Halloween 2016

You all already know that I was attempting to do a scarecrow theme this year, but for some reason, the stores don't sell a whole lot in the way of scarecrows, so I ended up leaning towards crows.  You can't really have a scarecrow without crows anyway, right?  After all, without crows, scarecrows may have never even been invented.

So this is what I ended up doing with my skeleton. PW never wants to dress up to be the "host" like Steph always used to do, so luckily I have a life-size skeleton to recruit for the job. I found the mask at Target and make him wear it, and sewed some patches on a pair of jeans that PW didn't want anymore, and put one of Chuck's old shirts on him.  And of course I had to have a hay bale for him to sit on.  I wish I had some old dried out corn stalks from someone's garden, but that's hard to find up here.

Notice the doll hanging by the neck in the window?

I found this doll at Value Village.  It talks and says creepy things when you move it around.  It is VERY sensitive - the slightest vibration will make it go off.  When I was carrying it around in the store, it wouldn't shut up because even just walking around with it vibrated it enough to say something (and it also plays creepy music).  When I was checking out, the cashier lady said "I was wondering where that noise was coming from......"  Anyhoo, I thought it deserved it to be "strung up", if you know what I mean.  That way, it would take an earthquake to set it off.

Ideally, it would be fun if I could always dress up according to my theme, as the restaurant host, but that never works very well.  I did that one year as a witch, and it was almost dangerous doing all the cooking in a witch costume - all that loose clothing getting caught on everything.

The last thing I wanna do is go up in flames as a grand finale.

Here is what my "restaurant", The Crow's Nest, looked like:

Every year it looks pretty much the same except for minor details according to my theme.

I always like the feel of the atmosphere when I walk in there.

Some of you that received my menu might be wondering what the food was.

I forgot to take pictures of the appetizers, but that was just some odds and ends of light finger snacks, and a small bowl of corn chowder, which you have already seen in one my previous posts.

Here is the Bootzaman:

VOGELSCHEUCHE MIT KARTOFFELKLOSSE

I found out that the German immigrants called a scarecrow a "bootzamon" (which later turned into "bogeyman"), so I wanted to do some kind of German dish.  Sauerkraut kinda looks like hay, so I decided to use that, and then made a face with the sausage pieces.  For the eyeballs, I shoved capers into small mozzarella balls and then put those into pieces of sausage.  The German word for scarecrow is "vogelscheuche" and the German word for potato dumplings is "kartoffelklosse".

So...."Vogelscheuche mit Kartoffelklosse" translates as "Scarecrow with Potato Dumplings"

served mit maiskolben on the side (corn on the cob).

I knew my kids wouldn't eat the Bootzamon, so I made them "Eat Crow" instead.

That one is pretty obvious.  It's just chicken wings.  The "parking lot garbage" was pieces of grilled cheese sandwich. 

For one of the desserts, I made "Scarecrow Brains" with malignant brain tumor.

It is rhubarb crisp with vanilla ice cream.

I made the vanilla ice cream myself because I can't have dairy.

I make my ice cream out of coconut milk.

The sauce is rhubarb-raspberry sauce that is Alaskan made.  

Very yummy.

Again, I knew the kids wouldn't eat that, so for the other dessert, I made "Compost Rot".

It is hot fudge sundae cake with store-bought chocolate ice cream.  I haven't had store-bought ice cream in a long time, and now when I see it, it's disgusting to me.  Even scooping it out of the box, it feels all "wrong", like it feels spongy.  That can't be real food. But that's just me.

Here is some extra "chocolate sauce" to drizzle on your synthetic ice cream if you want some:

I don't know if you can read all of that, but you get the idea.

So that was pretty much our dinner.  We didn't invite anyone over this year, so it was just us this time.  

Unless you count Bossy:

After it was all over, I had the whole weekend to start packing some stuff away, and moving some of my decorations outside on the porch to greet the trick-or-treaters.

So that's about it.  

Now, for the huge task of putting everything away.......

.......until next year.......

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.

How Much More Can A Canner Can?

Growing my own veggies certainly has its rewards, but at the end of the growing season, all those rewards come with the price of labor.  

Canning really isn't that hard, it's just time consuming.

And it's also very demanding because produce goes bad very quickly if you don't take care of it soon enough.  So, when the produce is ready, just like when a baby cries, you must set everything else aside and make it your priority to preserve your rewards, unless you don't mind eating rotten rewards.

A lady at church gave me a box of apples.

(Oh yay.  More work.)

I was excited about this because it's relatively rare to find apple trees in Alaska.  I don't know exactly why that is - I guess because they just don't do very well here and they have to be a certain variety.  I wanted to start my own apple tree years ago after we moved into this house, but Chuck was never into that idea.  Unfortunately, it takes several years for an apple tree to produce anything worthwhile, so it almost doesn't pay to start any apple trees now - not with Chuck's looming retirement years coming (who knows if we will end up leaving right when the apples start coming in?)

Yes, Chuck is starting to make talk about retiring in another state, but it's too sad and depressing to think about that,  so .........

back to the apples.

I've never canned apples before, so I looked up as much information as I could, and proceeded with hope that I knew what I was doing.

I had about 17-1/2 pounds of apples to work with.  This wouldn't have been so bad if the apples were larger, but all these small apples took a long long long time to core and peel.

After getting about halfway through them, my apple corer tool broke.

Argh.   (what cheap junk!)

And that made the rest of the job seem even more tedious and long.

But I got through it.

I divided my apples up into 5 pound increments.  Focusing on 5 pounds at a time seemed less overwhelming than 17-1/2.

I used 10 pounds for plain ol' sliced apples that I can use for pies or whatever.

And out of the rest of them I made applesauce.

I ended up with 6 pint jars of sliced apples, and 8 1/2-pint jars of applesauce.

It turned out that apples are very easy to can because there's nothing to measure, and no chemical science behind it.  

Just very time consuming to prepare the apples.

It took two days to get these apples canned, and I could finally relax.

But then I checked to see how all those tomatoes were doing that I put in brown paper bags to ripen.

Siiiiiiiggggghhhh.................!

I guess I got more canning to do.

In the picture it might not look like a lot, but.......it's a lot.

Especially when you look at them and think about the long tedious job of coring them and peeling them.  Each individual one.

I didn't plan on spending my day doing this today, but I know it's gotta be done asap.

But I just remembered I have to bowl tonight, so these tomatoes will have to wait until tomorrow because I hate to start a big job like this if I'm not sure I can finish it. (sometimes I wish I had a maid to help me get things done.)

I never thought I would say this but........I think I'm sick of canning now.

I don't even really wanna look at that big pile of tomatoes sitting on my counter.

If I wait long enough, maybe I can get Chuck to help me with them.

And this is only half of them.  There's still a lot more green tomatoes in my pantry that I will have to deal with after they turn red.  

But I suppose it would do me much better to think about how blessed we are to have them, instead of thinking about the work involved.  At least I can take a break from buying canned tomatoes for awhile, which have been linked to cancer (so some say).

In the meantime, when I'm not busy in the kitchen hording my winter vittles like a squirrel, I'm still working on my Halloween plans.

Only a few weeks away!  YIKES!

So much to do, so little time.

I started working on some cards and also made these scarecrow treat boxes.

I love getting creative with my Halloween stamps!

It is SO fun!

Can you find the Waldo scarecrows hiding in my pumpkin patch?

They look pretty cool when they're all lined up on the windowsill.

Hmmm..........I wonder if I could somehow attach them to a scarecrow body.

This time of year, I'm always thinking.

I hope my next post won't be about canning.

We were invited to go on another 4-wheeler trip this weekend to Knik Glacier, so if it's not too cold out that day, maybe I will have something else to post about.

But hey, you're the one who keeps coming back to read my boring posts, so what can I say?

While you wait for my next post, be sure and count your blessings.

All of them - right down to the last tomato.

God is good.

Our New Church Building

At last we are moving into our new church building!

We have been waiting for this for YEARS, particularly anxious since May of last year when we sold our old building, which is now a funeral home.  We have been conducting our Sunday worship services in the "funeral home" for over a year, and this transition mode seemed like it was lasting too long because we were going without our Wednesday night classes, and also no potlucks.  I will admit that I was pleasantly getting used to not having classes on Wednesdays, but I am really glad that we can all get reunited again as a church family should be.

Yesterday was our first worship service, so during the past two weeks, several people have done what they could to move stuff over from the old building to the new one.  Me and Chuck cleared out a bunch of junk that was all stashed in one room (now the Young Adult room), and we hauled all the junk out to its proper places.  And then we vacuumed up the construction dust out of three of the classrooms that were ready to be vacuumed.

Here is one of the rooms that I will be teaching in, starting in December.

I like to call this "my room".

There's nothing to see in there, except for some more dust that Kirkland left on the carpet after he hung up the dry eraser board.  Sort of annoying after I had it all vacuumed, but I guess it's a small price to pay to have a dry eraser board in there, which is very important to me.

If I'm not needed in the 3rd-5th grade class, I will be teaching in here instead:

I prefer to teach the older class cuz you can do more with them since they are better at reading and writing, but depending on what the lesson is, the younger class can be more fun if I think of a fun activity to do with them that would be too lame for the older kids.  So I always tell Mark to just put me in either one where he needs me.  I will find out which one when the time comes.

Our preschool classroom now has it's own toilets.  

I asked PW to take a picture of me next to them so you can see how tiny that little one is.  It is the teeniest tiniest toilet I have ever seen!  Isn't it the cutest?

Robert said the delivery truck actually said "PEE WEE" on it.

Here is our auditorium:

We only had enough chairs to fill up half the room - I think it is in our plans to purchase more.  I think I heard someone say that a few people had to stand yesterday, but I don't know if that's true cuz we were sitting towards the front. The rocking chairs in the back are for the moms (or anyone) who needs to rock a tired baby.  I hope they fixed the squeaky ones!

Here is a picture of our "fellowship hall".

We need to add more tables in there. Yesterday during potluck, some people had nowhere to sit.  It'll be so nice when we have our holiday dinners and other special events because in the old building we used to have to clear out the auditorium to decorate it, and it was always a lot of work.  Now we can just decorate this room without having to clear out any furniture.

Now here is MY department - the kitchen area!

I am going to be making the potluck drinks again, a job that I am so excited to be doing again.

But as you can see, the kitchen is still unfinished and is a disorganized mess.  This row of tables is for all the potluck food.  

I was disappointed to see the inside of the kitchen set up like this:

They have the drink table set up right in the middle of traffic flow.  More on that a little later.  First we gotta find all my STUFF.

Me and Chuck searched through all the boxes to find all the things I need to make my job efficient and successful.  We went through a lot of boxes but eventually I found everything I need.  The only thing lacking was a kitchen sink which isn't installed yet.  So the next morning we had to haul water from the Janitor's Closet which was ALL THE WAY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BUILDING!  And it's a really big building!  Seems even bigger when you have to make multiple trips carrying big heavy containers of water.  I told Chuck we should've brought our wagon (or any kind of cart with wheels), but it turned out that several people helped us haul water, so it wasn't too bad.  I just hope they have a sink in the kitchen by next week.

But I wasn't complaining about that part cuz I know that's just a temporary thing - I had a different complaint, and I did certainly let myself be heard!

See those tables on the right side, covered with boxes and junk?  Those tables are put there to be "crockpot warmer tables".  When people come in, they are supposed to put their crockpots there and plug them in to keep their food warm, and then later when potluck starts, all those crockpots get moved to the tables on the other side of the wall (as shown in one of my above pictures - you can figure it out). Anyhoo, this arrangement did NOT work for me AT ALL!  It was hard enough for me to get all those drinks done in an unfinished disorganized kitchen with no running water, but then add people who mill around, standing in my way, and people just walking through there as if it were a thoroughfare,  and people going in there to get something to drink before I'm even done making them - no way is that gonna work for me.  I will go nuts if I have to deal with that every Sunday.

So after worship service, me and three other ladies were standing by and observing how potluck was going, and how the potluck line itself was working, and we discussed the glitches and how we can improve them (or get rid of them).  And I opined to them about my situation, and we are going to keep trying different things until we get it right.  I suggested putting those crockpot tables on the other side of that wall, but the problem is that the outlets are on the inside.  I would really like to have the drinks so they are facing out though the window, so people don't even need to go into the kitchen at all. Actually, that is how I envisioned it was going to be, so I was disappointed and frustrated with this setup.  I don't know how we're gonna end up doing it in the end.  All I know is that I cannot keep doing it the way it was done yesterday.

I must try to be patient while we figure something out.

Anyhoo, our first worship there was really nice.  After being so crowded in our old building, it was nice being able to walk from one part of the building to another without running into a "road block". Right now things are a little chaotic, a lot of things still need to be done in the building, but I know in time we will all feel quite at home there.

Now for my other subject that you will probably get bored with.  We had a couple warm sunny days last weekend, probably the last warm sunny days we're gonna get before the snow flies, so we took advantage of it and finished harvesting everything that was left in the garden.

Got lots of tomatoes:

Most of them are sitting in brown paper bags right now.

Carrots:

I don't know why, but this is the 2nd year now that my carrot crop left me disappointed.  Most of them for some unknown reason stayed baby-sized.  Oh well, they still taste really good!  I wish the store-bought carrots tasted like these!

Pumpkins and squash:

I got 5 pumpkins out of my garden, so that's not too bad.  Plus my friend Marlene gave me one that she didn't want.  I will probably still buy some though.  I can never have too many of those sugar pie pumpkins.  Marlene also gave me a squash that she didn't want.  I don't know how anyone can not want a pumpkin and a squash, but she knows I look forward to those every year.  Maybe she was paying me back for letting her pick all the blueberries she wanted.  And I also gave her a few bags of my tomatoes cuz she said she didn't get very many of her own.    It's kinda nice having abundances  of harvests that we can trade and share!

My poor, poor, poor, poor sunflowers:

Winter is coming and they are not gonna have enough time to finish doing what they do.  Plus they've been blown over by the wind a couple times, I'm surprised they're even still alive.  I don't know what to do with them, other than just let them die and dry out and then I can use them for Halloween decor.

Well, that's about it for now!