The Dishes Are Done Break Out The Tree!

This year's Thanksgiving Dinner was at my cousin's house, who happens to live in the same town as me. This doesn't happen very often, usually we travel, so this was pretty cool. Plus it meant I got to drink wine, and play scrabble and get down on the floor and play with the kids and since I was drinking wine, noone thought anything of me being down on the floor, or making up scrabble words. (Mark, you rock at scrabble! I'm your partner next time! What? Scrabble doesn't have partners? Snap! You still rock!).

This year's Thanksgiving Dinner almost didn't happen at my cousin's house. Earlier in the week we had gotten our first storm of the season and while on the way from point A to point B, she rolled her Blazer. Her daughter was fine, and she was fine (after hanging upside down for nearly an hour, while they tried to peel the blazer away from her). This was not fine, and this was definitely cause for a Thanksgiving Dinner if ever there was one. Plus she got a new jeep out of the deal.

So, because her husband is hunting (what male isn't hunting at this time of year in N. Mich?), I offered to take her and her kids to go get their tree (she's not quite up to driving yet). We'll just fire up the farm truck and drive over to the local Tree Farm. Who knows what will be picked up. She's a balls-to-the-wall kind of gal, a go big or go home type, so I know I'll need the big truck. No matter, it will be fun. It will be a 'venture, as one of my grand-twins used to say. And we will have a blast, and there will probably be more wine.

For the last few years I have not gotten a real tree, the kids are gone, it's just hubby and me, and I really don't like cutting down trees, or buying ones that had already met their demise. It just seems wrong. So, in my lodge decor that adorns the inside of my log cabin, I have several very very realistic "fake" trees. Realistic to the point that if I put the big one (acutally a stand of 3 trees) in a pot, people would have to look to see that it wasn't a real tree. They are imperfect, they are different colors of green, and they really look real. So anyway, this tree, or set of trees, stays up year round in my house. It holds lights (year round) lodge type of ornaments, seasonal goodies and I take it out onto the deck and hose it off twice a year, because it also houses seasonal critters and dust. But this year......
You guessed it, we have a child in the house again! We have a gal who used to live with us when she was in high school for awhile (one of our daughter's friends), and she's back, going through a rough time, and has a 2 year old! How much fun is this gonna be!!
I won't pick out the tree for her, I'll let her do that, I remember how much fun my kids and I had when we did it, but I'll look forward to helping decorate it (gotta dig out the tree stand, if I even still have it).

This will be fun! And we'll drink more wine, or hot cider maybe, and have leftovers from yesterday and, and, and.......

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!