Plying my crafts, winter's almost over

Winter is almost out of here with spring's warm sun brightening things up and popping out new growth on the trees and bushes. We had a few days of hard freeze here about a month ago which nipped hard at some of our tropical plantings here in northeast FL. We got some medium-bad browning of branches on our new pygmy date palm, but the heads of each trunk are green and soon we can trim all that brown mess off. Nature, right? Just as the azalea's began their full blooming we get a hard torrent of rain and winds whipping madly - whoops, there go all the pretty blooms. 😒

Anyway, much like the last post, I've been cooking, (pot pies & various pasta dishes) and baking, (chocolate chip & pecan macaroons, plus cowboy cookies). And we've been gorging ourselves on mandarins & fresh strawberries - it's the height of strawberry season.  I don't make jam anymore so I've no need to buy a flat, but those big clamshells full will last us several days. I cut a bag full up for our fruit bowls then put the rest in a glass jar in the fridge. They hold up pretty well that way.

Italian sausage pot pie

Fresh berries!

In addition to all the great food, I've also spent a few hours making new trivets. It's so funny - I was going to make one but it's so addictive that I made 3 instead. I've always said I'm easily amused, haha.

 I'm regularly doing 2 craft shows a month, to good affect, but I added a special one called "Mystic Faire", held in a local hotel, which featured all things mystical such as creepy skull lamps & trinkets, crystals, swords & knives, candles, tarot etc. Very interesting show, my first indoor show so setup was a bit of a challenge. I did well, and had a good time doing it.

I'm scheduled for another month or so for shows, then it will be time to get busy with last minute projects around the house before heading out west for the summer.

I've been making a lot of dazzlers using semi-precious stone chip beads such as striped agate, lapis lazuli, cherry quartz, tiger's eye, amethyst and aventurine. Also, combining the stone with the bark gives a very organic and natural feel to the piece. 

Striped agate, peach aventurine
Tree-of-Life 

A small, simple dazzler,
closeup below.

 The chicken wire/wood pieces are also popular, I finally finished up one I had started last summer featuring a honeycomb with bees.

I wish the light was better in this shot :(

 Also, the fun bracelet bangles have been flying off the rack. I made some with football team color combo's, plus the chakra colors, (basically a rainbow - so pretty).

So that's my story for the last couple of months. I hope this finds you happy and healthy and staying busy doing things you love! 😊🥳

Holidays all wrapped-up and good food flourishes

 December was a busy month as you might expect around the holidays. Putting up decorations and outside lights, baking, shopping and making my bobby-dazzlers for the craft fairs all combined to make the month just fly by. I think I was a little too busy to thoroughly enjoy it, sadly, but still, it was wonderful.

This is the time of the year when cold fronts come in from the northwest and drop that temp on down, usually into the 40's for lows and mid-50's for highs. Here's a shot of a cold front coming in around sunrise.

I thought that looked wild - "doomsday is upon us".

We basically had a nice rerun of turkey day dinner and it was wholly enjoyed by one and all. Buffet style serving.

Here's the Boss in FL togs - yay FL weather!

I might have mentioned that I bought a multi-pack of pie crusts a bit ago and have been making various pot pies and things. I made an Italian Sausage Pot Pie with sun-dried tomato pesto, lots of eggplant, bell peppers, mushrooms, onions etc. and it was delectable! So much so that I added it to the Food & Recipe page so I wouldn't forget how to make it. You can check it out there.

Delving back into the world of quiche after a long absence was fun. I re-learned how to blind-bake the bottom crust (simple) and how to make a decent egg "custard" to cover the fillings with again.  So far we've had 2; ham, broccoli, mushroom and chicken, slivered tomatoes, asparagus and mushroom. Both included cheese, (but of course), and were great with a side salad for a lighter dinner.

On the crafting front, I had 3 shows in December leading up to Christmas and did fairly well. One of the things I like about doing the shows is meeting other craft folks. It's a great little community, very welcoming. I believe I'll carry on with it for a while longer. Here's a shot of me in my booth setup taken with a wide angle for a change. You can get a better overall look at the layout.

I've been so busy with the beadworks that my supply of trivets is dwindling, ruh-roh. I'll have to get busy with that when things slow down.

And I'll leave you with a couple of picks of the latest creations.

I've started making small UV Resin
embellishment's for some of my pieces
for a bit of diversification. It's also fun!

These Tree of Life pieces are very popular.
They are make using 4" hoops as the base.
That ensures they are light enough to hang 
from a suction cup on a window.

Thanks for stopping by and having a gander. Feel free to leave a comment and as always, take care.

Thanksgiving doings, dryer vent clean-out and upgrade, and beadworks.

I love this time of the year. I'm all shopped-up and caught-up around here and can concentrate on those things that I love - cooking, baking, beading, socializing and getting the decorations ready to go up.

I've been baking cookies, (of course) and worked through processing a 2# bag of asparagus and a 10# bag of red potatoes; scalloped, twice baked, cooked & cubed for home fries and smashed & frozen for use in Italian sausage & potato soup. Whew, big job but rewarding, lots of sides for grilled meats.

Delicious scalloped potatoes

With the asparagus, I steam it all until just barely crisp-tender, then season it with butter and spices and let it cool. We'll have some fresh like that but it freezes quite well. I will then use it in various alfredo sauces, quiches, cold salads and such. Another time/energy saver and I don't have to stress about it laying around in the vegetable drawer waiting to be addressed.

Some steamed already, and some getting ready to steam.

The Tollhouse cookies aren't the only sweets I've baked, I started with those delicious ginger snaps we love, with those tiny dices of candied ginger and more pecans, haha. Those got devoured in short order.

Tollhouse chocolate chips with loads of pecans.

Everyone knows we love having some pot pie around, time for another one. Now I just need to get some ready to go chicken and some crusts. BJ's warehouse store comes to the rescue with a multi-pack of pie crusts (6) and a tray of roasted chicken thighs from dinosauric-proportioned chickens! The photo below shows the meat from 2 thighs plus another thigh ready to be "picked". Man, with 4 like that I've got meat for days, or at least 2 more pot pies, lol!

Meat from 2 thighs with 2 left to "pick".

After all that picking I had to get the stock pot involved. I always have wonderful, strong stock in the freezer. Some as ice cubes, some in 1 cup measures and super handy for soups, gravies, sauces, making grits with it, sauteing veg's and more. I'm going to need a lot for Thanksgiving dressing.

On the topic of Thanksgiving, I was planning on dry-brining a Cornish hen for the meat. Generally speaking, turkeys are just too big for us. However, our local IGA (Rowes) usually caters to quite the international clientele and often has unusual cuts of meat. They had a very nice half turkey that looked just right. Turkey it is then.. out came the roasting pan, down goes the bed of carrots and some chicken stock and I forgot to take any more pictures, ah shucks.

Ready for the half turkey and the small "balls" of dressing.

Here is a shot from the dinner table. A mid-day meal is so nice - all afternoon to piddle around with the clean-up.

We enjoyed our meal in the Florida Room as usual.

I've been busy with the beadworks, developing new designs and stretching my skills. I've also participated in a few more craft fairs and have been pleased with both my sales and people's compliments. It certainly adds a fillip of satisfaction to the whole process.

Trying my hand at Tree of Life styles. I'm liking them!

Also some triple-hooper's with semi-precious stones/crystal beads.
It's all fun, FUN to me, and I'm covering my supplies costs.

The Boss has been busy with his projects as well, one of which has been to clean out the dryer vent of 40 yrs of lint, and install a super-duper lint trap which can be cleaned more readily. The dryer vents out under the deck via a 25' 4" PVC pipe laid in the foundation. Whose bright idea was this when the house was built?? 😦 Scary how much lint accumulates, and can you say flammable?!! Anyway, with his heavy duty leaf blower and a lo-o-ong cleaning brush he/we got it cleaned out. Boy, did it make a difference in drying times! He then installed a secondary lint filter system to prevent build-ups like this from happening again.

The portion of the hose that's inside the house,
a shocking amount of lint build-up in just 5 years.
Why doesn't the dryer's lint filter capture more?

Marry an engineer, you get engineered projects.

Ready to go. You put water in the bottom of the capture box
and angle the deflector screen towards the water.
Easy to see when it needs cleaning out.

As usual, thanks for visiting, and comments are always welcome. See you the next time. Enjoy the Holidays and all it entails, hugs.

Lunch Date, New Palms, Cooking and Crafts

It's been busy these past couple of weeks, what with catching up my dazzler's inventory after a record number of sales (35 items!) at my favorite craft fair, the Mandarin Garden Club. The ladies that organize the fair, and really everyone that participates, makes this a fantastic & friendly show. I have several more fall shows coming up so I have to stay on top of things.

Another beautiful day in a lovely setting. My set-up has changed
a bit as I've added my free-standing grid hanger, (on the far right
with blue coverings on the frame).

My sweetie took me out to lunch one day to a great local waterfront restaurant called Whitey's Fish Camp, on Black Creek. A beautiful setting, great fish & chips and, I'm sure a great vibe in the evenings with music on tap on the weekends. They're proud of Southern Rock, and that Lynyrd Skynyrd was a hometown band. Here's a link to check them out - some nice shots of the area - whiteysfishcamp.com

Deck seating and plenty of dockage for people coming via the water.
It was a king tide and right after a hurricane scooted by so the water was high!

On to the front yard makeover story. For years our elderly camellia bush and azalea were struggling and getting sickly looking. We did keep our crepe myrtle tree as it has a nice shape and is healthy. 

I wanted a fresh start out there so after we had the various "locate" crews come out, we had both bushes taken out and prepared for our new addition, a 3-trunk cluster of pygmy date palms. It will look so pretty, so tropical and provide a pocket of shade for plantings underneath it. They are slow growers, and bonus, not terribly messy. We had experience with them from the atrium at our old house.

All ready for the planting, but boy,
the rocks got a lot of dirt on them.
I smell another yard project coming up.

We have to keep the moat for 8 weeks and water everyday 
to get them established, but it sure is a big uptick in
our curb appeal, lol. Those foundational plants were outdated.

As far as cooking goes, I made a yummy chicken pot pie the other day - thank goodness for rotisserie chickens at BJ's! We split 1/4 of it, so 3 more dinners, yay.

Another project this past week was to tidy-up our driveway and road "meet-up". Our upper road, which is private, was repaved this summer while we were out west. The crew left a gap at the joining between the 2 which was less than ideal. When the crew came back to spray a topcoat on a section of road near us, the Boss got a small bucket of tar from the crew and we got busy making it a seamless join between the 2.

The gap between the 2 surfaces, not good if you're OCD,
plus the asphalt was crumbly at the edge.

I "blue taped" while he came behind and applied the tar. There were
several coats of tar needed, thanks for your efforts Boss!
Looks so much tidier now and the edges of the asphalt are sealed
so it should hold up much better now.

 

Aaahh, much better now.

Well, I think I have lulled you to sleep by now so I'll quit and leave the rest until another time. Thanks for dropping by, I appreciate it! 😊

Trip home, kitchen catch-up and 1st Craft show

(excuse the blurry header shot - taken while underway). 

We left Rustic the last Friday of September after a fairly leisurely and routine week of packing, cleaning, organizing & storing the lawn furniture & winterizing Rocky. Our usual strategy is to finish up mid afternoon and head for an overnight in Cheyenne, about 85 miles away. We get points at the Choice chain, so the Comfort Inn & Suites was the place for us. We do love their 24hr coffee station and other niceties. The staff was particularly helpful.  I had to include a shot of one of the 'Cheyenne Big Boots' by the front entrance. It's something like 8 ft tall and I guess there are a few in downtown Cheyenne.

After a good night's rest and hot breakfast we got on the road. Luckily we ran into zero problems, no big hold-ups, and no issues all day and made it into Chillicothe, MO late afternoon. Not a bad day at all. The Chillicothe Comfort Inn & Suites was a recipient of a big renovation the prior year and was really tricked-out. Very clean and beautiful. Again, the staff went above and beyond with their helpful and welcoming demeaner after a long day on the road.

Fancy Lodge-like entranceway.

Atrium affect from the 2nd floor

The view from our room - can you say quiet?

So onward the days went. From Chillicothe we took some state highways and avoided chaos that way. You can't beat the better views and lighter traffic although it might be a tad slower than the interstate.

Linda's obsession with hay and winter preps.

Once you've been riding through the heartland 
for a while, you definitely pick up bugs!

 Across the Mississippi and down through the land of the Smokies and other assorted hills & valleys to an overnight in Dickson, TN followed the next day by an overnight in Valdosta, GA, just a hop, skip and jump from home.

Excuse the blurry-factor.

Finally home late morning and super glad we didn't have any trouble. Everything looks great at home and I'm always so glad I took the time to get things clean and tidy before we left. The Boss gets the cars ready, they both get oil changes and one gets prepped for the road while the other gets tanked-up with non-ethanol gas & garaged with a trickle-charger left on it. So-o, now it's time to catch-up the laundry and go for a grocery shop.

Next up, cook some favorites to restock the fridge and freezer. I like to do a bunch of "lazyman" tasks to make scratch cooking easy and fun. That means doing a bunch of chopping and freezing; onions, both sweet and red, bell peppers of all colors. I also clean/cook mushrooms, cook-up sausage crumbles to have handy for scrambled eggs or breakfast burritos. Making grits and bagging them up in 2-person portions as well as cooking and freezing rice to have super quick/handy. A portioned rotisserie chicken is a great start since I can take the carcass and make stock, a staple in our kitchen. Also, a huge batch of spaghetti sauce with Italian sausage crumbles & meatballs plus my add-in veggies - mushrooms, onions, peppers, cubed, sauteed eggplant, and black and green olives.

I also like to cook & mash potatoes and freeze
for use in potato soup or to doll-up with sour cream and
cheese, etc. to make twice baked potatoes

I made it to my 1st craft show of the fall, a small affair with probably around 25+/- vendors. I like the smaller shows as they are much less stressful and chaotic. Sure the sales aren't as good but I'll take a pleasant day outside and middling sales any day. Beautiful weather!

We've got a front yard make-over project in the offing. It'll be work but worth it for sure. We haven't done anything much with our foundational plantings since we moved here in '12. More on that project next time.

Thanks for stopping by and leave a comment if you feel like it. See you next time. 😊

A busy summer, and I jumped the track.

 Here we go finally, a post to catch everyone up on the summer activities. Only fitting, as fall has almost fallen around here, with a morning temp of 34° Saturday morning. Brrr, a bit beyond crisp, lol. Soon we'll be packing up our belongings and squaring away the RV for the winter months. It's been a fun summer!

I have steadily acquired more wire, beads & supplies and made many more items for this fall's craft show activities back home in FL. I will say I've had some very good luck around here with the seasonal folks and the transients as well. Occasionally, when the park is busy, I would set up my display stand and make some sales. Father's day weekend was a busy one, plus a few more. Also, we've had a couple of yard sales, sponsored by the Resort to help them get rid of various furniture and decorations plus kitchenware that the previous owners had in storage onsite. I participated in both and sold probably around 35+ items, yay! No wonder I haven't had time to blog, I'm trying to catch-up my inventory.

Check out these surroundings, not a bad spot to spend the day!

A nice lady and her daughter set up 2 tables full of her late husband's tools.

Lots of chairs and other minutia

Here's the Boss checking out the tools. He found a great dremel
like tool that included an assortment of glass and stone etching bits as well
as drill bits/sanders. Of course we snapped it up.

One of my seasonal neighbors used to bake breakfast pastries for a restaurant. She had a very popular stand. I asked her how her day went, after seeing ppl at her table all day, and after realizing I had just spent $20 there myself, lol! She did well! She had parfaits, and small breakfast breads, cinnamon rolls, and regular bread as well.

A few of the larger pieces on display.

I've branched out to larger, more elaborate pieces, some incorporating large glass prisms and longer dangles, as well as natural components like polished gemstone chip beads such as pink or cherry quartz, amethyst, tiger's eye, and blue apatite. I've also been collecting and preparing small pieces of tree bark which I use in certain pieces for a more rustic look and feel. I'd like to have a wide range of items both in style & size and also in price range.

 Also, I was reminded by a friend out here that some small Christmas-oriented dazzlers would surely be welcome this fall. They can be used as stocking stuffers, ornaments on the tree, hanging from the rearview mirror of the car or even used to decorate a hostess gift to kick it up a notch.

A few be-ribboned ornament-sized dazzlers.

Just some normal small to mid-sized stuff.

Some larger more elaborate pieces.

The Resort manager asked me to make 6 each of the aluminum "fun" bracelets to add to her store offerings. I use silver, copper and gold-colored aluminum wire with various colored beads. The store carries a lot of souvenirs and jewelry as well as fishing/camping tools and gear. All this in addition to the normal food items you might expect.

I try for some neutrals like clear & black, plus red, green,
blue, purple and pink for variety.

To close, 2 lovely photos. The first, a gorgeous morning shot at the river taken by one of our managers. The second, a wonderful wildflower bouquet from my honey. Enjoy and we'll see you the next time. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a comment. 😊

The Cache la Poudre River, taken by Bruce Davis

Wonderful wildflowers