Ramblings - Mother's Day Weekend

It's hard to get into Mother's Day when none of my kids are in the area.  I did get a wonderful phone call from my youngest son.  I'm sure my oldest son was with his mother-in-law celebrating.  Otherwise it was pretty much another Sunday.

It's been a wet and rainy weekend.  I had hoped to take the dogs for a short hike but the weather wasn't cooperating.  Yesterday I sat curled up in my chair wrapped in a blanket most of the day.  I just couldn't seem to get the chill out of my bones.  For supper I made up a batch of my Sausage Tortellini Chowder and we ate the last of the french bread with it.  Wednesday I was in the mood for some fresh bread so I baked 2 loafs of French bread.  We've been munching on the first loaf since.  I used the second loaf yesterday to make Italian sandwiches for lunch.  We finished off the last of the chowder today for a late lunch.

Saturday I did manage to get a few things done.  I ripped up 2 more sheets for the next rug project.  I also started cleaning out the fridge.  I took out the fruit and veggie drawers and let them soak in the bathtub while I washed down the inside of the fridge.  Hopefully I'll get to the shelves this week.  I plan on ordering a lazy Susan for the top shelve that we keep a lot of jarred items on so it will be easier to find things. I was out of laundry soap so I made a double batch this time.  The house smelled wonderfully peppermint-y afterwards.  I also took the Jeep through the car wash and gave her a bath!

Matt finally decided to upgrade his phone and get a smart phone.  We decided to bundle our phones instead of keeping separate accounts.  I guess it's about time.  Hopefully we'll have our new phones by Wednesday.  I've been needing to switch phone carriers but hadn't decided on which one or what type of phone I wanted.  Sprint service in our area is horrible!  Verizon and AT&T are considered the best in the area.  Matt has AT&T already so we just added me and upgraded him.  As much as I liked the idea of downgrading my phone and saving money, the reality is I'm use to all those extras and they do come in handy when we go into the larger cities.  Coming back from Minnesota last weekend I used the internet search to find a home brewing store to stop at to pick up supplies.

To end our evening we made up 2 batches of mead, a 6 gallon carboy and a 3 gallon carboy.  Matt had been able to get some local honey recently for us to use.  We're excited to see how this batch turns out but won't know for months.  We used a different yeast for these batches and I'm a bit concerned how it's going to work.  It didn't seem to activate like I thought it would.  If it's not performing like I want I'll order another type and add it in.  We will wait until we rack it to add anything to it.  We plan to do the 3 gallon as a blackberry mead from the blackberries I got from the Bountiful Basket and froze several months ago.  I'll probably buy some more from the store to give it a nice flavor.  I may get some vanilla beans and do a vanilla mead with the 6 gallon.  I have a couple months to figure it out though.