Tag Archives: Halloween

Thankful Thursday

Posted in California, cooking by

I’m thankful we have a warm and cozy home. Plus I’m thankful that B feels good enough to get us wood for the wood stove.

Here are some highlights of the week.

Halloween pumpkin carved by my son and his friend.

I have no interest in carving pumpkins anymore so I’m thankful he did. Here’s my pumpkin stack though:

That’s about it for outside Halloween but I always put out my vintage Halloween things. Now they are all put away except for knitted pumpkins for Thanksgiving.

Above you can see the color of the paint B re did. I still kind of hate it but at least it’s not glaring light grey. Next year, we’ll re do it with a different color and maybe 3 times is a charm??

Cozy sitting. Looking at the TV wall and a cat. Those are their cat beds which I’d love if they weren’t there but needs must.

Looking over at the table and you can see a few knitted pumpkins.

This is the beef stew. It looked pretty good. Today has been busy with pressure canning black beans. I wanted to try one more different thing before I put the canner away. It’s de-pressurizing right now so I’ll open it up later today. I still might do some cranberry sauce though as I saw a recipe on Mavis Butterfield’s blog.

I also made the pizza dough for tomorrow night and used a Youtubers recipe that makes 4 doughs. I did this last month and like being able to pull it out of the freezer. The YouTuber is Happy Homestead and she’s about as down to earth as you can get and has really good ideas.

I’m thankful I love to cook for my family and I’m thankful for my family.

Simple Sunday

Posted in bread, California, cooking, covid-19, Myeloma, Uncategorized, Walking by

We are on extreme fire alert today thru Tuesday. Power will be shut off this afternoon. Scary stuff. Plus everything is so dry. These winds are supposed to be quite bad all the way to the Bay area. Geez. We really need a break here.

The winner of the bread recipe so far is the No knead sourdough. Both the rye and the white were superb. I may just keep tweaking it so it’s perfect. Of course, come next summer, I’ll abandon bread making and forget it all. Hummm…. maybe that’s why I blog about bread, so as to have a written history.

Success!!! We are walking a little later at 6am. The jerk is still there, but we are walking in the OPPOSITE direction and it makes all the difference since he’s not storming up behind us. Now he just storms by with his dog. It has been GREAT!

I had my biennial mammogram and will get the results next week. Since I didn’t hear anything I’m guessing it’s ok. I was in and out in record time as they have scheduled everything with Covid in mind so appts are spaced.

This week is my oncology appt. I’m not too concerned since I know it’s another 2 months before I’m starting something. That puts me after Christmas. So if all goes accordingly, I’ll wager January. After my appt, I plan to hit up Trader Joe’s in Roseville on the way home. I haven’t been there in months. There’s a few things I specifically want from there ( besides the Charles Shaw), tamari, hash browns, some frozen stuff which TJ’s does a great job of. That will go on my November food budget.

I was out in the prepper pantry in the barn the other day, and it looks great. I have to say, we did a great job on both food and nonfood. I can see periodically adding stuff but for the most part we are using stuff on rotation and then replacing.

The gardens are all cleaned up for winter. My daughter does a great job pulling everything up and putting it in the compost. We haven’t planted anything else yet but I may encourage her to start some chard and cold weather stuff. She did plant all the bulbs I ordered. I ordered 3 giant bags. We have one designated bulb area and in the spring it is very pretty.

This week is the living room zone, so I’ll wash windows and do a deeper dusting.

Halloween stuff..

Lanterns for later when the power is out.

Of course, we have out generators too but we’ll use them tomorrow for a few hours for the freezer and fridge.

Five on Friday

Posted in Halloween, home stuff, Uncategorized by

Friday stuff…

Autumn is really here with everything turning gold and yellow. The days are comfortable at 70 degrees but mornings are quite chilly (mid-thirties).

Hopefully, the firefighters are getting a handle on both fires north and south. I haven’t seen any more possible blackouts so fingers crossed.

  • I’m making a sourdough pizza dough for dinner. I was going to order out but decided this will be better. I have olives, mushrooms, bell peppers, and even some pepperoni. So I think we’re set.
  • Last night( Halloween) we watched the original”Creature from the Black Lagoon”. Very entertaining. The short shorts on the guys were hysterical.  They came up above their belly buttons but didn’t cover too much below. You couldn’t see ” anything” but it must have been held tight? Who knows? The night before we watched “Young Frankenstein” which is one of our top 5 favorite movies. It is so funny even after having watched it 500 times.
  • I’m heading to Walmart for a pick-up, then I might go to the gym?? Maybe?? If I don’t I’ll go tomorrow.
  • Washed the couch covers yesterday as that was in the LR  zone. Today is actually another zone as it is November 1. If you follow Flylady, that would be the Entryway and dining room. Since our table is in our living room space it’s already done. I did put away all my vintage Halloween stuff. I’m leaving out my knitted pumpkins till Thanksgiving and I have some small real ones on the table too.
  • Next week we have no appts, so I’m going to take Buggie( my 2000 VW) to get an oil change.
  • Last night with dinner we had a fun bottle of Chardonnay.
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Power is back on

Posted in California, Uncategorized by

So this was the 4th blackout. We had it pretty well nailed down with what to do. We’re also lucky we have a propane stove, wood heat, and a propane water heater. We had the generators for the fridge and freezer and fairy lights everywhere.

Still, it was inconvenient and for business owners and restaurants, it must have had a huge financial impact. Hopefully, it’s all over for now although there’s no rain in the immediate forecast. The fires are really terrible and you just feel for all the loss of property, beautiful countrysides and hills in LA.  The winds in LA have been incredible. Is this the new normal? I’m guessing yes.

Overall, it’s been a good week. The clinic visit for B was good and he’ll have another BMB on the 18th to see how the bone marrow looks.

I saw the oral surgeon for my broken tooth and will have that extracted in November. The dentist mentioned implants but I’m not going that way and insurance doesn’t cover it (as far as I know)so the cost is very high. So that’s that then.

Happy Halloween!

Simple Sunday

Posted in Uncategorized by

It’s the end of October. Wow.. I’m sure November is going to go by quickly and  then it’s the Christmas season. I didn’t really hit my Santa fund goal of $1000 but close enough. This is going to a minimalist Christmas for sure. There are no big purchases just stuff we need really. Costco has a Cuisinart food processor on sale for $30 off so I’m going to do that for me. My son, I’m getting Bose headphones. After flying, I’d say one of the things that made it tolerable was using headphones. His are not noise canceling but they did cut the sound by 50%.  So these Bose are noise cancelling. My husband can borrow them when he flys next which will be to Southern Cal in December. Other than that a few journals, pens, and an Easton press book for each.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

imageIt was interesting to go thru the bedroom while painting and there was zero that I wanted to get rid of.  That doesn’t include the closet which now is holding stuff till I finish the painting.

last night I made breaded tofu and chicken from a recipe in one of my favorite books ever The Kitchen counter cookbook. It’s baked and the tofu came out as good as southern fried tofu.  Try it.

Tonight I’m going to do a curry with tofu ,potatoes,carrots and whatever else jumps in the pot.

Happy halloween and Samhain!

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imagethis is my little vintage halloween collection. I adore vintage halloween  stuff , but it is very pricey. But it all fits in a small box and I don’t mind storing it.

Samhain, is cross quarter in the Celtic year, way before all hollows eve, the christianized version. We’ll have a little fire in our fire pit tonight and drink some red wine!

It’s a dex day so I’m on limited time till I crash. It’s so easy to forget how it is till you start again. This time I had 3 Saturday’s off. That’s longer than usual because my sister was here the week I would have started. But at least my ANC went up over 2000 so that was good.

I’m going to do some flylady stuff ,catch up on laundry and try and pot a few flowers.

I still need to budget out a few things too. Plus, we’re thinking of doing something non traditional for thanksgiviving . Over at    ,http://thriftymominboise.blogspot.com, she’s making lasagna. We do lasagne at Christmas. Although last year we did a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs and that was fun. But I think I’ll go back to the lasagna. Half meat, half vegie.

Today is a beautiful fall day, but tomorrow we’re getting rain and the sierra snow. I’ll worry about my daughter driving to work in the snow, but she has all wheel drive.

I’m still working on ideas for the room that was my daughters since my son moved to our studio. (which is a converted tuff shed by the way)! That was our homeschool room and later Sachi made it her graduate school study room. So now I’ve got two chairs out here but I feel it needs something else. I might move my desk out here, not sure.

Well, off to the day!