Happy Halloween!

This year's effort--a spooky pirate ship!

 Grove Avenue sign being eaten by a tree--scary!

Temple Newsam

This morning we went out to Temple Newsam--we'd only been there for Opera in the Park, so we hadn't really seen it properly.  There was much more going on than we'd realised--it's huge!

National collection of asters & chrysanthemums

I love it when garden walls have things growing on them...

Inside the rose garden

In the greenhouse

Loads of geraniums--it reminded me of our windowboxes on Camano (x50)

I'd never seen geraniums trained to grow up a wall before

I'd never seen pink & white geraniums, either--so pretty!

Spanish flag

After the gardens, we went to the farm

We thought these piglets were cute, until we saw even smaller ones in the next stall

These guys were only 5 days old!

They were crawling all over each other & scrapping--so cute!

This sheep came right up to me and let me pet it

It was so friendly and cute!

Richard had to give it a try, too

It loved having its head scratched--it even closed its eyes when you scratched behind its ears, just like Cookie does!

The antique farming equipment was cool, too--there's a hay baler behind this tractor

It was lovely to catch the farm when the leaves are changing, too--so pretty!

One of the pigs was named Sandra--but don't feel bad, Mom, there was a one-eared goat named Molly on the farm, too!

Introducing Blue Boy!

Goats!  One-eared Molly is the one seated in the middle, second in from the right

The house

We didn't actually go in and tour the house this time--we might come back when it's decorated for Christmas.  It's only a few miles away--it's so great to live close to these amazing places.

Happy autumn!

Falling leaves & Christmas Lights: October in Leeds

Autumn leaves at Roundhay Park last weekend

On the walk to campus

They've already put the Christmas lights up downtown--I love how they get such an early start on Christmas here!

The stores already have Christmas cards and Advent calendars--I took it as a sign that it's ok to load Christmas music on my iPod again  :)

Since getting back from the honeymoon, my main priority has been working on my dissertation.  The first draft (75,000 words) is due by Christmas, so I've been writing at home a lot, hiding away in the library, and doing my cafe crawls, too.  The Starbucks on Albion has a staff member named Molly, so they usually get my name right.  The Starbucks on Briggate, however, spelled it like this!

We got our pumpkin last night :) It's got a good carving face & a lovely colour--I'm not carving it until it gets closer to Halloween, but it's nice & festive to have around for an extra week.

Our kitchen with its new appliances :) 

We love the Le Creuset utensil jar!  It's much bigger than our old one, so we don't have to struggle to put away utensils anymore.  Thanks Kelly, Jason, Pudd & Charlie!

The Dualit kettle is lovely (merci a la famille Keriel!), and the De Longhi coffee maker is fabulous, too.  When I work from home, I've been making a pot in the morning to have with Richard and carrying on throughout the day.  I love the way it makes the whole kitchen smell so good!  Thanks Mom!

(I forgot to take a picture of the toaster, but it's been awesome, too!  Our old one toasted unevenly, so you'd get half-bread and half-toast...This one toasts it perfectly every time!  Thanks Tricia, Tim, Eric & Alicia!)

Another reason why this is my favorite time of year :)