Waiting for Christmas (to be over)

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! 

Yes, I know that orange wall is hideous, please try to ignore it.

Now that my elf is hanging around in my kitchen, it's time to get busy.  My shopping is all done, presents are all wrapped and sitting under the tree; now it's time to start my baking.

I won't be able to make everything today because I don't have everything I need.  Tomorrow is another trip to the commissary.  But today I should be able to get some things done.  But waiting for that butter to get to room temperature takes a long time, which is why I have time to sit here right now and write another boring post.

I know, I know, I could nuke the butter in the microwave to speed things up, but I don't like doing that.

See my big metal bin of flour on the left?  I ground up 4 cups of soft white wheat berries to get me started.  I really love that wheat grinder!  I used to grind them up in my Vitamix "dry" grinder, which worked okay, but I could only do one cup of berries at a time, and sometimes it didn't grind consistently.  Then I was offered an opportunity to buy this one from the guy who was remodeling our bathrooms.  It's old but it works GREAT! I love that I can grind as much as want in one batch, and I love how the flour turns out - so light and fluffy!  No hard missed berries to sift out!

Anyway, I also ground up some rye berries to add to my gingerbread men - I'm thinking it would add a nice complementary flavor to the molasses and gingerbread spices.

I also like to mix in ground oats and/or ground barley.  Anything to help reduce the amount of white flour in my cookies and breads!

So, last weekend we were finally able to go to the cabin.

It was so fun to be riding on the snowmachine again!  Except my hands got really cold.  We thought we had everything we used to have, but now we realize that we forgot that we used to have the handle guards on the snowmachines to help keep our hands warm, so we will probably purchase some before we go out again.

When we got closer to the cabin, we had to stop because the trails were canopied by branches that were weighed down by snow and ice.  I had to try and lift them up so Chuck could get his snowmachine through.  Most of the rest of the trail was like this, so I ended up walking the rest of the way to the cabin, which was really tiring because the snow was deep, and it was the kind of snow that you sink down into after you step all of your weight onto it.  That kind of snow is hard to walk through when you're wrapped up like a burrito in heavy warm snow gear.  And it didn't help that the crotch of my snow bibs was almost down to my knees, making it even more difficult to pick up my feet.  I gotta try to find a way to shorten the torso length of those snow bibs. Anyway, I was hot and sweaty by the time I made it to the cabin, even though it was only 5 degrees out.

I had the privilege of shoveling off the porch while Chuck cleared the snow off the roof.And then we also got the snow off the top of the outhouse and the top of the wood shelter thing where we keep our stacked wood. The snow was hard to shovel because it was crispy, like it was thawed and refrozen a few times.

I love being at the cabin in the wintertime!  So quiet and peaceful and pretty!

Then we knew it would be getting dark soon, so it was time to start heading back.  Chuck gave me a ride back to the other snowmachine where we left it, but I still had to get off to lift up branches when they were hanging too low.  Do you know how hard it is to lift up heavy frozen branches?  I don't have the strength for that.

So that is all for now.  Hopefully now my butter is soft enough to mix up.

Merry Christmas!

December 2020

 Well, here I am again.  This will be a very boring post because I really don't have any gossip for you.  I'm just writing because I'm waiting for my cake to get done in the oven.  Is that a good reason, or what?

So I will just share a few photos that I took during the past couple weeks.

This is our neighbor dog "Einstein".  He belongs to someone a couple houses away down the road, but he might as well belong to us.

One Sunday afternoon we came home from church, and as soon as we opened the door, he came right in with us, as if he belonged here.  It took us all afternoon to find out where he lived because no one was answering both phone numbers attached to his collar.  So we called our neighbor and he told us where he belongs.  So I walked him over there and no one was home, but strangely enough, the front door was cracked open.  Einstein went right in and I didn't know if that was a good thing or not because I wasn't sure if we had the right house, and what if he was just walking in there like he walked into mine?  I knocked on the door, but no one was home, so I shut the door tight so Einstein couldn't get back out and went back home, not sure if I did the right thing.  

He's been here a few times since then.  Just this past Saturday he was here again.  It was zero degrees out, and apparently he was locked out of his house (again) because he was cold and hungry.  I gave him some snacks and let him warm up until he wanted to go back out.  But later he was whining and scratching on our door, so we let him back in.  Then later we let him back out.  But then he was back again whining and scratching on our door.  Poor thing.  When it was dark out, we let him out one last time and he didn't come back.  I have no idea what his owner is doing, but one of these days I hope to go over there and meet them.

Here is our grand-baby Pumpkin.  She is SO ADORABLE!!

Too bad she lives in Fairbanks.  I hardly get to see her.  :-(

 

We had a "winter wonderland" scene a few weeks ago, so I took this picture of our back yard.

My sun room hardly looks like a warm sunny place right now.  The windows are all frosted up.

And here is my very own brand new helmet!  We got our snow machines back, but we didn't get our helmets back, so we had to go buy some new ones.  Now we just need a weekend to go.

Here is our next house project.  Painting the kitchen.  That orange color has to go.  If you like orange walls in your kitchen, I don't know what to say.

In this picture, the samples look blue, but they are different shades of grays and tans.

I've got them narrowed down to two - Asiago or Gilded Linen.  I'm kinda leaning towards Asiago, and Chuck is leaving it up to me, so we should be ready to paint when Chuck is.  But that poor guy is overworked all the time, so I don't wanna pressure him.

Peeka found a sunny spot next to my pumpkin.  I recently baked and pureed the remaining pumpkins that I had left because they kinda clash with my Christmas decor, don't ya think?  They will look much better in a pie crust.

And now Peeka found a spot under my Christmas tree.

My cake will burn if I don't take it out 10 minutes ago, so that is all she wrote.

Happy December!

Halloween 2020

Happy Halloween!

As I type this, I am waiting for my first trick-or treater.  It's 5:30.  Where are they?

Actually, I would be surprised if we got more than three.  Three is my magic number because I know we have 3 kids in our neighborhood.  About half an hour ago, my neighbors drove past me while I was walking to the mailbox - there went two of our neighbor kids.  So now I'll be surprised if we get more than ONE.

I put Mr. Bones out on the deck to greet that one kid, if he ever shows up.

We have a long porch that leads into the gazebo, and I was thinking how fun it would be to decorate the gazebo and create a scary "hallway" that the kids would have to walk through to get their candy from the gazebo.  It would be a lot of work, but it would be worth it if we had enough kids come.

On the inside of the house, I no longer have a whole room to work with for my "restaurant", so this time it only took a couple hours to get my decorating done.  Mr. Bones showed up before I was even done decorating, so I gave him an empty cuppa joe cuz I knew he would be sitting there waiting a really long time.  I don't even know why he comes here every year.  I know he doesn't come for the fellowship cuz he never says anything, and he doesn't come for the food cuz he doesn't eat anything.  I guess he just comes for the attention.  Some people are like that.

It's kind of a bummer that I have to do this in my dining area, which is not separated from the kitchen.  It seems to really change the effect; it's just not the same as it used to be when I did this in our other house.  Maybe next year I will think of a better way.  One of my guests would not even stay in his seat.  Even after my repeated pleas to "please stay seated and wait to be served", he kept standing around in the kitchen.  This is why I need a separate room for this occasion.

I also did a little bit of decorating in the living room.  This is our first Halloween in this house, and all of my Halloween furniture coverings no longer match what I am trying to cover, so it's almost like starting over with all the wrong pieces, and this is also the first year I haven't bought anything new because this year I just wanted to get a feel for what Halloween would be like in this house, and then maybe I'll have some ideas as to what I might need next year.

Peeka found a cozy spot snuggling up to the scary baby.

My Halloween dinner went pretty well overall.  We had 4 guests:  PW and her boyfriend Ryan, and Rocky and Bonnie, our friends from church.  The food turned out "meh" but I think everyone had a good time.

Rocky and Bonnie got here late so we started without them.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well this litterbox cake turned out.  It really did look like a litterbox, and the "turds" behaved just like turds when I was cutting the cake (they stuck to the knife and I had to shake them off).

So overall, it wasn't the same as past Halloweens, just because I didn't get to decorate a whole room, but creating the menu and having the dinner was still a lot of fun.

I'm thinking about maybe doing a rat theme next year, but I'm not sure yet.

Six 'o clock now and still no trick or treaters.  But Chuck's friend showed up to sell us our snowmachines that we sold to him before we moved, so it's nice to have those back.  And now that we got snow, we're gonna need those to get to the cabin.  

What am I gonna do with that big bowl of candy???

A couple weeks ago we had our Tea Party for the girls at church (ages 18 and under).  All the little girls were so excited to dress up all fancy.  It turned out really nice; they made everything real elegant for them.  I was asked to help in the kitchen preparing some of the food.  It was a lot of fun to be working in the church kitchen again - just like old times. 

And here is Pumpkin's 5-week photo, taken LAST week.  In a couple days we will get her 6-week photo.  Only a couple more weeks and we can finally see her in person (or doggie)!  And that will be nice because the puppy cam doesn't work half the time and I'm tired of being disappointed that way.

So that's all I have for now.

Don't let the bugar-man get you tonight!

Fall 2020

 Hullo, all!

Happy Fall, Y'all!

It is so nice to have the season of Fall!  As much as I love summers in Alaska, I still think Fall is my favorite season.  Not only for the bright colors and the magnificent scent of dead leaves 

(deep inhale.....................exhale.....aaahhhhhhh!)

But also because there is a lot of fun stuff going on in the fall every year (can you say "happy birthday" and "happy Halloween"?)

This year in particular has been a busy Fall.  Because of our move, we had to start over with our garden.  I mean, we had to start over from SCRATCH.  We had to build our garden beds and order some dirt.  But it was all good because this way, we could put the beds where we want them AND we could get some GOOD DIRT.

This time we splurged on the good stuff.

This is the best organic compost garden dirt you can buy in our area.  It was expensive, so I hope it was worth it.  This was only the first load; the next morning they came back with the rest of it, so we had a pretty big pile.  We were just kind of annoyed though that the guy didn't go back further on the plastic.  For some reason he said "this is back far enough", but it wasn't.  I don't know what he was thinking.  The next morning before he came back with the 2nd load, we had to lay down more tarp, which was annoying because the back half of this plastic was still bare.  Anyhoo, that is my only complaint about that.

So now that we got the dirt, we need to get some wood.  In case you haven't noticed, the home improvements stores are lacking in lumber these days, so we had to spend the extra money to have some wood cut for us from a local mom & pop lumber joint in Palmer.  We ordered enough rough cut wood to build eight beds and then had to wait 3 weeks for it.

When it finally came in, we got to work.

We started with two and then it was getting late so we built the other six the next day.

The weather was perfect for this job.

And then we had to wait for decent weather to start filling them with dirt.

One evening we managed to get one filled, plus one of my compost compartments before it started raining.  The rest had to wait until the next day.

You probably can't tell in this picture, but two of the beds have a compost compartment in them so I have somewhere to throw my kitchen scraps.  One of them is filled up because I've been saving my kitchen scraps all summer and I needed to finally empty that bin, so I was glad to finally bury it in the garden bed (mixed with dirt and mulched leaves and dirt).  

It was a lot of work (it took two days) to get all the beds filled up with dirt, and then we put a layer of mulched leaves and grass on top.  I hope that was the right thing to do - we are just going to leave it alone now until next spring.

No, that is not our camper - we are just storing it for some friends for the winter.

You can see that we still have some room left to build two more beds, which we are planning to do next summer, and also another bed for raspberry bushes, and maybe also a strawberry bed.

I am really looking forward to gardening next year!

In the meantime, other things are going on here.  Can you tell it's starting to look like Halloween here?

You all should've gotten my "restaurant" invitation by now, so you know that I'm doing a Black Cat theme.  I haven't done any decorating yet, but I did manage to work on my salt and pepper shakers.

I can't believe I only have two weeks left to get ready!

Other Fall happenings include a new granddaughter on the way!

(the 4-legged kind)

Meet "Pumpkin"!

She is a poodle, and will be ready to be picked up in November.

Isn't she adorable?  Stephanie is the proud mother of this baby and I am the proud gramma. I have been watching her every day on the breeder's web camera.  She is walking around now and starting to play with her siblings.  They are so CUTE.

I can't wait to see her and hold her!

That's about it, except for one more thing.  I saw this in my yard yesterday.

I was beginning to wonder if the moose ever came to our neighborhood cuz this is the first one I've seen since we moved here.

Now I know.

And I hope they don't ever find my garden!

Okay, so that's all for now!

Happy Fall, Y'all!