Thankful Sunday--September 30, 2012

I am thankful for the fence post and rails that 

are now in a neat pile.

Ward cleaned up our pile of fencing.

When we first moved here, our entire two acres had a split-rail fence around it. A couple of years ago, we decided to remove part of it and save the good pieces for repairs. However our repair pile was basically a mess--just a pile of good and bad pieces thrown on top of each other. Ward organized that pile yesterday by throwing away any rotten pieces and orderly stacking the pieces that were left. Now we're ready to do some repairs.

We removed the fence from the lower part of the yard and saved the good pieces for repairs.

The deer knocked down this part of the fence. We should be able to fix it with a new post from the pile.

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--Sept. 28, 2012

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money.

Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions.

 This Week's Food Waste

Have I mentioned that I am letting several end of the season tomatoes ripen on my counter? It seems as if one of them goes bad every week before I get to it. This week was no exception. We'll see if I can use up the remaining ones next week without letting another one slip by. Also, I cooked most of a bunch of old celery. However, some parts were starting to rot and had to go. The rest I was able to save for a Shepard's Pie.

This Week's True Food Confessions

Spaghetti with roasted tomatoes, ham, feta cheese, basil, and parsley

It took all week to make this spaghetti.

Day one--Went to Ocktoberfest Cookout and brought home extra cherry tomatoes.
Day two--Discovered tomatoes were getting old and needed to be cooked soon.
Day three--found a good recipe for spaghetti with roasted cherry tomatoes and the feta cheese we had in the fridge.
Day four--Meant to stop by the store and pick up basil and parsley needed for the dish, but got distracted by migraine. Had leftovers instead.
Day five--Determined to have dish for supper. Roasted tomatoes and cut up ham before I went to work. Got distracted by migraine again and another appointment after work. Didn't make it to the store, so picked up Subway sandwiches on the way home. In the meantime, Wally picked up pizza. Had a nice selection of foods for supper, breakfast and lunch the next day.
Day six--Actually made it to the store for the herbs and made the dish. Yea! Thank goodness, it was quite good after all of the anticipation.  
Day seven--On the 7th day we rested and used a gift card to go to a barbeque restaurant.

Hope springs eternal for a better week next week.

Kids

or When Did They Stop Being Cute?

When I look back over our pictures, I realize that at some point in time, we started taking fewer pictures of Wally and Theodore and started taking more pictures of the cats. I think it started when we got twice as many cats as we have kids. What do you think? Does that make us bad parents or good pet owners? : )

Annie, Leo, Lucky, and Lucy

 

A Second Look--September 26, 2012

We continue to have beautiful fall weather with cool nights, warm days, and occasional rain. A few of the flowers are still blooming, however I have noticed the insect activity has decreased around them. Before there might have been dozens of bees, butterflies, and ants on the sedum, but now there are only a few bees and an occasional butterfly at any one time.

Once again, in this time between the summer and fall, I am not finding as many photo-worthy things to share with you. However, my Second Look walk was productive from another point of view. There were quite a few branches blown down during the last rain storm and I picked up most of them. It was a good workout which can be as mood lifting as taking time to smell the roses (or do a second look.)

Here's What I Saw This Week.

The blossoms on this hydrangea bush are turning darker red.

I went out yesterday to cut down the dried up and mostly dead coneflowers, but couldn't when I saw this butterfly on one of the last blooms.

I found a balloon flower just opening up which is rare for me. Usually, I see only the bud or the fully opened flower.

Milkweed bugs on milkweed seed pod. I saw the eggs for these earlier in the season.

Single French Marigold

The grass I planted is finally starting to come up.

Most of my time this week was spent picking up sticks.

Assumptions

or I Hope You're Not Thirsty

Ward and I recently went to Brighton Dam. The main purpose of the outing was to enjoy the pleasant fall weather and to explore a new place that we had heard about but hadn't seen. While the trip lived up to all of its expectations and we had a lovely time, something more important came from it. We had a very real reminder that when you make assumptions, many times you can be wrong.

We assumed that there should be no problem with water supply around the dam with 7 billion gallons of water available.

However, we were wrong. The reality (and irony) was that water supply is limited around the dam because it comes from a well, not from the reservoir.

I'd like to wind this post up with some insightful words about irony, assumptions, and not judging until you know all of the facts. However, all I can think of are cliches. You're a smart audience. You can draw your own meaningful conclusions from my experiences. In the meantime, I just have to get these off my mind.

"Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink."

"Don't count your chickens until they've hatched."

"You can't judge a book by its cover," or "You can't judge a park's water supply by its reservoir."

When you make assumptions, you may, "Jump the gun."

The park's water was "Sold down the river."

Okay, I'll stop now. You're welcome. 

A Few of My Favorite Things

or What I Got for a Dollar (or Two)

I love getting a good deal as much as the next person and sometimes I'm in the right place at the time for a deal to just fall into my lap. That's a great feeling. Some how I feel like I've outsmarted the system when I know that all I have actually done is to help the store clear out unwanted merchandise. Still it makes me happy even years later.

What kind of deals have you gotten that you remember long after you made them? Here a few of mine. 

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  My Sun Hat

I got this hat on clearance at the end of the summer season for two dollars and I like to wear it anytime I'm out in the sun. It can be stuffed into a backpack without damage and I've gotten it wet without any problems. The hat shows no signs of wear even though I've had it for several years now.

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Baking Sheet and Spatula 

This baking sheet and spatula also came with a cookie mix, and all of them together only cost me a dollar. It was such a good deal that I got two sets. This was also a clearance item after Christmas. I have used these for maybe ten years now and they still work well. I finally got some heavier baking sheets, but these are still my go to items for every day cooking and baking. 

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Apple Plate

I got this plate at the dollar store for a dollar. It is heavy weight and I like its simple design as I like apples both to eat and as decoration. The best thing is that is handles hot things well and goes through the dishwasher without a problem.

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Fall Decorations

These door decorations were also end of the season clearance items and I think each one of them was under two dollars. These hangings are made of wood and work perfectly between my front door and front storm door. They fit the small space and can withstand the heat because it can get hotter than an oven there (Oh no, I just had a thought of another egg experiment.) I've had these for years and I only wish I had more of them like Miss Landers. She has one for every season.

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Maybe in the future, I will tell you about some "bargins" that didn't turn out so well. Unfortunately, I have some of those too.

Thankful Sunday--September 23, 2012

I am thankful that we have curbside recycling.

Weekly, our county picks up mixed paper, glass, cans, and several kinds of plastic. They will also pick up yard waste that they process into free mulch. We had a lot to put out this week because we forgot to do it last week.

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--Sept. 21, 2012

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money.

Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions.

This Week's Food Waste

 
 A couple more tomatoes went bad on the counter. This time I can't say that I was surprised by them. I meant to get to them because I knew that they were starting to go bad, but something else always seemed more important.  I eventually did get there and saved several, but not these two.

This Week's True Food Confessions

 We were lucky this week that we got to go to both a cook out and a pig roast. We took cookies and chips to them, so it was an easy weekend. During the week, we had to make some adjustments to our plans, so we had scrambled eggs one night instead of the chicken that we had planned. We had the chicken the next night. But the important part of this story is that we ate at home when the plans changed when it would have been easier to eat out. Score one for us.

But I had the most fun this week making lasagne by working with what was in the house. No ricotta cheese, so I used no-fat cottage cheese and sour cream. Not enough lasagne noodles, so I substituted spaghetti. Also I mixed kale, that we were trying to use up, with spinach and added some ground meat. And I can't remember how many different cheeses I put in using up the end of several packages. The result? It was quite good, if I do say so myself.

We'll see how we do next week, but if we can continue to cook on most days, I will be happy. 

Ponderings of Theodore--The Early Years

or The Young Economist


  Theodore is majoring in economics in college. Looking back, he had an interest in it all along. Here are some thoughts from his younger years.






"I like my jalapenos like the way you pay for the house--in small installments."

"If money becomes less valuable, will Daddy get a larger paycheck?"

"If the government is so much in debt, who do they owe money to?


However, those questions were often interspersed with typical boy ones like, "If you could fill a frog with water, what do you think would be the first part to burst?"

A Second Look--September 19, 2012

It's getting harder to show you things I haven't featured recently because the same few flowers are hanging on during this time between summer and fall.  Nevertheless, you can see the things I found interesting this week during a Second Look.

Blanket Flower

There are still a few butterflies and moths around.

Moonbeam Coreopsis

I saw a lot of webs of various kinds this week. There was a spider associated with this one.

Rozanne geranium

Berries--Poke, Dogwood, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit

Begonia

Tree Bark Variations: peeling silver maple, beginnings of woodpecker holes, oak tree fungus, and cherry tree growing around tree house board.

Mistakes

or Get Over It Already

My writing helpers otherwise known as my excuses.

Do you ever read something someone has written such as a letter, email, or an article and find mistakes? Then you wonder how someone could make mistakes so obvious and think, "Shouldn't they know better or at least proofread their work better?" Well, I do that all of the time when I read my own blog posts. Unfortunately, I usually find the problems long after I hit publish and it drives me crazy.

However, I'm trying to get over that. I'm trying not to worry about mistakes I may make because that takes away from the pleasure of communicating with all of you. I am trying to accept that I am doing the best I can under the circumstances. Sometimes those circumstances involve constantly removing one cat from in front of the monitor while another is trying to get on my lap. Sometimes I am writing when I'm really tired so I can publish a post the next morning before I go to work. Sometimes Blogger spacing is not working, so I am concentrating on that instead of concentrating on what I am writing. And sometimes I'm confused because it seems all the grammar rules that I thought I once knew have changed.

But wait, there I go again. I'm making excuses for my blog imperfections instead of accepting that good enough is good enough. While I will try to write well when writing for my blog, life is too short to worry about occasional misplaced modifiers and misspelled words. And that is what I'm going to keep telling myself until I really believe it.

Note: Sometimes I have an idea for a post and the words and the pictures just come together effortlessly and flawlessly. Wow, I love that feeling.

School Days-Lumpy

School is back in session, so it's time to start School Days again. 

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 School Days is a reoccurring feature in which I ask people about their early memories of school. Everyone has a story to tell about this and I hope to give them a voice here. 

Here's Today's Story

Lumpy began kindergarten at age five in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He started at the neighborhood public school in 1950.

Tell me some early memories about when you started school.

I don't remember much, but I do have a story from kindergarten to tell. One day one of the boys in the class bit me. For the rest of the day he had to sit under the teacher's desk. That was his dog house because the teacher said that dogs bite, children don't.

Also, I remember that Mrs. Rinders was my teacher's name and we had mats that we laid on the floor in the afternoon for naps. Mine was blue.

What else do you remember?

We moved around while I was in elementary school. After my kindergarten year in Milwaukee, I moved to Grand Rapids. Here I went to first, second, third, fourth, and part of fifth grade. In fifth grade, we left Michigan and moved to California.

Was it hard for you to make those moves?

The hardest move was to California. They seemed to do everything differently such as eating lunch outside every day. In Michigan, I had walked home for lunch. It was hard to leave all of my friends and it took about a year to make good friends again. I was very interested in nature and I gradually found two or three other kids who had the same interests.

Did you have a favorite teacher?

Yes, her name was Miss Peel. In the beginning of fifth grade my teacher had a nervous breakdown so they brought up Miss Peel, the teacher I had had in fourth grade, to be my fifth grade teacher. She was a large, stern woman, but a very good teacher. After she taught me, she went to South Africa to be a missionary. Knowing that I like animals and such, she wrote me letters about all of the new wildlife she was seeing such as the snake that had been in her hut. We kept in touch until she died about ten years ago.

Did she write to all of the kids?

I only know of one other person she wrote to and they stopped writing after about a year. Eventually she got married and ended up living in South Carolina. I still have a table cloth she sent me from Africa for a wedding present. It has hand painted animals on it and we have it hanging up in our house.

Thanks for sharing some of your memories and I hope another time we can learn more about your school days.

Thankful Sunday--September 16, 2012

I am thankful for clean sheets and a freshly made bed.

Chickens, Pumpkins, and Ribbons

But Mostly Ribbons

In September every year, my town holds a small agricultural fair complete with everything from goats to chickens and tractor pulls to cake auctions. The fair is not only a long time tradition in the community, it has become a tradition with my family.  The first year I discovered the fair, I entered a counted cross stitch piece that won a ribbon. From then on, I was hooked. While winning ribbons is fun, the fair has also become a place for us to meet with friends and neighbors. It's where I have the best grilled hot dog of the year and buy cookies from the local champion bakers.  It's where every year, Ward and I marvel at how many colors chickens come in and wonder how people can have tomatoes that look that good at the end of the season. In other words, the fair is good, simple fun.

However, maybe it's time to get honest with you. I have made the fair sound like it's an idyllic scene from the Andy Griffith Show, and I really enjoy the simple pleasures it brings. Well, that's mostly true. However, I just don't go to see the goats and eat hot dogs. The fair brings out my competitive spirit and the main reason I really go is to win ribbons. As I mentioned above, winning a prize was what got me hooked on the fair in the first place. I love the thrill of seeing a ribbon on some of my work and thank goodness this fair is a place where that happens easily. While not every entry gets a prize, effort is certainly rewarded. Now that is a simple pleasure.

Some Scenes From This Years Fair

The fair has many different categories and age groups for entries. Ward is examining the home arts division.

It took me a really long to prepare these walnuts to enter so I was very happy with this ribbon.

The photo category was the most competitive. We entered several pictures and were glad to get a couple ribbons.

The pumpkins are a favorite of everyone.

Several of our flower specimens won blue ribbons and several won no ribbons.

The library was represented at the fair. I worked here Friday morning.

Our favorite chicken. Notice the curly feathers in the back.

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--September 14, 2012

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money.

Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions.

This Week's Food Waste

 
This was the week of the stinky tomato. I have some end of the season tomatoes on my counter ripening and one of the green ones rotted. One day it seemed fine and the next day it was oozing stinky liquid. No picture of that one because all I could think about was getting that smell out of the kitchen. However, you can see the ripe one that went bad before I got to it. Thank goodness, there was no smell associated with it.

This Week's True Food Confessions

 I Spy a Good Week

Can you find:

1. A delicious dish that Theo put together of macaroni, tuna, and spicy tomatoes.

2. Squash stuffed with sausage, rice and cheese.

3. A pie made from leftover squash stuffing, cheese, eggs, and kale.   A big hit.

4. Frozen pizza topped with fresh tomatoes.

5. Breakfast burritos. A favorite of Ward.

6. Soup made from kale, potatoes, ham, and carrots. Surprisingly quite good.

7. A go to favorite on busy days.

8. Salad with fresh tomatoes.

9. Spaghetti with sauce from the freezer that was made earlier in the summer with extra tomatoes.

10. Dinner at church where we did clean up. (Might not see this one. Don't strain your eyes)

We all chipped in and made it work this week. A meal plan for the entire week with a comprehensive grocery store trip still evades us, but maybe it always will. There are still too many other things that are more interesting than cooking.

Beautiful Blogger Award--Part Two

 

In Part One of the Beautiful Blogger Award post, I talked about the people who nominated me for the award. During Part Two, I am going to tell you seven facts about me that you might not know and about some other blogs you may find interesting.

  

Seven Things about Me You May Not Know and It Didn't Occur to You to Ask

1. I like to eat pickles on my peanut butter sandwiches. It doesn't matter what kind. It's the combination of the dry peanut butter and the juicy pickles that makes it work.

2. I was a cheerleader in junior high and high school even though I'm not very coordinated. Limberness and enthusiasm can carry you a long way.

3. I have saved all of the petals from the roses Ward has given me over the years. They are in a basket in my living room. Thank goodness the cats aren't interested in eating them. They seem to like sampling everything else.

4. I have a bad sense of direction. Turn me around in a hallway and I may get lost. Therefore the GPS, that Ward got me a couple of years ago for my birthday, was one of the best presents I ever got.

5. I love being outside, but don't like it when it is really hot or cold. Then I like looking out the window.

6. Bejeweled is my current favorite computer game. One reason I like it is that I can play a quick game and then move on--that is if I don't start another game. :)

7. I love discovering the variety of titles I see at the library during my job. I think there really has been a book written about everything.

Now for my nominees:

Intermittent Farm Report  This is a delightful blog by Shelley that shows what it's really like to live on a farm and be self sufficient. Shelley writes about her life raising dairy goats, training dogs, tending her garden, building fences, making furniture, making cheese, making soap, etc. Shelley dives into her jobs with enthusiasm and knowledge that makes for interesting and fun reading. The blog is called Intermittent Farm Report because sometimes the farm work takes precedent over her blog.  However, she does provide regular updates that I eagerly wait for.

The Science of Heroes  This blog by Yvonne Carts-Powell keeps you in the know about what is going on the world of science. Yvonne regularly scans science literature and provides easy to understand updates of the current happenings. Besides providing clear summaries, she also occasionally throws in fun experiments and videos. My whole family really enjoys this very interesting blog.

A Place to Reside  Marilyn, the author of this blog, has a way of writing that makes me feel calm. She writes clearly and thoughtfully about a variety of subjects but cooking and food are her favorites. Sometimes she may include a meaningful exchange that she had with someone recently or use beautiful pictures to tell a story. A Place to Reside was on hiatus recently, but is beginning to publish again. In the meantime, look through the archives. I think you will enjoy them.

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Here's how it works:

1. Copy the Beautiful Blogger Award logo and place it in your post. 
2. Write something about the blogger who nominated you and link back to their blog.
3. Tell 7 things about yourself.
4. Nominate other bloggers for the Beautiful Blogger Award, and comment on their blogs to let them know.  No number was specified to me, but online, I found other bloggers were nominating 7 new bloggers for this award.

A Second Look--September 12, 2012

Here's a few things I've observed this week during a Second Look. We have been enjoying beautiful weather. I feel like this is our reward for enduring the hot weather last week and the storms on Saturday. The sedum is blooming in all of its glory and is filled with bees and other insects. The cows have moved back into the field behind us and there are several older calves that aren't sure what to make of me. They don't run away as fast as the older cattle, but do run when signaled by their elders.

Here's what I saw this week during a Second Look.

Marigolds and sedum

A few of the insects I saw on the sedum

Acorns brought down by the storm

Pine cones brought down by the storm

 

Cattle have moved back into the field behind me.

This was a young one who wasn't sure if he should be afraid of me or not.