Hot Sauce

The Fall time has arrived and so has a lot of work. It's time to gather in all the harvest and do something with it. I had to take a picture from mom's deck to show the leaves changing. It took less than a week to have the leaves change colors. We haven't had the hard frost at our house that my mom has had at her house but look at the colors. Wonderful!

Peppers from Mom's garden before we cut them up to put in the hot sauce. We also cut up onions from her house and garlic that my grandmother grew. Just need some vinegar and salt added to all those yummy veggies and Ta-Da...hot sauce.

Yesterday we bottled it and canned it. Now it's in my food storage. Yum!

Service Day

Last Friday I made some puppets out of felt with my sister-in-laws. My mother-in-law organized a service project for us to make...she was unable to attend since she was at work but we had so much fun with these puppets. This is not all the puppets we made but they show the different puppets that we made. We traced them, cut the, decorated them, and sewed them. Phew! It took most of the day but we are very excited to send these to an orphanage in Uganda. Hopefully they will also enjoy them as much as we did making them.

Friends from High School

Earlier this month my friend N emailed and invited M and myself to her house for lunch. It had been many years since we'd all been able to be together and so we were very excited to get together. M brought her two daughters and N had her two youngest home with her and we had a great lunch.

I had to post a picture of this dresser. N painted this dresser herself. She has so much talent. I loved having the tour of her house and seeing her touch in every room. She is a very talented woman and amazing mother of five kiddos. I hope to see her one more time before we move out of the state.

N, thank you for such a wonderful afternoon. You are a very gracious host and I loved being able to catch up on our lives.

Fall Weather

The weather is cold today. Yesterday we were almost in the 90s and today we are in the 40s...that's quite the change in weather. Looking at the nearby hills, I see a dusting of snow and when I breath out, I see my breathe. So different from yesterday's shorts and T-shirt weather. The following photos are of me yesterday. Because we knew the weather was going to get cold...we knew that the onions needed to be brought into the garage so that they could continue drying and not freeze. Here are some photos of my mom's onions this year. They are huge. She always grows wonderful onions but this year she used some new dirt that had a lot of nutrients in it and the onions loved it and grew and grew. Now she's trying to figure out how to dry them because she knows she cannot eat all of them.

The photo above shows a small black wagon full of onions...she had a total of three wagons of onions. My guess is around 200 onions. We also dried four buckets of peaches and made pear sauce (like applesauce) out of four additional buckets of pears. It was a really really busy day.

A Fun Trip South

We went south to visit SM's sister and her family this last weekend. They decided to take us for a hike. We decided to hike up a rock...I guess you could call it a hill or if you are from the East you could call it a mountain. It was very pretty and kind of slippery.

As you can see, I didn't make it to the top of the rock. I was a little bit scared of how steep it was a decided not to try. SM's sister stayed with me while the two guys and two little girls made it to the top. What a sight at the top!!

This part of the rock was a natural walk way...or during any rain, a natural water way. Not the best picture of the back of us...but a cool picture all the same.

Behind me is the rock we went up...and down.

Doesn't that just look cool? Thanks to SM's sister and her family for a great time!

Family Pictures

We had family pictures this week. Enjoy!!

Still keeping busy

As you can see from these following pictures, I am still working on my crocheting. I love keeping busy in the evenings while I watch TV. This burp cloth actually has a new edging that I made up. I took an edging pattern that I've used a whole lot and then I added an extra row of stitches and I love it. I'm not sure I'm the first person ever to do this...but nobody showed me how to do it...I just tried it.

The asters are out! I absolutely love these flowers and they make the backyard so beautiful.

Cucumbers anyone? My mom only wanted to plant one or two cucmber plants but I talked her into planting a half a row. Well, the consequence has been too many cucumbers. Sorry Mom, I just love cucumbers and thought you needed more plants. I forgot that you are the only one in your house that eats cucumbers.

As you can see, these are not typical cucumbers...I think they are called Armanian Cucumbers. They are my mom's favorite cucumber...and very yummy. They also get very large but don't get bitter so you can eat lots of cucumber. The dark green cucumber is a Japanese Long cucumber...and SM actually planted this type in our own garden.