hafghan

well, after a mostly sunny month, we finally have a rain day on our hands. i have been working pretty steadily on the 'quick' afghan that i started in august. i'll probably make some good progress this weekend, it's at that point where you can cover up with it as you crochet, which is a good thing :)

not sure what i will do today. i'm so used to going outside and putzing on the weekends. perhaps cleaning the house is not a bad idea, however :)


one thing i am not looking forward to, is not being able to visit with my creatures as much when the weather turns. i'm sure i'll still see the squirrels, but they are not as playful or crazy in the winter. i have 2 buddies for sure, there are probably more but i never see more than 2 at a time. this guy looks chubby and healthy and ready for cold!

then, there is my buddy loco. i see him once or twice a day now, he usually hunts and naps in my yard. i have known him since i moved here 7 years ago, and i'm still not sure exactly where he lives. i wonder if his 'other' family knows how much i love him?!


supposedly, it might snow this week just a little. finally, the plants will have to lay down for the winter's rest. i've never had so much TIME before to say goodbye. not that it's any easier, but a lot of them do look ready to go. i actually picked 5 more green peppers off the plants yesterday, which is crazy. normally, that would have ended at least a month ago.

sigh. beginnings and endings are so emotional. but soon we'll be thru it, and into winter...i am glad for the change of seasons, they keep me aware of life's constant flow. happy weekend, friends!

if i had a magic genie

i would make him make THEM cost $20.

lovely lovelies

these days. these october days are killing me. i don't ever recall a milder, more beautiful fall. although our local weatherman assures us we had one just three years ago. maybe. but it cannot have been better than this one. the sun coming up in the morning is very rich and intense. i had to go take a couple of pics this morning.



i've taken to going outside and moseying about on the days that i don't have class. yesterday, i mowed the lawn and did some yard work. i wonder how long before the neighbor's leaves across the street decide to come live with me instead?

i also have been visiting with loco (neighbor cat) almost every day. he cozies in, and has a nap under one of my trees with the bird feeders. it's very cute, and luckily i have not seen any actual bird carnage, i think he is getting a little old to care all that much, to be truthful.


here is to hoping your days are as sunny in your part of the world. happy wednesday!

move

hey, head on over and buy third day's new album MOVE right now! don't even question it, just do it ;)

and Lord? thank you thank you thank you for third day!

in other news

here is what happens when you spray paint some deer in a matte-finish turquoise.

happiness happens, that is what.

mad, mad men

i had to look up and see how many times i have posted on 'mad men' since i started blogging.

only 3 times. none of the times actually have talked about the show! that is craziness. we must discsuss.

mad men is my life. well, not exactly, but almost. my OLD life, that is. just as mad men is the life of almost every person who has ever worked in advertising, i would bet.

the people in mad men are not that emotionally balanced. most of them confuse work with their 'real lives' as one of the characters eloquently pointed out in last night's finale. i loved that somebody admitted that on national tv.

there is something about being in advertising. i've seen it way too many times to think it's coincidence. but really, some kind of virus exists that convinces you that you are somehow different than everybody else, that no one (often not your wife or husband) could ever possibly understand, so you are better off just working and pretending other parts of your life are not that important.

i'm telling you people, this hits home. which is why i was super disturbed and yet thrilled to see that Don Draper (messed up main character) decided to marry his secretary, which seems to solve a lot of his problems all at once. i was actually quite relieved about the predictability of don's decision, and yet it shocked me for its' stupidity. not to mention the poor girl, who is so awe-struck that her boss asked for her hand, that she has NO CLUE what she has just said 'yes' to.

i love/hate that show, yes i do. but i still have hope for Don, and all the rest of the people caught in the web. someday, someday, they will get out of it and look back with amazement at what they had allowed their lives to become. or maybe, that was just me.

ah, ahhhhctober

what a beautiful month it's been so far! i love october, i wish it lasted for at least 2 months. maybe this year, it will :)


time to get crocheting again. for some reason this year, siesta finds the crochet bag very interesting. EVERY day, she knocks it over and crawls in, tangling up all my yarn and making a mess of things. she is cute while doing it, though.


time to break out the soup recipes, too! if you have never tried baked potato soup, i recommend it. i used this recipe, and it would have been great if i had not oversalted it with sea salt. gotta be careful with sea salt. otherwise, yum. what will you guys do without my photo shoots on the front steps? :)



speaking of, that is my new junk bonanza tee. it has been worn for several days straight, washed and worn again. i guess that means i like it ;)

one more weekend day to enjoy! be blessed!

the birdies

so, we're back to 'bird obsession' season. for the record, i let the birds fend for themselves in the summer. i don't feed them, and i don't have as many around, although i have the old standbys that seem to be here whenever. there are lots of cool seeds and treats to eat at my house, i think.

but, with grey days approaching, i am starting to need them again. so, i set up the feeder for siesta last weekend, and by now the first *huge* batch of seeds is gone. i've seen chickadees, sparrows and cardinals so far. and squirrels, the squirrels are quite excited.

in honor of this, i was thinking of ordering some new prints for my bedroom from this artist, whom i have admired for awhile.

i sat down to look at his website last night, and some of these magnets made me laugh alound. esp. that last one. boy, oh boy, is that ever ME.






happy friday!

daily life

some mornings, i kind of just pull the camera out hopefully and plug it in, thinking "i hope there is something good in there to blog about."

i kind of like the artiness of those photos above. i think they capture siesta's story pretty well.

i realize that most of my photos are ones that i take here in the solitude of home. whenever i go somewhere, i get kind of too excited to concentrate on picture taking. sometimes, i forget about it all together. i suppose it leaves a limited picture of my life for this blog, but that's okay. i'm not really leaving a legacy here, just a snippet. snippets make me happy, too.

there are some things i wish i had photos of, that i don't, though.

like last night in class, when i watched the faces of my students as i gave them each little individual pep talks/critiques. it is fun to do that. to see them see themselves through my lens. i made sure i told them that it's MY LENS, not necessarily total truth. but then i gave some suggestions of how i see them as a designer. i got some blushes when i told them good things. and i think they took the less positive things thoughtfully. i hope i nudged them, more than pushed them. those are moments you cannot capture on camera, at least i cannot.

i wish i could take pictures of the conversation in my bible study, at my 'new' church. i haven't been in a bible study in awhile, and i just enjoy the process of getting to know new people, of being vulnerable and real in front of people, and hoping that you'll be accepted. it's neat to see the promise of what is to come, if we keep on opening up as time goes on.

there are other things as well, that cameras cannot capture. lots of living outside this little snippet. but still, somehow, it brings me comfort each day to come here and share with you the things that i do. thank you for giving me that sense of community my life would be otherwise lacking.


sigh. have a good thursday ;)

good idea or bad idea?

i decided to 'follow' a bakery (that is just downtown in sf) the other day on twitter. now, i get twitter feeds of their daily offerings, like today for instance:

Strawberry Scones
Peach/Pecan Muffins
Spinach/Bacon/Swiss & Red Onion/Feta Quiche

this may not have been the smartest thing to do.

i hope i don't get lost

or is that the point?

either way, excited that lou just invited me to her company's trip to the 'corn maze' tonite. walking in corn sounds fabulous, and the maze part? well, i'm always in one sort of those or another ;)

free and healthy

what an awesome weekend. i was pretty much completely and totally FREE! lots of time spent reading, and sitting in a sunbeam, and walking in the crunchy leaves that have gathered around the yard (not picked up yet :)) and just lounging. i know that i should have done a bunch of chores, but i'm really not sorry that i didn't ...

i did find an awesome score on craig's list on saturday. free apples. on a curbside, and i was able to take about 3 dozen, i suppose, from a much larger bounty that they were offering. i have kind of been hoping someone would drop more free apples my way.

these were tart and large, pretty perfect for applesauce. homemade applesauce is heavenly. i like mine slightly lukewarm, with a dollop of cream and a pinch of brown sugar on top, so that it sort of tastes like a baked apple.

super easy to make, too, i just peel/core my apples (as you can see i did not exactly peel all of them. then, cook until soft on the stove, and run thru a foley food mill to get out any extra peels and make smooth.


i could not find my foley food mill for anything. perhaps i am imagining that i even have one, but i don't think so. they are necessary :))

anyway, i have some chunky applesauce with a few peels in it. i noticed that my hero margaret from a way to garden makes it that way anyway. somehow, that makes it not a mistake, but a plan ;)

now it's a monday holiday! and another beautiful day, from the look of things. happy everything, everyone ;)

it's fall in my hood

have a wonderful weekend, friends!

a plea to a kitty

it wasn't the bad neighborhood alleycats and the all night carousing

it wasn't the sunday afternoon napping with a chaser of canned kitty treats

it wasn't the chocolate chip cookie chunks you found in between the couch cushion

in the end, it was the faux-fleece kitty hammock from petco that wooed you away from me.






come back siesta. i miss you!

fresh start

boy oh boy, do i like thursdays. since i began teaching at the end of august, i have started to LOVE thursdays. i teach at the beginning of the week, so from about sunday pm to wednesday night, that is pretty much all i am consumed with. of course, i'm trying to fit in my 'other' job as well, so usually those days are fairly hectic.

thursdays are good. this morning, i woke up fairly early, made my coffee (world market sumatran, some of my fave), snuggled in my quilt with kitty by my side (actually in my face, but that does not sound very pleasant), and read my daily bible. sigh. it was very peaceful.

i don't do this EVERY day, esp. the hectic ones i described above. on those days, i usually pop out of bed, and go straight to the computer. which seriously makes me shake my head at myself! no wonder the days are hectic! as if God would not change the atmosphere of those days if i invited Him into them. He would, and yet, i don't. i am dumb.

my pastor talks about 'daily office' and i am very faithful with some of it. checking facebook, washing the dishes, responding to email.

but he is talking about 'daily office with the Lord' and that i am not very faithful about. for that i am sorry, and asking for help right here and now to remember who comes first in all things.

this cannot be good.

simple is good

these are the books that came in the mail today. i think i am sensing a theme going on.

and really, i know i have told you all to buck up and join amazon prime, right? it's so worth it. they are used, and one of those books was $1.29, and one was $3.99. that is crazy good.

for anne

my friend anne posted on facebook yesterday that she has way too much ground turkey in her fridge.

i thought it funny that i had JUST purchased a pound from the grocery store, and made this yummy dinner last night. actually, that pic came from the internet. but mine looked sort of like it, not quite as perfect.

i made up the recipe. most of the stuffed turkey pepper recipes had tomato sauce in them, and i am not totally sure i would dig that. here's what i did:

4 fresh sweet peppers, tops cut off and insides removed
1# ground turkey
1 small onion, chopped
a few button mushrooms, chopped
1/2 cup instant rice
1 cup water
1 teas. sea salt
a few dashes of mrs. dash

Wash and core peppers, arrange in a baking dish (I cut mine in half and arranged the halves in a 9x9 pan). add a little water to the bottom of the baking dish, to keep the peppers from sticking. fill the pepper 'shells' with the ground turkey mixture. it will be kind of wet, but should stick together well enough to fill the shells.

i topped mine with about a tablespoon of shredded cheese. i don't really think that was necessary, but might have made them a little 'prettier.'

cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. uncover, and continue baking for 15 more minutes until edges start to brown.



i suppose you could put other veggies in there. i think grated carrot would go nicely with the turkey, too. i happened to have the mushrooms on hand. some of the recipes i looked at par-boiled the peppers. i don't remember my mom ever doing that, so i skipped that part and went for a longer baking time. worked just fine.

i was surprised how much i loved these. back in the day, my mom used her meatloaf recipe in her stuffed peppers. i'm not much of a meatloaf fan, but these were really quite tasty.

i have 30 peppers in the garage. i picked them saturday night because of a frost advisory that did not actually happen. i guess i will have a lot of vitamin c in me this week, and you guys will probably be getting more sweet pepper recipes :)




ps. anne. come over and get some of those peppers, please?

ps

somebunny else got a new bed today, too. see, maybe winter will not be so bad ;)

falling all over

i consider myself a pretty sensible shopper. i don't splurge alot of the time, except for on $5 flea market items.

which makes it especially curious why i cannot resist a new quilt every fall. seriously people, EVERY fall. i guess it's because i start thinking about my bed more in the fall. how much i love being in it ;)) and somehow, the eyes need some new candy to make it all the better.

pottery barn knows my weakness. so, i have been stalking this quilt for a month or so. this morning, it went on sale. still too pricey. i was able to resist.

then, just now, i got an email from PB saying that for today only, everything was 10% off. including the object of my stalking.

i swear. if anybody wants to attend a live rendition of 'princess and the pea' i could put it together pretty quickly. that is how much quiltage that is going on around here.

however, EXCITED to see this lovely quilt in person :)