I've felt kind of mischievous lately. It might come from the wonderful invention called, "vitamins" or something. Hey, I'm not complaining. I'm just glad to be feeling better lately.
I've even gotten the gardening bug. Well, uhm, I guess you could call it, the "next year" gardening bug. Remember that
cold frame experiment from yesteryear? I figured one of those old, wooden frames might have another year or two of life in them- a new life so to speak. No one ever goes behind the playhouse in the backyard so, I figured starting a compost pile at the house would be a good venture. It would be out of the way. One of those old cold frames would make a good housing for some rotting good stuff.
Last time, I filled a 5 gallon bucket with scraps and about once a week or so, I took that bucket to Uncle Bubba's farm to join his compost. Now, I'll be able to make my own. My goal is to make enough good stuff to plant my seedlings in next year. With that being said, I'm planning to garden next year. Having not really "gardened" to any large scale this year, I realized that gardening makes me happy. Hey, you just gotta' go with what makes you happy sometimes. It took shucking some corn to make me realize that....but that story is to come....
Here is the beginning of my compost pile. It already has 2 spent heads of lettuce, several apple cores (and a few peelings), the watermelon that was cracked (and we didn't realize it until it was too late), some cucumber peelings, the leftover organic dirt from my cucumber plants, some leaves, and of course, all of the corn shuckings and cobs that you see in the photo.
Where did the corn come from? Uncle Bubba. He gardened pretty big this year even if he got started a little late.
Scott and Go-Cart Boy brought these ears home the other day. We had no idea what condition (or stage for that matter) that the ears were in since the crop had been ready for many days.
"Hey, what are you lookin' at?"I guess you can figure that my insect loving daughter had a ball finding all of the corn worms. (This corn was totally organic- nothing was sprayed on it so it was bound to have some critters in it).
"This acorn smells like corn"I've never liked the wiggly critters. Even when I was younger, I always passed the "wormy" corn to my Daddy. (Let me rephrase that- scream and throw the corn down on the ground). He would just reach down, and flick them off and break off the "eaten" pieces. It would gross me out a bit. Have you ever come across "wormy" corn? If you have, you understand how gross it can be. Well, with age comes wisdom. I can now "flick" corn worms and break off the "eaten" parts of a corn cob. Roly Poly girl had no problem with it at all from the start. She didn't get that from me!
This is what we ended up with. The two dark orange cobs were already dried out! In case you were wondering, this corn was an open pollinated variety (heirloom) called "Bloody Butcher". It's an all purpose corn good for roasting, animal feed, and grinding (think grits). Uncle Bubba is going to let a lot of it dry out so we might have a "grits" making post one of these days. I'll have to read up on that before we attempt it though....
Roly Poly Girl found one tiny, little ear. She squeeled, "BABY CORN!!!" and took off for the house to tell her "baby corn" eating brother about it. They actually washed it and halved it. I didn't ask them how it was.
Scott brought some other goodies home too. The yellow guys are some type of Asian melon that taste like cantaloupes. The big squash, we have yet to slice and cook. I hope it tastes like pumpkin.
I love pumpkin....mmmmmm
Oh, what did we do with the corn? Since a lot of it was a various stages and it was actually showing it's, "Blood Butcher" hues, I creamed it. I had no idea what I was doing so you can figure that I made a complete mess of my kitchen. (Hence the absence of a creamed corn tutorial) The good news is that everything turned out alright and I ended up with enough for 3 quart freezer bags (and I didn't scorch any of it!!). I'm going to give Uncle Bubba some since he grew the corn in the first place.
The last item on my title says, "curtains" The curtains in question have nothing to do with corn or compost but it was a major event at my house this week. I had seen these curtains at a local home improvement store but shuddered at paying the price they had marked for them. Walking away from the curtain display was a simple thing to do since I'm somewhat frugal at heart. Speaking of being frugal, I went to a thrift store over the weekend and what to my surprise did I find (brand new and still in the original packages)? You guessed it, the very curtains I had sighed and walked away from at the home improvement store. They were more than 80% cheaper (did I mention, brand new and still in the package?!!) Needless to say, my girls have the "girly" curtains that I wanted and they love them. All it took was a quick run under the iron and they were ready to go. I love it when things work out like that... God is good.
During the storm, our tree dude, Melvin, got a makeover courtesy of yours truly. 
I had a customer that had asked if I could make a fabric bunny. I tried 4 different times to get the head right and this little guy is the result (the last try too- I'm giving up!!). My son's friend named him Boozle. Boozle is a gender neutral name, I think, so if someone buys him (or her), they will be happy to decide if this particular bunny is a he or a she. Boozle will soon be for sale in the South Carolina Etsy Street Team shop. You can click on over if you want to see if he (or she) has arrived yet.
Remember the title of this post? I mentioned sewing Daleks. I'm not going into a long spill about it, but Daleks are bad guys on the longest running science fiction show, Dr. Who. My husband (and several of the kids) are obsessed with anything Dr. Who. I started Scott a quilt a long time ago and I tried (I really, really, really did try) to get the quilt done before Christmas. I didn't make it but at least a nice looking Dalek was the result.
This is the Tardis panel (what Dr. Who travels in) and the finished Dalek panel. The fabrics shown in the photo are so perfect in matching how the show begins. I bought them a long time ago when our local Walmart closed it's fabric department and had everything 50% off. They have been waiting patiently in my fabric stash up until the day I pulled them out and got to work.
This quilt is the one I finished for my mother. I didn't get to machine quilt it quite like I had wanted (I did the bare minimum) but my mother loved it anyway so it was worth it.
This is my yarn that I chose (Hobby Lobby- 40% off!!) It is a wool, mohair mix and the color changes gradually to a grayish blue to a deep blue so it is interesting. All I can say, is I'm going to have some strange looking knitted socks. (That is if I ever finish the first one and make a second one!)
I found this really neat pattern on how to knit fingerless gloves. It is wonderful because it has step by step with pictures! You can find the pattern on instructables.com. It's the "How to knit close fitting fingerless gloves" pattern.
I knitted mine out of some (very hairy) yarn that my sister brought back from Scotland. I love them and they were a good beginning project for me. I'm planning on making more in the future.
"Huh?"
Somebody else had a bad day too.....
"Spools"
For this past Halloween I had to make my kids some costumes. I got all of my stuff out to get started and found that Roly Poly Girl had decorated my pin cushion. 
Captain Jack and Link battle it out.....
I made some cupcakes for the church festival. I got the idea for these out of a Family Fun magazine. You can find the recipe for these over at the Family Fun Website. Mine are certainly not as pretty as there's were, but I think they turned out cute anyway.
And last, but not least, I've been sewing up some tapestry tote bags for my Etsy Shop. This is one of the cutest ones so far. It's reversible and has a totally different snowman on the inside. You can see all of these new totes at Minnie Maes.
I had a plan.....
Roly Poly Girl helped me carry out my plan..... She scooped the "guts" out of the squash and we got it ready for the oven.
Here it is in the oven. I baked it at 350 degrees for an unknown amount of time- sorry, I didn't look at the clock- just went by smell to know when it was done.
We got all of these seeds out of the squash so while it was cooking, we laid these little guys out to dry. We are saving them for Uncle Bubba to plant next year. At this point I wasn't sure if having these squash in the garden was worthwhile but I soon found out that it was.
This particular squash tastes just like pumpkin when it's prepared in a pumpkin pie recipe. I didn't even put a crust in because I was that unsure if it would turn out a disaster or not. (After all, pie crusts make me nervous and I didn't want to waste the time and effort to create one from scratch if the pie might turn out "yucky")
Later that day, I made a jar of lacto-fermented sauerkraut. I used a combination of 2 recipes. One from the Nourishing Traditions Cookbook by Sally Fallon and the other that you can find here. I had some left over that wasn't going to fit into the jar so I just added some mayonnaise and, the three of us that like "slaw", had a treat.
Here is the beginning of my compost pile. It already has 2 spent heads of lettuce, several apple cores (and a few peelings), the watermelon that was cracked (and we didn't realize it until it was too late), some cucumber peelings, the leftover organic dirt from my cucumber plants, some leaves, and of course, all of the corn shuckings and cobs that you see in the photo.
Scott and Go-Cart Boy brought these ears home the other day. We had no idea what condition (or stage for that matter) that the ears were in since the crop had been ready for many days.
"Hey, what are you lookin' at?"
"This acorn smells like corn"
This is what we ended up with. The two dark orange cobs were already dried out! In case you were wondering, this corn was an open pollinated variety (heirloom) called "Bloody Butcher". It's an all purpose corn good for roasting, animal feed, and grinding (think grits). Uncle Bubba is going to let a lot of it dry out so we might have a "grits" making post one of these days. I'll have to read up on that before we attempt it though....
Roly Poly Girl found one tiny, little ear. She squeeled, "BABY CORN!!!" and took off for the house to tell her "baby corn" eating brother about it. They actually washed it and halved it. I didn't ask them how it was.
Scott brought some other goodies home too. The yellow guys are some type of Asian melon that taste like cantaloupes. The big squash, we have yet to slice and cook. I hope it tastes like pumpkin. I love pumpkin....mmmmmm
Oh, what did we do with the corn? Since a lot of it was a various stages and it was actually showing it's, "Blood Butcher" hues, I creamed it. I had no idea what I was doing so you can figure that I made a complete mess of my kitchen. (Hence the absence of a creamed corn tutorial) The good news is that everything turned out alright and I ended up with enough for 3 quart freezer bags (and I didn't scorch any of it!!). I'm going to give Uncle Bubba some since he grew the corn in the first place.
The last item on my title says, "curtains" The curtains in question have nothing to do with corn or compost but it was a major event at my house this week. I had seen these curtains at a local home improvement store but shuddered at paying the price they had marked for them. Walking away from the curtain display was a simple thing to do since I'm somewhat frugal at heart. Speaking of being frugal, I went to a thrift store over the weekend and what to my surprise did I find (brand new and still in the original packages)? You guessed it, the very curtains I had sighed and walked away from at the home improvement store. They were more than 80% cheaper (did I mention, brand new and still in the package?!!) Needless to say, my girls have the "girly" curtains that I wanted and they love them. All it took was a quick run under the iron and they were ready to go. I love it when things work out like that... God is good.
I grew these cuties. Yes, "grew"!! I had ordered these little guys from Baker Creek Seeds and planted them in pots out on the back porch. If you remember, it was part of my "gardening epiphany" project. I managed to keep enough little cucumbers coming in to make one small jar of lacto fermented cucumbers from my 6 or so plants that survived. I gave them to Uncle Bubba since lacto fermented cucumbers are good for the gout. He could use all the help he can get in the "gout" department. They actually tasted pretty good but were a little too salty. The recipe was from the Nourishing Traditions cookbook.
We went to a birthday party at a local lake. I took this little snapshot of the birdhouse not far from the dock. I have to admit that it made me a little nervous knowing that just some wood planks were the only thing between me and numerous mud turtles.
We threw a few birthday parties......
Go Cart Boy did some "ice" experiments..... quite pretty actually
Uncle Bubba brought some boxes of clay for us to play with. Go Cart Boy made this alien. I made an alligator (he turned out so hideous that I didn't want to share)...
....and last but now least (and probably one of the funniest things) Poppy was bit on the nose by an alligator.... or is that a crocodile?
