blog #421 >> More Catchng Up!

Sorry, sometimes I just get too busy doing things to catalog them in my blog. Poor thing! It's been so lonely lately!
So I'm going to attempt to get mostly caught up tonight...
let's see if I can do it.

We have... in no particular order...

EGGPLANTS!!! At last I have eggplants! And they are amazingly delicious! I've been roasting them in honey butter. They might be one of my new favorite foods.

I wish the tomatoes were doing as well as the eggplants. I have yet to get a single red tomato this year. Only the yellow ones are ripening.

But the green peppers are doing pretty good.

And the sunflowers.

And the fairytale eggplant of course.

And I've got zucchini coming out of my ears! These are the monsters that grew while I was away house sitting. I've eaten zucchini nearly everyday. And if you consider soup a beverage, I have made zucchini into a breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and a drink!



I also had a bumper crop of beets. So I tried making some pickled beets this year. I can't wait to try them!

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And this is the bathrobe I made from the chenille bedspread I pulled out of "The Bins." I LOVE how it turned out! And I promise to post more of my newly finished sewing projects soon... well eventually.




And here is a sneak peak at my newly finished blue dress. I started this when I was 13 and finally finished it! It was the ultimate in procrastination. But now I actually have the skills to fix it and finish it. (I had made it too big.) Although, I have to admit, I was pretty impressed with the straight seems and details on it. I was a pretty good little seamstress at 13.


Even though I know it's a bit early to be thinking about Halloween. I want this to be my next sewing project. It would make an adorable little party dress. I would have bought it, but it was already sold by the time I discovered it. I found it here on Wearing History's Etsy shop.


And this is the dress I did buy! Such a sweet little tea party dress!
I got it from Elegant Musings shop.


Oh, and I loved the clothes in this old Kodak 1922 Kodachrome Film Test too.



Let's see what's left in my "to post on the blog" folder...

ooooh here! These are some drip catchers I crocheted for my tea pot.


And this is an old parking lot photo I saw on Vintage Portland. I wonder if they ever lost a car?


hmmm... oh yes! And I recently rediscovered "Hark! A Vagrant" comics. I had forgotten how much I love her work! It always makes me laugh, plus it appeals to my inner history buff.

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And here is a new cookie cookbook I pulled out of "The Bins."

(Don't light the oven by yourself.)

(Official taste testers below.)


These are some cookie recipes I can't wait to try from Simply Recipes.
This one is for Butterscotch Cookies.

And this one is for Chocolate Nutella Cookies.
Photos by Simply Recipes.

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I also bought these How and Why, Wonder Books "The Science Library" at "The Bins." Because I'm a sucker for books, and I always loved these books when I was a little girl and this is the whole collection! I love the pictures in them and the early optimism of the 1960's, when we believed we'd be living on the moon in less than 50 years!

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And for a nerdy story and photo to leave off with. I recently found Bad Astronomy online and I can't believe I haven't been following it before. It's fantastic!
This is one of my favorite pictures from it. "The laser shoots up into the sky and excites atoms in the upper atmosphere, causing them to glow. That makes an artificial and very bright star in the sky! The telescope can then use that star to track the distortions in the atmosphere and compensate for them, allowing the images it makes to be incredibly clear and sharp." Read more about it here.

Alrighty, I've got to get to bed now.
Good night!
T

blog #420 >> Catching Up

...because I'm waaaaaaay behind on my blogging!
Once I get this far behind I just keep on putting it off because I know I'll just have one more thing to post tomorrow, and I might as well post everything at once. So this will be a very long post in fairly random order.



Here's the cherry jam and canned cherries I made this month. And I obviously didn't have time to post a blog about them right after I made them because I had to clean up my messy kitchen. That's the part I don't like about canning, the sticky sugary mess I need to tackle afterwords and the multitude of dishes that need to be washed, (by hand.) It's days like this that I'm glad I've got a kitchen door. I can just close it and not think about it for a couple of hours. Then I can come back in with the magic cleaning apron, and it's all sparkling clean before I know it.

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Yesterday I went up Long View to visit the Terry-Taylor garage sale with my sister Carrie. Little did I know that it was the largest, most amazing neighborhood garage sale I've ever been to! EVERYONE comes out for this! It's like a garage sale, meets fair, meets strip mall. Every house has something out front, from a hot dog stand, to used scooters, to charity drives, to election candidates handing out fliers. Even if people didn't have anything to sell they'd sit out on their front porches in lawn chairs and watch all the people go by. And everything was such a good deal! We went a little later in the day, so at that point people were practically giving stuff away, just so they wouldn't have to cart it to the dump. And after it started to rain, people WERE giving everything away. I got all this stuff for $10 (and then I spent another $10 on food.) I'm such a sucker for young entrepreneurs' lemonade stands and the kettle corn for charity.
However, I didn't realize what I was getting into when I left for this "garage sale." After all, "How big can one garage sale be?" And unfortunately I was not wearing appropriate shoes for the occasion. Now today, I feel like I maybe limping for the rest of my life. Or at least I'm not in any hurry to be putting shoes back on my feet. Oh, cozy slippers!

Here are some ice skates I got. (Another pair of unpractical shoes.)

And I found this cute red bowling bag for my sister. The shoes are even her size and the bowling ball already had her name on it! It was destiny!
(Please note if I were speaking this there would be a sarcastic tone on the word "destiny.")

Then we headed back to her house and made some home-made funnel cakes. They're so easy, and delicious! And they're much cheaper than the ones you buy a the fair. Find the recipe here.

And I still think my sister has the cutest kitten in the world, and I don't usually like cats.

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Oh, and here's the monthly garden update.
The sad thing is I think that was the last thing I posted.


As you can see it's doing much better than I previously thought it would. I'm getting lots of zucchini and I'm getting more strawberries and peas now than I did in June. Everything has been late this year, but at least it's coming up. I also reseeded the radishes for "hopefully" a second crop.


I am also VERY pleased with my striped beets! I think I'm going to try making pickled beets next week with the rest of them. These are definitely seeds I'll be planting again.




And I'm happy to announce that the peppers are not a loss, I've got at least one coming up!

But I've yet to get a red tomato.

And even if my little fairytale eggplant never produces an eggplant, it's still got lots of pretty flowers.

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I thought I was missing something. I almost forgot to post these!
Here are a couple of my recent sewing projects.

I made this purple skirt from some scrap fabric that Trina gave me. Thanks!


And I finally finished the "tie" skirt. I have to say that the hardest part was finding all those ties, and taking a picture of it. Unless it's on, it really just looks like a bunch of ties sewn together and not much like a skirt. However, it's pretty phenomenal on, I just wish it didn't get quite so much attention from strangers on the street. And I wish I hadn't made it a little too big. I need to sew better belt loops on it.

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And since this song has been stuck in my head the past month. Here it is too. I love this band so much!



Cheers!
T