March 2026: End of October/November 2025 Update....

Well it's February 2026. 

Holy Cow! How did this happen??!?!

Okay so much is going on that I need to break these entries into more than one. December is coming up next, and then January.

So the October/November update is 2-3 months LATE...

I had actually started this as my standard End of October update, but things got carried away here at the house, and so now it's an October/November update. This entry once again is very picture intensive, so be patient while it loads.
(CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR BIGGER VIEW)

So let's get going!

OCTOBER

The month of October rolled in, and the weather started to cool off, my wife and I took a few drives through the Indiana countryside and enjoyed the colors of the Fall season.

One of our side trips was to a location known as "Wilson Farm Market", in Atlanta, Indiana, (Yes, Indiana has a thing with naming their towns after other cities and towns; ie: "Warsaw, Galveston, Atlanta, Vincennes, Berne, Portland, etc...)

While there I was able to see certain items that raised my eyebrows.

(Did they make this out of real bears?!?!?)

(Does this mean, it's slow, barely moving, and leaves you feeling angry and frustrated?)

After our trip, and we got back home, I started my preps for Little Wars.

But before I could get going, I needed to get things in my painting room straight and cleaned. So I went ahead and got it done.

Behold!  A clean painting room!

And a clean painting desk/table!

I know...madness right?

Soooo......

MEANWHILE, ON THE LIQUOR SHELF....

I had taken a road trip to see my sister in Sept, and upon coming back I had stopped at one of the local VA ABC stores, and picked up 3 bottles of gen-uine Virginia Hooch.

Of the three, the Bowman Bros Small Batch is the best and smoothest. The Bumgardners comes in as what I envision "low quality 19th century roadside tavern hooch to be."

And as winter was approaching, I laid out my "What I need to do this winter" table o' projects.

Most of this was stuff for Little Wars in April. 

(Yikes!)

And I got  to working on it all...

Including making a scratch cabbage patch.

And priming and prepping some buildings.

This was after I had washed them and was letting them dry down in our laundry room.

And somewhere along the way I managed to try out an 18th Century recipe for boiled peanuts.

They are an excellent snack.

(Mr. Washington would be pleased I believe...)

(The finished product...)

Speaking of finished products, I did get stuff done.

And I finished some figures...These here are just a few of of them.

(Backstories to come soon...)

And finally a breakdown of all I got built and painted for the end of October and for the early part of November I believe...

And somewhere along the way I also picked up this. It's not bad and does have a nice peanut buttery taste to it.

(Surprisingly, it's really not that bad....)

But then as October rolled to it's merry end it was time for one last thing...

HALLOWEEN!!!!!

So I looked for costumes.....

(This one seemed truthful and appropriate....)

And I decided to work on some Jack O' Lanterns....

(Am I doing this correctly?)

This year I went with a standard Jack O' Lantern pattern and a Pirate pattern.

They actually both came out nicely....

And I got the candy ready....

While Juju did her best "Halloween black cat" impersonation AND helped with the pumpkins!

And Gemma secured the cardboard boxes....

And I decided to try my pirate outfit on, and got ready to throw the candy....errr....I mean, "Pass out the candy" to the trick or treaters.

(Yo ho ho!)

And we had the house set up....

With over 70+ trick or treaters I do believe it was a good thing....

Also for the Halloween season, my wife and I attended one of the Candlelight Concert Halloween events in Indianapolis. We got to hear good music in a beautiful setting and have a wonderful date night.

It was an awesome time with an awesome lady as we celebrate the season, and our anniversary month together. 

Also finally I was able to hit a model train show, and picked up some O scale buildings and cars on the cheap, so I can use in my future games of "The Chicago Way"....

If you haven't considered Farm Toy Shows and Model Train shows for scenery and terrain and such, I would encourage you to do so.

Not only that but the sets do give you scenery, terrain, building and painting ideas.

And on that note dear friends, I think my End of October/Early November update is done.

Next up, November/December. I swear I will catch up soon!

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!