A neighbor’s cow says hello. I had to snap this one quickly as the farmer was out and gave me an odd look for for photographing his livestock.

Lots of vultures around here. They usually roost in large numbers in the trees or on the steeples of the church down the road. This guy was sitting all by himself on the fence watching the swans glide through the water.

His buddies weren’t far away though. I know they’re not the prettiest birds, but they are rather funny. Note the one spreading his wings and giving me his best sexy, over the shoulder look.

And hey! Is this deer sticking his tongue out at me?

Aside from a playful passing swat or two, I received no smacks at all for several days … unless you count the smacking of well aimed snowballs thrown by my boyfriend.

While the weather did put a damper on some of the plans we’d made for Friday, I was only too happy to go and play out in the snow. I hate the cold, but I’ll make an exception for snow.

After our company left today, I got at least a fraction of the spankings I managed to earn over the weekend. You see, I took full advantage of knowing I could be a playful brat and get away with it. My proudest brat moment was dumping a heaping shovel full of snow off the deck and onto my boyfriend’s head as he rounded the corner. He didn’t forget the little incident though and managed to warm my bottom in return for chilling his top half. My bottom is still a nice pink as I type.

I need a pillow.

Peanut kept a watchful eye in the hopes St. Nicholas would return with more catnip mice and crunchy treats for her and Misha.

Later that afternoon, I bundled up, and my boyfriend and I headed out to find a tree. Don’t let the beautiful blue skies fool you. It was freezing out!

I loved one tree we found that had small pine cones still clinging to the branches. A little decorating help from Mother Nature. Unfortunately the rest of the tree was a little dried out and we had to pass on it.

We found better candidate and sawed away. While we’d always gotten a real tree for Christmas in my family, this was the first time I’d ever gone to a cut your own place. Despite the cold, the novelty of searching for and cutting my own tree made it worthwhile.

My boyfriend finished up the task ensuring the cut was straight …

and then I grabbed his gloves and made off with our find.

So no switches for me. The only “Rute” for me this year were the ones on the Christmas tree. I’m almost certain I was at least a little naughty this year. Maybe St. Nicholas thought that with all of the spankings I receive I’ve already made up for it? Or maybe he’s just leaving it for Santa to handle come Christmas.

I had asked Peanut if she’d like to join me on the charity walk especially since the funds are going to support the same shelter I had adopted her from, but she just laughed at me and went back to napping in her rocking chair.

So I borrowed my friend’s dog, Shadow, to accompany me instead. She was so eager to go, she even offered to drive.

She was very well behaved even around all of the other dogs. Several people had their canine friends along and the shelter also brought every dog available for adoption out for volunteers to walk.

Waiting following registration was the hardest part. Both of us were eager to get going. Finally after an hour or so of milling around, chatting with other participants (me), and sniffing lots of tails (Shadow), it was time to head out. Although we started towards the back of the pack, we were soon one of the ones in the lead.

Shadow says, if you’re not the lead dog, your view never changes.

We picked our own apples – McIntosh and Red Delicious.

Mmmmmm. I love apples. I’m a very happy girl with my bag filled to the very top with the yummy treats.

The bag held about 5 lbs of apples. I was kicking myself for not going for the bigger bag as I have a lot of apple recipes I want to try out. I also wish I had picked more McIntosh than Red Delicious because the latter is not recommended for baking.

It’s a little early yet to make a jack o’lantern, but a nice whole pumpkin is festive too. As I picked through the pumpkins, my boyfriend snapped a picture of my pumpkins!

Today I got a chance to put those lovely apples to good use and made an apple pie. Would you like a piece? Apple turnovers are up next. Or maybe apple cobbler. And apple strudel muffins.

You know the saying, “American as apple pie”? Well, to keep with the theme, here are some stars and stripes.

But if someone reads my blog, I can certainly understand why they might come away with the impression that my entire life revolves around spanking. It is what I tend to post about most but that’s because it is a spanking blog after all. However, I really do like to keep a good balance of other outside interests because honestly, while spanking is a wonderful and fun passion to have, it can’t be everything. In fact now that I spend much of my time working on the PB website for a living, my other hobbies, interests, and passions are all the more important and appealing.

I thought I might share with you some of the activities and interests that I like to engage in outside of the realm of spanking. Some things you may have picked up on from various vanilla posts and others I don’t believe I’ve touched on.

I love animals and will be participating in a charity walk to raise funds for the local animal shelter this fall. So it’s no Buns on the Run, but it is my small way of giving back to a worthy cause.

On any nice day that I can get some time away from the computer, I can be found hiking, kayaking, biking, or at the very least, walking to the local stores to do my errands.

I’m a gym rat too so on days when the weather won’t cooperate, I’m content to sweat it up with my iPod indoors.

I love amusement parks! The bigger and scarier the rollercoaster, the better. I haven’t gotten to go yet this year, but the season is hardly over yet.

I’m very much looking forward to getting my piano tuned after I move. No sense in doing it now as it will get all out of whack when transporting it to the new house. I can’t wait to be able to play again without disturbing the neighbors. My favorite classical composer is Bach and modern is Brubeck.

I also know how to play the violin, but I never much liked it. After playing for 10 years in school, my poor violin now sits abandoned in my closet.

I used to think I would grow up to be a music teacher, but I’m terrified of speaking in front of crowds. A classroom of kids qualifies as a crowd in my book and so I nixed that idea pretty quickly.

Since I love math and science as much as music, I decided to go that route instead. While in college I worked in a flavor development lab compounding liquid flavors of all sorts. On a good day I would leave smelling like cotton candy. On a not so good day, bleu cheese concentrate.

I enjoy photography. Nature photography in particular.

For all my love of nature, I seem to have been born devoid of a green thumb.

Ghosts fascinate me. I enjoy reading books on supposed true accounts of hauntings. I think I would like to spend a night at a nearby haunted inn, but I’d probably be scared out of my wits.

I like to draw and prefer pencil and pastels over pen and ink. My favorite things to draw are apples. I draw them all the time and random papers of mine are often covered in apple doodles.

So that’s just a bit of Pixie sans spanking. Don’t worry though, my next post will return to its normally scheduled topics of bratting and bottom warming. Just wanted to share a little bit about some of my outside interests here as well.

I loved the petting “zoo” they had with lots of baby farm animals. How cute are these little piggies napping in the sun?

I’m not really feeding the goat my ice cream (hey, there are some things a girl just won’t share). The cone was filled with some sort of feed that this guy happily snarfed down.

There were tons of vendors selling all sorts of traditional crafts, furniture, quilts, and yummy treats. Of course what caught my eye were all the wood and leather workers’ stands. With all the wooden spoons, paddles, and belts on display, I had to remind myself I wasn’t at the Shadow Lane Vendor’s Faire.

These were being sold as wristbands by Old School Leather. The name alone had my spanking thoughts in overdrive and I think these would make handy, portable, wearable mini straps. Easily controlled, nicely weighted, no need to double it over like a belt and cause an unsightly crease, just lovely. Don’t you think that’s a much better use than a wristband alone?

These caught my attention too. A bucket full of oddly shaped paddles with a comfort grip for the spanker? Errr, no. I was disappointed to find they were just those noisy pop guns and it was time to reel myself back in.

But before the day was over, I was spanked with one unusual improvised spanking implement – a shamrock. My boyfriend had purchased a shamrock shaped wooden plaque with a handpainted hex sign similar to the one below and I was giving him lip about buying an Irish plaque at a German festival. Without warning, he grabbed the shamrock by the stem and smacked my bottom right there in public! He’s getting quite brave. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that, but I wasn’t quite up for asking a random passerby to take a picture of my boyfriend reenacting the shamrock spanking for my blog. You’ll have to use your imagination this time, but you can bet your Lucky Charms I was blushing on both ends after this little public display.

As we finished up our day at the festival and were headed back to the truck, we passed this sign. Apparently Richard Windsor was having an all you can eat feast at his castle. Reasonably priced, but knowing ol’ Richard they’d probably be serving Vegemite and tofu dogs so we passed in favor of Cracker Barrel (who I’m sad to note was all sold out of paddle ball sets).