It's Beginning to Feel a lot like Winter!

This was the scene from my new vehicle's windshield the other morning. I knew it was going to freeze, but we rarely get these beautiful frozen crystals on the windows! When I was a little little girl, my Grandmother would tell me that Jack Frost had visited in the night & we would put our hands on the window & melt our palm prints out. I loved winter for that, it was the very first season I fell in love with. I haven't had a visit from Jack Frost in decades. This delighted me in ways I am unable to express. I hope their beauty in the pictures can delight y'all too.

We forgot to take our hose inside. Silly us. Apparently there was a small leak. I have no idea if the hose is ruined or not, but I thought it was very pretty the way the icicles formed and the icicle stalagmite next to the hose too. The weeds lived though!

WTF for the Day, Hopefully

So on the way to work this morning, I saw a big WTF. Thankfully, I had my camera with me at the ready AND I was stopped right by this thing at a red light that went on and on and on.

Look, guys! I know y'all have been wanting a new van. This one's only had 1 oner! At first, I thought that might be a Southernism for owner, but I started second-guessing myself.



I mean, I don't know a LOT about cars and their mystical components. I'm relatively mechanical and I can follow instructions to do simple things like fill my gas, replace spark plugs & brake pads, but that's about it. What if an "oner" is one of those mystical engine pieces you have to have special training to identify? I mean, this big ole' van only has 70k miles on it!

Right?



I bet the following picture is what your engine compartment looks like when there's only one "oner". Which would also explain the low low mileage!




Then again, that 70k might not be mileage. That might be the asking price. I mean, how else are they going to be able to afford a window-writer that can spell gud?

Gournay Potatoes & The Boy in the Box

I took some potatoes from my Mom's garden, a delicious red onion, and some herbs from my garden. Sliced thin & baked with cream and butter and Gournay, cheddar, and mozzarella cheeses until everything was tender & bubbly.

That is my recipe, above. I have no idea what quantities were used, just "enough". It was so good I could have married it. Unfortunately, everyone else felt the same way about it so there wasn't much left. I'll make it again someday.

Keegan is my little kitchen helper. He scrapes dinner dishes & pans for me, pre-dishwasher, and he unloads the dishwasher after it's run. I know, it's a hard life for a little boy. Well I asked him to scrape out a pan and he came from his room to do it... wearing a box over his head. No eye-holes cut out or anything. He says (muffled from inside the box, facing in the wrong direction from me because he can't quite tell where he is) "Mom, why don't you make me wear more boxes on my head?"

I think about this for a minute, trying to figure out if there is a correct answer or even possibly something he might want to hear, but I get nothing. The sound of the tumbleweeds in my sound-processor. So I did what I'd like to believe any good mother would do and I said rather gruffly, "I don't know, Mister, but you'll wear that box the rest of the night or you're grounded!".

His Dad helped him cut eye holes & a nose/mouth vent because the box was also a bit too narrow for his face & was pooched out strangely toward the bottom.

Apparently the boy has scraped dishes wearing a box before, it's messier than the normal procedure and the dogs are congregated. Look how attentively they are watching the pan. It's like a magic show just for them! "C'mon, box-boy, scrape faster" they're saying.

The Wily Kiefalope

Once known as my mild-mannered baby son, it has now grown to gargantuan proportions and nearly unbelievably is taller than me by more than an inch! I sent him off to his Grandparents' and a mere two months later he comes back to me OVER TWO INCHES TALLER!

I tried to explain to my Mother that it was completely unacceptable that she transformed my baby into a burly-voiced giant in under a sixth of a year but she completely ignored my complaint. I'm afraid to send the little one up there next summer. No good can come of it.

Here's a picture of Kieffer and me standing side by side. He now uses me as a comfortable armrest, towers over me, checks my hair to make sure the part is straight. All the horrible things we kids used to do to our tiny little Granny and we thought it was so funny (I'm sorry, Granny. If I'd known how terrible and traitorous we were back then I never would have adjusted your hair from above... I now know I deserved that elbow to the bladder). I KNEW I should have gotten Kieffer started on coffee earlier.

Fish

I'm Alive, if Barely Counts.

I've been cooking, have some good recipes to share. I've been knitting, have a crappy pic of my FO (Icarus) but nothing really good yet because my hubby is a slacker just like me and he's my designated photographer.

Instead of a proper post, I'm just going to post these crappy pictures that have been building up in my "Post About This" folder. Then I'm going to go knit some more on my Traveling Woman, because the sooner I can finish it the sooner I can start on my Aeolian. By the by, I only started the TW so I would have some beading experience before starting the Aeolian. That and I needed a project to be finished in under a month so I could feel like I actually do accomplish some things in a reasonable amount of time...

My brother, Scot, got suckered into going into the attic-from-Hell and installing a fan in my spare room. I took some pics. I call this his "Attic Bandit" look. The fan looks & works very well, by the way. I haven't told him yet but we're in the process of picking out fans for every room. He's going to be so excited!



This is a great ride I took with my best friend Scott. Normally I ride my bike & follow him, but I felt like taking pictures so I rode with him for a change. We didn't go far, because his back seat is about the size of a chestnut but he assures me (ASSures?ha ha ha) that there is a great product on the market that extends the sides of the seat for a more comfortable passenger ride. In other words, the big-ass-girlfriend seat extender kit. We had a great time despite me being a big-ass sissy.



Below is the great recipe I got from a friend. I hate exact recipes, so this is an approximation. Two cans of croissants, unrolled flat on foil. Squeeze or roll all scored edges together. Make a mix of about 2 cups shredded chicken, 1 cups chopped broccoli, 1 cup chopped red peppers & mushrooms if you so desire, a half cup mayo (I used ranch dressing) 1 cup shredded cheese, 2 cloves of garlic (pressed) and 1 teaspoon of dill weed. It's a rather dry mixture, add salt & pepper to taste. Spread it out along the center of the croissant panel. Cut your edges in about 3 inches to make strips you can twist & pinch over the top. The twist looks really neat when it's done. Brush bread with beaten egg whites & bake @ 350 for 25-28 minutes.



If you do it right it will be beautiful. If you're sloppy it should look like mine below.
No matter what it looks like, it tastes magnificent and it's really easy to do. Looks great, tastes great, not a lot of work. That's my favorite kind of recipe! By the way, I have an actual recipe if anyone really needs it. Most of my friends are cooks like I am, you get a general idea then go make it your way at home so that's what I've given here.



Now, ANOTHER kind of recipe is the one below. I have several tomato plants as some of you may already know. These plants have produced some fifteen THOUSAND tomatoes and are all over 9 feet in length! I have friends and neighbors avoiding me because I keep trying to give them tomatoes. That is pretty bad! They are delicious though, so I thought I would use some of them up in a homemade tomato paste. This pot is what I started with in the morning.



This is what I wound up with after it was all cooked down that evening. This equals one can of tomato paste as far as I am able to tell. I cooked it all day. Not so efficient, but definitely more tasty than the store bought stuff and I managed to not waste precious produce. I won't be doing it again, but for a learning experience it rocked.



I have been cooking a lot more, but I want to knit now that my duty is done. See? I'm still alive!

Got Some Gardening Done

(I just threw pictures in randomly, I'm exhausted, the next post will be more cohesive)

Between the lovely weather, my lovely job, and going to KY just about every single weekend - I haven't really had time to do anything I need to do. Like knitting, blogging, house cleaning. See how I snuck that cleaning one in there? Ha ha ha, as if THAT really ever happens. I clean less often thanks to my new lower standards! I recommend that to anyone who's stressed over a messy home. ;)

This past weekend I went to my Parents' place for the holidays. Mom fed us, Mmmmm! I got to shoot my new shotgun and subsequently severely hurt my shoulder. Turns out I'm a muffin, and when you don't really have fat shoulders/armpits, muscle definition, or sufficient padding you can really bruise yourself shooting something with a moderate "kick".



A lot of wonderful things happened this weekend, like Mom's cooking (just have to mention it again, it was THAT good), getting an animal-love "fix" from their herd of critters, seeing my Dad and harassing him, getting to play with the kids, seeing my best buddy Scott, & spending the night @ his house watching old movies & hangin' out just the three of us (hubby too). Mom loaned me her extra espresso machine! That's been keeping me wide awake since I got home. I'll have to post pics of it later, I think it needs a name - I love it THAT much. I also -finally- got the opportunity to bring back some plants since we drove up in PJ's car.



My Mom and I really really love our family heirlooms. We've got some neat stuff that's been in our family for generations. We've got a deerskin-bound lesson book/journal from a great-great-great+ somebodyorother that's just full of old math and calligraphic handwriting lessons. Apparently books were so precious back then you got one and made it last throughout your lifetime because he grew up writing school lessons in the book and used it when he was grown and working as well. We've got family bibles that helped my great-grandparents trace our geneology back many generations, from when we first came to this country. We've got some furniture from many other generations. And perhaps most tangible these days - we have flowers and vegetables from my great-grandmother's old home place gardens. A home that all of us remember living in at one time or another, five generations of us, that is now no longer in the family.

My Mom's garden at her home is all that's left now of what once was the old home place gardens created by my Gran. I got to take a huge clump of phlox and another of poppies. I didn't have room for asparagus, but will get some of that as soon as I've prepared a safe place to put it at my home.



So since arriving back home Sunday evening - in a torrential deluge, I might add, I've been pruning and weeding and trying to prepare my yard for the special things I've brought home. My neighbors must have thought I was crazy, pruning and digging in the rain. And for sure the mosquitoes thought I was a delicious snack no matter what the weather. But I got things under control and got about half the stuff planted. The important heirloom stuff definitely.

I got a butterfly bush, and a bunch of black-eyed-Susans from the horse fields while I was home too.



I don't know where I'm going to put everything, but I do know I'm very happy with the possibilities and I hope the cool weather stays long enough for me to at least get the yard mowed!



I'll post pictures as the yard progresses. Tomorrow night I'm having a friend over for espresso (which IS a good idea, no matter WHAT you say!) so I'll be neglecting yard and knitting again, but I'll try to post a espresso pic.