Merry Christmas!

Clip art by Marcello Corti

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

December Ramblings - New Year Goals

from Simple Country Livin Facebook page

Wow, I cannot believe we're almost to the end of 2016 already! Time just seems to fly.  I've quit making New Year's resolutions and instead have decided on goals, I divide mine into personal, professional and now business. I like the term goals as I can work on them throughout the year, I don't need to be perfect with them immediately like a resolution. If I miss a week or even a month I can get back on track to meet the goal. Does anybody else have New Year's resolutions or goals? What are they? Do you stick to them?

Personal Goals:
* Do yoga at least 4 days a week (subscribed to Gaiam TV again to get back on track with this)
* Meditate daily
* Read inspirational/spiritual material daily
* Work with my Angel tarot/oracle card decks more
* Study crystals & crystal healing
* Study Reiki more / advanced techniques
* Work on a craft project at least once a week
* Schedule a regular date night again with Matt
* Schedule overnight or weekend trips with Matt - try for quarterly getaways

I'd been doing some of the above regularly but have gotten sidetracked with little man living with us and need to figure out how to get some me time in with him around. It's very similar to how new moms need to figure out how to fit baby time and me time together, just feels strange at my age. At this point I feel good if I get a shower in before he wakes up in the morning. Finding floor space for yoga without toys has been tough. I'm working on getting my sewing/craft room cleared a bit so I can use the floor space in there. Reading has been the hardest, it seems every time I've tried to read with him there he decides he wants on Grandma's lap.

Professional Goals:
* Learn more about ND law (I'm working for a law firm again)
* Learn to do probate cases
* Possibly take an Angel tarot reader class and get certified
* Take Animal Communication class and get certified

Business Goals:
* Double existing client base
* Possibly hire to expand business
* Pay myself back for all costs incurred in 2016 with the business
* Possibly start a second business with Reiki / crystal healing
* Quit working 3 jobs

So, these are my goals to start the year with. I may modify as life changes. Things may change if Jordon gets a different job and the little man isn't around as much. With the roller coaster my life has been lately I don't want to lock myself into any path but be able to switch tracks and adjust my goals as needed if I'm lead to without feeling like I failed.

December Ramblings

Our Little Man safe in Daddy's arms

I can't say much due to ongoing legal issues but my grandson is safe and staying with us now.  Talk about life changing! I hadn't imagined at 51 I'd be taking care of a baby again on a regular basis.  As Matt put it, he didn't think he'd be experiencing parenting for the first time at 50. To say dealing with protective services, lawyers and two sheriff's departments has been sometimes very frustrating and I have to give Matt a huge thank you for taking the lead on dealing with this as I was adjusting to a new job and job schedules.  My son being awarded custody was a huge early Christmas present for all of us. There's still more legal stuff to deal with and we'll do the best we can with that.  Now to figure out how to keep my house looking and feeling warm and inviting with a toddler running around.

Litttle Man loves his Pooh rocker

I'm starting to settle in at my new job as a legal secretary. It's been slow getting up to speed and I'm not there yet due to the fact the office is so busy and my boss hasn't had time to train me very much. Thankfully this week she was able to show me how to do a couple new things. The firm I work at now primary does real estate, estates/wills and such.  He no longer takes cases that require litigation for the most part.  He's done well in his career and can now decide what he wants to take and not take and when he wants to work or not work.

We had our first blizzard of the year this week and what a blizzard it was! The entire state shut down for the most part. They'd predicted 3 to 5 inches in our area and I think we ended up with around 14 inches. After the storm stopped the winds picked up and we experienced white out conditions and severe drifts to the point they shut down all interstate traffic.  Semi trucks were parked up at Walmart almost to the point it was difficult to find parking spots for employees or customers.  Those parked and travelers that took refuge at local hotels shopped and caught up on laundry.  After two days of the state being shut down they are finally reopening the freeways and the trucks are starting to move.

The best way to hang out during a blizzard

If you've never driven in prairie country it's hard to understand how deadly the winds can be this time of year.  When there are no buildings or trees to block them they just pick up speed and even semi trucks aren't safe from being blown off the roads.  Add slick road conditions and the danger increases more.  I was able to make it in both days to my job but the roads were an obstacle course of drifts to plow through, this is when I realize how awesome 4-wheel drive vehicles are. My son has a Taurus. He made it to work but couldn't get home in it so a coworker was kind enough to give him a ride home. His car just wasn't equal to 2+ foot snowdrifts.

NOVEMBER RAMBLINGS

From Teresa's Cozy Corner

Where did this year go? Am I the only person who feels like every year goes by faster and faster?  I can't believe November is almost over! It's been a roller coaster ride this month with lots of changes.

I decided to start working on getting organized for next year and found some wonderful planners on Etsy. I ended up buying several from iorganizemylife. I really liked his Vintage Home planners and bought several. You can't beat the kitchen set for $2.56, especially when you can reprint and use them over and over. He didn't have a check register one so I emailed him and he said it was on the to-do list and he'd move it to the top since I requested it. I ended up buying a pretty pink faux leather covered planner instead of using the calendar set like I'd initially planned but I have it to use in the future.

BLESSINGS:

The start of the explosion of blessings this month was getting an email from one of my Mary Jane's Farm pals telling me to check out the Farmgirl of the Month chatter. I was shocked to say the least that I'd been named November Farmgirl of the Month! It was a huge honor. If you haven't checked out Mary Jane's farm website you really need to. Her magazine is awesome and she also has an online Sisterhood digital membership with newsletter as well.  My Sisterhood membership was due so they kindly renewed that for a year and sent me "Go Where the Peace Is" by Melody Ross. I haven't had a chance to read it yet.

The next blessing was an offer of a job from a local law firm, which I accepted. I'll be working from an office now instead of home. It was also a part time position so I've had to change my schedule at Walmart and increase my hours there to compensate, at least until my pet sitting business is more consistent. I worked for a law firm in Michigan for six years before moving here. Law was extremely interesting and I had actually started going to collage to get my degree as a paralegal but had to stop after my divorce. 

My pet sitting service, Prairie Critter Pet Sitter, is flourishing! I was totally booked for the Thanksgiving holiday. I even got a call on Black Friday to book for Christmas! It's a lot of fun hanging out with the dogs but it's also very time consuming because I give the pampering of my time to them.

Yes, I basically work three jobs. I was getting a bit frayed around the edges and Matt kindly gifted me with TWO massage gift certificates for my birthday. Isn't he wonderful! I'm hoping to use one this week.

HOME IMPROVEMENTS:

The blind in front of my work computer was driving me crazy. I HATE blinds, especially vertical ones. They'd gotten to the point where they didn't want to close correctly and the slats wouldn't always move the correct way. I decided since I had to look at those suckers all the time I deserved to look at something I liked so I replaced the nasty horizontal blinds with lace panels. Such a difference! I bought a double rod set so if I need to I can add a set of thermal curtains in the winter.  We'll see how the new windows are.

Matt had 10 days off over the holiday so he worked on getting some items off the honey-do list. One of them I was excited about was putting shelves up in the dining area. As you can see from the before picture it was a mess of stuff we had accumulated there. I have disliked this area since we moved in and wish we could afford to replace this entire unit but I have to make do for now.

BEFORE

I'm working on trying to make this cabinet more primitive looking. Future work will be replacing the plastic amber colored plastic glass with either chicken wire or possibly a glass with bubbles in it so it looks older. I'm considering painting the unit but can't decide on a color. I found some door pulls that look similar to the brackets we used and plan to get those switched out in the near future.

AFTER

Nonetheless, I'm excited that Matt's stein and shot glass collection and my teapot collection can finally be seen.

FALL FOOD PREPPING & JERKY MAKING

Picture from Homespun Wife

Fall is my favorite season and probably one of the largest food seasons there is, at least here in the States.  Fall with Harvest celebrations and Halloween start the food season that just keeps going through Thanksgiving, Christmas and then New Years celebrations. I'm really not sure why we don't have more food celebrations during the winter when we need them so much but suspect that our ancestors needed to save their food supplies and getting places was probably difficult. In Denmark they entertain (hygge) and have a lot of meals with friends and family during the dark months of winter and it's an area I think many of us would be wise to emulate. The light tons of candles, sit at the table with family and/or friends and eat.  Who wouldn't like doing that!  Meals don't have to be elaborate, simple meals can be great too.  Smorgasbord and pot luck to me are pretty much the same thing, have everybody bring something and enjoy.

For centuries Fall was the time of harvest and of preserving the harvest.  I remember going to my grandmother's house and helping pick and prep food from the garden and from the vegetable stand we use to go to.  I remember hours sitting under the tree out back shucking peas and stringing beans with grandma.  I loved going to the farm where we bought vegetables.  They had tons of chickens and other animals but the peacocks were my favorite.  I could stand forever watching the peacocks. Occasionally Grandma would give me money to buy a peacock feather to take home.  These memories are dear to me as she passed about 30 years ago.

This year I had to put my desire to do major canning aside to take care of things that were going on here.  My son needed to make a quick move back here to Jamestown so we had nearly a month of them spending the weekends with us while we helped them look for an apartment and work. Thankfully Jordon was able to get a job quickly and we got them moved.  Those would have been the last weeks of the harvesting in our area so I missed out this year but that's okay.  I now have the grandbaby close to me and I'm having a great time introducing him to new foods.

In the fall, just before winter arrived, would have been the time they would have slaughtered the animals for the winter so they wouldn't have to feed as many animals and it would have been cold enough so the meat could be left outside until the finished processing it without going bad.  Various methods of preserving the meat to keep it through the winter would have been used such as salting, smoking, and canning. Nowadays we can use these methods any time of year and we don't need to wait to make our favorite recipes.

Matt finished making some delicious venison jerky today using several packages of the venison we still had in the freezer.  Jerky is roughly a two day process, one day to season and smoking on the second day.  He also started brining the pork roasts for making Canadian Bacon.  This is our third batch of Canadian Bacon and it is delicious!  Canadian Bacon has a four day processing time as it sits in the brine for three days and then you smoke on the forth.  After you have homemade you can't buy it from the grocery store any more.

Calender and Daily Planner Decor

I use my monthly and daily planners every day.  Due to my living in a small town I don't have much availability of planner styles so I end up with generic, plain ones (i.e. dull).  I've seen planners online with large price tags but they weren't decorated in a way I liked.  Recently I started noticing a trend in planner and calendar making and decorating and started reading some blogs and looking at Pinterest for ideas.  I don't have time to design and make my own calendars for each month so I've come up with a way to make my planners more visually pleasing and more enjoyable to use thereby hygger something I use daily.

I use two planners, one for my full time job and a personal one that I also use for my pet sitting business.  I'm describing how I use these techniques for planners but you can use these for any calendar you have.  The first thing I did was to buy stickers.  You can also buy sticker making machines if you want to print imagines off the internet and make your own stickers. I'll probably stop at some craft stores the next time I'm in Fargo or Bismarck to look for a wider variety of stickers but for now what I have available is working.

This is a picture of my work planner page undecorated.  Obviously very generic and dull looking.  I can write what I want in it but looking at this doesn't inspire me or make me smile.  I apologize for the poor quality pictures but I had to use my phone camera to take them.

This is how I decorated next week's pages.  I need a lot of space to write information in regarding my work production so I couldn't use a ton of stickers, but it definitely improves the look of the page.  As you can see I went seasonal and used some Sunflower stickers.  The package did several pages in this planner and also a month in my personal planner.

My personal planner is a bit more fun for me.  This page is for November as I already decorated October's pages before deciding to post regarding how to do this. I found some cute dog and cat stickers that I use for days I have pet sitting clients.You can see I've already got a reservation in November and I've got the stickers on those days.

Here's October's pages.  I would typically have gone with a Halloween theme for this month but for some reason felt really drawn to the fall theme in both planners.  You can see how much more appealing and fun it is to look at.

I went pretty basic with just using stickers for decorating.  If you have more time and/or are more resources available you can cut out decorative paper in the sizes of the squares.  I've seen birthday print paper used on days with birthdays.  I've also seen major projects where they used a variety of papers and had put patterned or colored pages on every day of the month making the calendar look like a quilt which was pretty but I imagine very time consuming.  If you chose to do something like that, you'd definitely need a sticker making machine.  I've seen some use washi tape and I may try that in the near future.  To make the tape narrower you can slice it in half using a paper cutter with a sliding razor cutter.  Some use die cuts over the top of the papers.  A lot of techniques used for scrapbooking are being used for calendar and planner decorating.  The awesome thing is you can decorate to whatever level you're comfortable with and have a lot of fun personalizing something most of use on a daily basis.

HYGGE

The Danish call it hygge (prounced hue-gah).  There are many definitions of hygge but they basically come down to living a life well.  Louisa Thomsen Brits describes hygge this way in her book "the book of hygge - the Danish art of living well", "It is therein the rhythm of your daily life, in your habits, routines and rituals."  and "It can be found in asking yourself where you feel most at home, what are the activities and customs that anchor you, who makes you feel at ease, what is it that contributes most to your sense of welling, what do you do to unwind, what do you reach for to create comfort?" 

Basically, it's the rituals of our life that make us feel happy.  It's the small as well as the large things. It's the way we decorate our home as well as the lighting of a candle on the dinner that makes us feel warm and comfortable.  This concept has caught the attention of many as people around the world as many are trying to find more happiness in their lives to balance the increasing chaos of the world, the feeling of safety.

Each of will define hygge a bit differently and that's okay, that's the way it's supposed to be. You can hygge everything about your life from putting warm, cozy flannel sheets and a down comforter on your bed in winter with plenty of plump pillows to hygger your morning ritual of lighting a candle before you start your coffee or cup of tea and sitting and enjoying it instead of taking your cup with you to the bathroom and sipping on it while you put your makeup on or you rush off to start up your computer to look at emails and social media.

So where am I taking hygge and my blog?  I plan on sharing ways I'm adding or removing things in my life to help balance it and to increase my pleasure.  The current "glamping" trend is a form of hygge and I'll share as we continue our rebuild of my camper.  Organizing, especially with the help of books like "the life-changing magic of tidying up - the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing".  From what I've read the Danish apparently decorate somewhat spartan like and without a lot of clutter. I hope to remove things that aren't causing me pleasure so I can enjoy my space more. The trend towards slow cooking and cooking meals at home is also a form of hygge and I will continue to share more menu plans and recipes.  So there won't be a ton of changes, I just have a name for it now and will focus my posts in this direction.




If you'd like to read about hygge, there are a growing number of books about hygge on the market with several scheduled to be released later this year and early next year.  There are several books on the topic available for free with Kindle Unlimited.  I have two in my reading queue that I'm getting ready to read and will review when I finish them.

"the book of hygge" that I mentioned above is somewhat of a philosophical look at hygge.  I find this book reads best if read in short blocks of time.  Unfortunately this is in printed book form only and you can't get it on Kindle at this time. I picked up a nice hardback of it used.  The photography is awesome.  The pictures give one a feeling of warmth as you read.  This is a book you'll read over and over to get all the nuggets from it.


The book that introduced me to the concept of hygge was "The Year of Living Danishly" by Helen Russell.  It was an interesting book about a Brit who moves to Denmark when her husband takes a job with Lego and the book describes a year's time of her trying to adjust to living in a new country and it's customs, which includes hygge.  She doesn't go into much detail about hygge, but she does mention it several times which caught my interest.  I have this book on audio through Audible.

The Cozy Life: Rediscover the Joy of the Simple Things Through the Danish Concept of Hygge by Pia Edberg can be bought fairly cheaply on Kindle or in printed form and is a nice introduction on the subject of hygge.  It's a free read if you have Kindle Unlimited.  It describes things you can do to make life cozier.  It's a nice short read.

AUGUST RAMBLINGS - IN LOVING MEMORY

It's been a heartbreaking month for me.  I've lost two of my beloved dogs, Tip and Oreo, within two weeks of each other.  Tip's heart gave out and Oreo plunged into deep dementia/Alzheimer's after losing what little sight she had left.  Tip missed his 15th birthday by a month and Oreo would have been 18 in October so they lived a good life, I just wish I'd gotten more time with them; although, I don't think I'd have been ready to lose them ever.   I lost Tip on August 17th and Oreo on August 31st.

TRAVELS:

Matt and I actually ventured from home this month.  We spent a beautiful 4-day weekend in Minnesota on the lake with friends.  Tip got to go on the trip with us and enjoyed laying in the lake like he so much loved. The picture below is the pups hanging out by our tent.  We camped in the back of the cabin this year by the lake.  Absolutely beautiful.

The couple we stayed with renewed their vows at the cabin, which was lovely.  This was after the vows ceremony.

We also ventured to Bismarck.  I had some business I needed to do and then afterwards we went downtown to the historic part of town to have lunch and a bit of shopping.  Matt had wretched his back so we weren't able to do much shopping unfortunately.

We ate lunch at Peacock Alley. It was originally a hotel build in 1933.  The hotel was widely known and many famous people stayed there including Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jack Dempsey and Jose Louis. There's a tunnel underneath where they would bring the high profile people from the railroad to the hotel.  Unfortunately we didn't get to take the tour.  The tunnel was also alleged to have been used to smuggle in booze during prohibition and of course prostitutes.

They have a wide menu of items.  I tried the Beer Reuben.  The corn beef was marinated in beer and the sauerkraut was brined with beer.  It was definitely tasty.  The French Onion Soup also used beer instead of wine.  It was good although I think I prefer the more robust taste of wine in my French Onion.

Beer Reuben and French Onion Soup

 They are also known for their martinis and beer.  Since the martini special that week was a chocolate martini I HAD to try it and it was quite yummy.  Nothing like drinking your dessert before you eat. Matt tried one of the specialty beers and had a burger he said was really good.

Chocolate martini and beer

After that we went back to his vehicle and got his growler so he could get it filled at Laughing Sun Brewery.  They had homemade cream soda that I enjoyed.  Matt got his refill of Black Shox Porter and bought me a growler of cream soda to bring home.  They also had a tasty Sinister Pear Ale. It's a nice little brewery and have live music nightly that I'd like to go back for. It was a good thing we'd eaten as they do not serve any food except for pretzels.

Laughing Sun Brewery

CANNING:

I wasn't able to get much canning down this month like I'd hoped.  I did buy 3 dozen ears of corn and managed to can 18 pints.

CRAFTING:  

I've been working on coasters this month using the Amish Toothbrush technique.  I've been playing with some leftover scraps from rugs.  These are some of the latest ones I've completed.

READING:

Simply Irresistible by Ellen T. White
Interesting overview of famous/infamous women and what they had that attracted men so much. The author comes up with five types of sirens that draw men to them and gives brief synopses of several women who demonstrate each type or a combination of types.  It frustrated me a bit that there wasn't more information on the women, but it's a good place to start if you want to know more about the women who influenced some of the greatest men in history.

Bear Patrol Series by Scarlett Grove
I've been reading a bunch of this series so I won't list all the books.  I just finished Detective Bear. This is a shifter romance series were they turn into bears, typically brown or polar (Ski Bear).  Backstory on this series is that shifters came out that they existed and after years of harassment the Army drafted them to help win a war, after which they were all heros. This group of bears also settled in the same area as they'd been a tight special ops unit while in the military.  Geek Bear, Cory, is a wiz with computers and develops a dating app that can match them to their mates 100%.  The bears are also a tight rescue unit for the area and find lost hikers and such. These books are on the shorter side and I can finish one in a night.

Plain English: An Amish Memoir by Susie Fisher
This is a true story of a girl who grows up never feeling part of her Amish Community and leaves it with the result of being shunned.  Interesting family dynamics both before and especially after she left.

Shadow Spell by Nora Roberts
This is the second in the Dark Witch Trilogy focusing on the brother as they continue to try to figure out how to destroy Cabban.

Homespun Mom Comes Unraveled by Shannon Hayes
Shannon Hayes has a blog called The Radical Homemaker.  Interesting book about how she morphs into a radical mom.  She also has a Facebook page under Shannon Hayes as an author.  The Brocante Book Club is going to be reading another of her books soon. 

JULY 2016 RAMBLINGS

I've had crushing news from the vet this month, Tip, my male border collie, has congestive heart failure.  So for now, more meds to try to and make him comfortable, but the prognosis from what I've read is 6 to 18 months. His tolerance has dropped significantly for any type of exercise. It also explains his intolerance for the heat of summer. I'm finding the idea of my pack without Tip in it really hard to imagine. He's been an unbelievably awesome dog. So for the time he has left I'll keep him as comfortable as I can but knowing at some point I will have to make the decision to ensure he doesn't suffer.

About two weeks after the above diagnosis he started having bloody diarrhea so I rushed him to the vet.  Due to his recent diagnosis of congestive heart failure, I had to prepare myself for the possibility that this could be it for him. He's always had bouts of diarrhea after storms or fireworks but it typically cleared up within a couple days.  Apparently the back-to-back severe storms we recently had started a domino effect with the diarrhea.  New diagnosis is stress induced colitis.  Three new medications added to his pharmacy and I have to change to a bland food for him.  I also need to try to keep him from getting stressed out to avoid triggering further bouts.

I've also had to make the decision to change vets.  I like the vet I've been using and she came highly recommended BUT she has no after hours or emergency coverage.  With three geriatric dogs I cannot chance not being able to get vet care if I need it.  There's only one vet clinic in town, Southwood, that has emergency vet service and they no longer take other vet's clients.  After discovering the blood on a Friday afternoon I attempted to contact my vet about 2'ish in the afternoon to be told she'd just left for the weekend.  They suggested I try another vet in town so I called Southwood and thankfully they were able to get me in. I was very happy with the vet, Anna. I took in a stool sample and I know my previous vet would have run tests on the sample before seeing Tip but she held off until she did the exam and determined it wasn't needed.  I appreciated not having to spend more money.  Within  two days of starting the new meds he was acting almost totally normal again without the lethargy he'd been having.  He's honestly acting awesome so I'm really happy.

CRAFTING:

I finally finished the rug I've had in the loom forever.  I'm really happy with it and love the earthy tones. I'm still planning on putting it in the camper as it will go great with my cabin/lodge theme. Now to go through my fabric stash to decide what colors my next rug will be.  

I used some wooden needles I bought from Carrol's Farm Crafts on Etsy to finish up the last row or so.  It made it so much easier to get into the tight spaces between rows.  These are beautiful handcrafted needles too.  They're designed for using to make Amish Toothbrush Rugs but work awesome for twined rugs as well.

CAMPER REMODEL:

The camper tearout is almost complete.  Matt just needs to pull out the electrical. It's been a hard job for him and he's done a great job of it.

Water heater where a bench seat had been that covered it

Kitchen area

lots of water damage / rot

The last picture has the bathroom tearout section with the shower pan still not taken out yet. We've decided not to replace several things:

• the shower - there's just not enough room and I just want a toilet so we'll clean and put that back in along with a small sink.  
• the water heater - to save space plus we'd have had to replace it since it was shot
• the refrigerator - we've decided to replace it with a small electric refrigerator instead of a 2-way or 3-way.  It will save us considerably as we can pick one up cheap (probably about $100)  with back-to-school deals starting compared to over $1200 for a 2-way

THRIFTING:  

I went thrifting and picked up a lot of good books cheap.  I think most of the books were like 50c each.  This is just a couple of the books I picked up.

In addition, I found two mini donut pans for 99c each!  I was so excited to find them as I needed at least one more pan for when I make donuts when the crew is here.  

READING:

Comfort Classics is an excellent cookbook from Weight Watchers.  There are several recipes I want to try out although I'll use full fat options instead of the low-fat ones.
















Dark Witch is the first in Nora Roberts The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy.  I remember buying this on a Kindle special and started the first two chapters and then forgot about it.  I'm glad I have the book format now as this is a keeper.  I just ordered the next book in the series from PaperBackSwap. Unfortunately they don't have the third one so I added it to my wishlist.  I may have to look for a used copy on Amazon.  This series reminds me somewhat of The Three Sisters trilogy and The Donovan Legacy trilogy.

June Ramblings

The Walton's house from the TV series

Flashback: I loved watching the Waltons on TV growing up and even later.  I loved the large, close knit family.  I LOVED their house. The house would be way too large for us at this point in our lives but it would have been awesome when I had kids at home.

HOME PROJECTS:
June shaped up to be another super busy month for us. Matt and his buddy Nick, along with some muscle help from Jordon, got our new windows put in. It's a good thing because the one set probably wouldn't have survived another summer.  It was so rotted that when they went to pick the window up to place it on the trailer it broke apart. The new windows look great.  Matt worked over the weekend and got the outside finished.  Now he needs to finish off the inside portion.  We now only have one small window left that was original to the house that needs replaced. Thankfully it's in much better shape than these windows were.

window that broke from rot

new windows in

As you can see we don't have steps out this door and haven't since we moved in for the simple reason we can't agree on what we want.  I would like a deck with a ramp for the dogs and to eventually fence this side.  A gazebo style deck where I could sit and relax would be awesome.  We have a small deck on the other side but it's filled with the grill and smoker so there's no room for me and the dogs to just hang.  My garden is on this side of the house towards the back. Matt wants just a basic set of steps. We'll figure it out eventually.

GARDENING:

I finally got to work in the garden and tore out all the dead plants from last year.  We shoveled all the dirt into the wheelbarrow and I put weed blocking fabric on the bottom and then put the soil mixed with compost back in the bed.  I over planted this small bed last year so I was more minimalistic this year in planting it.  I also used the barrel that we had tried to grow tomatoes in for herbs this year. Hopefully the garden will do better.  Unfortunately they're not selling these pre-made beds any more so I'm going to have to order online to be able to expand.

COOKING:

Spicy Hawaiian Pizza

Matt's been doing a lot of cooking with the smoker.  He made some homemade Canadian bacon. Thank you to his brother-in-law Doug for the recipe for that!  It's addictive and will be a frequent item in the smoker from now on I can assure you.  He made me some homemade McMuffins with the Canadian bacon and the taste was unbelievable.  What a difference in the taste.  We also used some for a Spicy Hawaiian Pizza.  He also did bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers that disappeared very quickly.

We forgot to take a picture of these yummy treats until only these two lovely ones were left before I finished them off.

Someone on one of my Facebook groups posted she'd fixed a cup of hibiscus blueberry tea which sounded so good I decided to try making some myself.  I took some blueberries and put into the bottom of my cup and then brewed them with my loose leaf hibiscus before adding honey.  I've made this several times it was so good. I used Mountain Rose Hibiscus High Tea.  Sorry about the poor picture.

READING:

I picked up another Sue Henry mystery, The End of the Road (A Maxie McNabb Mystery).  I was a little concerned by the title but be assured nothing happens to Maxie.  I really like how she brings characters from her other mysteries into different storylines.  I need to order a couple more by this author to read.  I have a friend I plan to loan one of the Maxie McNabb Mystery books to as I think she'd really like the series.

Brocante Home Living Room forum on Facebook read and discussed Slow Love - How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas & Found Happiness. It definitely was not a book I would have chosen on my own.  Her ongoing relationship with a married man just made many of us want to smack her and honestly the stupidity of her trying to keep that relationship going would have probably been enough for me not not have finished the book if it wasn't for it being a discussion assignment.  I just found it really difficult to respect the author through most of the book even though she published multiple magazines nationwide and had written other books but others loved it and thought it was a great book about recovering from a life disaster.  Several of us brought up we had problems having any sympathy for her having to sell her house after she finally mentions that she has another house, her vacation house, she'll be decamping to in Connecticut.

Fiona Ferris continues adding to her series on living French with How to Live Well.  Some good ideas although some can be found on multiple other sites and articles.  It's a short book.  I believe it was $2.99 for the Kindle version so very reasonably priced.