Early Thanksgiving Morning . . .

Here I sit on a beautiful sunny Thanksgiving morning. The finches are singing, the family is still asleep and I'm sipping my first cup of coffee.  This is my favorite time of day.  Today it's made more special by the Starbucks French Roast in my cup.  I love my Keurig coffee maker, but I've really missed Starbucks coffee.  Yesterday I stumbled across Starbucks k-cups in the store and I was so excited I could have jumped up and down!  Yum!

I have a few ornament exchanges coming up, and thought I'd make some special gift bags to put them in.  After a bit of rummaging in my stash here's what I came up with.  Although why I decided on yo-yo's, I don't know.  I've never made yo-yo before but found this tutorial on Heather Bailey's fabulous blog.  The steps are much easier than I expected, but the execution is a bit tougher! I'm sure I'll get better with practice. Recycled gift bags, fabric scraps, old sheet music and some buttons from my button jar and Ta-Da!

Last weekend we managed to get a few things done around the house.  I really wanted to get the kitchen finished before all the cooking today.  Here are before and after pictures.  It's hard to see in the first picture, but the breakfast area ceiling was lower than the rest of the room.  Since we were having the porches and siding redone on the back of the house, we had the contractors raise the ceiling to match the rest of the kitchen.

A little bit of paint and some new light fixtures, and now it's much more open and bright.

The kitchen is ready, but I didn't get around to replacing the dead plant by the front door.  I can't believe I've let it sit there so long - I should be mortified :)

I'm thankful to have a sense of humor and family and friends who can appreciate it!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sherri