Back2DaCabin

Today we were "supposed" to go to Knik Glacier again with Bob, but we decided to go to the cabin instead.  I'm glad we did cuz today's weather doesn't look like the kind of weather that I'd be very happy in on a trip like that.  Too wet and cold.  Brr.

Chuck had the day off work yesterday so we went to the cabin yesterday and spent the night.  I was looking forward to bringing home some rose hips and high-bush cranberries, and went there armed with empty containers and my new Alaska Berry Book! (I found it at Fred's for $10.)

But I came back home with the containers still empty.

All the berries must've been frosted multiple times already cuz there weren't any left hanging on the bushes.

No rose hip tea for me this year.

Bummer.

I forgot about those bird houses that we had left there to dry last time until I saw them again, still right where we left them on the front porch.  Chuck hung them back up in the trees.  Now they are just waiting for their new occupants.  Maybe I should've put a realtor sign on them.

This one almost looks like it could be haunted.

As you can tell, we were having wet foggy weather.  This morning when I went out to the outhouse, the temps were in the 30s, but it didn't feel that cold.

Inside the cabin, it was a toasty 80 degrees.

It was too wet outside for Chuck to work on trees, so he went up in the loft and tried patching up some insulation.  Yes, I know it still looks "bad" up there, but hopefully next summer, that will be improved.  The important thing is that it holds the heat in.

It gets really hot up there, which is why I keep pining for Chuck to take that upper level off, and just let the cabin have a low ceiling all the way across, so it'll heat up better in the winter.  But of course, he's not gonna do that.  He likes having that loft, and I suppose it does come in handy for people who borrow the cabin and they have more people with them.  But I feel sorry for the poor souls who have to sleep in that oven.  Chuck was sweating when he was working on it; it's must've been in the high 90s up there.

That is why we sleep in the bunk bed below:

I know this post is super boring, but I don't know what else to write about.  I'm just updating because I know my mom likes to look for something new to read when she gets on the computer at the library.

(Hi Ma!)

So anyhoo, even though it's cooler on the lower level, it still gets pretty warm.  When it gets that warm in there, I have to be careful not to get up too fast so I don't pass out again.

After Chuck was done with that, we went outside to practice our shooting.  

It was hard to tell if I was hitting the target or not, so we set up an empty can of beans.

And I hit it with my first shot.

But we won't talk about all the times that I missed.

Let's just say, if I was ever home alone and got intruded upon in the middle of night, I can just imagine myself saying something like:  "Who are you?  What do you want?  Get out of my house! I have a gun, and I sorta know how to use it."

Just ask Mr. Van Camp.

Swiss beans, anyone?

Gun practice didn't last very long because it started drizzling, and Chuck didn't want the guns getting wet.  And since the weather was preventing Chuck to do any work outside, we decided to pack up and go home.

Every time we leave the cabin, we always stop at the gas station just a few miles away (to go pee, and to buy something warm to drink for the road), and this time it was good that we did that cuz after we got there, Chuck discovered he had a flat tire on the trailer.

How in the world did that happen?

I know this post is painfully boring.  Sorry.

Let me digress.

Here is my first pumpkin spice latte for the Fall season, accompanied by some double-chocolate fudge cookies.  Now that pumpkin season is here, I will be drinking these lattes almost daily.  The ones at Starbucks are okay, but I like mine better, for taste and for health.  Ask Starbucks to make it with REAL pumpkin and add some ground flaxseed to it, and you will get a weird look.  At least mine doesn't have that chemical after-taste that you get at Starbucks.

Here are a couple of pumpkins that a friend of mine gave me.

A friend of hers let her pick what she wanted from their U-Pick-It farm, and she knows that I'm always looking for pie pumpkins, so she picked these for me.  Then she told me about that farm, which is only a few miles away from my house and I never even knew it existed.  So me and Chuck went there last week to see what she had left.  She still had some pie pumpkins left, so we bought 5 more for $25 (that was a special discount that she gave me because they were "rejects" at the farmer's market). Anyhoo, now I've got several pie pumpkins to keep me happy for awhile.

I need to buy some big carving ones though, for Halloween.

They can get quite pricey, so I am just buying them one at a time, whenever I happen to be in a store that sells them.  We'll see how many I end up with by the time Halloween gets here.  So far I only have one.

Speaking of which, one thing that I've been getting ready for is my Halloween "restaurant".  Right now, all I will say is that this year it won't be a "restaurant", but a Bed and Breakfast.

The Sleepy Hollow Bed & Breakfast.

As far as I know, everyone who reads my boring blog (what is that, maybe 3 people?), are people who I would normally send a Halloween invitation to, so I will not disclose any more information about that.  You will just have to wait until you get it in the mail.

I digress again.

Here is a birthday card that I made for my sister.

Her birthday is only 4 days before mine.  Weird, huh?

Karen, if you're reading this blog right now, please shut your eyes and continue scrolling.

Here is a wedding card that I made for my niece.  She is getting married only 4 days after my birthday.  Weird, huh?

Well, that's all I got.

Aren't you glad?

Hopefully, I'll have something for you next time that's worth reading about.

Fall Busy-ness

So, after we got home from Fairbanks last week, I had only a day or two to get ready for our midget guest again.  Here comes Dominic!

As usual, we had him for three nights and three days.  This time he slept a little better than usual.

But during the day was still a challenge.  To get him to take a good morning nap required a walk around the block in his stroller.  After getting back home, I just let him sleep in his stroller and he actually slept longer than the usual 20-minute nap.  But I wasn't so lucky with his afternoon naps, which meant he was crabby during the evening hours.  But at least that way he was tired enough to go right to sleep when we put him down for the night.

But he is such a good baby when he's had sufficient sleep.  

It's been kind of fun watching him every two months because I like seeing what new developmental changes he's made.  He crawls really fast now, pulls himself up on things, and a few times I caught him standing alone for a few seconds.  But when he realizes that no one is supporting him, he lets himself drop.  He has also discovered some consonant sounds which is really cute ("da-da", "ma-ma", "na-na", "ba-ba").

Anyhoo, those three days with him seemed to go a little faster this time.

We will have him again in November.

I got so used him clinging to me all the time, that after he left, at first I didn't know what to do with my arms.  They were FREE!  But it didn't take long for me to get my sewing machine out again.

I got this stack all done.  Now I have to cut them all in half.

I'm keeping the quilt update short because it's too boring.  Here is the next boring subject:

today we had a break from the rain, so after we got home from church we took down our greenhouse.  Kinda sad, but more of a relief because it's one less thing for me to tend to.

The back yard looks weird and empty now.

We moved the frame so Chuck could mow the long grass down.

Then we pulled everything out of the beds and collected some stray veggies that had gotten left behind.

And decided to just put all the buckets on top of the beds for the winter.

Then we emptied out the rain barrels.

I collected some of the dried out big stalks of corn because I might find a use for them for Halloween.

Which brings me to my next subject:  Halloween.

This year my theme is going to be.............(drum roll, please)

Actually, it'll be a combination of this story and a pumpkin theme.  I ordered the Kindle version of the book and have already read it twice to get some ideas.  I will probably keep reading it over and over for more ideas.  (it's a fairly short story)

In light of my theme, unfortunately, this is all the pumpkins I got from my garden this year.

Just two small pumpkins. They're not even big enough for a pie, unless I combine them.  I will probably just use them for my pumpkin spice lattes.  

BTW, see all the tomatoes we cleaned out of the greenhouse?  I tried making Fried Green Tomatoes with them last night.  They were good, but I don't understand the hype.

I'm getting off subject.

So, I have already been looking for ways to decorate my "Halloween room" with pumpkin vines going all over the place.  Too bad I didn't get more pumpkins from my garden cuz they are expensive to buy, and for this theme, the more the better, wouldn't you say?

So this is what I got so far, as far as creating pumpkin vines:

Green wire and fake leaves.  So far I only have one leaf attached because I did this when Dominic was here, just to test it and see how it would work out.  I bought a bag of fake leaves, and punched holes in all of them, now I want to attach them all to the wire.  I don't know how it's gonna look in the end, but I am still looking for other (cheap) ideas.  I was hoping to save my REAL pumpkin vines out of the garden, but they were starting to look like something that I wouldn't wanna put in my house. We threw them in the burn pile.

This is only the beginning stage where I get an idea and then work with it, not knowing for sure how I'm gonna make it happen, but somehow it all works out in the end.  My "restaurant" date is set for Oct 23.  Yikes, that's only 6 weeks away!

And this is where I start to panic.  

Time is never on my side, so it seems.

Stephanie's Moving Day-Weekend

Most of you know that my daughter Stephanie lives 6 hours north of us at Eielson AFB, but she and her hubby Isaac just bought their first house off-base in Fairbanks.  So we went up there over the weekend to help them move.  I was really glad to see Mica again (my "grand"kitty).  She is a really nice cat.  I would love to trade Kiska for her, but of course that's not gonna happen.

It didn't take very long for me to witness some sibling rivalry between Mica and Charlie:

Charlie likes to pick on her, but Mica has gotten used to it. (and Steph says it's good for her)                

We arrived there on Thursday night, and got busy right after breakfast on Friday, which BTW was my and Chuck's 28th wedding anniversary.  Steph felt bad about making us help them move on our anniversary, so she treated us out to breakfast.  Although, she didn't have to feel bad - she wasn't MAKING us help her (we wanted to).

Getting them moved really wasn't as big a job as I thought it would be.  I guess it makes a huge difference if there's no kids.  Plus, they've only been married for 5 years, which isn't a whole lot of time to accrue a bunch of stuff.  

Their house is really cute; a perfect starter home for them.  It's a small ranch style house with 3 bedrooms.  And the kitchen has a few upgrades in it, like a really nice stove and tiled walls, and she really loves her "island" counter.  Here is Steph cooking her first meal in her new kitchen - after we put enough things away to allow her to do that.  She was frying up some eggs with the zucchini and tomatoes that we gave her (yum!).

Lucky for her, they have in-floor heat so she can run around barefooted without freezing her feet off.  I don't have that luxury.

So Friday was basically moving stuff in there and unpacking, and putting stuff away - it took two trips, which wasn't too bad.  Although we did leave some unimportant things behind that they still need to go back and get.

For some reason they were having nicer weather than we were having here in Wasilla.  The temps were in the 60s there, and sunny.  Perfect for planting her rhubarb.  So on Saturday, we spent a lot of time outside.  Here is the rhubarb plant I gave her.  I hope it will be happy there.

Little did we know that there was another rhubarb plant hidden deeply in a patch of thick weeds and wild roses.  Steph and Chuck discovered it when they were looking around the yard.  So, after Chuck dug it up, Steph and I moved it out of there and planted it by the house.

There's no way to tell how long it was buried and forgotten in the weeds, but rhubarb plants are amazingly hardy plants. So I think once this thing gets a full dose of TLC, Steph will have another really nice rhubarb plant.

For their housewarming gift, Chuck insisted on buying them a new lawnmower.  But really, I think it was more for him than for them.  The lawn there was getting pretty long, and Chuck just cannot stand a neglected lawn.  It drives him crazy.  Even if it's not his lawn.  Steph and Isaac didn't own a lawnmower (they didn't need one on base), and Chuck couldn't bear the thought of that grass not getting mowed, so he bought them a lawnmower, and of course Chuck went to work mowing their lawn.....

...and Steph started digging around in her garden area in front of the house, getting the grass clumps and weeds out...

...while Charlie Doggins took a break from running around.

Charlie absolutely LOVES his new yard!  There is a lot of room for him to run around, which he did a lot of on his first day there.  He was SO EXCITED and he looks so cute when his ears are flopping up and down! When evening came, he was a very pooped pup and fell asleep on the living room floor.

Here is another small garden bed that is set away from the house, overrun with weeds of course.

I don't know what Steph will do with it, but I know they get a lot of moose in their area, so planting veggies is probably futile.  Unless she plants something that moose don't like.

Here is the back of their house:

They talked about expanding the back deck, but I'm sure that won't be anytime real soon.  The house has other minor issues that need to be addressed first.

I really like their yard.  They are surrounded by trees all around, so they have lots of privacy, and you feel like your "in the woods".

And another bonus is that their property (the back yard) goes right up next to the Little Chena River.

Steph has tons and tons of wild roses on her property, so I was kinda hoping to bring home some rose hips with me, but for some reason the rose hips were all kinda mushy, so I didn't bring any home.  But I don't know, maybe rose hips are supposed to be mushy?  I need to do more research...

So that was about it for that.  I'm sure as I type this, she is still trying to get settled in.  I look forward to seeing all the changes that she makes whenever we go up there again.

On our drive up there and back, I really enjoyed seeing all the fall colors.  We saw way better scenery than this picture, but Chuck doesn't like to stop to take pictures.  I only got this one cuz we had stopped to stretch our legs.  (Actually, I'm surprised that he even stopped just for that!)

Also, on way up there, passing through Denali Park, I happened to notice this little store tightly squeezed in the middle of a strip of other touristy stores.  I noticed two words as we whisked by:  "Fabrics" and "Scrapbooking".  All in the same store!  Yeah, that's my kind of store.  I knew I had to stop in there when we came through again on our way home.  And Chuck actually stopped for me!  Sometimes he's a pretty nice guy.........

Usually when we go through this part of the trip, these stores are all closed and dead because we always drive through out of tourist season.  But this time there were still lots of tourists in the area, so everything was open and the area was hustling and bustling with activity.  They did have some nice fabrics in there with moose and bears and things like that, but most of the fabrics were "batik" fabrics which I don't really wanna mess with cuz I hear that they bleed.  (why on earth would they sell mostly batiks?) They had some fat quarters for a pretty decent price that weren't batiks, and I kinda wish I had bought some, but I guess nothing stuck out and screamed "buy me!" As for scrap booking, they didn't have a whole lot, mostly bear paw stamps and some paper, and a few other odds and ends.  I ended up not buying anything, but it was fun to just look and see what they had.  At least now whenever we drive past it, I won't be longing to see what's in there.

Cuz now I know.

So what's next in my life?  Oh yeah, it's time to start thinking about taking down the greenhouse and putting it away, and then figuring out what to do with all those green tomatoes.  I think I might try "Fried Green Tomatoes".  I hear they are pretty good.  

I would love to let them sit on my counter and ripen, but we still have fruit flies all over the place.  And those things LOVE tomatoes, so I really don't want to have tomatoes sitting around all over, otherwise those pesky things will NEVER leave!  And they say not to keep your tomatoes in the fridge cuz they start to go "funny" sooner.  Plus, I don't think they would ripen in the fridge anyway, would they?

So, I'm sorta in a dilemma.

Maybe I'll try putting them in paper bags and sealing them up good?  But the flies might still find a way to get inside the bags.

I hate fruit flies.  I can't even make any bread anymore cuz they are attracted to the yeast when I'm letting my dough rise.  

Stupid fruit flies. 

They are infringing upon my constitutional right to pursue happiness and prosperity.

Maybe I need a lawyer.

okay, I'm getting dumb now

time for me to close this out