Cool mornings, picnics, flowers and fabrics

 We have no complaints about the weather here lately, sure, we've had a few HOT days that required some A/C but the mornings have typically been cool to chilly with low's in the high 40's to 50's. Aahhh. Many of our family, friends and neighbors are singing the summertime blues - hang in there guys.

We've taken some time to get the yard and flower garden fixed up but have also made it on 1 auto-touring picnic lunch up towards Dowdy Lake and some of the surrounding areas. When we leave the Resort, we turn right then immediately turn left onto route 69 which, while a dirt road, isn't too bad and goes through some pretty spots.

Overview looking south towards the Poudre Canyon

I'm always on the lookout for some pretty flowers and good photo ops. There is one variety of yellow flowers, very prolific I might add, that retain their color after being dried. I cut a small bunch from a roadside a few years back that still looks wonderful. BTW, I definitely don't make that a habit!

Found a patch, lol.

Here's how they look in situ - zillions of them around.

One of the places we passed by was the reflecting pond - I had a pic of it from a season or two ago and it's much fuller this year - lots of rain and snow melt.

The area is now being used for cattle grazing, they are just off camera, lol.

One limited picture doesn't always tell the story.

Lots of pretty rock outcroppings. Some are steep and tricky looking and some look so inviting for climbing.

A great place to wander - just watch out for snakes sunning themselves.

A small bit of snow left on the mountains near us, but I'll bet there's plenty more south of us in Rocky Mtn Natl Park.

I'm always on the lookout for horses, and spotted a small herd which included 3 foals - I made all the brrrrrpp noises/clicks to try to get their attention but they weren't interested in me.

A dramatic sky means the rain's falling somewhere - some of our neighbors who live in Ft. Collins or parts east have told us some horror stories about hail this spring. I mean like hail punching holes in the roof! Holy hail-bombs, Batman! Luckily only pea-sized up here so far.

Looks like a storm's brewing.

We made it up to the lakes area and stopped in for a gander.

Lunch in the car by Letitia Lake

Below is a shot of Bellaire Lake, just off 69 and a local favorite for fishing. They have a paved path around part of it for handicapped access and it seems quite popular.

Bellaire Lake Picnic Area

This bird (swallow?) made it's nest right over the door of a vault toilet, I'll spare you the shot of the door handle - haha.

On the cooking front, since fruit is so prolific right now, I made a small batch of strawberry/cherry jam. No pectin handy, and not a ton of sugar either (by choice), so it ended up being medium jell, in other words it could do passable duty as a syrup on french toast or pancakes. It's sure tasty though.

Strawberry/cherry jam. One jar for the freezer and one for the table.

I also have been taking the leftover bananas and peaches and making half batches of the banana bread recipe (on the Dreamtime website) in the Ninja Foodi on the bake setting. With it being handy on our outside table, I can use it and it doesn't heat up the RV. So far we've had banana/peach and peach/cherry - what's next I wonder? Meatloaf. It turned out I baked 2 mini meatloafs in it later in the week.

On the craft front, I've been doing some triveting (is that a word?) while watching the Tour de France. We love watching the Tour and have been for many, many years. Some really spectacular scenery over in Basque, France, & Switzerland and some amazing athletes getting out on that grueling course for 3 weeks! Kudos.

Thanks google

Here are the completed trivets, a couple of smaller ones and a larger one with flourishes.

Love the way the swirly one came out.

Well, that's about it for now, thanks for visiting.

Long overdue & wrap-up post

This post should have been written about 10 days ago but somehow I never got around to it. In between pulling weeds, working with food to not only use up or give to my neighbors, but also to freeze for our trip out west, plus the normal daily chores, I got really busy working on trivets. It was so much fun. I had to sew quite a few "tubies" with the new fabrics I bought, so that I would have a good stockpile to choose from while out at Rocky. I also got creative and gen'ed-up some trivets to add to my collection.  One of my neighbors wanted to buy a few to give as unique gifts, yay! So, in addition to the 19(!) I already had "in stock", I made 4 more and enjoyed the process very much.  Here are the new ones.

 The crepe myrtles were in full bloom and boy, are they showy. When it's a good year they are bursting with blooms, and it sure seems like a good year.

And this is one in a shopping center parking lot,
you know it's not getting a lot of love.

On the cooking front I baked a banana bread to have something sweet to go along with our evening hot tea, and froze half of it to take with us.

Finally, I made pizza using the store-bought dough I had in the freezer, so easy and so good!

Before baking, and it's enough for dinner for 2 and lunch for 2.

Thanks for reading along, that's all I've got for you, but the next post will be from Colorado.

Nearly February, and Life Trucks Along

 Just thought I'd take a few minutes to write a catch-up post, although there really isn't much going on out of the ordinary. But life is what you make it, and we try to have fun any way we can, within legal boundaries of course, lol.

The weather here in North Florida has been pretty good all in all. We have our cold snaps that last a few days, and our rainy days which also usually last a day or 2 but otherwise mostly sunny and high's in the low 70's. In other words pretty darn nice. We get some nice sunrises around here, and some spectacular ones, especially during the cold snaps.

I'd relegate this to the "nice" category but even so..
very peaceful & a pretty good way to start the day.

Since we don't get that much cold weather and since we've gotten fairly lazy we decided to nix the whole wood-burning aspect of our great room fireplace and go with an inexpensive electric fireplace insert. Mainly for ambience but also for that little bit of heat when we want it. In our house, gas logs are not an option, but I have to say, for $160 @ Walmart, we're pretty happy with the results. We really got spoiled with our electric fireplace in Rocky and thought we'd try to replicate it at home.

All in all, not too shabby and after staring at a gaping black maw
for so long this is a very pleasant change. And to think, I used to
be the resident pyromaniac, fire-starter around here!

I've spent a fair amount of time in the craft room, working on my puff quilt and doing some beadwork. (Gratuitous selfie goes here).

But with the play-offs, I've been "triveting" too - (is that a word?) Hey, it's fun, they look pretty and are quite useful too.

Can you tell that blues are my favorite? You should see my closet, lol.
The bottom one is a work in progress that should be finished
by the time all the play-off are over today.

These are my remaining trivets. I keep them
stored like this so I can enjoy them.

My next door neighbor just had a 90th birthday and her daughters threw a very nice party for her which even included her daughter and grown grandson over from their home in Germany. She took a few trivets home to share with her family/friends. (Wow, they're global baby! HAHA 😁) I think everybody needs some pretty in their lives. I used to sell them when we lived onboard Dreamtime down in the Caribbean, but now I just gift them to friends. Here's a link here if you want to see more. TRIVETS.

In the kitchen, about a week or so ago I was organizing the freezer and almost threw away the frozen overripe bananas I had stashed in there (so tired of "tripping" over them, they're not exactly stackable!! grrr! 😖) but cooler heads prevailed and I instead made banana bread. So good - recipe on the Dreamtime site here just scroll down til you find it.

I do get out and thrift during a grocery run once in a while, and look what I found for $3 - a gorgeous, blue Pyrex deep dish pie pan! Well, I guess there must be a pot pie in the offing, right? 😀

What a score!! Hey, it's blue - cool!

Beef pot pie - for the first time I tried using an
egg wash and look how glossy!

Even with egg prices so high, we still have them nearly every day, and one morning while making breakfast they looked amusing - like cats-eye glasses, cross-eyed. 

Haha - couldn't resist the picture.

That's about it for this update, but I have more on tap, so check back in a while. If you feel so inclined leave a comment - I love hearing from y'all. Have a great day!