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!