Picture Overload

Whew! I have been a busy girl this week and haven't really had that much time to blog. But I thought that I should post a few pictures from Thanksgiving before I forget. First off I want to share a recipe for a delicious cake that I made.

I made the Apple-Cream Cheese Bundt cake that was on the cover of Southern Living back in August. When I saw the recipe, I just knew that I wanted to make it for Thanksgiving and I was glad that I did. If you click on the link above, it will take you to the recipe. It's a little long to put into this post. It wasn't that tough to make, just a little labor intensive considering you had to peel and chop the apples to put in the cake. I used a mixture of Gala and Granny Smith apples. The recipe calls for just Gala, but after reading the reviews, many people said it needed a bit of a more tart apple, so I threw in the Granny Smith. This cake is good if you like a cake that isn't overly sweet. And the praline icing is to die for. My mother and I ate just pecans dipped in the icing and it was better than an actual pecan praline. Yum, yum. You need to try this recipe.

Let's see....I recruited my brother to play photographer on Thanksgiving and take a few pictures of me and the boys for our Christmas cards. Yeah, trying to get three dogs to cooperate and then have my brother try to work my camera and pose us wasn't really working out. I will just show a few of the outtakes.

It helps, Brad, to have us all looking at the camera! I have so many of this type of photo, it's not even funny!

Of course, my dad's dog Jack thinks that he is a dachshund. He had to be in the photo too. Sorry Jackie, but you won't be making the Christmas card!

This was Brad's favorite photo of the day for some reason.

He called it the "dogs looking to heaven asking Jesus to save them from their miserable lives.." My brother is not right is all I can say about that one. But the dogs do look pretty funny all looking up to the sky like that. And please excuse my extremely white-trashy roots. I promise that is on my to-do list to get taken care of. But for now, it's nothing that a little Photoshop action won't take care of. ("I'm gonna be in photoshop all night"...name that TV show) But looking at this photo makes me realize just how bad they really are. Guess I will have to bite the bullet and take a Saturday to get that done. When, I don't know but it is of importance after seeing this! See mom- I told you my natural color is no longer blonde, but brown!  

Just had to add a picture of my daddy. Just because I can :-) He had to show off his newest fruit tree.

See that tiny thing? Yeah....that's supposed to be a grapefruit. They are so small, but are actually really good. We ate them like an orange. They tasted like a cross between a grapefruit and an orange. Really weird. I told my dad that I was impressed that his grapefruit tree lived because I sent home my lemon tree to him to plant at his house that I had grown and nurtured from a tiny cutting off of my grandmother's tree into a nice large plant, and somehow my father managed to kill it.

What Thanksgiving isn't complete without a little target practice? And yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is a sweet, old recliner doing duty as a target holder. Who doesn't have one of those laying around? Ha ha. Cue the Sanford and Son music here. This picture is of all of the boys gathered round to see why they couldn't hit the bucket. "The sites were off" was their excuse, yeah right. They just needed a girl to show them how to get the job done!

My grandmother made the trip down to Blountstown to spend Thanksgiving with us. Would you believe that she is 88 years young? Barrett got a lot of great-grandmother time and it was so sweet to watch. And speaking of Barrett...I think he might have a career as a cross dresser someday.

Yes. Those are my boots that are a very nice thigh-high on Barrett. I haven't laughed so hard in a while. It was so funny watching him try to walk in heels. His father was so proud. After that, I sealed the deal and taught him a few cheerleading moves just for good measure. It was priceless.

Of course, there were lots of photos taken of the boys. I love this picture of JR. It says a lot about his relationship with Brutus. Brutus stole his golf ball and was chopping away at it and JR was just like "really?" Poor little Eeyore face breaks my heart!

And no trip would be complete without doing a little animal watching. Mainly the deer and cows out in the cow pasture.

My father's sign is still kicking. It cracks me up. If you can see Jack is following the cow ("Cow dog" as my father calls Jack). Trust me, Jack is anything but a cow dog.

We also got a little home improving time in this past weekend.

We painted some furniture! (or daddy painted some furniture...) I am re-doing my bedroom, so out comes the paint. I love projects like this. They are fun to me. I will post more about the finished project later when it all comes together.

Ok, I really need to get to work now, so I will stop with the photos. But this is just a little sampling of my Thanksgiving weekend. I hope everyone had a blessed and wonderful Thanksgiving like I did. It wasn't anything fancy or spectacular, but it was spending time with people that I love and that's the most important thing.