Getting Ready (for Halloween)

Wow, has it really been almost a month since I last blogged?

Time escapes me when there's so much to do.

What I've been up to is probably boring to you, but not to me.

I've been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for Chuck to get my Halloween stuff up out of the crawlspace, but he's never as zealous as I am to clutter the house up with Halloween decor.  And when he waits until the week before, it almost doesn't even seem worth the trouble anymore.  But anyhoo, it sorta worked out for me cuz I was completely immersed in getting my cards and menu done, and it's really hard to focus on decorations and getting those done at the same time.

Now that I got them all mailed out, I'm ready for Chuck to get my Halloween stuff out now.

Today is Friday.  Tomorrow is Saturday.  This would be a good time.  Yeah.

While I am waiting, I decided to work on those "little things" that might bog me down later, like decor details, and little extra embellishments for the dinner platter.  That way I will have them ready when I want them.

I have been trying to think up stuff to put on display that would represent Angelique, so I came up with these tarot cards.

I wrapped a regular deck of cards in black paper and decorated it.  The judgment and death cards were printed off the internet.  That's as far as I wanna go with those.

As you can see, I also started decorating some candle sticks.  I know the blue candles seem to offset the Halloween mood, but they were blue on the show, so that's what I wanted to stick with.

There are some other things I can think of that would represent Angelique, but I need Chuck to get my stuff out of the crawlspace.  I really don't wanna go Halloween shopping again until I know for sure what I need.  You would think Chuck would understand and concur with this ideology.

I also need to find ideas to represent Barnabas, a werewolf, and ghosts.

I really need my stuff!!

This seems like old news now, but a few weeks ago, a lady at church was giving away a bunch of apples and told everyone to "help yourself" to them.  So Chuck and I took two plastic bags worth.  I was grateful to have them, but soon lamented about how small most of them were.  There was no way I was gonna peel and core all those little apples!  My intent was to just make applesauce with them, but this time I decided to just leave all the peels on them.  Why throw out all that healthy fiber?  At first I didn't know if this would ruin the texture of the applesauce, but my food processor pulverized them well enough, you really can't tell the peelings are in there.  The only difference I noticed is that the applesauce was a bit thicker than I expected, which can easily be fixed by adding some water.

It made a LOT.

My bowl runneth over.

Anyhoo, I spent around 5 hours quartering and coring all those apples, and ended up with 29 8-oz jars.  That should cover a lot of pancakes.

And the next day at church, another lady asked me, "Do you want some apples?"

I said, "no".

Also on the same day, I tried making the salsa that I wanted to make last year, using up 5 pounds of green tomatoes, which we had a lot of.  (I also mixed some red ones in there to give it some color.)

I should have cut the recipe in half cuz, just like the applesauce, it made a LOT.

My pan was heaping full, and that was before I even added the 5 pounds of chopped tomatoes!

(what you see here is chopped red peppers in case you were wondering)

When it was simmering, it smelled DIVINE!  Oh my, it smelled so good!!!

And that is why we were disappointed when we tasted it.  It didn't taste near as good as it smelled.

So, it's too bad we have a lot of it, but we'll eat it somehow.

Next year if I need another supply of it, I might try a different recipe.

Anyhoo, that was a LOOOOOOOOONG day of canning!!!

Then we had a visitor, but she didn't stay very long.

probably because my garden was all cleaned out.

"Where's the food?"

A couple days ago we observed our first white precipitation, only it wasn't in the form of flakes, it was more in the form of tiny pellets.

Does this count as our first snow?

I'm gonna say "yes".

And in the mornings, it is now cold enough to where we wake up to frost.

So that is pretty much what I've been busy with these past few weeks.

And now while I'm waiting for Chuck to get my Halloween stuff out, I suppose it's time for me to make some more bread cuz I ran out, and I don't wanna resort to eating store-bought bread.

I probably won't blog now again until after Halloween, unless something happens that significantly changes my life somehow.

So, I wish you all a haunting Halloween!