Beanie's First Snow

To my surprise, I woke up this morning to a blanket of snow.

The first snow of the year is always exciting.

I don't know if I can say the same for Beanie though.

She was curious about it and sat in the door wondering if she should go out or not.

She is a year old now, so I'm sure she's seen it before, but I have no idea if she's ever been out in it.

She finally mustered up the courage to go out, but she was not willing to go the distance that she usually does.

Instead of bolting across the yard in the direction of the weeds, she stayed put on the deck and watched the snowflakes falling toward her from the sky, wondering if she should take cover or not.

It only took a minute for her to make up her mind.

Inside the house is where she belongs!

October 20, 2016

I have nothing important or exciting to say.  I just wanted to "check in".  I'm going to be pretty busy now through next week, so I thought I'd better sit down and chat while I can.

Here is a picture of a pretty sunrise we had a few days ago:

Last Sunday morning I took a picture of the moon on our way to church:

The picture doesn't do it justice.  It was pretty awesome to see in person.  It's kinda blurry cuz I was sitting in a moving car.

I don't normally take my camera with me to church, but I did last Sunday cuz I wanted to show you my "sink" that I am now working with when I make the potluck drinks.

Someone brought in some hoses and attached them for me.  It's WAY better than hauling water all the way from the Janitor's Closet, so I am NOT going to complain.  However, let it be known that the big professional sink in the back of the kitchen was hooked up this week.  So that is nice for the ladies that will be using that one.  Also, I suppose it helps me too cuz now I won't have to take all the potluck server spoons home to wash them.

I didn't mind doing it, but it's one less thing I will have to do on Sunday afternoons, now that we can wash them at the church building.

Since I had my camera with me, I took a couple pictures of our potluck crowd:

We got more tables in there so now it's no problem finding a place to sit. I'm not sure if those picnic tables are a "temporary solution" until we buy more tables, or if they are permanent.

Speaking of food, here is something that I tried last week:

"Aren't I cute?"

They are meatballs shaped like rats.  I saw this idea a long time ago and always wanted to try it.  It was kinda fun to eat them, even if they did remind me of our poor hamster. And it was kinda weird shoving a green pepper stick up his butt, but I liked the effect of it after it was baked. The ears were supposed to be zucchini slices, but I didn't have any, so I used mushrooms instead. He was also supposed to have chow mein noodle whiskers, but I didn't have any of those either. I will have to try this idea on one of my Halloween menus sometime in the future.

Outside of Halloween, today I made these blueberry hand pies.  The recipe suggested using store-bought pie crust to make the job go really fast, but I do NOT EVER buy store-bought pie crust!  Instead, I used a recipe I had for "pumpkin empanadas" and used that for a crust instead.  It turned out to be a lot of work and very time consuming, so I can see why buying a store-bought pie crust was recommended.   But they turned out really good (I already ate 3 of them!).  Next time I might try to make them using home-made pie crust and compare. But now that I made them "ala" empanadas, I might not like them as much with pie crust, but ya never know!  I sure do like having a freezer full of blueberries to play with! 

My Halloween preparations are moving along, but I'm sort of at a slight lull right now.  I can't do TOO much decorating because that room is where Chuck does all of his "church books", so I can't cover up the computer or his file cabinet until as late as possible, like the day of the dinner or the day before.  So for now, I did what I could, and I will have to do a lot of last-minute decorating in the middle of next week.  

This weekend I will be going through my menu so I can make a detailed grocery list of everything that I will be needing.  It looks like our Halloween dinner will be on Friday, so if I have all my ducks in a row, everything should work out fine.

Other than that, there's not much to tell.  It's getting colder outside now, and we started turning on our gas fireplace.  At first Beanie was afraid of it, but now she knows it's a cozy source of heat. We put this bed down for her, and when she sees that the fireplace is on, she crawls in there and takes a bath, so we call it her bathtub.

I Love October

I love October for several reasons.

I love the cool crispness of the air and the smell of dead leaves.   It should be a depressing season, knowing that it brings the cold dark winter months, and the days get shorter, but there is just something about October that makes me all happy inside.

For one thing, October brings my birthday.  I'm at the that stage in my life where I don't exactly welcome that annual reminder that I'm slowly turning into an old prune, but it really helps that my birthday falls in my favorite month of October, when most of my birthday cards and gifts are more likely to have something to do with Fall (or Halloween).

My daughter Stephanie sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers in Fall colors, neatly arranged in a ceramic pumpkin vase, and her note said "Have a spooky birthday!"

I loved that!

I also love the taste of October.

I had some leftover cooked winter squash from making squash bread, so I made my first pumpkin spice latte for the season.  Technically, it was really a squash spice latte, but after you add the proper spices, you really can't tell much difference.  It was a welcome treat.  I'm waiting for my next opportunity to cook more squash (or a pumpkin), but I'm sorta trying to save them for my Halloween decor.  In the meantime, I've been trying to buy some canned pumpkin, but the stores are always sold out whenever I look for some.  Sooner or later, I will probably cook a squash or a pumpkin just out of sheer impatience.

Bossy likes Fall too.

She likes Fall because that is when the heater starts kicking in again.  She loves to sit on any blowing heater vent and hog all the heat. It's funny that cats are always desiring to be warm and cozy.  I guess that's what makes them warm and cozy pets to snuggle with.  That is, if they are in the right mood.

As for Halloween, I'm still trying to work on my menu.  I made some headway, but what I lack is wit and a talent for creative writing to make it entertaining.  When I get frustrated and can't think of anything, I walk away from it and work on my decor.

This is what I got so far:

Don't be too critical - I'm not done yet.  Chances are, most things will get moved around and rearranged as I go through all the bins.

As for my scarecrow, I don't know what to do:

I don't want to use the skeleton for this because I don't think he makes a very good scarecrow, but if Chuck doesn't make a wooden stick figure for me to work with, I might be stuck using the skeleton.  Right now everything is still "in the works" as I try to get ideas, but I'm getting there.

So that is just a little glimpse of my October.