WEEKEND RAMBLINGS JANUARY 25, 2015

We had a bit of nasty weather yesterday.  I was at work so didn't get to see it happening, but the customers kept me updated on it as they came through my line.  It started out raining, then turned to snow, then a misty rain, and back to snow from what I was told.  Of course once it started getting cold out the rain froze so we have ice under the snow.  There were several accidents due to the ice on the roads.  Matt saw a vehicle in front of him spin totally around and go through the median right on the overpass yesterday.  I can't imagine a scarier spot to lose control of a vehicle. When I got off at 8 last night the snow was quite pretty.  It was the huge snowflake type of snowfall.  I wished I had a fire pit outside and a chair to curl up in with a quilt to sit and enjoy it.  Roasting some marshmallows would be good too.  We didn't get much more accumulation last night but there's a nice fresh layer of snow on the ground.  The pups were dancing and rolling around in it this morning. Lacey makes me laugh watching her joy of playing in it.

 

The furkids went in for grooming Thursday.  This is the only time I can remember I have been this upset over their grooming.  I didn't notice it when I picked them up how bad a job they did on them.  Tip had some old scabs in his fur on his hip area from the skin allergy issue, which should have been easy to wash out and might have possibly needed a brush or comb to work out, but instead they hacked his fur off.  Thankfully she didn't shave the area. I request their nails be done with a dremel so they'd be smooth and they were obviously done with clippers.  Lacey's poor tail and fur on her hip area they chopped off.  She has a very furry tail and they clipped it way back at the top of the tail making it looks weird. This is also the first time they've ever come home acting stressed from being groomed and all three developed diarrhea from the stress.  Looks like I'll be searching for a new groomer. 

 

I bought a Bountiful Basket and several add-ons yesterday.  I'm excited with this one and hopefully we'll use it up before anything goes bad.  I bought the basic basket, herb basket, 20# of baking potatoes and 5 loaves of sourdough bread.  I LOVE their sourdough bread.  This week I decided to volunteer for the first time and enjoyed it.  Jordon needed to be dropped off at work by 7:45, which is right next to the Bountiful Basket pickup, so I figured I'd drop him off a bit early and be there to volunteer at 7:30.  I helped unload the semi truck and then acted as a runner, getting the add-ons and baskets for the people working the tables.  It made for a long day though.  The herb basket came with 5 vanilla beans so we'll be adding those to the mead.  If I recall right, I saw 5 vanilla pods at Walmart for over $10 and I paid less than that for the entire herb basket so the vanilla pods themselves were worth the purchase.

 

My bargain find of the week was getting a year of Amazon Prime for $72.  Someone posted on one of the budget/frugal blogs I follow on Facebook yesterday that it was on sale yesterday only.  They upped the cost from $75 last year to $99 this year so this was a big savings.  My Prime Membership ends next month so this was something I knew would be coming up to renew. Of course they didn't want to give me the price since I'm already a subscriber.  I remembered something I read on another blog about a year or so ago and "gifted" myself a subscription to get around them not wanting to let me have it for that price.  I ended my membership at the end of my contract next month and I'll activate my "gift" the next day.  Savings of $25!

 

GARDENING:  The lettuce is ready to harvest!  I'm so excited!  Maybe tonight we'll harvest it and enjoy some.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but it's about 5.5" tall, the middle is almost 6".

 

 

CRAFTING:  I've worked a little bit on the baby afghan this week.  It's coming along.  I want it to be at least 36" and it's about 22.5" right now.  The pattern is easy once you have it down and you can mindlessly work on it for the most part until you get to the corners and have to work the miter.  I've been watching a lot of Miss Marple this week and working on this.

 

10-Stitch baby afghan







ORGANIZATING PROJECT:  I worked through the bookcase I started on.  I ended up taking 5 fabric shopping bags full of books to Salvation Army.  Most of the books were cookbooks and diet books.  I've got about 4 bags of magazines I need to either take to Salvation Army or find someplace to donate them also. Oreo is making sure I'm not getting rid of the dog treat cookbooks.  I think I listed about 30 books on PaperBackSwap and had 10 of them immediately grabbed up.  I'll start on another bookcase this week.  I really wish they could be swapped for Kindle books but that feature has not been available for electronic books yet.  There are probably a lot I could still weed out of this bookcase but this was a good start.

READING:  I finally finished Quaker Café by Brenda Bevan Remmes.  This was a book that took me a little bit to get into but by halfway through it had caught me.  There are a lot of turns in this book and some thought provoking subjects. I also finished If You Lived Here I'd Know Your Name by Heather Lende.  I got it at a discount price from what it is listed for now but it's a great read about her life in Alaska and the people that live around her. I will probably pick up more of her other books.  She writes for NPR and several other publications/organizations.  I'm fascinated by Alaska and would love to visit there and have been reading books like this when I can find them.

WEEKEND RAMBLINGS JANUARY10-11, 2015

It was a pretty relaxing weekend.  Saturday I decided to go thrift store shopping.  I can't remember when I last went so I was overdue.  I scored five Patterson novels for Matt for $3.25 total.  I picked up a couple books for myself.  Salvation Army had all their books marked down to 25c a piece.  It looked like they'd gotten rid of most of their books as most of the shelves were only partly full or totally empty so it was really surprising when I found four of the Patterson books there..  Not sure what's up with them cleaning out their books.  Salvation Army is typically our best place to find used books in town.  It appears to be mostly text books now on the shelves, which just seems odd.  I also found a pair of flannel pj pants with Westie dogs on them for $1.99 and a hooded sweater for $2.  I tried to check out a couple junk/chic junk shops but neither of them were open. I went to our heath food store and finally found some carob powder and even better it was marked down 75% so it cost less than $2 for the container! 

Saturday night we went to Matt's company's Christmas party. They had a comedian hypnotist named Fred Winters for entertainment.  The show was hilarious.  The man hypnotized 12 people.  He had them do all sorts of things like having the men think they were pregnant and that they'd gone into labor to having one guy turn his shirt inside out every time he said pizza.  I would have hated to be one of the people and have to work with everybody at the company.  I have huge respect for those brave enough (or drunk enough) to be hypnotized in front of all your coworkers. They had a silent auction and I won a filleting set.  It's a really nice wood one with 2 knives and shears and then a universal fishing tool.  I had hoped Matt would win either the 60" TV or the ice auger grand prizes but no luck this time.

Tip had to go back into the vet this week.  He fell coming into the house from the mudroom really hard and then started chewing on himself the same like he was a piranha.  As I didn't want it to get to the point he was bleeding again I took him in.  She thinks he's having some type of skin allergy.  Now we just have to figure out to what.  He's on an allergy medication to help with the itching and doing another round of the antibiotic.  The bad boy did some counter surfing and pulled a bag of King's Hawaiian Rolls off and ate them earlier in the week.  As he was the only one with diarrhea I'm assuming he some how managed to not share his bounty with either of the other two.  A loaf of bread disappeared off the counter last night and we found minute plastic bag fragments on the floor, which is Lacey's MO.  Fortunately nobody has gotten diarrhea. The carob I found will be used for carob treats for the pups.  Tip really misses his Boxer Brownies (carob brownies) from Three Dog Bakery. I think they have the recipe in their book.

MEAD:
Sunday we racked our mead and added blackberries and blackberry puree to the 5 gallon bottle. The 3 gallon one we decided to put some cinnamon sticks and vanilla beans in (which I need to order). We started this batch of mead I think in September, so it's been sitting for almost 4 months.  Hopefully by summer we'll have some tasty beverage options.  Excuse the messy table.

3 gallon carboy before racking it

6 gallon bucket after adding blackberry puree and blackberries to it

GARDENING:
The lettuce is getting huge.  I'm going to have to raise the light this week.  It seems they double in size overnight.  They leaves are a nice thick leaf, not thin and wimpy.  The dill is up about 3 inches.  The basil I just took the dome off.  I can't wait for it to really start growing so I can harvest some.  Margherita pizza!  The parsley sprouted this week so everything is growing!  The parsley is also the only one with a dome still on it. I put more nutrient in as you need to add more every two weeks.

CRAFTING:
I did work on the 10 Stitch baby afghan this week and I'm nearly done with the first skein of yarn.  I already have the next one rolled and ready to go.  I really need to start focusing on this project more.

WINTER ORGANIZING:
I got a start on weeding out one of my bookcases and pulled probably a dozen books out.  I really didn't have a lot of free time to work on it this week but at least started.

I inventoried the freezer a couple weeks ago so I'm trying to use up what's in it.  Using up the 10 clam shells of blackberries that was in it will open up a lot of space.  Matt and Jordon both have been taking frozen meals to work so a lot of space has been taken up with their food.  My menu plan for this week are based around using up items.  Meals includes steak tacos using the flat iron steaks, ham & bean soup to use up the ham bone, sausage and biscuits to use one of the packages of bulk country sausage. I have a ton of vegetables I need to use also.  I may roast the chicken I have and then use the leftovers to make chicken pot pie.

WEEKEND RAMBLINGS JANUARY 4, 2015

Happy New Year!  Matt flew back from Michigan and was pretty tired so we didn't do much except have a drink and go to bed after we watched the ball fall.  He slept in his chair until then and I honestly wasn't sure I was going to be able to stay awake long enough but we managed it.  We decided to drink wine this year as neither of us was in the mood for champagne. Champagne for me is for mimosas; otherwise, I'm not a huge fan. We had a lovely Cabernet that we both enjoyed.

I spent most of Matt's time gone working on organizational projects.  There was a large moving box from our move here that I still hadn't gone through.  Matt has frequently complained about my bath items that were stuffed on a bamboo side table in the bathroom.  So my first project after he left was to buy a shelving unit for the bathroom and getting my bath supplies organized.  The bars are a bit too far apart so I think I may get some tempered glass to put on top of each shelf so items don't fall over. I didn't have many options at Walmart to chose from. There's enough room I might get another one and keep the towels and washrags in so they're closer to the tub/shower instead of in the closet across the room.

My AeroGarden is growing beyond expectations so far.  I've had to take the caps off three of the pods because the plants were so large.  I'll take the cap off the last lettuce tomorrow.  Everything is growing except the parsley.

3 types of lettuce



basil, parsley, and dill (left to right)

Today I took down the tree and got the living room cleaned back up and reorganized again.  I bought a roll of burlap that I used to make a runner for the top of the TV stand and also to cover the tops of the speakers next to it.  I like the rustic look of it and I think the roll was less than $5.  I have a wood tray on the ottoman that I plan to cut a piece from what's left to put inside to put inside the tray. 

The store manager informed me yesterday that I won't be on the schedule after January 17th.  How long I'll be off he didn't know.  So much for my part time job. Corporate cut the hours they can schedule and told them they can't give temps any hours and can't convert any temps to permanent. It's totally insane too.  Shelves are nearly half empty and people complain all the time they can't find anybody to help them. Oh well, we'll see what happens. My hope of getting a camper is disappearing. I'm not sure if I'll just sit and wait it out or look for another part time job.  I've got some jute I can crochet another rug from and put up on the Etsy website and see if I can sell them. I also have been wanting to start a quilt so I have time for that too.