Enjoying the warm days of fall!

I've been trying to spend at least a half hour outside tending to the overgrown (yet pretty) gardens. I've got a million things to do but I NEED to get outside to relieve some of the stress and worry over my husband's health. I've started at the driveway side garden nearest the mailbox. This year it was overtaken with crabgrass. I'm transplanting a few "wild" plants that have spread around the yard and going to add some rocks to create a little shading for the plant roots.

I get side tracked though with all the other things in the yard though. The golden rod is going crazy. I love it this time of year when paired with the asters we planted for the honey bees. Our yard is never so busy with bees than at this time of year. Our own hives are still this year but there are plenty of wild honey bees to be seen.



Well who wouldn't be cheered up by a little warm sunshine on a cool fresh morning with an abundance of flowers and bees all around?

A new Etsy treasury to share made by Joanna's Photograpy ...

Happy Autumn Moon!

This Sunday we celebrated our yearly Autumn Moon Festival in our backyard with the cousins and grandma and grandpa. Isabelle insisted on tiki torches for the patio and I found a few more sets of lights to string outside as well as an abundance of candles.

The kids started the party by dressing up in their silk outfits. Then we each painted a paper lantern or banner. The kids had a lot of fun doing this yearly craft so we have quite a collection of lanterns from all the past years too.



Then they headed outside grabbing the ribbon sticks to dance about the yard. Some were rainbow colored and others handmade from ribbons. A music tape was set up in the playhouse.

We made cookies with our chinese wooden cookie molds. Since we had purchased a box of mooncakes we just made cookies with vanilla and chocolate shortbread recipes (the chocolate was awesome!).




We ordered take out from our local Panda Wok and supplimented that with steamed buns and pork shumi from a chinese grocery store in Littleton.

After dinner we made tea and served it in our tiny tea sets from China and ate our mooncakes. Then we each took a lantern and a few floating candles and walked down to the river in the darkness. We could see the moon coming up through the clouds. Our little lanterns shown just enough light to walk by. At the river we each lit a candle and sent it floating down river with a prayer and moment of silence. It was so pretty! We walked back up towards the house and restarted our bonfire and toasted marshmallows and lit sparklers.

Mark was a bit under the weather and enjoyed the day relaxing watching sports on tv with Uncle Pete. Emma took over on cooking the steamed food (Mark's job) and did an excellent job. Mark didn't make it outside to enjoy the night lights and walk under the moonlight and we missed him. But the kids were busy enough to keep Robin, Grandma, and I running around.