Hurricane checkin

I have a copule of friends on the East Coast that I would like to make sure are ok.... Laura?  I know you weren't right in the line for the storm but is everything ok there? 

Frosty wedding movers

A friend of mine online (waves at Laura) does this with her headings and it makes for some interesting reading. I smashed the three main subjects of this post into one heading instead of just saying ‘weekend update’ like I usually do – I thought I would try to make it a bit more interesting this way. And working backwards in time…

We woke up to a hard freeze this morning. This may or may not have been the first one this season (I didn’t look out yesterday or Saturday morning so it may have looked just the same.) This morning I’m sitting here at the kitchen table working ;) and looked out to see the sparkly grass.

Yesterday, Bill and I helped our friend Laura (different from above Laura) move to her new apartment in the city. Bill was there all day and will be going back this morning to help finish up the move. I had to take Tom to the airport so I didn’t arrive until they got the truck to the apartment so I helped to unload.

I went with Tom to meet one of his Army buddies Ryan for lunch on our way to the airport. Ryan was with us on the fishing boat in Florida on our trip down there. He’s a nice kid. Sara was Tom’s date for the wedding and she met us for lunch too.

Saturday night was my nieces’ wedding. Everyone looked so fancy! And Bill wore a bow tie (now that was interesting learning how to tie!)










Friday night Bill and I met our friends Amanda, Rick and Laura for a concert in St. Louis. This was a group that Amanda has seen at a festival last year. Big Bad Gina and two cover acts were at the Warehouse in St. Louis. It was a late night but we have fun.

Bill will have to come back up again since he didn’t get the siding put on the garage (which was one of the main reasons he came up for this week.) But he did get the storm door on my kitchen door and several other repairs around the house that needed to be done before winter.

If I'ld known you were coming I'ld have baked a cake.

Instead I made pie...

Tom will be in tonight from Texas for my niece’s wedding and I had two pie pumpkins. I had originally meant to can the pumpkin but then I found out that you aren't supposed to can it unless in chunks or freezing it so I decided to just go ahead and bake the pies instead.

I started out making just a deep dish pumpkin pie but I had more filling that would fit in one pie crust so I put the rest in the second crust and then mixed up a chess pie and put that over the top. We'll see how it tastes later when the pies cool.

This was my first attempt at making pie from pumpkins (instead of out of a can) so I'm anxious to see how good it is. The filling tasted like pumpkin pie before I baked it! LOL.




We also have a freeze warning tonight so Bill went out and picked the last of the tomatoes. These have been on there for a while and they only ripen a few at a time so I've not been able to do much but eat them. Hopefully, they will all ripen now and I can some of them.



So Bill pulled up the garden and put it in the compost pile. The ground is really soft right now because of the rain we had the last few days so this was a good time to do it. I guess we are ready for fall!

16 pints and 8 half pints

That’s how much apple butter I got out of the bushel of apples I bought on the way home from Bill’s reunion a few weeks ago.  I just finished up the last batch last night.  Now I have to find somewhere to store all my canned goodness.

I have about 5 pints of tomato sauce and a few quarts of chopped tomatoes as well.  I froze some zucchini and summer squash and that’s about all the preserving I got done this summer.  My garden did not produce well enough to can any more than that.  We ate the green beans that we got – we only got one batch and everything else pretty much withered and died. 

I wasn’t able to buy at the farmer’s market either since they didn’t do much better than I did.  Oh, I was able to put up a few pints of green beans from the farmer’s market but that was about it.  I don’t like to buy just from anyone – I want to make sure they were grown organically and locally and a lot of the farmer’s markets this summer were trucking in produce because they didn’t have much.

I have used some of the Tattler lids that I had bought last winter – and reused a few and I really like them.  They don’t have that ‘pop’ when they seal but once they are cooled you can hand test them and if they are sealed they wont open without using the tool (or a knife) to pry the lid off.  You just have to remember to screw the rings down tight as soon as they come out of the canner.

I looked yesterday for some pretty Holiday fabric to cut into squares for decoration on the Apple butter that I will be giving away as gifts – didn’t find anything I liked so I’ll just have to keep looking.  I have also started knitting a scarf that I will be giving away as a gift this year.  I’ve made plenty of scarves in the past but this is the first time I’m changing colors (putting stripes in it) so it’s a bit of a challenge.  I can’t just knit away absent mindedly – I have to count rows and change colors on the correct row and try to make sure I still have enough yarn to finish the other side.  I’ve been back to Wal-Mart twice for more yarn – I guess maybe I’m knitting tighter than I used to or maybe it’s the yarn – not sure but it is looking pretty nice so far.

I have to start working on a skirt for Aubri’s Halloween costume.  Yes, she has a costume party to go to on Halloween so she has decided to dress in Ren faire garb.  I don’t have a problem with that since she can wear it to the fair next summer.  We picked out the fabric last night and I prewashed it so it’s ready to go tonight.  Skirts don’t take a lot of time so I should be able to finish it tonight and we can start working on accessories.  I may have to lend her some for now until next summer when she can get her own.  I’ll try to remember to post pictures.

Weekend

Saturday Bill spent sanding the floor of the apartment.  This is the last step before staining and polyurethane goes down!  Then the walls will start going up - I'm getting really excited now!  We stood in the utility room downstairs on Thursday night staring at pipes sticking up from the floor that will be the toilet and main drains for the house and were thrilled!  He just has to hook up the pipes to the septic and we are in business to do our business (indoors)!  LOL

Meanwhile I spent most of the day out in the campground finishing up the clean up after Samhain.  We had some jack-o-lanterns left behind that I sorted through and threw the ones that were bad out on the compost pile with the pumpkin guts for next year.  We actually had a pumpkin vine growing again with a bloom!  Hopefully if we have a wetter summer next year we will get pumpkins!

It rained last Saturday night so everything was still wet on Sunday when everyone left so there was a lot of stuff that was just left out to dry like the tiki torches, two tents that we lent out, tables that needed washed off and some misc stuff that needed to go into the trailer.  I cleaned all that up as well as organizing the trailer!

I also raked the area where the wood pile had been.  Bill wanted to burn all the wood before we stacked more so that we could get to the stuff that had been sitting for 3 years so I raked that all up and burnt the leaves and rotten bits of wood.  It took all day for it to completely burn.  We went back out later after dark to check on it and it was really neat looking in the dark with just the red coals in a circle on the ground.  There was enough heat coming off of it that despite the cool temps out in the woods we were quite comfortable until the pile burnt down to almost nothing.

We have some folks coming out the first weekend of November to use the campground so I wanted to make sure everything was cleaned up and ready to go by then.  Bill will haul the wood we split a few weeks ago from where we split it up to start a new wood pile sometime next week.

Looking forward to this weekend - my niece is getting married on Saturday and Tom will be flying in for the wedding on Friday.  Will be good to see him again and have a chance to set back and relax a bit on the weekend.  Bill is here at my house in the city this week to do some much needed fall repairs and maintance so I'll have him all week!  Woo Hoo!

For Laura...

I need a real camera instead of the one on my phone but I took this on the way home yesterday around noon.  It didn't pick up the beautiful patchwork quilt that cover's the hills but you can definitely see my ridgeline!  It's soo much prettier in person.

More fall colors

 

The road into our land.  I wish I had a better camera to get the ridgeline off to the right - the hills are alive - with color!

 

The beauty is on our property.  It's a big old Oak - the colors are bit dark here but it is a deep red.

 

I took some more pics on the way out while Bill was driving...

Long overdue update

Well ok I have been busy but I’ve been reading posts and blogs every day so there really isn’t any excuse except laziness… yep – there you have it. So here goes with the update…

Wow looking back it’s been a month since my last update – where to start! Ok, we were heading into the busy busy busy weekend times…

The Hoodoo festival was great! I’ve never been to anything like that before and Bill and I found the people so welcoming and the place really awesome – I believe we will be going back again next year if they have it again.

Work weekend went well. We cut up all the trees near the campground on the road and stacked the wood. (Bill wanted to burn all the currently stacked wood in the campground since it had been stacked for about 3 years.) We did have one accident – Bill dropped a piece of firewood on my foot! It was an accident – he was splitting wood and I was stacking. He had the last two pieces of a round and turned to hand them to me. I took one and turned to stack it and he must have thought I was going to take the other because he let go of it and it fell on my little toe. I said some unintelligible things but finished stacking that cord. The toe is not broken but it’s still sore 3 weeks later! He was soo sorry and I know he didn’t do it on purpose but owwee it still hurt a lot!

The dedication was beautiful – my student had all of her friends and family in attendance and was gifted some really nice things. She is now looking forward to her initiation sometime this spring.

Family reunion was terrific! I didn’t feel quite so much like the Yankee this year – maybe they are all getting used to me or maybe I’m just getting more used to the accent but I only noticed it for the first day. We arrived to rain on Friday and it was cold on Saturday and Sunday so we spent most of our time inside the dining hall instead of outside like we usually do. Bill’s brother Richard and his wife and I did manage to do some hiking on the trails so I got some activity points for the weekend as well!

We stopped by the monument place we stop at every year and finally purchased that lady we have been wanting for so long. She is beautiful! Right now she’s sitting in the yard on a cement pad that we haven’t taken up yet but we needed to unload her from the truck before we get her placed in the Hawthorn grove where she will be permanently.






She got a little mud on her from the tractor when we moved her.






Last weekend was our Samhain at Brittony Woods. It was beautiful! The labyrinth turned out gorgeous and I did get some pictures. One of our group had just gotten a new camera and he took lots of pics for us! The kids had a good time and even though it rained Saturday night it waited until everyone was about ready to go to bed anyway.




This weekend I’m in the country once again – Bill is going to rent a sander and sand the hardwood floor in the apartment so that he can get it stained and sealed before putting up walls. He also has been working on the septic system and is just about ready to install the toilets! It will be so nice to have indoor plumbing! LOL

Next weekend my niece is getting married so Tom is flying home for the wedding. We’ll only have him for the weekend (and he already has a date for Friday night!) so we wont’ see much of him but it will be nice to have him home.




Erik and Meghan have patched up their differences and are back together. The engagement is still on hold but they seem to act like nothing has happened at all! Young love!

Aubri has been practicing her driving – I guess this should be a scary thing but she is doing really well and driving my SUV which is a manual and not automatic. She does really well with the clutch. Not much of that head jerking thing going on – she usually gets it going or kills it!




I took these pics on the way down her last night. You can’t see as well as I would have liked but the trees are beautiful right now!






Well, I’m sitting at the McDonalds in Fredericktown and need to get busy with work so hopefully I won’t wait so long next time for an update! :)