Spring is Sprouting

 This will be a boring post because I really don't have anything to write about.  I just like to check in once in a while.    Isn't it wonderful that May is here?  Now Spring is truly here (in my opinion).

I haven't seen any flowers yet, but my garden seeds are really taking off!

Well, the important ones are anyway (tomatoes and celery).  I gave up on my strawberries; I will probably have to buy some strawberry plants from a nursery.  Also most of my sage plants didn't germinate, and none of my lavender or catnip came up.  My bell peppers - I don't know what's wrong with them.  I think I got only one bell pepper and one hot pepper.  My banana peppers seem to be doing okay though.  I've never grown any kind of pepper before so this is all a new experiment for me.

Our temperatures have been fluctuating so I am always shifting my plants around according to temperature and light.  When the sunroom gets close to 60, I will put my broccoli and celery in there, as well as some of the germinating seeds.

If it gets close to 60 outside, then I put my celery and broccoli outside.  They prefer cooler temps so if the outdoor temps get that warm, it gets too hot in the sunroom for them. If it's not warm enough outside for them, then I have to keep them inside the house in front of a window.

When the sunroom gets in the upper 60s, I move my tomato plants out there, and take my celery and broccoli out of there if the temps get in the upper 70s.  If it's warmed up enough outside, I can put them outside, otherwise I have to move them back onto the kitchen counter.  A lot of times the sunroom gets up in the 80s and close to 100.  Then I don't even use it cuz that is just way too hot for anything.

 Last week when the temps got in the mid to upper 60s (pushing 70) it was nice because I was able to move ALL of my plants outside.  It was perfect because it was really warm out (I felt HOT), they were getting full sun, and they also had the perfect little breeze to help strengthen their stems.  I think I have a pretty good head start on hardening them off already.

In the mornings I move some of my plants in front of the sliding door where the sun comes shining through.  It's a nice option when the sunroom isn't warmed up enough yet.  By the time the sun moves out of that position, it's usually warm enough to move my plants into the sunroom.  I just have to be careful not to trip over them because in the mornings is usually when I do my laundry and in this spot, they are sitting right in my path.

Chuck still works from home most of the time, but he went in to work on Thursday and came home with this plant that someone gave him.  It's a scented geranium.  I'm not familiar with geraniums, so I had to "google it" and find out what they are and how to take care of them.  This one is lemon scented.  You can't smell it just by sniffing; you have to rub the leaves.  And boy, oh boy, do you get a strong lemony-lime scent on your hands!  It smells so good!  I'm thinking I might experiment and rub some on me when I want to repel mosquitoes.  I don't know if it will work, but it's worth a try.  I haven't been bitten yet, but I have seen how big they are this year!  Last Sunday when we were leaving for church, they were swarming all over the car like we were in a freak mosquito attack movie, and they were ginormous!

Anyway, our snow is all gone and our kitties are so happy now.  They are spending a lot of time outdoors now.  Sometimes we catch Peeka burying her pee (or something) in a pile of dirt by the trees.  Hopefully, she won't get any bright ideas like that in my garden beds, which might look like giant litterboxes to her.

Sometimes Peeka is content to just find a sunny spot and sprawl out.

So that's pretty much it.  I know this is boring, but I just haven't really been doing anything out of the ordinary.  Most of the time just babysitting and nurturing my plant babies.

We won't be going to the cabin any time soon.  Spring is the worst time to go because it's too muddy.  Not enough snow for a snow machine, but too muddy, even for a 4-wheeler.  So we usually don't bother until the end of May.  But this year it'll probably be June because we are planning a trip to Fairbanks the third week of May, and the weekend after that I will be busy establishing my garden beds.  So there's another boring post for you to look forward to.

I hope you all are enjoying your Spring weather!

Spring is Here!

 Spring is here, but Peeka agrees with me that it still seems like winter, especially since we got covered with a new thick blanket of the white stuff.  No, I'm not talking about Oreos! 

I don't mind the snow.  I love it when we get dumped on!  Usually when a snow storm comes, Anchorage hogs most of it.  With this storm we actually got quite a bit, and Anchorage got even more.  No surprise there. 

Every day Peeka wants to check to see if winter is over yet.

She was disappointed this day.

But snow, or no snow, here in Alaska we MUST start our garden seeds early and not let the snow affect our judgment.  June 1 is my designated (outdoors) transplanting day, so it is crucial to get things started!  My celery and parsley have sprouted, which is very exciting!  It seems kinda weird to be sprouting these little green things when we still have 2 feet of snow on the ground, but to me, the little green things tell me that Spring is here, even if the snow says otherwise.

Two of my parsleys didn't germinate (yet) for some reason.  I will give them another week or two.  If they still don't show up, then I'll reuse those pellets for something else.  I don't wanna let those go to waste.  And I will just have to make do with 4 parsley plants instead of 6.  But this is why I always plant one or two extras.

Today I started seeds for spearmint, strawberries, broccoli, banana peppers, lavender, peppermint, sage, rosemary, Polar Beauty tomatoes, and Sub-Arctic tomatoes.  It was 80 degrees in the sunroom today, so I put them out there so I could still have my kitchen counter available to make supper.  I will have to move them all back in when the temps cool down.

The are already getting steamy under the lid.

Every two weeks I will be starting more seeds, as per the directions on the packages, so by the end of May, this table is going to be FULL!  Especially since a lot of these seedlings will be transplanted to little pots, which will take a lot more room.

I found a fun way to plan my garden beds!

These are only 4 of them, but since I have 8 beds (for now), I came up with the idea to make a visual aid to help me plan out my beds.  Since I've been collecting scrap booking tools for the last upteen years, I have quite the collection of various sizes of circle punches, so I put them to use.  I used the recommended "thinning space" on the seed packets to determine the size of the circles - 

one inch = one foot.

I used 1" squares for patches of veggies like carrots and peas.  I was NOT gonna punch out tiny period-sized dots to represent each carrot!  So there is probably some elbow room left in the patches because I may not even have enough pea, bean, and carrot seeds to fill up the patches that I planned for. (I could always buy more, I suppose.) This helped me figure out how much room I had and how many of each veggie I could plan for.  And then I cut out flower shapes for some specific flowers that I want to plant in the garden beds, and I wanted to make sure I planned out some room for them.

It took me a LONG time to punch them all out and label them, but I had a lot of fun putting the "puzzle" together, especially when referring to my "companion planting" notes.  I had to move things around after I discovered I had some things together that really shouldn't have been.

Anyhoo, I am on my way to gardening!

And that's pretty much all I've been up to (in my spare time).

Maybe in two weeks I'll fill you in on the next 6 veggies that I will be adding to my windowsill.

Sorry if this is boring.....

p.s.  Last weekend we went to the cabin, and I wanted to share some pictures, but I unintentionally left my camera in the truck.  So I took some pictures with Chuck's phone, but he is terrible about getting them transferred to the computer, and I refuse to keep asking him until I sound like a broken record.  So you will just have to use your imagination.  It was BEAUTIFUL.

WOW, has it really been almost two months since I've posted?  I'm sure no one out there missed me, but I am going to just "check in" for now.

I have to say that I am so glad that the holidays are over!  I have been free to busy myself with normal things like sewing and scrap booking.  I finally finished Stephanie's quilt, but I don't want to show it to you until after I give it to her.  It was a lot of work and I'm so glad that one is over!

So I started another quilt.  This time it's for PW.  She loves cats and owns 4 of them, so I thought I would make her a "kitty quilt".  About a year ago I started looking for different kitty patterns and thought I might make a kitty sampler quilt by using all kinds of different designs.  But then I found a cute pattern on the "Shiny Happy World" website and decided to go with that one.

I started with one sample block to practice with, just to get a feel for how to make it and to find out if I wanted to make any kind of adjustments for the quilt itself.  I thought it turned out super cute...

But what was bothering me about the pattern is that they look more like bears or dogs because of the way they have the mouth shaped. 

But I was pleased with the practice block, so went ahead and made the first block for PW's quilt.  This one represents her cat "Peanut", who is black, big, and fat.

Instead of a "bear" mouth, I gave him a little kitty mouth, which I think really gave him the right expression, and made him look more like a CAT.  I didn't do very well on the bow tie - I need more practice with my applique skills.

Anyhoo, the next one I made represents "Raptor".

PW says that Raptor is a biter, so I added some fangs.

PW's four kitties are going to be on colored backgrounds to make them stand out from the rest of the kitties on the quilt, which will be on neutral backgrounds.  So to add a few more splashes of color, I made some "MEOW" blocks, one in each color to match the backgrounds of the 4 kitties.

Then I finished making her other two kitties, "Ash" and "Galadriel".

Every time I make one, I snicker at them because they always turn out so cute!  But I still need to figure out a way to make the noses smaller - they just don't look right being that size.  It is next to impossible to applique pieces that small, especially if you're "turning them under".  I don't want to just fuse it on because it might fall off after several washings.  And I would prefer to turn them under so they don't fray on the edges, so I am still trying to find a solution to this problem, or I just to need to keep practicing with smaller pieces.  Anyway I think I am getting better with each one I make.

Here are two more that I finished.  The rest of them that I make will go on these neutral backgrounds.

The kitties themselves are wooly flannel; I wanted them to feel soft and cuddly.

I am using buttons for the eyes for the same reason I am having problems with the noses - they are just way to small to applique.  Anyway, I think the buttons give them more character.

The quilt will be really cute when it's done.  There are 12 different cat patterns to play with.  I'm not sure yet if I'm doing 6x6 array or a 7x7 array, so I will be making 3 or 4 sets of each of them.  It's also going to be "Quilt As You Go" because the blocks are 10", so I am letting the applique be the quilting, and that would be hard to do if the whole quilt was put together.  I am still very new at QAYG quilts, but after learning how to do it the HARD way with Stephanie's quilt, this one should seem pretty easy.

I think I might even want to make a quilt like it for myself, because I think it's going to be too cute.

Anyhoo, off that subject, we still get our neighbor visitor "Einstein" coming by once in a while.

Usually he shows up on the weekends.  He comes over and scratches on our door and whines, so we let him in.  He's all excited to get a snack from us, and then he leaves.  Sometimes he hangs around for awhile, but after we quit giving him snacks, that's when he decides he wants to go back out.  Some days he is out luck when I don't really have anything for him, but today I had some leftover turkey to give him, then he cleaned out the cat dish (he's never done that before!), and now he's eating a doggie snack - we bought a bag of doggie snacks from the commissary just for him, but usually he doesn't eat them - he would rather first see what I got in the fridge.  He must be really hungry today!  I feel so sorry for him when it's really cold outside.  I don't know if his owners boot him out all day, or what, but he often roams around in the neighborhood as if he has no home.  I suppose he's just making his rounds, seeing what other kinds of snacks he can mooch off of people.  I would really like to give him a bath because he always stinks, but I don't do it because I don't wanna send him back out in the freezing weather if he's still wet - and I don't wanna keep him in the house long enough to thoroughly dry.  So - me thinks his owners need to take better care of him.

So that's pretty much it, just back to my normal activities and waiting for Spring to come!  I already received all the seeds that I ordered, so I am impatiently waiting for March 9 because that is the earliest day that I can start planting seeds.  Celery and parsley will be the first ones that I start.  I can't wait!

I hope you are ready to read all my boring posts about my garden.

If your February is as cold as ours, I hope you are staying warm!

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!