What I did on my Fall Break

Ok, you caught me...we're only halfway through fall break...but this is a catch all of what I've been up to and what I hope to finish before going back to school on Monday!

Monday:  Cleaning, hauling stuff to Goodwill drop off, picking up The Boy, Guitar lesson, grocery store, Target, Dentist appointment.  The good news is that we have a guest "room" again--bad news is that The Boy has moved into it while we are dog sitting, so he and the dog can bond.

Tuesday:  More cleaning and hauling, watch two episodes of "Outlander"  (it was ok...not worth $1.99 for more episodes though...I'll wait for it from the library), playing with dogs, pick up food to feed 15 freshman volleyball players, pick up The Boy, watch some volleyball, feed 15 volleyball plays, concession stand stint, home to watch Roanoke on the History Channel (meh, it was ok)

Wednesday:  Finish Roanoke while making 4 lasagnas (3 to freeze, one for tonight).  Talk to water heater people about scheduling permit inspection for heater that was installed a couple weeks ago.  Prep to make chicken and rice casseroles for freezer, entertain visiting dog while waiting for her owner to pick her up.  Later today, pick up The Boy at chess club and watch some more volleyball. And pick up some more carbon monoxide detectors, since the inspection requires more than we have.

Thursday plan:  8:00 am coffee with principal at The Boy's School (not just me, grade 3-5 parents), lunch with a friend at 11, COSTO run, pick up The Boy...somewhere in there hopefully run to the post office to mail  gifts to my newest nephew and his brother.

Friday plan: Wait at house for water heater inspection.  Maybe get work done in yard, more laundry (of course).  Pick up The Boy--trick or treat downtown for a few minutes?  Pick up the Girl...run to grocery store to get stuff for Saturdays' adventures

Saturday plan:  Visit puppy at 11, go to friends house to watch Purdue get creamed by Nebraska, drop The Girl off at a friends house to help friend supervise younger sibling trick or treating, take Boy trick or treating with friends.

Sunday plan:  Church and collapse...I need a vacation from my vacation...geez.

Other items on the "to do list"  (let's see how far I really get:  clean yard and prep for winter, dispose of dead dorm fridge, change smoke detector batteries and clocks, work on school work, and the usual....laundry, dishes, bills..egads)

Good bye 2015 garden....

Between the month of rain, the Japanese Beetle invasion, an apparent bunny infestation, and the 90+ temps in September...the garden was pretty disappointing this year.  My organic pest control worked when I did it well--insecticidal soap and cayenne pepper are just a couple of my methods--but I wasn't very good at keeping up.  I'm a lousy homesteader, what can I say.  We had a few tomatoes, some beans and peas (not enough for a meal), a few cucumbers (not enough to pickle, just enough for eating) and some peppers--oh and two okra.  We may still have a few more tomatoes and peppers, but it looks like everything else is done (as evidenced by the dying vines and plants).  Here's the final "big" harvest.

Notice that the oddly shaped carrots are as big as the butternut squash.  Sigh.  There are a few more carrots out there, too, I'm leaving them for now. There are a few onions and two sad little tomatoes there...  Mr. IM posted a slightly different view of the carrot on Facebook with a slightly obscene label.  Men.  The good news for the carrots and onions was that they became part of the yummy veggie gravy that went with our pot roast on Sunday.  (Now that's a recipe I should share--it is one of the Mister's specialties!)

Now here is the success story of the summer, ironically.  You may remember the previous "potatoes in a bucket" projects.  (See here, here,  and here).  Partially due to the rain, I didn't start the potatoes when I should have.  Sometime in June, I cleaned the refrigerator---like take out all the drawers and shelves and scrub every surface cleaned--and found...wait for it...two little potatoes growing legs.  So I chopped them up, threw them in a plate of water overnight and threw them in some dirt.  I did add more dirt a couple times., but nothing else. Over the weekend I realized all the potato stems were dead, so I dumped them out, expecting, well, nothing, like the past two years...but...surprise--from my two pieces of potato I harvested 4-6 reasonably sized potatoes and a bunch of little ones.  Hmm.  This is an idea for next summer perhaps.

Fall Break...

This was my view this morning...very different from a "usual" Monday morning..

After dinner I was wondering why I was so tired...then I realized (as I posted on Facebook)..
"First day of fall break 2014 is nearly done...went to dentist, Walmart (Thanksgiving basket baskets), Kohls (shoes and shawl for Mane Event), Target (random Target crap and Halloween candy), Grocery store. Ordered a freezer of meat, made a couple of appointments for later this week and 3 lasagnas. Brought in the gnomes for the winter. Gave Indy both of  her medicines and let both dogs in and out 30 times...Picked up and fed kids before delivering them to music lessons. ..."

Oh, yeah...no wonder I'm worn out...

For weeks I've been procrastinating on doing certain errands and cleaning (kids' dish cabinet--ack!) because I knew break was coming...somehow I feel like this is another break I may need a vacation to recover from :)  Tomorrow is a much less planned day--an appointment in the morning, pick up kids in the afternoon...so maybe I'll get some of the "home" stuff done.

I also ran out to the garden (or maybe that was last night) and found a few last green tomatoes--

It was 80 most of last week--a very mild October for Colorado--last year (maybe the year before?) we had a snow day during my fall break!  It was much colder today and a little rainy--maybe in the 50's though, seasonally appropriate weather!  It is supposed to warm back up into the 70's for Halloween though--we have big plans to do the downtown trick or treat party on Friday afternoon, so I'm counting on good weather...I mean, how many more Halloweens can I convince the kids to go to the "little kid" party so I can wander downtown, drink coffee and shop while they trick or treat?  

We haven't decorated much this year either--certainly not up to last year's standard, but maybe tomorrow after I pick the kids up we can get pumpkins and do some carving.

It's fall

So, I'm trying to spread the blogging out and have one post every 3 days or so...sorry if you've become accustomed to every other day...I think you'll live.  This school year is kind of brutal...eesh.  I quite often find myself writing these on Sunday night and setting the timer for later in the week..oh well.

The garden, except for the potatoes (which can wait for after the first frost) is done.  I'll keep checking it every few days, there were a few tiny cucumbers and some tomato blossoms that might survive.  I brought two pepper plants in to see if we can grow peppers through part of the winter, although Alice the Cat is doing her best to eat all the leaves and baby peppers right off the plant...grrr.--The tomato pots were too big and bulky to deal with, so they stay outside  Maybe I'll plant one inside later this winter.  I've left the flowers to the mercy of the elements, they are still pretty, but their days are numbered!

As seen on Facebook--green tomatoes and cucumbers, hurriedly picked before a frost threat.

Carrots--not a bad amount...a couple meals worth...and let's be serious, I don't have a garden to survive on, I have one because it is fun---and look at how cute those short, fat carrots are!!!

To celebrate fall, we headed to downtown Castle Rock for Oktoberfest (yes, that is how you spell it, when it is the "Fall Harvest Festival".

Here's my attempt at being artsy--see the flowers growing through the bench?  Oooh, ahh...

Um...don't even know what to say, except that the flamingo is cute :)

We had some tasty brats with sauerkraut...yummy!

and did a little shopping--this cute little trailer is a shop now, behind the antique (junk) store.  IM said he would consider an "RV like that one"  (say it in your head like Cousin Eddie, with a southern drawl and its like you were with us)

And the coolest part of the festival (really) was this Lego display and the "Lego Launcher" that The Boy had a chance to try!

Winter is coming!

I took a few pictures of the yard/deck at the end of September and beginning of October--

Liberty checking out the last of the flowers for the year..

 My secret owls and bunny, waiting for the snow, protected in their little "houses"













 A few last roses near the bird feeder

 It looks so pretty--hard to believe snow is predicted!

Fall decorating

Those of you who know us know that I love holiday decorations and that I have a lot...starting in early October the top of my dining room buffet is the showcase, but any flat surface is fair game...

 Pictured...let's see..far left, fall colored vase thrown by a former co-worker's husband, some fake pumpkins (purchased at a post-Thanksgiving sale several years ago), a vase with fall (dollar tree) flowers, a cornucopia filled with gourds dried by my parents, orange vases and pumpkin man from Mr. Ranch's grandparents's house, some ghosts...one painted by my grandmother, and a bunch of corncobs and fake leaves...

The Boy decorated this corner for us--lots of faces in this corner.











A nice side benefit of the garden corn project was that I have corn stalks for the front porch--stay tuned and I'll post a picture of the "pumpkin man" who is sitting on the bench these days.

And here are the children helping...looks like a fall decoration/Halloween costume store exploded.

 More work by the children

 A nice view of the drying rack

And some more, um, "decor" :)  Wait until you see my Christmas decorations!

Peaches, Part 1?

Every year the Knights of Columbus at our church sell peaches.  We used to buy a half case and just try to eat them before they went bad and then freeze what ever was left "for pie".  I don't ever make peach pie.  Ever.  Ok, well, maybe once in a while, but we still have frozen peaches from last year in the big freezer, so not very often.

This year we bought a whole case.  The kids have made a dent in them by eating at least a couple each per day, but that still leaves a lot of peaches. I think the picture shows the last layer (of 2 or 3 layers).
I identified the "squishy" peaches...and using my handy Ball Blue Book Home Guide to Canning and Freezing (a wedding gift that I once thought, "um, what am I going to do with this?"  I use it often in the fall to deal with my excess produce....) whipped up some peach jam....

 I only made a half recipe, although I suspect these three jars will last the winter, unless someone really gets a hankering for some jam.

Now...what should I do with the rest of the peaches?