Note about additional bargains

It is really that you get $25 worth of anything free. (See previous post.) I had intended on getting a luggage set that was priced at $25, but it was gone. Guess someone else did what I planned. So I ended up getting lots of stuff and paying $7 difference. Some of it wasn't sure if it was on sale or not, so I kinda lost cost of how much I had.

Got 7 books including a Southern Living Annual Recipes cookbook and The World According to Garp in hardback. Other vintage goodies--peach wall pocket, turnip spoon rest, restaurant ware plate and saucer, old embroidery hoops(made back when they were smooth as satin wood) patchwork angel(that I want to art up some). Then got some clothes-about 3 or 4 tshirt type tops, Land's End 3/4 sleeve shirt, genuine beautifully hand-embroidered peasant top, nice brown sweater, Liz Claiborne shirt, dressy silk young-looking top, and a really nice blue jean skirt.

Some of the shirts are probably going to my dd's as they are not really me and are kind of small on me. I've been losing weight and so I don't have any idea of what fits me right now. Not been shopping yet since I've been losing. Wanted to wait until I had to. So I just took a pic of the more interesting things, leaving out most of the clothes and showing only of them the lovely embroidered peasant shirt.

BTW, it's hard to type without errors when there is a cat laying on your mouse pad!

Thrifting pictures

Went by the Salvation Army after work on Wednesday and it was a good day to be there. Everything priced from $1 to $20 was half off. They also have a program where if you spend $100 in a month you get $25 gift certificate good for anything I think. I'll find out about that today as I did that in October so I'm going to get my $25 GC and see what I can get with it.

Wednesday I found 3 pairs of scrub pants that were like new for only $1 each and I needed some more. Also for work, the crazy purple shoes which WERE new. Still had the tags and originally sold for $30 and the S.A. had them priced for $10. I wouldn't pay that, but did give the $5 sale price because again I need some work shoes and while these won't go with everything I can wear them with several things I have. Almost cut out of the picture by the bad photographer are 2 cute little plastic drawer units for 50 cents each which should be good in the art room for small stuff. The vintage apron was $1.50 I think and the 4 trivet thingies ended up being 50 cents each. They are metal with a cardboard bottom. Believe they are vintage but if so are like new. Will probably sell them at our booth if Emily doesn't want them(they won't match Holly's kitchen).

I'm telling these backwards as now I'm talking about the top photo. The cute baking dish looks like it's from the seventies? and was purchased for $1.50 and the wooden candlestick in it was a quarter. Bought it to make a candle holder with a saucer. The wooden cake pedestal was also $1.50 I think. Plan to repaint that white or black. Then the Halloween candle dish and shade were new with tag from Home Interior. They were $1 and had a few chips on the paint that I was able to cover up with some of the crazy colored nail polish I mentioned having a stash of before from when the girls were younger. Amazing how often I use that stuff. The lovely fall tart warmer is a Fitz and Floyd piece which was $1.50 on sale. It had a few flakes of paint missing, too, but you can't tell it now after some more nail polish touchups. There is an owl on one side and a squirrel on the other so it's pretty all the way around. Would be a good table decoration. Almost forgot the bluebird at 50 cents.

Fall swap and birthday goodness

Received in the mail yesterday the fall 4x4 pages from a swap hostessed by my friend, Beth from the atc_group on Yahoo. They were all gorgeous and will make such a pretty book all put together. Beth even made a title page from some of her digital artwork. I'm envious of Beth's ability to do such art. These pages are shown in the 2 photos above. I'll give the artist for each page left to right, top to bottom. In the first scan, Beth's title page is first and then her 4x4 page is next to it. Aren't they beautiful!?! Love the colors she used, the gold accents, and the leaf danglies! Next on the bottom left is the front of the page by Judy D. which is a lovely Halloween/fall combination. Beside that is Lottie's page, who is Beth's Mom. Again I love these colors and the ribbon and leaf trims. In the next photo the first one is the back side of Judy's 4x4 which I wanted to show because she had both sides decorated so prettily. On the right top is spooky page by Candy P. So totally cool! Next row on the left is another Halloween page done by Aiyanna W. with the raven that has such great details including stitching and black netting. Love this one, too! Last, but not least, is the funny doggie with googly eyes created by Denise B. This one makes me smile every time I look at it in addition to being pretty.



Shown here are the birthday surprises that Beth was so sweet to send me! There is a soldered pendant/necklace. The front is shown in the scan of all the items on the top and the back of it is below. Wanted to show that because it's pretty, too. I love this necklace! I told Beth she couldn't have given me a better present as I've been wanting one for a long time, but haven't gotten up the nerve to try soldering yet. Isn't it just so gawgeous! Did I mention I love the necklace? Also, she included some cute cat magnets. So sweet! These make me smile! And on top of these goodies, Beth sent one of her "oh, so cool" altered Halloween postcards! I'm lucky to have such a great art friend, aren't I?

My poor granddoggy

This is the outfit his parents got Coal for Halloween. As we say in the South, bless his heart! He is Craig and Emily's doggie. They put it on him while I was down there for the art festival so I could see him in it. It's hard to get a good picture of him because he is always moving, but these turned out OK. Coal is a pretty dog and very sweet and is part collie and ? maybe retreiver. Looks a lot like Max except the opposite color. Max is retriever/sheltie mix. Thought this would be cute to share for the week of Halloween. I've not been doing much except working lately, though I am trying to finish up an art swap, so not much to post about so far.

It was cold here today, even for Alabama. There was frost on my window when I left work this morning. We may have to break down and turn on the heat, lol! My dh and I are very hot natured and like to keep the house cool. I love to wear comfy clothes like sweatshirts, but if the thermostat's set too high, I can't stand to have them on. Can sleep better if it's not too hot also.

Born to multitask?

To change from showing you photos from the art festival, here is another altered book spread. This pic of the little girl was found in a magazine ad as were the words. I have a presently disorganized file of clippings that I pull from to use in my journaling. The flowers were stamped with some cut out of the top of a styrofoam covered plate from the cafeteria at work. Game markers make the flower centers. I used a multi-colored stamp pad for all the stamping, the flowers and all the random color around the pages. More scrap paper leftover from the piece I used on the front of my inspiration journal, I believe, are the square bits on each page.

I think most women feel overwhelmed with tasks at time. I know I do. Especially when you've got family to take care of, be it a husband and/or kids, or aging parents. Add in a job outside the home and things can often be "interesting" shall we say. I guess some men may feel this way, but not here at my house. My dh is very laid back for the most part and seems to let very little bother him. Of course outside of his work(and he does work hard) he is very selective about which household tasks he'll bother with. He is getting better as he gets older.

Little more of the art festival

Sculpture by Mark Orr:

Assemblage work by Amy Lansburg:

Paper mache art by Tiffany Ownby. I thought this was very uniquely beautiful. Never had seen any art done this, but I like it!

Folk artist John Henry Toney explaining his art to an interested party.

Both of these 2 are book art by Joe DeCamillis where he has a miniature painting set into the book. Very beautiful altered books for sure!


Assemblage art by Anthony Pack


Hope you don't mind me sharing so many of these photos, but there was so much wonderful art! I haven't even shown all I took, but I think I've probably shown enough. I'm back at work for the start of another work week. Looks like tomorrow will be good sleeping weather with rain and cool temperatures. We are definitely having a fall this year as far as temps, but not as much fall color as you would expect here. Don't know if it's from dry weather or what. Well, I need to go to bed.

More Kentuck festival photos

Beautiful people:

Very cool mixed media work by Sloane Bibb who is from Decatur, Alabama:

Emily being silly in front of sculptures by Mark Winter.

Mixed media work by Justin Robinson, an artist from Northport whose paintings I love:

Work by Athlone Clarke, loved this, too:

There are still several more I want to share and many more I wish I had photographed. Please be sure to visit the link to the festival information to see all the artists and an example of their art. Lots of very talented people there. I wish there were links to the websites or blogs of the artists.

Kentuck Art Festival

Went down Friday evening and got to visit with both of my dd's and their hubbies. Holly and her dh had tickets to the football game on Saturday so only Emily and myself went to the festival. It was held in Northport, a neighboring town to Tuscaloosa, an older town with a lovely main street, several antique shops and even art galleries. For some reason my dd's have never told me about it or taken me there before this? Will definitely be going back to visit it later on. Didn't think to take a photo of the town.

The Kentuck Art Festival was in a wooded park area and was a much bigger deal than I was anticipating. You can visit the link which will take you directly to the page with a slide show of the work of most of the artists who were there. The art included everything from outsider/folk art to assemblage art to fine paintings. It was all so wonderful! The exhibitors were from all over the U.S. There were mixed media artists whose work I had seen previously online or published(and admired), Lynn Whipple and Mary Beth Shaw. Some of the artists were local so I hope to see some of their work when I go back to visit Northport again or be able to look up the others who are from Alabama and find where they exhibit.

Works by Lynn Whipple:


Works by Mary Beth Shaw:


If I were rich, there was so much I would have loved to purchased! Right now, I did good to pay to get in and only bought some cards that were prints of original works by Mary Beth Shaw. But it was a very memorable, inspiring experience. Took lots of pics that I'll share over the next few days. The weather was wonderful! It was a little cool in the morning, making it a lovely autumn day with temps in the 70's as the day progressed.

You can see from the first photos that some of the artists travel in style. Do you have YOUR ducks in a row? Also there were some very colorful people in attendance. Don't you love their sense of expression! Like I said, I'll share some more shots and will try to get the artists names matched up to them so I can let you know who did the work. The shot below is of a piece done by Aaron Hequembourg. His work was so beautiful, done on reclaimed wood from old homes, it was a mix of painting, wood-burning, and, I think, transfers of printed material, as well as some mixed media.

We will be going back next year and maybe Holly can go with us next time, while the guys all watch football. Here is one last photo for today where Emily went for a contemplative pose in front of the displays of these awesome vessels made out of all kinds of materials. I'm sorry I don't know who did these, but I'll try to figure it out from my program and add it here later. They were great. I have a closeup of one which was very complex. I'll share it another day.

Live Life

I picked this picture out of a magazine because she reminds me of myself when I was little, then used it in the altered book for this spread. The pages on the right are folded and glued. I put a blank paper under it to do the scan so the next spread wouldn't distract. Words on the triangle page came from a bulletin at church while the words on the left page were found in a magazine. The paint used is from my stash of nail polish colors. At the time I did this page I didn't have a lot of paint bought up yet, so I just used what I had. Having raised 2 daughters through the eighties and nineties we have some really wild and sometimes wicked colors of nail polish. I have to admit some of them were mine. I went through a spell where I tried to have artificial nails, but it was just too much trouble and with me having to wear gloves at work and wash my hands all the time, they just wouldn't last. Now it is against the rules for us to have them because it's been determined that it increases the possibility of spreading infection. Can't believe I went to all that trouble anyway because if you knew me, it's just not "me". Anyway another reminder to myself to enjoy life and live in the moment, because I can tend to dwell on the future at the expense of the present. I can be a worrier, but it's mostly the kind of thinking like once I do this and I can that, if that makes any sense.

I have worked on another Halloween project or 2 for myself but not completely done with either. Neither have I decorated yet. Yesterday I worked on these things some, did a little housework(not much, lol), and worked on glueing pictures in my inspiriation journal, which I've never shown here. I'll get it and scan to show you. This was a mostly unused ledger book from work that I was able to rescue from going in the trash. The front is covered with some "scraps" paper,literally made from the scraps on my work table at the time. I glued a sticky backed metal strip beside it along with some buttons, a key with fibers, tag with the word "inspire", and a butterfly sticker. Painted with a copper metallic paint over the metal strip and here and there on the book to age it. This is where I put pictures from magazines of decorating and craft ideas and other artistic inspiration. Having a place to put them enables me to then throw the magazine away, something I have problems with. Also in here I write down ideas that come to me or things I see on TV. I recently went through and got rid of a bunch of magazines, so I have a lot of pics to glue now.


Speaking of magazines, I just recently saw on someone's blog that Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion is going to cease publication! That is my favorite decorating magazine and one that, thankfully, I've never cut up and thrown away. Most of the decorating is just my kind of thing and then there are lots of artistic homes and studios shown along with the art. I can pull out an old issue and browse the pages and find something I don't remember seeing in there before. I'm really going to miss this magazine.

I'm going to be going down to Tuscaloosa for an art festival there called Kentuck, I believe. I had forgotten about Emily telling me about it and she didn't call to ask me about it again until yesterday. The week I work, especially if I'm busy outside of work, I forget a lot. I'm going to go down and spend the night tonight and then we'll go to the festival tomorrow. I'll let you know what we see. Will have to remember my camera, but sometimes they don't want you to take pics.

Fall flowers

I've got more color around my house now than I did in the summer. As I've said before my flowers beds are in a sorry shape, not much left except "shrubberies"(that's italicized because my family can't hear the word without thinking of Monty Python's skit). But here and there are some beautiful flowers to enjoy.


Love the purple of asters, which are the flower for my birth month of September. I planted some in a small herb bed behind the house and they do wonderfully there. The yellow is a Mexican sunflower(I think?). It is very pretty but it gets top-heavy and when we had some strong winds last week, the flowers kind of fell over. But they bloomed, proving you can still be beautiful even if you are not at your best. Growing not far from them are a few morning glories that I allowed to remain. Well, ok, I'll admit, the weeds have gotten away from me! These came from a trellis that I dumpster-dived. It was all bound up with vines and although I thought the dead vines looked familiar I didn't recognize them for what they were. Some of the seeds fell off as I removed the dead growth near the flower bed where I was putting the trellis 2 or 3 years ago and I'm still battling the invasion of the morning glories. It is the most unbelievable shade of blue though, isn't it?

Halloween art

These are the ones that I made for Beth as a thank you for hostessing the swap. I didn't want to show them until she had them so they would be a surprise. She posted that she received them and was so sweet in her comments about liking them. The bottom tags started out with some color spray inks of yellow, orange, and red and then some black gesso painted on before adding the collage elements. The moon and star on one are punched out but on the "Boo" tag I found that using an orange and yellow paint pen over the black gesso while both were still wet made a cool swirly/blending of the colors. I outlined them in glitter after the paint dried for a smoother edge. I had printed off some vintage photos onto some photo paper to use in Halloween art. I've found out now in working on this stuff that I should have set the pictures some how before trying to use them. Not sure what would be best for that, maybe a spray matte sealer. If water, glue, or paint got anywhere on the image it smears it. Guess this is the concept behind image transfers which I've not been sucessfull with yet. The smallest tag began with a sturdy clothing tag. I love to save the interesting ones. Gessoed it and then added a dotted background paper, printed Halloween image(that was rescued from previously mentioned damage with additions of paint and glitter on her cape), pencil, marker, and more gesso.

The top picture is a faux altered cabinet card. I've only a few actual cabinet cards in my collection so far and have been unable to bring myself to use the originals. I have some old photo mattes that I wanted to use with a printed vintage image but didn't have one the right size. You might remember in the last post I did about thrift store purchases my mentioning using the matt from a purchased old frame. This is where I used it. I glued the photo inside surrounded by some torn papers and then stuck that to the old backing that was also in the frame, making it end up looking like a cabinet card. The strap is a piece of a belt cut to size with a grommet in the top and old jewelry used for embellishments. I saw from Beth's post that the bottom dangly didn't make it through delivery. Sorry, Beth, this is a pic of where it is supposed to be. I had some problems with this pic when I glued her hat on, so in an attempt to fix it, I used some paint on her face and hair and ended up liking it and it became the theme. "Giselda thought her makeup made her look less witchy".

Some of what I've been working on

I've got some more still to take pics or scans of-some Halloween stuff, but here is part of what I made this past week. The last photo shows the idea I came up with for making a pillar candle holder from a saucer or small plate and wooden candleholder. This one was painted off-white to match the plate and then roughed up so that some of the original wood shows through. This has probably been done before but I've not ever seen it. I used gel medium to glue the plate to the holder. It seems to be a pretty sturdy fit. That was my only concern, what to use as the adhesive. Let me know what you think of them. I want to sell some of these at our flea market booth.

Then my other trash to treasure items are in the top 2 photos, shown together. The "ghoulie goul" was a thrift store purchase for 50 cents in an unpainted paper mache state but someone had handdrawn a face on it. I painted over the ugly drawing with white and gave it a skull-like face and an authentic bone accent to it's little raffia tuft. Remember I live on a farm, so I find small animal bones sometimes in the barn. Then used a diluted sepia paint wash to age it a little. That doesn't show up as well in the photo. She is sitting on my other project which is one I've done before. I take a wooden bowl and glue it to yet another wooden candlestick(I snap them up when I see them cheap at the Salvation Army). So far this one I've just left unpainted, but the one I did for Emily I painted black. It had a more rounded bowl and looked pretty classy when done. So for a total of a buck and a little paint you get a unique compote/pedestal good for candles or if you're like me a place to diplay some cool rocks or other gatherings from outside like acorns, hickory nuts, pine cones, etc.

We, or I should say mostly my dh since I work 12 hour days, are dogsitting my dd's dog, Coal. He is wanting to play and I've got to get ready for work.

Pages about love

To show my romantic side after my previous post, I'm showing this spread from the altered book again. As you can tell there was no theme to this book. It's more like an art journal thing I guess. On the left page the heart is the paper insert from a small Valentine candy box stained with walnut ink and accented with gold. Both pages have been aged with walnut ink and then all but the found poetry words blacked out on the right page. The words are:

she seemed to see him inside out
she settled back and waited for him to come round

I have done some artsy-craftsy stuff this week but haven't taken pictures yet of the things I can share right now. Some of what I've been working on is a hostess gift for a swap and I don't want to show that yet. As soon as I get time, I'll get pics taken and posted of the other things. Most is Halloween-related but one project is a trash-to-treasure idea I had that turned out very pretty I thought. Actually I did several T2T things. Much of what I do is of that sort. Nothing I like better than taking junk and making something pretty out of it. Love seeing what other people come up with, too. That is part of the appeal of altered art to me. It combines art with a T2T mentality except to the extreme that it actually then has a message.

Behind every good man

This is yet another spread from the altered book. Yes, I know, enough with that already, but the stuff I'm working on now I can't share yet. This one gives my take on the expression, "behind every good man", where I add the phrase, a great woman. Maybe a little sexist on my part and I'm aware that some men are sucessful despite not having a great woman in their life. But, I do believe that throughout history and even today, many women have provided strength, care, and endless hours of their time with the man being the only one getting any credit. This attitude of mine probably springs from my having grown up in the era of the women's lib movement. The generations of young women coming up now are experiencing freedoms that they don't fully realize or appreciate, I'm afraid. They have choices about careers, education, voting that women fought and died for. I hope I instilled in my daughters how important and valuable they are as women.

Sorry for my preachiness and I don't mean that I hate men. Far from it, I think some of them are totally yummy! Oops, that was sexist again, sorry ;) I'll get off of my women's lib soapbox now.

Life is a balancing act

This is another spread from the altered book. At times I've felt more like this than others. Right now, we seem to be in one of those periods where life is in balance, even if it is precarious. So I'm enjoying it while it lasts. My natural tendency is to worry about when is it going to get to where I can't seem to keep everything under control, as there are certain circumstances in our lives that could change that I won't go into. I know that all it takes is one delicate push and there you are again trying to keep everything from falling over or it feels like it anyway. But what I'm making myself do is to not allow the worry over the future, especially with the economy like it is, to rob me of the joy of the here and now. There are concerns I do have always in the back of my mind but I'm trying to not let them consume me. I realize that we are not all in this place at the same time, so what we can do is lend a shoulder, a hand, or an encouraging word to the ones who are at the times where life's events have them in a struggle or even where everything has fallen in around them. I'm not as good at that as I should be. Well, my little bit of philosophizing for today.

It is a beautiful fall day here. I've some outside work to do at Mom's today so it should be good weather for that. "We're" trying to get her flower beds back in order. By we, I mean me with the Mom supervising, lol! I know it hurts her to not be able to do the work herself and I'm not saying that facetiously. She had discovered since her retirement(she's now 68) that she loved working outside and the last couple of years before her stroke, which was last November, had worked hours and hours clearing the wooded area around her house, making new beds for native plantings, and getting it to where she could enjoy the view of the creek below her home. The good thing about her doing all that physical labor is that she had built up a lot of strength and had lost a good bit of weight. It seemed ironic that just when she had gotten herself in shape, she had a stroke, but the fact she was stronger probably was a great help in her struggles to get around afterwards.

Unfortunately she's still not completely regained use of her right side. Her right arm is worse than the leg, but she doesn't have complete control of either. She is able to live alone, though, mostly independently. There is a wonderful young woman who comes to help Mom a couple of days a week and then my brother, Stan, and myself are over there a couple of times a week, at least, to help her with tasks she can't do alone or that are difficult for her. My other brother lives off and is actually working out of state right now, but he comes on the weekend when he can. Since it was her right side that means she can't drive. I still hope that there will be some more improvement and think there is still a little happening. Mom won't keep up her exercises, though, as she's mostly resigned to things not getting any better, so whatever improvement happens is going to just be God-given, I guess.

I started out thinking I didn't have much to say, but ended up saying a lot! Hope you all enjoy a lovely week and some great fall weather. Personally, I hope we have rain, as it is extremely dry and dusty here and I love rain anyway.

Life's an open road

I woke up early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, hampered perhaps by the cat that kept perching on my side to sleep and the dog curled up so near my legs that I had to sleep on an angle. So not being a TV person, especially not the infomercials on this early, I logged onto the internet to surf a little bit. Nothing like some early morning exercise to get you going! Caffeine from a Diet Dew doesn't hurt either.

Hope you check out the post I did last night about my goodies from yesterday. Today's picture is a scan from the first altered book I did that I talked about a few days ago. I'll probably be sharing some of these from time to time. Thought it was time to show some arty stuff. I finished a Halloween-themed piece, but it is a hostess gift so I can't show it until it's received. I'll probably be getting that swap in the mail tomorrow. These pages were done after I found the image of the girls in the car with the phrase "life's an open road". The words "get out of the maze and burn rubber" came to me making the page theme then, "get out of the maze, life's an open road, burn rubber". With that in mind, I wanted to show a road for the background so I used some textured spray paint then added the painted yellow double lines and then the skid marks. In retrospect, I wish I'd blended the maze and the picture around the edges a little more, but still I like the sentiment. Think it would make a good T-shirt. Have the maze on the front with the words, "get out of the maze", and then on the back the "life's an open road, burn rubber" part. Maybe I'll design one someday.

Get out there and burn rubber today!

More goodies to share

You may remember me posting here about the fact I won a giveaway back in September from Cate at A Charmed Life . I was actually a second place drawing winner but the person who won the first drawing never came forward to claim their winnings so Cate notified me last week that I would be getting the big prize which I received today! It was this really cool CarryAll and lots of goodies. The top photo shows the tote filled, lots of pockets front and back, with a sturdy wire frame. The middle pic shows the gorgeous fabrics, yummy fibers, wool roving, wool beads, patchwork squares in some beautiful patterns and miscellaneous bits like game pieces, beads. etc. At the bottom, you can see the paper and ephemera assortment also included. I've never seen anything like some of the papers, very textural, and then others like the white paper with the leaves are just so pretty! There are stamps, tags, & 2 loverly fabric folders. All in all a very generous prize which I totally love. Thanks so much, Cate!

Then below are the things I got when I was bad and went back to the Salvation Army again today. If you go to thrift stores you may know what I'm talking about when I say the following. There were a couple of items I thought about getting but didn't, so decided to run back in there today while in town to go grocery shopping. Right now they are having a sale on Saturdays where all clothing and clothing type items are 1/2 off, so the purse was only $2.50 and the yellow floral and the delicate blue Italian scarf were only $1.50 each. The bag at the top of the photo is a metal mesh candleholder and was 50 cents, but I bought it for the mesh and plan to cut it apart. Then I got a small original floral painting for only $1 and a small black leaf iron tray for $2. I seem to have a thing for leaf trays. Already I had a large orange one very similar to this one, a copper water lily leaf(looks kind of art nouveau), brass magnolia leaf, a silver colored oak leaf, and then some ceramic oak leaves with acorns. These do make good Halloween/fall decorations. Also bought today were 2 shelves which I forgot to take a pic of. These were the reason I went back. One shelf was a handmade painted white one with 3 levels that most likely was in someone's kitchen at one time holding spices. It was only $3. The other shelving unit was made I'm sure back in the Early Country phase of the 80's/90's since it has a teal/maroon paint job but it's really nicely made with a beaded board backing and 2 pegs on the bottom. For $5 I can see it repainted either white, black, or some other vintage color like green or blue. These I may use at our flea market booth for display or to resell.

So it's been a very good day. Our football team won while the big rival team in Alabama lost. We enjoyed a meal at our pastors' house tonight with our Sunday School class. It's Pastor Appreciation month, so several classes are fixing meals this week for them. We had a Mexican food theme and I fixed taco salad, taking some of my homemade salsa to go with it. I also tried a simple cranberry/jalapeno relish to add some spice and it went over pretty well, only it was very hot. Too hot for me, but my dh said it was good. It made a big batch so I put some up in the freezer to test out on my 2 son-in-laws who like hot, spicy stuff. We'll see how they like it.