Thanksgiving is Coming! It's Practically Here!!

Steve's  brother, Jeff, will be here for Thanksgiving!  I will pick him up from the airport tomorrow and he will be here until Monday.  Now, of course, here it is a regular work week as it is an American Holiday, but Steve is taking off Thursday and Friday and we have offered Haley the same option, which she may or may not take.

It is my favorite holiday, and so I am glad we will have a guest!  Sure it won't be like home where we had 18 or more for dinner and many spending the weekend, but it's family and it's our first guest from overseas and it's UNCLE JEFF for crying out loud!!  Woohoo!!

The difficulty is trying to have a traditional meal.  Found a turkey, cannot find poultry seasoning per se, but can work to create my own, cannot find dried onion or french cut green beans, cannot find pumpkin puree for pie or bread, cannot find orange sherbet or jello gelatin packets to make mom's famous orange salad, can't find all we need for chex mix and flip flop bars either!

As it turns out, some of Steve's co-workers had to travel to the US and came back bearing pumpkin puree and york peppermint patties to save the holiday!  Now will have to work on improvising and choosing other items instead.  They do have squash and, of course, potatoes. 

We will hopefully be calling people on the big turkey day!  Ooodle Ooodle Ooodle!!

Camlin Willows Living Room

When we first got here, the room had a Jute Rug, so things that rolled moved quite easily and rapidly across the floor.  It was a problem with the ottoman when the dogs would jump up and go for a ride across the room!  We finally bought a new, plush carpet and the room is fantastic!  Love the fireplace and the french doors.  Have lots of pictures up and it feels like home. 

You can see the pot on the plant stand - it still has a few plant strands in it, and I was going to remove it from the picture but then figured, everyone knows I kill plants, why hide it?  Besides, I have found that they do carry Pointsettias for Christmas, so I will have one of those on display until it dies sometime in December or January - it's all good!

Camlin Willows Office and Workout Room

It's a lovely place to sit and work on the computer!

The flying geese, painted by Mom and one of Dad's favorites.  Also the potential spare fold-out bed for guests!

Like how I juxtaposed the microscope pollen crystals picture with the wooden framed Noah's Ark?!

This is the printer that sometimes prints, and sometimes, well, doesn't...

Door at Tesco

This is an emergency exit door at the Tesco grocery store.  It cracked me up and I kept laughing...

Why is the door so alarmed?!  What happened to shock it so?!

My first snow in Ireland!

Woke up this morning to snow in the Emerald Isle!  Just a dusting really, but lovely all the same.  Roads were a little slippy though.  (Here they say "slippy" not "slippery"!).   So, it does get below 0 degrees Celsius but it doesn't last for long, and it appears to be a very wet snow.  I wonder why?!

Camlin Willows Master Bedroom

Glad our bed fits!

My side!

These glass doors lead to the balcony off the front of the house.

The curtains are apparently supposed to puddle on the floor, but I roll them up to keep the fur off them!

Steve's side!  He needs more space for clothes than I do now that I am not working...

This  is a picture Connor painted in grade school,  I sent him a text showing him I had gotten it hung up.  He wrote back "sewer!" and then corrected it with "aww"  Gotta love auto-correct!

Edenmore Bog Walk

One of our first days here in July, we went to this bog for a nice walk.  It was warm and sunny and no mosquitos!  On Sunday Steve and I went there again with the dogs.  This time I took pictures. 

This is the road you have to drive on to get to the trail head for the walk around the bog.  If there is another  car coming toward you, it is a feat to find a way to get past each other!

There was no one else there, so we let the dogs go off their leads.

The bog is where they grow peat or turf, which is used for fuel to heat the homes here.  There really isn't a lot of wood burning here.  It is usually turf or coal that people burn in their fireplaces.

That dark line is a wall of turf that has been exposed when the stuff in front of it was cut and harvested.

This is a pile of cut turf.  When we came in the summer,  these piles were all over the place.  It appears that  people can pay to have their own plot of turf to harvest themselves and burn in the colder months.  There were more people here in the summer and they were loading up trucks and vans with piles of turf to take back home.  The turf has a different smell to it - but not unpleasant.  Some people love it, some can't stand it.  I find it quite pleasant, but we actually have been burning coal these past few months.

The bog walk is quite lovely!