Happy Thanksgiving! I'll Be Back Soon!

 

Happy Thanksgiving! 

I'll be back soon to blogging! Watch for a new post next week, lots to share!

Gratitude, Winter Is Here/Food Preps

Gratitude -

I was going to do a "what I'm thankful for" post but didn't have time to get that done before Thanksgiving. So, while belated, here are some things I am EXTREMELY grateful for:

Surgery: One of the things I'm most grateful for right now is coming through some back surgery, solved a lot of chronic pain issues for the last year. I had two options, got two different opinions. The first doctor barely looked at Dave and I, rattled off a lot of statistics. Not a good fit. Second doctor, at a totally different practice, looked at us, answered Dave and my questions, outlined everything really well. Chose that procedure. Much shorter recovery time, surgery went well, I had immediate pain relief about 90% plus. I'm getting better each day! I've been off work the last two weeks, one more week off work then next week will start working half-time at home. Will gradually increase my hours till the end of the year and then back in the office in January. I am very grateful that I was already set up to work from home! My boss and my co-worker have been really supportive. Dave's such an incredible hard worker, and went above and beyond caring for me the 1st week after surgery. We had our 30th anniversary in this time frame! We were able to go out to dinner and relax.

New Tires: Dave took my Mazda in for a oil change and turned out the tires were really low, which was kind of a shock to us. We had about 20,000 miles onto 70,000 mile tires. Dave talked to them and since that was the place we bought the tires from they gave us a big credit towards new tires. They said they had problems with this make and model. We got brand new tires this weekend, huge discount. We also got a different brand so hopefully we won't go through this again. It was good timing getting the replaced going into WINTER since we're just starting to get some snow in the area. Nothing at our house yet, buT due this week!

Dave's Pal: Dave was thrilled that a longtime childhood friend Bob moved to our area. I had met him before, great guy. I am really happy they can spend some time together and hang out. We had him over for a simple Thanksgiving dinner, since he moved here three days before and didn't know anyone in the area. It was lovely! Really enjoyed my newer "buffet", after removing the computer in the kitchen last year, worked great for serving turkey day foods! Sorry no food shots-

Roasted some leftover pumpkins from the house for the girls-

 

 

Still wondering what they are?

 

 

 

Winter Is Here/Food Preps-

The cold weather has finally come! We had 18° weather last week, with our first snow forecast down in the valley for late this week. This is a time of year I stock up on certain things. We did take down all of the Autumn/Thanksgiving decor this weekend. I don't have any Advent/Christmas stuff up quite yet. I like to take a breather between the two. I did put my first holiday decor up, my favorite vintage jar with a little red berries on the kitchen window. We did make a run to Trader Joe's and I bought one of their nice small fresh candle wreaths that I actually hang on the kitchen wall. Bought some live red berries, some evergreen branches, an amaryllis and a few food items. Before surgery I totally forgot to buy some amaryllis bulbs last month. We went to Costco a while back and I needed some unbleached flour. I do try to do as much whole grain and I have tons of whole wheat/whole wheat pastry flour. At Costco they had a large bag of all purpose flour for eight bucks, much cheaper than at the grocery store so I bought a bag. I think it was 15 lb? 

I bought some wheat berries from the LDS Food Store online.  

Churchofjesuschrist.org/Food Storage Basically you can set up a new account if you are not a member, which I am not, and when you set up your profile there's a checkbox where you CHECK "I am not a member".  I got a really great deal on six cans of hard wheat berries for about $45. I think shipping was about $7? Took about 2 weeks but I'm really happy to have the wheat berries on hand. I think next year is going to be really really ugly for the wheat market in the US for the consumer. Really great thing is berries keep a long time in a cool, dry area in those cans. They do also sell other dehydrated things like carrots, potatoes, onions, beans, oats. I thought they had a really good customer service with shipping in a fairly timely manner. Also went thru my pantry, got out some of my stash of coffee beans. Bought more teas, cereals. Washed and sorted our winter hats and gloves. Using those already!

 

Here's a peek at our garden-random gorgeous fall colors here at our homestead- 

Our Oak Leaf Hydrangea

 

Backyard mound garden

Dave got the sun room up on the coop two weeks ago-

 

 

Bonnie enjoying the winter sun-

 

 

I had some scrap faux Ikea sheepskin (cut out a circle for Bonnie's kitty perch top)-

 

 

I thought I could winterize my little bench!

 

 

Just cut a curve and draped!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all! We'll be staying home since we rarely travel for Thanksgiving, which is fine with me. I've never been a fan of traveling for the holidays since so many things can go wrong weather-wise. Our first snow came this morning, about a half an inch here in the valley, nothing like they're having to the East, with blizzards! We have had severe winds up to 55 miles an hour. More snow maybe later this week. Living in the Northwest I've seen it all from snow to very, very icy conditions. So we'll be home with family relaxing on Thanksgiving! Anya is ready for some turkey. I decided this year to take today off for a vacation day, so I can do food prep and kind of relax! Here's a peek of a few of the things that are around the little homestead for Thanksgiving-

My fave thrifted embroidered piece

Mama Pea blogger gifted me with her mini quilt!

On the table tomorrow will be a nice big roasted turkey and all the trimmings.  Our two married girls will be here with their families! I'm really grateful for so many things and that's why Thanksgiving is really my favorite holiday of the year. It's not about buying or giving stuff. It's about being grateful for what you have. And I am.

First Snow Is On The Way!!!

First Snow Is On The Way!!!

Yes it is, happy dance! Luckily we're not travelling so life is good! Looking forward to some time off next week with family.

Fresh Eggs, Sunroom & The First Winter Storm, Thanksgiving & Family, Blog Re-Vamp

Fresh Eggs, Sunroom & The First Winter Storm-
Unlike some people I was really thrilled last night when I heard some really strong gusting winds hit the windows and heard the rain! It is been so long since we've had any rain, probably a couple months. We really don't get summer storms that produce any rain anymore. 20+ years ago, when we first moved to the Boise area, we would pretty regularly get some summer storms with thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. Those days seem to be over. This morning when we woke up there were lots of leaves on the ground and everything was really wet, perfect. Air smells great and there's still more rain headed this way today. David cleaned out our gutters a few days ago knowing the storm was coming in. It's so much easier to do in the leaves are dry in the gutters! Our maple tree still has quite a few leaves, but that's just the way it goes. Every year.

Sunroom on left

Dave decided to put the coop sun room up Wednesday since he had that day off work. We were both off work all week on vacation, a nice treat! Dave created this sun room for the girls years ago after I saw something similar online. We salvaged lumber, and bought some really cheap, used shower doors. Dave then built a frame for it and made it removable, so we can store it when spring comes. The chicken started exploring it as soon as he had it up. n space and they were taking dust baths yesterday. It just gives some extra room for the birds if the weather gets really bad. Ironically two winters ago when we had Snowmageddon 2017 we had decided not to put it up, go figure. That winter turned out to be the heaviest snow on record, or close to it, in the Boise area ever-

It's been really fun collecting eggs again! We've been getting one small egg everyday and I'm not sure if it's from one chicken or both of the younger ones? They're a little smaller so I suspect they're not from our two older hens. The really nice thing about having younger hens is that you know you'll have several years worth of fresh eggs. While the older hens are doing pretty well, they stopped playing when they went thru their Autumn molt. I suspect they will probably start laying again but time will tell.

With the colder weather I brought out my faux sheepskin chair cover from Ikea last summer, nice and toasty! My back always gets cold sitting next to the glass in the dining area-

The morning after

Thanksgiving & Family-
We had a really great time yesterday for Thanksgiving, and we hosted. I provided the following (sorry no photos)- the 22 Lb. turkey, Yukon Gold mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, homemade cranberry sauce (Emeril's), Indian pudding and a Flourless Chocolate Almond Cake.  Since Dave can't really eat dairy anymore I wanted to have a dessert that he would enjoy. My one daughter brought a pumpkin cheesecake and I made Indian Pudding, both with dairy. The chocolate almond tart was a big hit with everybody! I could go the rest of my life without ever eating another pumpkin pie anything. I'm just not a fan. Between an apple pastry my daughter brought, a berry pie, pumpkin cheesecake and the chocolate tart there were just desserts galore! I must say I really miss having a separate dining room that we had at our last house.

Dining table needs to be put back together

Our current house is smaller and has one space for the kitchen/dining area. With the table leaf we can seat 6 and you can squeeze in 8 if you need to. We also had a card table set-up that works next to that. It was a tight squeeze but we all had a good time and lots of great food and that's all that matters. We also had an unexpected guest which was fine, someone was at their families house and wanted to drop over. I'm a big believer in the idea that a house full of love has elastic walls. Ironically I had roasted an extra turkey breast for plenty of leftovers.The next day or two and I will clean off the carcass to make turkey soup.We don't watch football here, play computer games, we just talk and it's really nice to have just family. Someone in our family has gone to other Thanksgivings elsewhere and said there were just way too many people, friends, neighbors etc. They missed just having family time to just hang out. That's the way we like it! I hope you had a great one!

Blog Re-Vamp
You'll be seeing some changes on the layout of my blog soon. You may have already noticed a few? I'm eliminating a lot of the Amazon links on the left side bar since it wasn't really generating much income. For whatever reason people just weren't looking at various items. The reality is that I found I earned more money as a Hometalk featured blogger in two months than I did in the last year or so with Amazon, so I'm concentrating on that. My total out of all the years I have been blogging has been less than $120.00 or so. While I don't mind working for free I would actually like this blog to generate some income at some point. Time will tell, but you'll see some changes. I still may have specific items in specific posts with a link, but many of the other generic links will go away. Everything else is still there, just maybe on the other side of the blog.

Happy Thanksgiving To You And Yours!

Happy Thanksgiving To You And Yours!

Anniversary Road Trip, Winter Is Here!

Anniversary Road Trip-
Last year we went to the mountain resort of McCall, Idaho for an overnight trip for anniversary. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to go back this year for our 25th! We drove up Saturday morning and spent the night, came back Sunday afternoon. We stayed a nice little hotel that's right near the lake, which has a nice 5 Star restaurant next door. Weather was great, it was clear and sunny but cold. The room was nice and spacious and had a very deep bathtub which I loved, able to soak up to my neck. McCall is an interesting dichotomy with very wealthy people that live there part time or have mega cabins there. There's also more people like Dave and I who just go up for a day or the weekend. Then you have a lot of service workers, many of whom are seasonal. The ski season hasn't quite started yet, since there's really no snow to speak of. We drove up to Brundage Mountain to see what the ski slopes look like and not for sure-

After we drove back towards town, we drove part way around the lake, but sadly part of the road was closed for construction. We didn't make the normal loop all the way around, but stopped here right after breakfast. Sunday morning. It's a short walk from the hotel-

Payette Lake 

Boats out for the winter

Didn't find anything at the usual thrift store I usually go to. We tried a couple new food places- one for breakfast and one for coffee in the afternoon. We're probably like a lot of people who don't go up there very often, we tend to stay at the restaurants on the main drag. We had lunch at a local brewery place, great burgers, fun decor!

We had a really nice dinner at Rupert's restaurant next door to the hotel. They have some really unique decor!

Big wooden airplane props

I asked her waitress since it was our 25th anniversary if she could take a photo of us. She obliged and also brought out a brownie with a sparkler sticking out of it! Was kind of like a short round sparkler with a spike on the end that they stuck in the brownie. That got every body's attention in the room for sure. Is it cool idea and I couldn't get my camera phone out fast enough since I didn't know if it was going to start a fire! Magnesium flaring up 2 feet, wow! It was really nice and festive and someone else was celebrating a birthday. We watched the sun go down over the lake.

Lots of windows facing the lake

It was definitely colder up there than in Boise. It was 14 degrees yesterday with morning lots of frost! But this sky was beautiful and we had a nice leisurely drive back. We decided to go there again next year and already looking at booking another stay.

Anya is ready for winter

Winter Is Here!
There are few leaves still falling down, but the cold weather is definitely here. We've had some weather in the teens and twenties already.  We're hopefully going to have some serious rain in a few days, as it's been really really dry. There's no snow in the foothills yet, a little unusual but it's early in the winter still. The coop is all prepped for winter except for the sun room. I'm hoping for eggs soon! Someone has been in the nesting box, so that's a good sign. *** UPDATE- we got our first egg today from one of the new hens! Yeah!

The winter bird bath is out, great in the really cold weather-

Gnome is tucked in too

Girls had some free range time today, loved it!

Sarah is getting big!

Our maple tree still has a lot of leaves on it, as well as our apple tree. We just really need some wind or to take care of that. The comforter is on the bed along with flannel sheets, and the new Ikea cover Dave and I got in Salt Lake City. Anya likes to burrow when it colder-

furry paws sticking out

We swapped out our more mild weather clothing for polar fleece, sweatshirts, flannel blouses. Hats and gloves are out and we are getting ready for Thanksgiving. We hosting this year with everyone else bringing some side dishes. With two toddlers here I'm sure it will be busy!