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O.K., first of all you need to stop right there and lower your expectations for these Google can suck it posts (Goosuck) because I don't spend the night with Elton John every week.

My life is not that dazzling.

O.K., I know it looks pretty dazzling here. My friend Andrea helps with that as she's basically always dazzling. She wears bright colours, patterns and BIG earrings.

You know the kind of earrings you put on thinking you'll feel glamorous but quickly remove because you feel as self conscious as if you had live babies hanging off your ears? Well, Andrea can wear those earrings with ease.

She's always been good with babies.

Even though I'd like to wear those types of earrings and buy those types of earrings, I do not ever wear those types of earrings. Mainly I look at them in my jewellery drawer and wonder if I should give them to Andrea.

Even my gold sequin dress wasn't as dazzling as it appears. It's from Joe Fresh; a brand that you can find exclusively next to the cheese section in the grocery store. I paired my $25 dress with an equally swank garden purse.

Stop searching "Hermes garden purse" this instant. There is no such thing.

By garden purse I mean I wore a leather tool belt as a purse. I wear it in the garden to hold my pruners and seeds. The odd time maybe I have a dead cricket or something in there.

It worked surprisingly well as a crossbody bag.

The whole Elton John look was accented with a street meat hotdog, a clutched paper napkin and due to the fact that I haven't been in Toronto for a few years - a persistent look of confusion on my face.

The above photo was taken the moment I was trying to remember where the car was parked. It was the same face I showed to the woman who asked me if I knew where the bathroom was, and the person working the gate who they asked to see my ticket.

Mainly I made this face all night long except when Elton John played Crocodile Rock because at THAT moment everything in the world made sense.

So. Just so you know. It's not always going to be this exciting and fun filled. Most days the most exciting thing that might happen to me is finding a perfectly intact dead cricket.

Now. Please enjoy this random photo of bagels I made in my new pizza oven this week. The story behind these bagels is the story I actually wanted to tell you about today but apparently I felt I needed to over describe earrings instead.

They're Montreal style everything bagels with poppyseeds, onion flakes, black and white sesame seeds by the way, boiled first then cooked in a wood fired oven. Which - maybe is my way of leading a dazzling life.

I'm not sure if you all were just being nice or are completely starved for a legitimate way to waste time on Fridays but a lot of you seemed to like last week's puzzle.

It's getting to be that time of year when sane people in the Northern Hemisphere are slowing down and spending more time indoors. Yesterday was the first day of fall for us and in my area the weather behaved accordingly.

There was a frost warning for Thursday overnight and even though I'm typing this BEFORE the frost is supposed to hit I'm not worried on account of the fact that I screamed NO when I saw the warning come up on the Weather Network.

Don't get all excited, this only works once a year so if there's another frost warning for tomorrow or this weekend we're all screwed.

Please enjoy this possibly annoying, possibly addictive Spot the Difference photo.

Things are getting official here with the addition of a timer.

CLICK start to begin your timer. Hit pause when you're done.

SCROLL to see the answers

See? It's officially fall, I'm dragging out the old Thanksgiving photos - you can see how to make one of these Thanksgiving centrepieces here.

And no, my fellow Canadians it isn't too early to start thinking of that sort of thing. Thanksgiving is in 17 days.

So you might also want to look at this and especially this post. But whatever you do don't look at this post.

I'm a little heartbroken that you have a commercial pizza oven. I loved the cob oven.

Karen, that dress & purse are amazing! You really pulled them off! Wow! Don't tell me that guys weren't lining up to try a pick-up line on you that day!

Andrea's earrings would have been smashing with your dress - they are in fact, smashing just being in the neighborhood of your dress - and hotdogs go with everything. Also, and I'm trying to be delicate here, are you growing your hair out?

It is so great to have Andrea back in Canada! As much as I love your posts, I really missed her, too. Love the Tiered arrangements - you have inspired me to dig those things out of the basement and use them.

Hi Jenny!! Do you know Andrea, or you just miss her from my posts? Either way, she's been in Singapore for toooo many years and couldn't even return for her regular visits because of COVID. So you'll be seeing more of her here. ~ karen!

I'm so excited! I'll be in Canada for Thanksgiving this year! Being American that means I get 2 Thanksgivings this year.

I always get 2 Thanksgivings, lol. I always feel insane envy when ours is over and American Thanksgiving rolls around. So I usually make a Thanksgiving dinner for myself on that day too. ~ karen!

This search was a bit harder for me in my phone than I expected. Lots of fun though. I spotted your man right off. Lol. Thanks for such fun.

I know - all of these puzzle type things are easier and way more fun on a laptop or desktop. But I'm possibly the only person left who mainly uses a laptop for anything web related. I HATE using my phone for the Internet. ~ karen!

I love your creative cross-body bag! Nice multi-tasker - and there's a story behind it so it makes it so much more fun and original! You two look dazzling. The best memories are those where you had to pull it together on a dime and still had the time of your life!

Montreal bagels should be bought in Montreal. It isn't just buying the bagels but lining up at 1 in the morning after a night out. And the smell. Arguing which one is better Fairmount or St. Viateur Eating them fresh out of the paper bag. At least I used to do that - now I buy them around the corner. I haven't been out at 1:00 in years, but still I remember. I won't argue which are better NY or Montreal, they are really different things.

I also have a friend who can pull off chunky earrings. I try but looks terrible so I give them to her! Lol New pizza oven huh? What brand and what happened to the one you made? I always wanted to give that a go..... Bagels look delish and gold is a great color on you :)

Its 46 degrees here! Makes me sad. Time to start putting away all things summer...... Say it isn't so! Oh why oh why can I not live in Hawaii!?!? 🏝

Hi Carrie Anne. I forgot to cover up my pizza oven last year before a hard frost and all of the outside lime plaster cracked. So this spring I needed to remove it all and redo parts of the oven. I decided that it gave me a good 10 years and I'd like to try a professional pizza oven so I disassembled my old pizza oven (it was 100% compostable!) and bought a new one. It's a Gozney Dome. They've already gone up in price since I bought it in the summer! ~ karen

Thanks. Can you send me a link. All I see is gas fired.... Totally interested and.....of course it was 100% compostable.... You're Karen!😁

HI Carrie Anne, You can get the Gozney Dome is dual fuel. So you can run it off of a propane tank (which works amazingly well!) and wood. If you're in a rush you go with propane, if you want wood smoke and have more time you go wood. https://us.gozney.com/products/dome?variant=39308025102473

Hi Karen, Your blogs are one of the few things that make this American smile lately. The only thing in our news is Donald the Bloated and Incoherent Orange-faced Slug. I would much rather read about Elton John, your friend's earrings, Montreal bagels, and your leather garden purse; (mine is an orange cloth one from Home Depot). My friend Sandy swears that Montreal bagels are even better than NY bagels, which is hard to believe, but she never brings any back from Montreal for me to try. So... what are the chances that you would teach us how to make Montreal bagels? Please?

Omg!!!! Bloated and incoherent Orange-faced slug!!!!!!!! Thank you thank you thank you! That's hysterical and totally correct.you have just started my day off with a smile😁😊

Hi Carol! I'm an amateur bagel maker, lol. So I wouldn't be the best instructor at the moment. Gimme a few weeks. ;) Montreal bagels are boiled in honey water (or similar) so they have a very slight sweetness. It also gives the crust a shine. And they're more chewy and less bread-like than regular bagels. They're also usually smaller. And they really are FUN to make. ~ karen!

Found only 6 and one wasn’t real. At 71 (well in 10 days) I need to enlarge things. Like my bladder so I had to abort the mission to go pee. I’m sad about the cool Cobb oven and slightly aghast with the ‘new gangled’ one. Will you ever rebuild?

No. I won't rebuild. Not after using this thing. It's much easier to use and much more predictable than a cobb oven. I had my fun. I know I can build one and I did it. I'd rather build or make something new. Like an underground fruit cellar. :) ~ karen!

Well this guy from Chicago thinks you do look 'dazzling'. I 'could' add that you're a real cutie-patootie at all times, but I don't want to appear untoward or overstep the writer-reader civilized boundary. By the way, this pic puzzle was fun and I HAVE become addicted to that free jigsaw puzzle website. Who knew retirement could be so magical? Stay well and reasonably sane.

Well thank you Randy. I bought a 100 piece puzzle this summer. A real one. I still haven't had time to do it. Too busy trying to look dazzling at all times. ~ karen!

Send that photo in to PuzzleYou and they’ll make a puzzle out of it; you can choose how many pieces!

This is exactly what I needed today! Thank you for being real and honest and unfiltered!

And don't forget really quite elegant. ;). You're welcome Malin. ~ karen!

Jenny is my aunt who has the B&B in Southampton and also who makes the best apple pie.

I would like to takeover any of your ginormous earrings.

Love your expression Karen it’s one I have seen in several mirrors when trying to recall why oh why did I dress up for this or that 🤭.

As Andrea and I descended the stairs into the arena towards the front floor section like a couple of importants, I looked down at our feet and asked "What do you think the chances are we'd both be wearing flats out on a night like this 20 years ago?" The answer was obviously zero. ~ karen!

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My name is Karen Bertelsen and I was a television host. In Canada. Which means in terms of notoriety and wealth, I was somewhere on par with the manager of a Sunset Tan in Wisconsin.

I quit television to start a blog with the goal that I could make my living through blogging and never have to host a television show again. And it’s worked out. I’m making a living blogging. If you’re curious, this is how I do that.

So I’m doing this in reverse basically. I’m the only blogger who is trying to NOT get a TV show.