only out of contact a day or so.
Thanks #3 Son! We appreciate your expertise.

Thanksgiving dinner is over, and the last of my family have left. About 90%, or maybe more, of the cleanup is done, and I have the first of two loads of table linens in the washer. The rental chairs have been collected, the recyclables gathered, and the dishwasher is running as we speak. Most of the dishes were hand washed by my nieces, but I’m cleaning up the dessert plates and a few pans.
It was lovely! One of my nieces said that this is the most incredible meal our family has during the course of the year. I think it’s because everyone rises to the challenge and brings their finest recipes. As a family, we love to try new recipes, so there are always too many appetizers and desserts. We have food left over for days of meals, and I have to surf for ways to use up leftover ham.
I got to see parts of my family I haven’t seen for several years, and I played with a one year old who wore me out just watching him. I love Thanksgiving.
Thank you, to my family, for making it such a wonderful day.

Are you a sale maven? Do the words “the day after Thanksgiving” bring joy to your heart? Then get your rest tonight. The BIG sale day of the holiday season is upon us.
I won’t be joining you. Personally, I’d rather go to a mall on a Tuesday morning at 9:30, when not another soul is around, other than the sales people. I don’t like the hunt or the crush, and I don’t need to know that I ripped the very last Baby Bumpkins out of another woman’s hand, to win the shopper of the day award.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like to make purchases for less. I’m not convinced that you can’t save just as much on other days of the year. The traffic alone is enough to make me shake in my boots. The thought of all those accidents just waiting to happen, and all the road rage, is all I need to keep me firmly planted at home.
So, tomorrow, when all of YOU are out there, braving the crowds, I’ll be at home working on quilts. I’ll finish the Thanksgiving clean up, and I might even start some of the holiday decorating, but I WON’T be shopping.
I’m giving my feet a rest, and having a mental health day too. I encourage you to give it some thought. Let’s start a “Down with Shopping the Day After Thanksgiving” society. You have my permission to buy as many gifts on-line as you want prior to Thanksgiving. In return, you promise not to shop the day after Thanksgiving.

To my blog family, I wish you all the happiest of Thanksgivings, even those of you who may not celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow. The idea is the same worldwide, even if we choose different days or ways to celebrate.
Tomorrow 27 of my family will be here to share a meal and say thanks for all that has happened in the past year. Dear Husband’s youngest kid gave birth to our beautiful granddaughter. One of my nephews married, a niece had a baby boy. My god child also had a little boy this year. We feel very blessed.
I have pumpkin bread in the oven, and my Sicilian husband is making lasagna, which is his contribution to our meal. The element on one of my ovens has died, but we’ve found clever ways to get around the problem, and I know that our meal will be incredible. I come from a family of wondrous cooks.
I hope you have something for which you can say thanks. It doesn’t have to be something big. It could be the smile a child gave you, or a rose from your sweetheart.
I’m glad that I met Cop Car and Hunky Husband and have been voted into their family. I’m glad Dr. D. and Mad Bull came through the hurricanes safely. I’m glad for Desiree that things seem to be working out for them. I’m glad that Stephanie came home to recharge, and that the boy is doing fine, Billy. Jamie, I’m glad that I haven’t heard any stories about a mother in the Dallas area going on a rampage! lol
I’m looking forward to catching up with you all on Friday. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

I learned yesterday that you should never wait until three days before a holiday to shop for a new table cloth.
I have a lovely table cloth, in the right size, in a wonderful Fall Gold shade, but there were no matching napkins left. Instead, I ended up with eight wonderful napkins in gold, russet and green that bring a lot more color to the table. Some lessons are felicitous, but I didn’t think that was how my shopping trip would turn out yesterday.
I found two table cloths in a reasonable price range to cover a long banquet table. Unfortunately, there weren’t matching napkins for either of them. Then, I found these great napkins, but there was no matching table cloth in the right size.
I looked at every set of gold napkins in the place before I finally realized that the table would be prettier with the additional color. I’ll add flowers in fall colors, and candles, and we should have a lovely table.
I hope your Thanksgiving plans are all coming together well!

The rain has moved in. It’s been gray all day, and was misting as we came home from errands around noon. The sky darkened through out the afternoon, and around 4:00 I realized that it was raining. We should have rain off and on into the weekend. It was 60 degrees today, but by Sunday, we should be down into the low 40s.
As we drove home, we passed the last of the corn fields to be harvested. The resident Canada geese were gleaning the fields. The farmer had made his first pass over the field, leaving roughly the bottom 12 inches of the stalks behind. Eventually he will disk the crop and turn it under, but for now you see a rough stubble. The bodies of the geese were hidden by the stubble, but you could see their necks sticking up out of the field. There were so many geese it looked like the farmer had planted another fast growing crop.

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BFI, the company who picks up garbage for my town, needs to have someone encourage them to institute a “The Customer is Always Right” policy!
We live between two subdivisions, and every time there is someone new assigned to our route, they miss our garbage. Of course, it’s MY duty to call them and let them know they failed to pick it up.
This morning I called, and was told (repeatedly, by a machine) that their hours were from 8:00 to 4:00 Monday through Friday. Unfortunately, it told me that at 8:00, 8:01, 8:02, 8:03, 8:04 and on, until I had to quit calling them at 8:10 so that I could get to exercise.
When we returned home, I called them again and had to play 20 questions. Each of the questions was phrased to show us just how sick they are of STUPID people who call them. What day is your Pickup Day? Tuesday. I just told you that it wasn’t picked up yesterday, and yesterday was TUESDAY! What time did you have the garbage out at the curb? 5:00 a.m., even though you don’t pick up the garbage until later in the day. Did it have the proper stickers on the bins? Yes! Did you use an authorized bin? We use your bins for recycling, and our own bins for garbage. This was the garbage you missed, so no, it was not one of your bins. What’s your address (in a very bored tone)?
This woman lead me right to the edge of violence. Every word from her mouth implied that we had screwed up in getting the garbage out to the street. They NEVER admit that their people could have erred!
Now, I’ll probably get in trouble for complaining about their service on my blog, and they’ll give me someone else’s garbage, while leaving ours behind, again!
If your business requires that you have to work with the general populace, you need to get real about how you interact with them. I can tell you, when the contract comes up for renewal, I’ll be encouraging the committee to look into other service providers!
If you read Essay’s blog, you’ll understand when I tell you that my Peeves rating was “VOLCANIC!”