In Which The Mouth Swipes My Pie!

So, today finds me over at my cousin's house armed with pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce and rolls.
Since I'm totally a homemade gal, I did almost all of it. The pumpkin pie came from pumpkins, that no, I didn't grow, but I did can. Those are the best. Don't even have to have pie pumpkins, any that I've tried will do, they just taste way better, fresher than the canned pumpkin mix I've "bought" in the past. Takes 3 qts of home canned pumpkin for 2 pies. The pie shells are made from a centuries old recipe I've had for, well, half a century anyway.
I bought the cranberries and the oranges, but will mix them together with a bit of sugar and cinnamon, add some heat and water and produce cranberry sauce.
As for the rolls, yeah, they're just plain white rolls, but I'll throw in a bit of whole wheat flour just for kicks.
I didn't whip up the cream myself, I don't have access anymore to fresh milk and cream so I bought the old standby, CoolWhip. Hey, that stuff's not bad!

I will take my pie (made 2 of them, The Mouth swiped one), Cool Whip, cranberry sauce and rolls and head over to my cousin's house as soon as the rolls are out of the oven (and I haven't started them yet, but it's still really early, she'd shoot me if I showed up really early).

And in return for all of this early showing up and all, she will reward me with wine! Lots and lots of wine. Knowing her, it will be an all I can drink kind of thing, bottomless, and not even in good wine glasses, but in tankards. Yeah! That's what you should drink wine out of, saves the need to keep going back for a refill.

I did not finish my mossi cardi, grrrr, but I will take it over to work on, when I'm not swilling wine or on the floor playing with the kids.

So, two things happened yesterday that merited remembering. When The Mouth dropped off my groceries (my vehicles are in various states of protest, and the one that runs currently does not have plates or registration on it so I can't go too far), she spotted the pies. Pumpkin pie is her favorite, and as it was, the 2 pies happened to be cozily nestled into my 2 remaining pie pans, my favorites, as it were, mostly because they're the only 2 I have left.
The minute her eye went for the pie, I knew I was in trouble. So, I did the only thing a loving mother would do. Grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and hastily scrawled out a contract regarding loss of life and limb if the pie pan was not returned. Laughing at me, she signed it, making such comments as "you know I'll bring this back". Yeah right, if I knew that, I'd still have 8 pie pans instead of my current favorite 2!

The second thing that had me rolling on the floor relates directly to the new tin roof we put on the cabin this summer. And Bu-Dawgh. And the current location of his leash, which is outside the front door. I knew the snow was going to come down, the temps had warmed up and you could almost see the snow inching it's way down off the roof. And Bu-Dawgh loves to play in the snow, next thing I heard was the goosh-plop of the snow off the roof hitting the ground. Thinking this would be an awesome thing for an oversized puppy I went out fully prepared to see him happily bounding around in the new fallen avalanche. He was not. He was up on the deck, hiding underneath the summer aquarium, shaking. Not shaking as if to shake off the snow, but shaking as if he was scared to death. Trembling. And very much willing to leave his snow outside. He's such a baby. He's recovered though, already been out playing in it. I suspect before long, he'll be looking forward to the goosh-plop so he has some new snow to play in!

Off to start the rolls now. Have a great turkey day!

Some Stuff Done, Some, Not So Much

The roof is done!
YAY!!

The dishwasher is installed!
Yay!

Ok, well almost.
The roof is all up there, 45 or so sheets of tin. Most of it is screwed down, the hard part is done. The ridge cap isn't screwed down yet, or however you put a ridge cap on, and the tin needs to be finished with the screwing down.

The dishwasher, almost.
It's installed.
It works,
It doesn't leak (any more).
I still have to trim the cabinets so it fits better, and adjust the bottom so it looks nicer.

I spun up another batch of yarn this weekend, this, some beautiful off white and brown heathery mix and started to knit my next project - a scarf/hood/vest kind of thing with cables and everybody. I really like the yarn, it turned out a bit darker than I figured it would. My other choice of color would have been an off white, and that would look just a little too "snow princess-y" for my taste.

We're smack in the middle of starting our Indian Summer. A week or two period around the start of deer season when the temps suddenly go through the roof (60 degrees), the end of the motorcycle riding season, the time when walking through the woods and hear the crunching of leaves under foot would be glorious, but the sounds of gun fire kind of makes one think twice about it.

Yup, good times.

Colors are gone, the little ghouls and ghosties are back home and back to school, and now we get ready for Thanksgiving.
Got all of my decorations out and put them up. I love doing this. In the fall season I collect pumpkins, I guess. I didn't do this intentionally, however looking around my house at all of my fall decorations, there seems to be a plethora of pumpins and pumpkin type stuff. Candles, sculptures, tree decorations, hanging stuff, sitting stuff, it's everywhere.
Not really a lot in the way of ghosts, spiderwebs (well, scratch that, but I didn't put them there), and other hallowe'en stuff, just pumpkins and more pumpkins. These will make way for snowmen and Santa Clause's after Thanksgiving.

I love collecting stuff - from the looks of my house, you'd seriously never get that!

So I'll Sit Right Down

And have another beer in Mexico.....

Ok, I believe I'll do that. And in another universe somewhere that might actually work.

Just a few smatterings here (I like to use long technical words, it messes people up).

Have a loooonnnnggg weekend coming up, and I don't mean that in a good way. Saturday, I'm working. Gasp! What's that about. The only day it's not supposed to rain for the next quite a few.

Even up here the hurricanes have their way with the weather. I'm sure it's a drop in the bucket, but we still get the air pressure changes, the rain and I still feel the achy joints.

My personal opinion is that the high pressure systems that we normally get from Canada and the hurricane-isms that we are getting from the south are converging over the lakes and having a mighty melt-down. You can almost hear them arguing. Either that or it's the thunder.

So, maybe rethinking the Mexico thing, because of Ike and all.

Sunday, we'll be up on the roof (probably, depending on how much water-age is falling from the sky - steep angles and tin roofs combined with water-age makes for some interesting times, add a bit of thunder and lightening and it's just way more fun than I can deal with). And then..... after the roof is done, I can get hubby concentrating on my greenhouse.

Maybe.

He likes to think that he can take breaks and go fishing every now and then. And it is salmon fishing season, and we do like our salmon. Salmon patties are really yummy on a cold winter night. So I guess if he wants to go fishing it's ok with me.

But when he gets back, and the roof is done.....

The Mouth now has a boyfriend, which might seriously hamper her plans to move to Alaska in the spring. And I've been accused of being narrow minded, and not only that, but being narrow minded while in possession of a gun. I like to think I've always been fairly tolerant of all the idiots my girls have brought home. I haven't met him yet, so I don't know what kind of metal he's made from. But apparantly he's self sufficient, doesn't live with his mommy, and actually has a job. Don't laugh, that's a plus up here.

Hubby brought home a compound bow this past week.

He handed it to me.

He told me to pull it and see what I thought.

I did.

It was easy, a lot easier than I thought it would be. (45-55 lb)

I think he has plans to take me bow hunting this year.

Could be interesting.

I'm not real good with a bow. Add an arrow and things might get dangerous, but that's weeks away.

I'd rather use my .22

Well, that's about all that's happening in my neck of the woods. Still have more tomatoes to can, and a bunch of dirt to gather up. I like to start all of my seeds in the winter (feb. or so), and it's really really hard to find dirt to start them in, when you have to dig through 4 foot of snow, and then need a pick axe. It's lots better to gather up the dirt in the fall, when it's a bit warmer. I'll store it in buckets, and pots in the barn until it's time to plant stuff, then bring it in. Or, hopefully I'll have the greenhouse and I can do this all year round!

What fun!

And What Did I See???

Went out to the barn and what did I see?

8 baby buk-buks staring back at me!!!

Well, in this picture you can only see one, but there were 8 (I think), with all the scurrying around, it was hard to get an accurate count. I had purposely left this hen alone, because it was just easier, she seemed to be a bit moody, when actually, she was broody ;-)

When I decided it was time to move her into the chicken pen with the rest of them, she growled at me! Then I found out why!

Now, I'll let her have free run of the barn and yard until her babies get a bit bigger, then I'll shoo them all into the pen.

I LOVE baby chickens!

I got quite a bit done in the "reclaiming the garden from the weeds" project and started, in earnest, ridding the world (or at least my world) of zucchini, one plant at a time. I didn't even plant this stuff! I planted a few seeds last year and got enough zucchini to feed the entire county for 10 years, I certainly didn't need to plant more this year, but it seems to be quite capable of rejuvenating itself. And while I was watching the beautiful Caribbean sunsets, and not my garden, it took over. And yes, it's taken me this long to get back to it. We also waged war on the burdock this weekend, they have a habit of taking over also.

Started haying for real Saturday. We had a straight shot of 4 good dry days, so we'll get as much done as possible. Last night it was still too wet to bale, (we did bale about 20 just to see) so we raked it, and I'm sure tonight, it will find it's way into the barn. I seem to have lost an incredible amount of muscle mass this past year, couldn't believe how heavy those bales that we did finish last night were, ugh, gonna be a long night.

But it's gotta get done, and during January, when it's 1000 degrees below zero, and the critters need extra hay to keep them warm, these days will be a nice memory.

Talked to hubby about our addition (no more critters, this is a small addition onto our house). He wants to enclose the fish tank, but yet keep it outside so if (when) it leaks again, the mess will be outside, so we're going to put an addition on that side of the house, and part of it will be for my greenhouse! Can you say vine ripened tomatoes all winter long????? yum! Rabbit food! And, since it will be off the corner of the house where the woodstove is, we can open a few windows and let the woodstove heat it also. We've already got one nice window (huge Anderson windows about 10x8 foot) scrounged for just this purpose. We have the logs for the outside, and we have extra lumber sawed out for the framing.

Another thing off the scrounge list? Hubby managed to procure enough tin to finish the roof! This was left over from another job one of his construction buddies did and he got it for pennies on the dollar. Not the right color, but the price was right, so as soon as we're done with this round of hay, guess what? Yup! Back up on the roof, that will be NICE to have that little job done!

Still looking for leftover eaves and downspouts at auctions... (hey, baby brother, you just put new siding on your house, got any leftovers? You can ship them to me with the fishies!). I want to collect rain and snowmelt off the roof of the barn, chicken coop and house for watering the critters and gardens, it seems a shame to let all of that water just soak into the ground, when we could be storing it for when we need it.

Lots of projects and where in the heck did July go???

Baby Buk Buk Condo!

Worked some more on the Chicken Coop (aka.. baby buk buk condo) last night. It's almost done!! You might ask why it's taken soooo long to accomplish this. Well, for one, this time I wanted it done RIGHT (as opposed to "cobbled"). And, I had to scrounge for materials. The actual condo itself (frame) was an anniversary present from hubby (how romantic is that?? ) We scrounged for roofing tin, actually, the only thing that was purchased for this specific project was the screws. How cool is that??

So, last night, the front and back doors went on (again, $0.00 cost) from hinges left over from other projects. The mosquitos (Michigan's state bird) were out in force last night so we called it quits a bit early. Don't have electricity run out there yet, so there weren't any lights either.

Tonight.... finish the trap door. Then, it's done!! I'm so excited (we've already been over how exciting my life is).

I have a few other excuses also, as to why this project has taken a lot longer than I wanted it to (beside the full time job thing, and the garden):

Exhibit A:

A new roof for our cabin! The backside is done! Cost: approx 45.00 (for the roofing nails). The tin was left over from the barn, I'm not crazy about the color, but for the 45.00 that the back side of the roof cost us, I put another $100.00 to it and bought barn tin paint. Closer to winter (when it's not 950 degrees up there) I'll take a power washer, sander and paint sprayer up there and do the hunter green that I want.

The front side will have to wait as we're almost out of leftover tin. We can buy what we need but at the end of the season, there will be "giveaways", free for the "come and get it", which is how we got all of this in the first place.

Here are a few other pictures of the reasons it takes me sooo long to accomplish anything!

From left to right:

Mike (Mike McMustang - branded mustang, captured from Nevada) Sierra or Si (Sierra's Mercedes Benze - branded mustang, captured from Wyoming), and Jake (welsh pony and arabian cross)

And 2 of my calves, appropriately named Salt and Pepper, although, not like you'd expect!

Left is salt and right is pepper.

And, in one week, this will be ME down in the Caribbean!!!!!!