Winter Prep & Last Harvest, Baking With Duck Eggs, Bye Bye Car!

Winter Prep & Last Harvest-
Sorry I missed my blog post last weekend but life's been busy! New later job hours, new car, lots to do! Last weekend, besides buying a car, we were busy with some gardening projects. With 20's/30's at night this week Dave and I harvested the last of the tomatoes, peppers, squash, herbs and cukes-

Tomatoes destined for salsas and soups

 Dave put up the big lower piece of glass on the coop and we stored the screen. It insulates the coop more, but there's still plenty of ventilation. We also added some plastic on the main entry door. Cuts down on the drafts. I keep a close eye on the temps and smell in there. The "sun room" is now also up. The girls LOVE it in cold, snowy or wet weather. We added some pine shavings and a roosting bar since it dried out-

We've had a lot of rain lately, much needed. There was 8" of SNOW in eastern Idaho this week! I'm putting away all my yard tools into the garage and covering my garden workbench with plastic this weekend. It protects the wood and I don't use it anyway in the winter. Dave took my Mazda in for a oil change and we had the "cabin air filters" changes. It's been 5 years and we didn't know they were there, and supposed to be replaced, as nothing was in the scheduled maintenance book. They were FILTHY!!!

Ew!

Better air flow now and it will cut down on the dust as well. When they checked my battery it wasn't in good shape, but was still under warranty. Dave took it in with the chains for the old wagon we never used. We wound up getting a new battery for free and a $40.00 cash refund for the chains! SCORE!!!

We had a cold Halloween and it was was pretty mellow with our kids grown up. We only had about 15 kiddos trick or treating, but one was an old student of mine! A little boy (K) said "Hey I know you!" when I opened the door. I told him who I was and he was so sweet. I told him to tell everyone I said "hi!" Nice surprise.

Baking With Duck Eggs-
A new work pal was offering up free ducks eggs! Her friend give her tons of them, so I found myself with 12 big beauties! I did some research as I knew they were excellent for baking with some info here How To Use Duck Eggs. They add more rising to any baking recipe. I'm going to try this today- Applesauce cake with duck eggs minus the frosting since duck eggs have a lot more fat. No point in clogging my arteries more! Maybe with some muffins today too :)

Winter outside kitty Posey, who I gave a little food to, being eyed by inside empress Anya

New baby

Bye Bye Car!-
This is our new 2013 (30,000 miles) Subaru Outback we just bought, after we had to retire our old 2001 one. It that had 14 years and 160,000 miles on it. We knew the head gasket was leaking, but then found out oil was getting into the motor and it could seize up at any time. We would have had a dead car and no trade-in value. So we went shopping last Sat. at our local Subaru deal. We had a looked at a Mazda 5, a wagon, since our M3 has been super reliable. Very well rated by Consumer Reports, but it seemed a bit cheaply made, and after seeing the deal on the Outback we were sold. It's taller and wider and a bit more interior room. Much better turning radius too! We heard our old baby is being fixed up by the service department and will be sold to another owner. She'll be recycled!

Not our old car but the same model

We got an excellent deal, we added fog lights (base line model), the dealer added new tires and and an additional key. We got an excellent interest rate, 2%, and some trade-in value. Time well spent and all of our hard work paying down other debts over the years added up to a much high FICO score and a better deal. All in all we're glad we went with the Outback again. Dave's thrilled he gets to drive the new car to work, as he always seemed to wind up with the older one. Since I have a longer commute our Mazda is better for mileage for me. When the snow and ice hits though, I'm stealing her! The only downside is it has the WORST software for setting up the cell phone. Very long and cumbersome. The Mazda was so easy in comparison...