Fa-La-La! and a Blog tip

Are you over all that food yet? We had a very festive day with lots of good food and time with family. There are 4 generations sitting at this table, Peter's daughter Stacey, Peter, his mom Barbara, and Grandma Eleanor. That's pretty neat! His two sons got busy with work and couldn't make the trip this time. All my food turned out great, how about yours?

I couldn't resist this cute set of oh-so-Christmasy kitchen towels at Homegoods recently. For $5, a great way to add a little punch in the kitchen this season. And the colors are perfect in my kitchen too. The Christmas boxes are now out of the attic and decorating is in full swing, so stay tuned for some fun. I'm starting with my foyer table and this year, the starring colors will be lime green and white!

Fa-La-La Ya'll!

We have a slightly important little football game today and I have just one thing to say about that....ROLL TIDE!

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BLOG TIP: How to Enlarge Pics

OK, here's a little tutorial on enlarging pics. If you didn't already know this little tidbit, it's best to load your pics first and then add your text. If you were wondering WHY your pics are not clickable for enlarging, then you've probably been dragging your pics around AFTER you have loaded them. You can't do that and keep them clickable. And to get large pics, here is all you do. When you are composing a new post, you'll see 2 tabs on your open post box, one for Edit Html and one for Compose. You mostly will use the Compose tab, but Edit Html comes in handy a lot too and you'll see why. Don't be scared of Html, it's your friend.

After you have uploaded your pics, click on the html tab. You will notice that each pic you uploaded will have a whole paragraph of text to identify it. I've found it's easier to go ahead and size those pics as soon as you upload them. Without any text in the way, you can easily identify where your pics are. You will need to count from the top if you are trying to enlarge only certain pics to make sure you are getting the right ones. There are 2 steps to enlarging pics this way. And you will need to change EACH and EVERY pic individually to enlarge them all, if you wish to do that. It sounds time consuming, but once you get the hang of it, it's not hard at all. You'll see lots of nonsense that won't make sense, but look for this in all the bits of text for each picture you load (STEP 1):

WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px;

or you will see something similar, just look for the WIDTH and HEIGHT part. You will need to TOTALLY delete that whole part, including CURSOR, all the way to the ;

It doesn't matter if your px numbers are a little different than mine, that's the part that needs to be deleted. Just highlight over it and hit delete.

(STEP 2) Then, look for a number like this in each pic's paragraph of text: /s400/

Change that 4 to an 8 and your pics will magically enlarge. Click on over to the Compose tab and you'll see it immediately. You can click back and forth as you are working on your post. Try it out in a practice post with a couple of pics at a time until you get the hang of it.

You will love it. Now, this takes a bit more time when you're composing, but it's totally worth it to me for those huge pics. You have to be careful if, like me, you have 3 columns on your blog. I usually don't enlarge my pics that are square, but only the ones that are taller (vertical) pics. I have to be careful that my pics don't run off the page, but the vertical ones work great being enlarged. Now, you can also enlarge your pics by clicking on each pic and dragging the handles on your pics in Compose mode and pulling your pics out and larger. I've been doing that the last couple of weeks since they messed up the other method, BUT I also noticed that when I manually drag the box and make it bigger that my pics were not clear (but grainy) and I was really frustrated with that. So, changing the code is the better method for clear and large pics!

You'll also notice that Blogger has changed the order that pics are loading. Don't know what to do about that, guess we'll just have to adjust and load them opposite of the old way. That part I can live with.

Try it out and you'll be hooked too!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families and friends. This is the time for a grateful heart and a spirit of sharing. This year, we are staying home and two of Peter's three children will be here with us for a few days, so I'll be cooking on Thanksgiving Day (which I'm not used to doing!) and there will be six of us, including his mom and Grandma Eleanor. We usually go later in the weekend back to Georgia, but this year we've decided to just be at home and that will be very nice for a change. With other family obligations, my immediate family can't always get together on Thanksgiving Day anyway, so it will be just as well that we don't have to travel and just enjoy the day in our own home.
So, I got out the white china and decided to set a pretty table. We don't often use our diningroom, so it's fun to play around with the place settings and linens. I hardly ever set a formal table, but I had fun with it.

I just used what I had and this is the first time I've used all of this together. After putting the table together, I realized that at least half of these things came from yardsales (no surprise there). This white china with a simple gold band was found at Target a few years ago (el-cheapo) and I have a set of 8. The placemats were picked up this summer at a yardsale (I think I paid $1 for all of them!). They are woven wicker-like and I love that they are round. They fit my round table so much better than the rectangular ones do.

Even the faux pears were a yardsale find.

As well as this pretty lace square runner in the middle of the table and the salad tongs, both yardsale finds.

This will be our first time using the yardsale silverplate flatware I found this summer too. $10 for the whole bunch. I polished it up with my Wright's Silvercreme and it is beautiful. I moved the bittersweet and glass vase in from the livingroom along with the wooden candlesticks (vase & candlesticks also a yardsale find). Simple and elegant. I only had 4 of the plaid napkins, so mixed in 2 of the green.

(Yay, I did some research on the problem of enlarging the pics on Blogger & found out the solution from a message board. If anyone wants to know, just ask & I'll share). I was so used to having nice large pics, but of course they changed some code & messed it up. Now I have the answer & big pics again!)

Here's what I'm cooking this year:

*Roast Turkey

*Beef on the smoker

*Sweet Potato casserole

*Cornbread dressing (my mama told me how to make hers, this is my first time!)

*Tossed salad with cranberries & feta

*Cranberry congealed salad

*Green beans with feta and basil

*Mrs. Shubert's rolls

*Coconut egg custard pie

*Pecan Pie (both pies from Publix, I know my limitations!)

Happy Thanksgiving, ya'll! I'll take a couple of days off, but will be back this weekend! Enjoy this time with your families. I'm looking forward to getting those Christmas decorations out very soon.

Antiquing

There's nothing more fun to me than browsing antique shops, just to see what I can find that catches my eye. So, I went back to two of the shops that Kat took me to last May, Bienvenue and Smith's Antiques. I took a few shots to share with all of you since I know you enjoy it as much as I do. I loved this natural dried wreath with BELIEVE garland looped over it to look like peppermint candy. So pretty! This will get you in the Christmas spirit!

This pink and green combo is so pretty on the black rocker.

And of course, shells in glass always gets my attention.

A pretty toile pillow.

And I just loved this color combo with the shot of leopard print on the chair.

Blue and white dishes, so classic.

A black and white transferware platter was very pretty.

Does this look familiar?? Pricetag for only one was $350, it wasn't even a pair. This one was about the same size as my pair. I know I got a great deal on mine!

A pretty rustic blue door.

A REAL zebra rug.

Victorian birdcage.

I am really liking these Regency iron and glass tables. Love the shape of this one......

And this console table. Love it!

This paint finish was pretty with the caning.

Bunnies always catch my eye. Lamp and pillow.

Dressmaker form, anyone? And how about that pretty chippy blue shutter in the back?

Love this old door.

And this tole platter.

Graceful furniture lines.

Alabaster lamps.

More furniture

Toile and some old iron fencing.

And I stopped by another place I spotted called Scavengers. They had a mix of old and new.

Pretty little table.

And these colors together were just yummy!

Hope you enjoyed the day of antiquing. I've got a busy week with cooking for Thanksgiving and enjoying our company, but I'll come back and share my Thanksgiving table with you when I get it all figured out! I hope all of you will have a wonderful week of celebrating with your familes and eating some special food. Celebrate the season!

Beach Bum

I think I could officially become a beach bum, well part of the time anyway. There's nothing more relaxing than spending an afternoon on the beach. Shells are not abundant in this area of the Gulf for some reason, but I did mange to pick up a few cat's paws, which I think are so adorable. I have so many shell varieties now, I think I'll do a shadow box with their names and showcase a few of them.

We had a couple of good days that were warm enough to enjoy the beach and we did. We also managed to get by one of our favorite seafood restaurants, Dewey Destin, for some fried shrimp. It is without a doubt the best fried shrimp I've ever had! Kat and I went here last May when we were down there and we were hooked.

My honey walking on the pier while we waited for our food to come out.

There are always an abundance of birds hanging around hoping for some morsels. There are signs everywhere asking people NOT to feed the birds. You can imagine what would happen if they did.

Colorful umbrellas on the outdoor tables. You just can't beat this view anywhere!

And here's the shrimp basket...go ahead and drool, I know you want to.

So Kat set us up at their beach club and we had lunch here on the balcony one afternoon.

And looked at this view.

And then walked here....

Both directions hardly anyone in sight.

Except a few of these guys.

It is paradise.

Yep, beach bum....my new calling in life!