Fire in the sky

 Yesterday morning there was fire in the sky and this was taken toward the east from my patio.  The other was toward the west and even in that direction, they sky was lovely!!!  I also pulled the living room blind to see deer on the front lawn. The antelope are elsewhere on the prairie, but the deer will spend the winter sleeping in my yard now. We will occasionally see the coyotes, fox, badger, moose and weasels, but the bald eagle perches daily in the tree south of us and the deer are here every evening.

 Snow arrived as predicted, but only a small amount and the temperature is proof that winter has arrived!!  With that in mind, time to turn to indoor activities and below is the first of many projects I have planned for my summer craft retreat with dear friends. Picked up at a thrift shop, I scored 6 wine glasses for $5.00 and this is my version of a painting project for the gals.  My mind is thinking of jack'o lanterns, witches, Santas, lop-eared bunnies.....endless new projects for painting.  With the tea lights on top, what do you think?

"It is said that we do not make our friends, that we simply recognize them." ~ Faith Baldwin

Holiday happenings

 I have been a little lax about posting...working on a quilt and the Mr. and I went to a pool tournament last weekend and I am preparing for the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons upcoming.  Almost my favorite time of the year.  Girls, I have a craft project that I think you will love!!!  Just beginning to work on it.  Last weekend I met with several of my friends over in Cheyenne and we went to a couple of Christmas craft shows and that is where I saw this painting project.  My retreat gals like to paint and if the project can be a gift...all the better.  Wait for the finished project soon.  Also, since I am a baby boomer and of the generation that came during the first half of the last century, I still retain that simpler love for life.  Technology will cause that to change for other generations but I have the time and love to bake for the holidays.  Above are real fruitcakes!!  Not the kind you buy at the local market or the specialty stores, but the old fashioned Christmas fruitcakes.  We always had them at home and my dad loved these.  They are expensive to make and were a real sweet treat for those who struggled to make a living for their families..we had them once a year.  Mine is a very old recipe, but there are similar ones on line.  It has 4 cups of sugar, 7 cups of flour 8 lbs of candies fruits, dates, raisins, nuts, molasses, 10 eggs and lots of spices. Then when it is cooled, it is drizzled with brandy, wrapped in cheesecloth, then foil and placed in a tin.  Every few days, I will drizzle brandy over the loaves and rewrap until Christmas.  Yummy!!!  (not everyone loves these, in fact I find that mostly people my age appreciate the traditional sweet, but there are a few that do and I will gift them one)

The leaves are long gone from the cottonwoods and the Canadian cherry tree in our yards, but the pine makes a pretty silhouette against the firey sky sunset.  For us it is way too early for the Christmas decorations, but this pine will get it's lights soon and we are planning our 2nd annual trek to cut our indoor tree. 

When I was growing up, my mom had Thanksgiving dinner with aunts and uncles and cousins.  It was always festive with lots of food, games, a little bottled cheer and lots of love. When my children were growing up, we lived too far away to be with family most of the time and the Mr. and I are too far away from our children to travel at this time of the year.  We still live in snowy, windy country with travel advisories most of the time, but we have been fortunate to have family and friends most of the time.  Even if it is just the two of us and the furkids, I still cook a turkey and have all the trimmin's.  So when it snows and it does regularly, I bake cookies etc. and the holiday happenings have already begun!!

Cold snowy days

 I got a call from my buddy in town (50 miles away) checkin' on me to see if I had been in...and not contacting her, but alas, I assured her that I had not.  I understand why snowbirds travel south in the winters here.  It was a freakin' 9 degrees yesterday and the wind is blowing this morning at a speed that rattles your teeth.  The inch and a half of snow we got yesterday a.m. is blowing like glitter everywhere and NO...I am not venturing out!!  Maybe I will quilt!!!  Above are finally the 1126 or so pieces stitched into arcs for the quilt I am making, but there are many more pieces to add.  The furkids below know how to handle these cold, snowy days which is why I have leather furniture. And I do have alternate seating. 

 Some of my favorite things are the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets and even with snow on the range, we still have those.  Thanksgiving is creeping up on us and looking at the calendar, I realize that we have so many birthdays in November.  2 nieces, a couple of nephews, a son-in-law, several dear friends and my sister,  and daddy and the Mr.'s mother had November birthdays.  Could explain those cold snowy days in February huh? 

The eagles still perch in the tree south of us as they look for prey, and the deer are starting to venture near for foraging, but the antelope are now in large herds on the prairie and a little more scarce.  Watching for tracks in the snow that on chance the moose may have visited this morning, the snow was only disturbed by a small bunny that has taken up residence in my garden.  The Mr. wants to feed him, but he is probably preferring the remnants of the flower bed and garden.  They can be ravenous and destroy so much, but I am not launching a battle yet.  Although we have cold snowy days, we don't have most of the natural disasters that much of the rest of the nation has and we are thankful for that and the fact that spring will eventually be here!!

Halloween?

Is it really almost Halloween? What have I been doing? I know someone has complained that I haven"t posted lately.  Don't have an excuse.  I did have to harvest my tomatoes and spent some time freezing them as they ripened in a box in the closet...below is just a small sampling of the harvest.  I make sauce from them mostly, pizza etc.  We also got a storage shed which was ordered in July..(finally), and I took a trip south of the border (WY) last week with my buddy.  We got stranded for 2 1/2 hours behind a 3 semi-truck accident going down on Friday and snowstorm on Sunday coming home in Laramie.  But we went to a quilt show, a Maggie Magee craft show and The French Nest outdoor market in Ft. Collins.  In addition, 3 of my quilt buddies from Cheyenne met us in Ft. Collins and we also had lunch with them, we stayed with a friend (Thank you Ruth) and had great food!!!

I have been working on a double wedding ring quilt and spend most afternoons paper-piecing small pieces of fabric (I never throw anything away), to the arcs below.  I think I will need about 116 and I am close to having 80 finished. For me it is therapy.  I have already used the fabric in the plastic bin and have resorted to my stash for more now...but as a (use what you have) quilter, it gives me great satisfaction that I didn't throw these small pieces away. 

In my sewing room, I have the buggy above, a relic from much earlier times and have not had the heart to let go of it.  I also have a baby blanket, crocheted by one of my grandmothers I think, that was mine, in the buggy.  For some reason Coalette has taken it upon herself to take her afternoon naps in the buggy, as Roger sleeps at my feet while I sew.  Can it get any better? We don't get trick or treaters out here, so I guess I didn't realize it had been sneaking up on me.

Wyoming weather and such

 Having been absent from this blog for a few weeks, I am back at the keyboard.  Sometimes it seems like you just need a break and with this situation with our government (let that many mothers govern and the situation would never have happened), among another ongoing thing, my blood pressure has been boiling. However, it is under control and life goes on.  A week ago the snow on my little balcony off my sewing room had 12 1/2 inches on it and a couple of days ago, we trekked to the Bennett Peak area to search for chokecherry seeds and check on our Geocasche and the leaves on the trees were just still in glorious colors.  The weather is fickle. It was a solitary drive and the furkids got to go, but it was really pretty.

 A few weeks ago I promised the picture of more rolling pins recycled and it is perfect for hanging my apron.  I use aprons!!!  Another piece of history which is fading is the apron.  Well, maybe not completely fading as I see a new interest with those younger generation crafters who quilt and try to revive some of the lost skills. After all, who tats any more?  That is a craft forgotten for most.  Lots of young people are crocheting and knitting though and that is a good thing.  Good for the soul!!

Last year, on one of my trips to Denver with my buddies, we spent the day at the Brass Armadillo and we were seeking a cookbook for my friend here to convert into a clock and I was looking for Christmas themed old handkerchiefs.  A booth there was literally loaded with handkerchiefs!!  Not only was it loaded, it had so many Christmas hankies that I couldn't decided which ones to purchase.  In a magazine I had seen a Christmas tree skirt completely made of these and quilted.  Recycled and quilted...just up my alley.  I have it nearly completed and will no doubt embellish it. I am also working on a wedding ring quilt with over 100 pieced segments of 11 small pieces each. How many is that? In addition, there will be many background pieces to stitch to these.  I have 25 finished so this will occupy a good share of my winter snow days won't it?  In addition, if the weather permits, my buddies and I are planning another jaunt sometime soon as it has been forever since I have done this it seems.  These are my two old friends (over 40 years) and as Dolly and Kenny sing----"you can't make old friends". 

I do love the seasons and don't mind the snow as long as I don't have to go out in it.  I grew up with long snowy winters and like my mother, do not like cold weather.  It is like chicken gizzards, you can not develop a like for some things, although she loved gizzards and liver, I still cannot handle either of those.  But I do share her dislike for cold weather and the wind.  Oh my gosh we have had wind.
Anyway, my dad who dearly loved my mother, took her to New Mexico for her last few years and I think she was happy there. So we started with cold weather and have ended with warm weather.  In a few weeks we will have Thanksgiving...I am looking forward to that and Christmas.  Thank goodness we have lots of holidays during the winter and our larder is always full, the coffee pot is on and the sewing bobbins are full!!!

Windy Wyoming

 This blog title doesn't really represent these blog photos today, but my heavens to mergatroid, has it been windy!!!  So windy that I haven't really been able to go out and work to get my garden stuff in.  And I just looked at the thermometer and it is 33 degrees outside.  It wasn't supposed to get this cold and I didn't cover anything.  Having the cows back in the pasture though does give me some pleasure in that it reminds me of the stock from which I came.  Good ol' beef and farming country.  Those cold mornings when we went out to feed the calves from a bucket with a nipple attached and getting milk splashed over us wasn't really fun, but it surely taught us how we earned our beef on the table.  I love baby calves and their beautiful eyes. Hard to look into those sweet faces and long lashes and know they would be on the table come winter.  We have taken the hummer feeders down and put up the bird feeders above, so you can see how close these cattle are and it warms my soul to see and hear them.

 Some of the things I collect are mashers and rolling pins, but not just any mashers and rolling pins.  The ones I collect "speak" to me. These kitchen tools have been replaced by more modern appliances, but I know they will go by the wayside and again, it reminds me of my childhood.  I do remember watching my grandmother use a masher similar to the ones above. And a butter paddle? Although used in a simpler era, and becoming more scarce all of the time, these were essential in any pioneer kitchen. I have a food processor and even though it makes a wonderful scratch pie crust, I still like to use a rolling pin and I have many.  I remember using my "little" rolling pin and rolling crust with grandma.  She would give me the leftover pieces and I could sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on my carefully rolled pastry dough and bake it in her oven.  These little pins are really getting difficult to locate and I just received my latest pin treasure this week from my dear friend.  It is the green handled one on the far right and is in pristine condition.  Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

 These are some of the other pins from days gone by and I have taken a couple of them and used them for apron Hooks....will post later. Snow is on the mountains and our larder is mostly stocked so it is time for pies right?  My mom wasn't the greatest cook although she was good at opening cans and jars, but she made great pie crusts. I have tried dozens of so-called perfect pie crusts, and I have even resorted to buying frozen crusts, but I am still searching for a crust that would marvel my mother's.  And her warm ginger bread with cream on it...does anyone even make gingerbread?  I don't mean cookies.  I mean real dark brown gingerbread in a 9 X 13 cake pan. I don't recall ever making it.  But my mom could bake and maybe that is why unlike Rachel Ray, I would much more prefer to bake than cook. With winter around the corner, we need to store up some fat don't we?  My doctor would not agree I am sure, but that's what we did with the cattle...fatten 'em up for slaughter....so If the wind doesn't blow 100 mph today, I won't bake, I will go out and work off a few calories.  Then I shall bake.

Fall around the corner

 It has been quiet on the home front and above, the first of the garden, picked earlier this week, has now become nearly the last of the garden.  It was our first "real" frost last night and we covered what is left of the tomatoes.  I have put up for the winter much zucchini and will start the tomatoes that were picked last night.  About a dozen had been left to ripen on the vine and they are red and plump!!
More will survive this first frost covered, but with a bit of yellow showing in the far aspen, we are reminded that snowfall is not far behind now. There are still root crops in, parsnips and carrots and they will be fine for a while. Our quest for more camping will be cut short now too.  So like the cat Coalette below snuggled in my needlework bag, we will be seeking out the comfort of the heaters. The antelope are gathering their herds and the rancher put the cattle out next to our fence for winter pasture...all signs.

 I have probably posted this picture below, but I love how my furkids snuggle up to each other.  The cattle drive my little grey guy nuts. His dream in life is to be a "cowdog".  Not happening! The Mr. has suggested that he take him to the Silver Spur ranch and offer him up as such, but he isn't much bigger than the cat.

With the onslaught of cooler days, let the quilting and crafting and painting and reading begin!!  They are therapy for me and make the hours fly.

"Pleasure and action make the hours seem short." ~ William Shakespeare