Ghosties 'N Ghoulies....................

We'll see if we get any Trick-or-Treaters this year. The last couple years we haven't had a single one. Getting candy just doesn't seem to be a big deal for kids any more or else they're just too lazy to walk almost a block to the only house on the street to get it. Walk..........who am I kidding??? Parents drive them from house to house. Sure different from when I was a kid, or when my kids were young.

My beautiful new...............

........kitchen range.



I had to share a photo while it's all shiny & new. It sure is great to have more than one just-barely-working burner. Got a good deal on it too. It has a small dent at the bottom of one side so they gave me $75 off. With the difference in sales tax it comes to about an $80 savings. The cabinet beside it completely covers the dent. I LOVE my $80 dent!!! LOL

I finally finished ripping & resewing the Bricks & Stepping Stones blocks. Now I just have to pick off loose threads & press them again. Still can't believe I messed up such a simple block. The lesson here is, "read the directions" rather than just sewing stuff together willy-nilly.

Finally....SUNSHINE!!!

That's right, we had sunshine today. I finally felt wide awake and didn't yawn once all day. It's only supposed to last 2-3 days so we'd better enjoy it. Fall is kind of a bust this year. It froze hard so early that there won't be any "pretty" this year. And all the gloominess certainly brings a person down.

So what did I do today? Well I vacuumed & vacuumed & vacuumed some more. Then I spayed with flea spray. Yes, my cats had fleas and therefore my house had fleas. Advantage seemed get rid of them on the cats and all the vacuuming and spraying seems to have them out of the house....after spending about $100 on spray, Advantage and flea collars. They've been really bad this year.....my pets weren't the only ones in town infected and I know of people in Colorado & Florida who have been fighting them as well. Call it "flea terrorism."

One good thing came of it though. I pulled everything out from under my bed to clean & spray since one of the cats likes to hide under there and found a box with three quilt UFOs in it (is that really a good thing?) that I thought I accidentally threw out when I painted the bedrooms three years ago and switched the bedroom and sewing room around. And that's the only even remotely quilty that happened here this week. :)

Let's take a vote....

....and here's my vote!



That's right, it's snowing again and I say it's time to vote NO on this nonsense!! Maybe Mother Nature would do the democratic thing and stop the flakes. Spring was short, Summer was weird and now it looks like we're skipping Fall. Let's vote in some sunshine, ya'all.

Keeping busy doing nothing much

This is the scene that greeted me yesterday morning.....





This is the second time it's snowed and it's not even the middle of October yet. What happened to Fall?? The Old Farmer's Almanac is said to be predicting a long, snowy, cold winter. Could they be right? It's off to a good start.

There hasn't been much quilty activity going on around here except for going to Quilt Club last night. Our friend Lori from SD & her sister joined us. Her sister doesn't sew but I think she got a kick out of watching the whole proceeding. Luanne, our hostess had us do string blocks....would you believe we got all 48 of them sewed. We jabber a lot, but we work as fast as we talk. We're well-fed too...Luanne brought all kinds of goodies and some absolutely fantastic cheesecake made by her daughter-in-law.

What's been keeping me busy lately is dehydrating apples & pears, making deer jerky and some chokecherry jelly. The dehydrator has been working overtime...the pears are getting too ripe too fast.



The picture includes the three "do-overs".....jelly that didn't set up. Wouldn't you know it was the box of Sure-Jell that I just bought that didn't set up....the 5-yr. old boxes and the boxes from last year worked just fine. Go figure!!!

Since it's pear season and pear season is short, I've been making French Pear Pie every few days. Yum. And since we've been eating so much pie it's probably a good thing the season is short.



It's really not fair to show a picture of food without the recipe so here it is:

FRENCH PEAR PIE

Single pie crust to fit your pie pan.

Filling:

Enough peeled, sliced pears to fill pan
3 T. frozen orange juice concentrate
1/2 t. dried lemon peel
2 heaping T. cornstarch or Clear-Jel (I prefer the *Clear-Jel)

Mix thoroughly, pour into pie shell.

Topping:

1 C. flour
1/2 sugar (increase both of these a little if your pan is larger than 9")
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. ground ginger
1/3 - 1/2 C. softened butter or margarine

Mix well and put on top of filling, pat it down firmly. Bake at 375 for 45-50 min.
Test with a toothpick to be sure pear filling is done.

Cool and enjoy with a generous helping of vanilla ice cream on top.

* The catch with using Clear-Jel is that it is only available on-line or from Amish bulk food stores.

Eye candy

Today's eye candy is my Bricks all sewed to the Stepping Stones and pressed.



Behind them is a pile of scrap strips left over from the backings of quilts. I cleaned out underneath my quilting machine. Yaaaay me!!!! LOL They'll most likely get cut into strips for Heartstrings quilts but I AM considering cutting the cat fabric into bricks along with a bunch of my other cat fabric and making another Bricks & Stepping Stones quilt. Don't know what I'll use for the Stepping Stones yet but I'm considering an assortment of hand dyes. What do you think?? Or should I just stick to two colors? Hmmmmmmmmm

Today I've been deeply into harvest-type things again. First thing this morning I got a load of apples in the dehydrator.....Golden Delicious...and they ARE delicious. After lunch I went out to the garage and found some of the ripest pears and made a French Pear Pie. It's in the oven now. Maybe if I remember I'll post the recipe in a later post. We really like it with a good helping of vanilla ice cream on top.

.............Had to take a minute to take the pie out...looks good.

Once the pie was in the oven I pulled on my gloves & went to dig in the freezer for some bags of chokecherries I put in there more than a couple years ago (can't remember exactly) and put them on to cook. It was either they were good enough to cook or they were getting thrown out. They'd been in there long enough. They seem OK so I'll make jelly on Tuesday since I work at the library on Monday.

DH picked the squash & pumpkins today. There are only four big, orange pumpkins, just enough for each grandchild & us to have jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. The squash more than made up for the small number of pumpkins...65!!! My friends & neighbors better lock up their houses and cars or they might find them full of squash. LOLOL

Happy Halloween!!!

It's a little early, I know. I found my new blog background at thecutestblogontheblock and thought I might as well get a leg up on my Halloween decorating. It might be the ONLY Halloween decorating I do!! LOL I love Halloween and have a couple of boxes of decorations stashed in the basement storeroom, but somehow or other a bunch of other stuff has gotten piled in front of those shelves that I'd have to climb over/move to get to them. How does that happen anyway??

In a way, Halloween is the perfect holiday. You can decorate as much as you want, make special treats and eat all the candy you can hold. No presents to buy and wrap, no big holiday meal to cook, no house to clean so guests to the big holiday meal can get in the door. Just fun, fun, fun.

I've had a couple Halloween/Fall quilting projects hovering in the background for a few years now. Will I get them done this year?? Probably not, but they're fun to think about and look at the patterns and pet the chosen fabrics. Sometimes that's enough, ya know? The new blog background does put me in the mood though.

The week so far

It was hard to get out of bed this morning since it was so dark, gloomy & windy. The forecast is for even stronger wind for tonight and tomorrow. Maybe I'll sleep in in the morning. Yeah, right!! I never can sleep past 8:00 no matter how hard I try for later. :)

Monday and Tuesday I made deer jerky a little different than we have always made it. Most years part of the meat gets made into summer sausage but last fall we didn't need any more of that so the meat just got cut into chunks and frozen. We have always made jerky by slicing some of the meat, soaking it overnight in a flavoring & salt solution and then drying it in the dehydrator. This time we used ground meat, Jack's Links original flavor jerky cure & seasoning mix and a "Jerky Gun." It turned out pretty good, but a little peppery for us. I think for the next batch I'll use all the cure but a bit less of the seasoning mix.

Tuesday night I went to my oldest grand-daughter's freshman volleyball game at Pierce. They won in two sets. And I found out the difference in having the game at the high school gym instead of the downtown auditorium gym. When freshman games are downtown they go for three of five sets and cost $1. At the high school they play for two of three sets because the JV and Varsity teams play too and the cost is $5. You have to pay for less bleacher butt, apparently. :)

Last night I worked on my Bricks & Stepping Stones for a while. All the 4-Patches are sewed to the bricks now. My least favorite part...pressing...has to be done now. I've made a lot of blocks, now I have to decide if I want to make a twin-size for the bunk beds or a bigger one. Guess I'll wait and see how far the blocks go. Is that relaxed, or what?? :)

Today was spent at the library. There was some end of the year stuff to do and new books to unpack. Otherwise it was pretty quiet. People who weren't at work didn't want to come out in the cold wind, I guess. I go back for the evening hours but don't expect it to be too busy then either.

Sorry there's no photos but some weeks just don't warrant a lot of picture taking.