Happy Halloween!

This was our exciting Halloween night. We made it through dinner while watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and that's about it. We were going to carve some pumpkins and then go out with painted faces for dessert. I guess two mid-terms and studying until 2am or 3am most nights of the week will do this to you. I fell asleep too for two hours and I'm not even in school! I guess we'll find out how long face paints keep.

FREE CHOCOLATE!!!

http://www.haydeechocolatier.com/gourmet_chocolate.php

My Mom just sent me this link. All you have to do is give them your address and they'll send you a box of 8 fancy chocolates. You might end up with some spam too, since they want your email address too. I think it's worth it though. (Not the "mechanically separated chicken parts" kind of spam...I mean junk mail of course.)

I found this on their Chocolate Blog. I'm going to try it tonight for my date with Greg. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Dangerous Chocolate Cake-in-a-Mug

1 - coffee mug (microwave-safe)

4 T. - cake flour (plain, not self-rising)

4 T. - sugar

2 T. - cocoa

1 - egg

3 T. - milk

3 T. - oil

1 - splash of vanilla

3 T. - chocolate chips (Optional)


Add dry ingredients to the mug; mix well with a fork. Add egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in milk, oil, and vanilla, and mix well. Add chips, if using.

Put mug in the microwave, and cook for three minutes at 1,000 watts. Cake will rise over the top of the mug -- do not be alarmed. When finished, carefully remove mug from microwave and allow to cool a little. Tip onto a small plate prior to serving, if desired. Yields one generous serving or two "more virtuous" servings.

The answer to save our economy!

Hahaha! This is so funny. I got this from Kaela blog. They posted it awhile ago but I just saw it tonight. HAhaha!

http://consumerist.com/consumer/clips/snl-skit-dont-buy-stuff-you-cant-afford-252491.php

Halloween Cookies!

I got some new cookie cutters recently and have been looking for a reason to use them. (They are pumpkins and leaves...I know, it looks like Christmas trees but they're not.)


I decided to make sugar cookies for mutual and let the girls decorate them for their treat. My sister also sent me these cool stencils, so I brought them to try out. They are a little tricky to use, but Greg figured out how to do it pretty well. I made some more cookies so we could decorate them too.

I did this one. The eyes got kind of goofed up when I took the stencil off. I tried to shake off the extra sprinkles, but of course they just got stuck on other parts of the cookie, so you can't really see the eyes very well. It's a cute face anyway.


Greg did this one. He spent a lot of time carefully placing the sprinkles in the stencil with a toothpick. It looks pretty good!



These are all the cookies we did. You can see the cool little stencils and my cookie cutters. There are about 10 different stencils to use.



If it weren't for all the orange and scary pumpkins, it would have felt like Christmas!

Applesauce

We made applesauce today at a friend's house. She has this really cool applesauce maker. You cut the apple in fourths, and cut out the stem and blossom on the end. That's it! You don't have to peel or core or make tiny pieces. Then you throw it in a pot and cook it. When the apples are soft and mush easily, you pour them into the top of the contraption and start turning a crank. The core and seeds and peel gets filtered and spit out one direction, and smooth nice pure applesauce comes out the other side. It makes the process very easy and fast.


The only problem is you can't make chunky applesauce that way, and chunky is the whole reason I like homemade. So we a couple pot-fulls of apples that were sliced and cored and peeled with the other tool we got, and then just mixed in those chunky pots with the smooth. We made 25 and a half jars, and canned them with her pressure cooker. Ta Da!

Canning Season!

I picked a whole bunch of yellow plums at a friend's house last week and have been working on pitting them and making jam out of them. I did this last year, but forgot just how many plums I can really handle. I had to give away a box because I wouldn't be able to finish the work before they went bad. They are very tasty though, and make great jam!



My next project is to turn these grapes into juice and can that. I have 4 big buckets full that I picked at another friend's house last week too. It's just kind of overwhelming because there are so many--I've had a hard time getting started on that one. The grapes are really sweet though, so it will make good juice.



Tomorrow I plan to make applesauce with another friend. I already made a batch of applesauce this year, but that supply is dwindling quickly, so I want to take advantage of all those free apples that are just hanging around waiting to be picked, and make some more! I got tons of nice jars for free from another friend, so it will only cost a little sugar and my time!

The Lord Bless you and keep you

I sang this one in high school too. We used to sing it at the end of every concert, and we all loved it so we sang it really beautifully. I'm going to be singing it with a couple people at a wedding on Saturday night. (These people sing it a bit slower than my choir did.)



I loved this song so much that I practiced all the parts and made a recording of me singing it. It's sounds kind of funny--a whole choir of Holly.

Vote against same-sex marriage

Sorry, I couldn't get the actual video here, but this is the link. Copy and paste it in your browser.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1815825713

My Mom sent me this video today. It made me feel sick to think about the little kids being taught such awful things in school. I plan to home school my kids--at least while they're young. The world is becoming a scary place and I'm afraid for when it's time to bring my children into it.

The Garden Harvest

This is the rest of what we got from our garden. I think these peppers look cool, with some of them turning red, purple and yellow. (I guess the purplish one doesn't show. One of our sweet banana peppers was turning purple. Greg put it in the salsa.)


This is all the ripe tomatoes we got before the freeze. They are chopped up for our last batch of "Garden Fresh" salsa for the year.


These are the green tomatoes that I'm trying to save. This is about 2/3rds of what was on the plants, but I just couldn't get it all. It's hard to know how many will ripen, but I'm keeping hope that some will. Especially the ones that are kind of orange right now.


These are tomatillos. They make the salsa really good. They are good chopped up and charred for mixing in the salsa. They are also really good fresh chopped on salads, or you can make chip dip. It's the main ingredient for the salsa verde. (That's what makes it so green.)


These are the onions. We have white globe onions and green onions.


And here's the pumpkins. I think these are the coolest thing from the garden. I carved one of them (on a previous post) and the rest I hope will finish turning orange. I will bake them and can the good stuff. Then I can use it to make pumpkin pie! Yum!



That's all folks! Please join us next year for Holly's Garden Adventures!

Baby Blanket Corners

Ali was asking about the corners of the blanket. This is what the other corners looked like. (I just sewed this real quick to put up a picture, they looked a little bit different just because they were on the blanket.)


I just folded the silk under itself and sewed up the diagonal. I copied the idea from a blanket I have already. It wasn't too hard. I just had to fuss with it a little to make it stay just how I wanted it.

Baby Blanket

I made this for my friend who is having a baby girl. It was my first blanket and turned out to be trickier than I thought. Well, it was easy until I started sewing with the silky part. I didn't know that it would snag so bad on the little foot that moves the fabric from underneath. (I forgot what that part's called...something like dog feeders, or eating dogs, or something like that.) Anyway, I figured out that putting masking tape on the silky part made it work ok. I just put it on the side and left the part that was getting stitched clear so the needle wouldn't get all gummed up. I thought I'd be fancy too and use the heart stitch instead of just a boring straight line or zig-zag. That was tricky too. Since the tape was on it, the foot didn't move it along like it should, so I had to pull it through and try to keep it steady. The hearts are different sizes (skinny or fat) because I couldn't pull it through exactly the same the whole time. Overall it doesn't look too bad though.



I was so tired, I started falling asleep while I waited for Greg to come take a picture of it. (Well, and he got distracted and took a long time too.) Doesn't it look cozy and nice?



I also was happy to be able to use one my cool labels. I bought these about two years ago when I first got all my sewing stuff.



This morning at the Baby Shower I thought it was funny how everybody was so excited about the blanket. They thought I hand stitched the hearts, but couldn't believe it, so they were asking me how I did that. I said a little sheepishly, "Well, I just pushed the heart button." And they asked how I made my label, and I said I bought it. "No, no, Holly. How did you get your name to look so nice on it like that?" "Um, well, I bought it with my name on it."

Anyway, everybody else just got her baby clothes, so I was glad I could give her something different, and that everybody didn't make baby blankets too. It was hard to give it away. After I worked on it so much I felt kind of attached. I might just have to make myself one later.

Garden produce

This is the first of the garden produce. I've been watching the cantaloupe, hoping they'd grow big and sweet. This is the biggest one, but it was only about the size of, well, I'm not sure. It was about 6 inches in diameter though. There wasn't a whole lot of fruit, but it smelled and tasted pretty good.


Next year I will start the cantaloupe indoors early, and we'll build a little greenhouse for it like we did the peppers. It wasn't hot enough, and they needed more time to grow. That's why we didn't get much of a crop this year.

Pumpkin Carving

I brought a pumpkin from my garden to mutual on Wednesday night. We were carving pumpkins for our activity. I don't think I will ever outgrow pumpkin carving. It was fun!

Weather Report

(note the drooping tomato plants in the background....so sad. kinda looks like cooked spinach.) Up front is the zucchini and pumpkin plants.



These are the tomatillos. I explain about the husks and fruit below...




Pullman current temp 26.1°

Hi: 49° F

Lo: 29° F
Mostly cloudy. A 20 percent chance of rain showers...

Do you know what this means? Well, it means that it's been freezing here, and that my garden is now dead. I picked all the peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins and zucchini. I had been fantasizing about how I could cover it all with a tarp again, or build a green house, or dig up all the plants and keep them in the house in pots...but I think it really is time to let go. It's gone, all gone. Tomorrow I will sort through the tomatillos for the good ones. There's at least 100 on the two plants, but a lot of them are too small still. They grow a husk first, and then the fruit grows into the husk. That means I have to hold each one and give a little squeeze to see if the husk is empty or if the tomatillo grew into it. Today it was just too cold and raining, so I left them for tomorrow. Hopefully it will be sunny and a little warmer while I sit out there.
I'll take some pictures of the food I harvested today. It was kind of fun see it all at once. We got a lot of peppers, and so many tomatoes! I don't know how many will ripen, but I tried to get most of them. I cut them on the vine, so they can continue getting nutrients from the vine and ripen in the window. The cherry tomatoes looked like little bunches of grapes. They grow mostly in bunches of about six or seven.
I talked to my garden expert friend. He gave me words of comfort, and told me what to do with my vegetables. I carved one of my pumpkins at mutual last night, but I'm thinking I will bake the rest of them and can it. That will make good pumpkin pie later. We decided to have a garden planning party in December when his seed catalog comes. I can't wait! I'm excited to put together my next garden, after learning so much this year! We haven't even had Thanksgiving or Christmas, but I can't wait for winter to be over so I can start my new garden!

My New Swimsuit!

(I had to be inventive about taking the picture--I was home alone)


My mom asked me to send her my measurements awhile ago, so I knew she was up to something. Today I got this big squishy bag in the mail--stuffed in my mailbox. I was so excited that I decided to just put it on!

The good things about this swimsuit:
1)It's modest
2)It has a cute little skirt, so I don't have to wear soggy shorts over my suit all the time
3)The colors are blue and green. If you haven't noticed from pictures of my bathroom, I really like those two colors

Thanks Mom!

My New Flowers!

I've been wanting to do something crafy and decorative for the bathroom for a long time, and I finaly found the answer! I picked out these flowers at Joann's and put them together with that green kind of sticky plant tape. Then I put the marble/pebble/pearl mixture from our wedding in the vase. I also got those little candles and holders to match. (They are cheap at Walmart.)


This stuff is also a lot cheaper at Walmart. It wasn't enough to fill up the whole vase though, so I think I might get some more. It makes the pebbles have a softer look and it holds everything together how I want it.


See how well it all matches? Ta Da!

The Choirboys!

These are my new favorite little kids. I found this when I was searching for "What Sweeter Music" by Rutter. My choir is singing it this Christmas and I wanted to show my family what it sounded like. Then I got stuck listening to these kids that sound like angels. They should get together and sing with Charlotte Church. You can look them up and find lots of videos of them singing.



I'm not sure why it shows them getting a hair cut, or singing without it matching the sound...but the music is nice anyway. Maybe they should get a new video guy.