Happy Halloween! Today has been crazy! All my little students were so excited! They can't wait to get out there and indulge in a major sugar rush! Of course, I can't wait for a major sugar rush too... I've been munching on some candy after school today. I did get to dress up today. My kiddos who don't celebrate where not in school today, so I wore a sparkly hip scarf over a black skirt and purple shirt... I told the kids I was Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was fun and lucky, the day went fast!!! My first class so not good, but the rest of the day went well!!! Thank goodness!!!Tonight I'll be handing out the candy. Traditionally, we haven't had a lot of kids. It should be about the same this year. That means that we have candy left over that I can eat!!! YEAH!!! Enjoy the ghoulish night!
We did a bit more, but I didn't take picts of it. We also got the light above the toilet installed. It's starting to take real shape and look more and more like a bathroom... not a prison cell!
Here is the first skein dying... I am so proud that I didn't make a mess while doing this!
I also got a very cute small pumpkin that I set out on my front step. Aren't they cute all lined up?
Since we now have all these wonderful apples I thought I should make something yummy with them. Every year I make apple crisp, so I wanted to try something new. Today, I made my first apple pie! Here's my apple slicer/ corer:
Here are the sliced apples in the pie plate:
I cheated a little bit and bought the ready made crust:
Here it is after baking... I'm waiting for it to cool so I can cut a slice!! YUMMY!!
After I finish the 36 repeats, then I can start on the border around the edge. I think it looks great so far! I'm excited about starting the border. I hope I have it done in time for my husband's Christmas party! ^_^
Ah, the New York State Thruway. As you can see the leaves haven't really changed color yet...but it was still a pretty drive. I arrived at beautiful Seneca Lake before my friend and there was a sailboat regatta going on. You can't really see it in the pict, but it was cool to watch:
We did meet up before the trolley came, but not before my wonderful friend tried to give me a heart attack. I have issues about time. I have this consistent need to be early to everything I go to. I need to "hurry up and wait" as my dad says. Knowing this (and that I'd be early to our meeting point) when I called her to see were she was she replied "Oh, I'm an hour away." 
We set off for our first winery of the day (our tour included 5 wineries): Wagners. I've been to Wagners before, but never tried to wine. I was a little kid when my grandparents had a cottage on Seneca Lake. I have eaten many lunches at Wagners' Ginny Lee Cafe. However, we got a walking tour of how they make the wines before we started tasting. Here are the vats that they make the wine in:
The bigger silver rings are the refrigeration units that cool it when they want to stop the fermentation process. I didn't know that the sweeter the wine, the sooner it's stopped. The dryer the wine, the later it's stopped. So see, my day WAS educational! I had to take this pict because it was so funny to me:
I know it's kind of blurry, but it says : Danger: confined space Do Not Enter. Duh, why would you want to get in there unless you wanted to die by drowning in wine? That would be a great plot line for a mobster movie.
Here's the stems and leaves after being separated:
Here are the grapes before they go though the machine. They sit in these tubs and they have vitamins added to them to enhance the sweetness and other important things before they are pressed and made into wine.
After seeing that, we walked though an area full of barrels where some wines were aging in their barrels. I liked seeing them. They were in American Oak barrels and they will sit for at least 2 years.
A big barrel of wine:
More barrels sitting and aging:
The artistic shot of aging barrels:
Finally it was time to start tasting the wines. We tried four different kinds of white, and then fours reds and one dessert wine. My friend has been to culinary school and took a wine tasting course. She taught me how to swirl the wine and why you do that. It was cool to learn about how to hold the glass and the different smells. I really don't want to look like a country bumpkin who doesn't know about wine tasting... we had a few people on our trolley whose main objective was to get as drunk as possible off the sample wines. We then looked at what we wanted to buy and went back to the bar to try a few that were not on our tastings. We decided that we should eat lunch before we buy so off to the cafe we went. Lunch was great. I had a wrap and she had a chicken sandwich. I then bought two bottles of white wines and she bought one. We were very excited about this and then it was time to get back on the trolley and taste some more wines at the next winery. 
Here was their selection of wines:
I bought their Riesling. I got one for me and one for my in-laws.
After we bought our wines we had a little bit of time before we had to be back on the trolley for our next destination. So, we took a walk down to see the grapes up close (and try a few too):
Here's another shot of grapes:
Then we drove around the lake to Gelnora Cellars Winier. We had to wait outside for a little while. Then we were given our own private tasting room since our group was so big. We tried about nine wines and my friend and I both bought their Jammin' Red wine.At this point our box to hold wine on the trolley was almost full. From there we headed over to Anthony Road Winery:
Here's our group tasting the wines:
Here is a sample of their wine:
Sweet Dream was the name of their dessert wine:
Here's the view of the lake and vineyards at Anthony Road:
Anthony Road had a great garden that we could walk in (neither one of us bought wine here, nothing really WOWed us). Here's their scarecrow protecting the garden from birds:
They had these beautiful morning glories that were so big:
There were also these big red beans:
Of course, this garden had grapes:
The grapes were growing on a trellis above our heads. I loved how they hung down from the beams:
There were also a few pumpkins:
We also found this old wine press when we were getting ready to leave:
As this sign shows our final stop would be at Fox Run:
Here was the entrance to Fox Run:
Their symbol is a fox (duh, FOX Run...). So here was a bronze statue of a fox on a stone in front of the winery:
Here was a great view of the lake from the front of Fox Run:
I bought a bottle of the "Arctic Fox" a sweet white wine. That was the last place we went and it finally was sunny on our ride back to our cars. I highly recommend going on a tour of the Finger Lakes wineries. We are now planning to look into touring the Niagara region wineries... yum. 
Here's the second bobbin full plyed up:
