Hosting for the Holidays

Here are some holiday shots from picking out a tree to christmas dinner...

not the tree we picked...but a nice shaped spruce!

getting the tree in the house...

and upright!



decorating for christmas dinner after the extra-large table was assembled (4 tableclothes were used!)...

tim did all the cooking and prepped for days before!

our honored guests arrive and the merry making ensues...

Hannah in band jacket with concolor

Check out the hair pine cones!

Shaggy Concolor Wreath

holiday cheer

Fall Food

A few random photos of fall foods from the garden...

We grew our first fig this year on our smallest fig plant.  It was little but delicious!
 

We also canned tomatoes for the first time...the tomatoes were probably overripe and we obviously did not put enough in each jar, but it was a learning process and it will be interesting to see how they turn out as sauce this winter.

We also made pesto with the abundance of basil we grew.  We prepare it without the cheese and freeze it in ice cube trays so we can just use however many cubes we need for a particular dish during the winter.

Sunflower and Spider

We grew the tallest sunflower we have grown this year- a Russian Mammoth.

We also hosted a large orb weaver spider for a while who remade her web ever night after wrapping up her catch.