Last time, I wrote about all the fun adventures I had in October 2019. So let’s dive into November.
November started with a belated Hallowversary celebration for JC and I. Celebrating 11 years, we chose to keep it small and local since, well, I frankly didn’t have time to do anything more than that! But I had heard about this event at a fairgrounds called Pumpkin Nights that sounded worth investigating. So, we had an actual date night: we had a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant and then bundled up to be outside at the fairgrounds.
It was a maze of multiple displays of pumpkins that span a variety of themes, from a pirate beach to underwater to Day of the Dead to a Chinese dragon. The vast majority of the pumpkins were fake, but I didn’t mind because they were all lit up and differently decorated and “carved”.
There were a lot of other activities there, too, like watching a movie, playing cornhole or full-sized bowling, digging in the sand for buried treasure, food trucks and more, but it was quite cold and we were content with walking through the displays and heading home.
The following week, I attended a concert with friend Sidra to see Kevin Griffin, the lead singer/songwriter for Better Than Ezra, a band I’ve loved for nearly 30 years. He’s always a delight to see live and I never get tired of him. This time, he had this promising young woman open for him and she was incredible too.
Here’s a short video of the two of them jamming out on my favorite song.
My next big moment of the month was doing a podcast recording with the Scrap Gals. These are two friends in Tennessee and Kentucky who run a podcast all about scrapbooking, and it was on my Goals List to be a guest on the show. Well, I poked my head out of the sand and told them I’d love to have a chat about organizing scrapbooking stuff (because you all know I can organize it much better than I can use it!!), and after like six months of trying to find a date that would work (overbooked!), we finally did it in November. It went really well and got a lot of positive feedback from listeners. They also provide bonus content on a hidden web link (the podcast is a paid subscription) so I boiled down my hour of ramblings into a Twelve Tidy Tips cheat sheet.
I can’t link to it since it’s only available if you subscribe. But trust me, I had great ideas. 😉
OK, so next up was MY BIRTHDAY, which I spent in AIRPLANES en route to Saskatchewan, Saskatoooon, Canada, for my second annual Scrapbook and Cards Today Crop and Create event with friend Margaret! We loved it so much last year that we just had to return (and, of course, I was overbooked earlier in the year to try a different city like Calgary where they have it in April).
This year, we rented a car for a day, flew in on Thursday instead of early Friday, and had the day to roam around. We found an awesome store full of local goodies, so we stocked up on prairie berry everything, went downtown to the mall and the Roots store and had a lovely dinner.
On Friday, we met up with Tara (who we sat with last year), her daughter Brynn and friend Carmen and had a yummy lunch at a diner before heading to the hotel and getting our scrap on! Rounding out our posse was Katherine who we also met last year. Of course, we had fun! I won like 6 prizes throughout the weekend, got my Christmas cards done and took amazing classes. Some instructors were the same as last year, some different, so that was nice.
That pretty much consumed every waking moment of Friday and Saturday, like it does, as well as most of Sunday. All the locals left after the event ended at 4pm, leaving Margaret and I to amuse ourselves. Luckily the hotel has a great assortment of pools and hot tubs that we did not get to use last year, so we went for a dip and a chat for a while. Then, we topped it all off with a return to the connected sports bar for more yummy pickle-favored chicken wings and local beer.
Little did we know that there was a playoff football game that night between the Winnipeg Bluebombers and the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the Canadian football league. Sadly, the Roughriders lost in a nail-biting finish.
So, between all the goodies we got for free, the stuff I won, the few items I bought from the local scrap stores that were there, the class kits and the crapton of candy, tea and jam I bought, I once again could barely fit it all in my suitcase!
Anyway, the weekend after that I got to see Ira Glass live in Denver with friend Juli. I honestly had never heard his radio program, but knew it would be an insightful night. He was really funny and he presented a bunch of insights he’s had over the years, some very serious, some not.
The day before Thanksgiving, we had an Avalanche game against the Oilers. On Turkey Day, we continued our tradition of going to Murphy’s Taphouse in Louisville for their homemade turkey dinner (that we have at noon), then going back to the in-laws to watch some random movie. I honestly can’t remember the movie since I’m writing this 8 months later.
The day after, Black Friday, I of course avoided any kind of shopping, but continued another tradition that friend Nana and I have done for the last few years: we spent the day making some sort of bath item to give friends and family as gifts. This year, in continual attempts to do things that take less time, we made body lotion. And lots of it.
Then, at night, I went downtown with friend Lisa to see comedienne Anjelah Johnson. She is apparently paranoid, so her telling of all the stalker things she does to her husband was pretty funny.
If you’ve never seen her before, check this out.
And voila, just like that, November came and went.