Cruising right through April

And the weeks keep rolling on by at a good clip. Soon we'll be to the travelling time of the year, but in the meantime we'll do our chores and otherwise entertain ourselves as per usual. 

I have a favorite thrift store just a mile or so up the road called B.A.S.C.A., whose mission is to provide better living, working, educational, social, and recreational opportunities for adults with special needs. Their store helps support 4 group homes - 2 for women and 2 for men. It's a great store, and gets some wonderful home furnishings, dishware, and artwork donations to resell, and at Christmas they have a beautifully decorated Christmas-themed room with lovely crystal glassware, elegant dishware, and everything needed for entertaining during the season.

Some of the lights are still up. At Christmastime the table in front is
set in high style for 10,  plus a large Christmas tree resides in the corner.

A few more shots of their store to give you an idea of what a fun browse it is. I make it by every week or 10 days. I should really volunteer sometime.

If only I had room!

This small seasonal section is featuring Easter at the moment. 
Lots of nice small housewarming gifts and other doodads.

I finished my lap/nap quilt and am quite pleased for 2 reasons; it's finished, and it came out very nice. I'm happy with it, even if it is a tad small. 😉 It was hard for me to judge the size when starting it. Using 4½" squares; 15 squares down by 13 over. Sounds like simple math right? Well, the polyfil puffing shrinks them up, fine, I'm fine with that.

How it looks on a queen-size bed, impossible for 2 people,
but for 1 person @ quiet/nap time it's great, so snuggly. 

With right sides together, I used a whip stitch to attach the fleece
throw to the topper, then turned right sides out and again whip stitched it 
all the way around. Finally I tacked front to back every 4 squares.
The backing is the same royal blue as the bedspread.

The boss had his projects as well, one of them being to add a topcoat to the deck after a good scrubbing. He made it look easy and all I had to do was help move some furniture.

Almost finished! Looks like he's painting himself into a corner
but not so, he'd painted the far half a few days before.
It was pretty dingy but now, clean, nice and fresh.

I stopped by to see my friend Nancy's new place and to have a wonderful shrimp creole lunch with her. We had a great catch-up session and so far, she's loving her new apartment. She is an artist as well as the mother of 4 grown children, so her 2nd bedroom needed to be large enough to hold her studio and to double as a "doable" guest room - score!  To top it off it has a great patio area lakeside with eastern exposure, so it's shady and cool out there during the afternoon/evening hours.

She's pretty happy with it!

I've delved back into the relaxing world of puzzling again. With all the sewing and canning projects I haven't had much time for it. Here's my set-up. I use Dollar Tree flexible cutting mats for extra pieces and work the puzzle on a 22"x28" piece of poster board. That way I can gather up all the cutting mats, place them on top of the puzzle and pick the whole thing up and walk it away, quickly freeing-up my craft table.

My small rolling table (thrift find) holds 2 mats.

We have had some really pretty mornings around here lately although the last few have been rainy and we've got more onshore rain in the offing - a good thing as our lake level is down.

Great morning for a row around!

Well, I guess I'll leave it here for now. Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to leave a comment, I'd enjoy hearing from you. 😊

Day-to-Day activities plus a delicious Thanksgiving Dinner

Our days have been rolling along like clockwork. The temp's are drifting lower and we have wonderfully crisp, clean air with blue skies most days. We have had occasion to eat out on the deck - generally it's breakfast, as it's too chilly and dark at dinnertime.

I can tell that that is egg on pizza, a familiar favorite.

But some days it's too chilly in the morning (this AM it was 49°), and we retreat to the Florida Room.

Another favorite, here's a yummy ham, tomatoes, scrambled eggs 
and french toast (a nice finishing treat).

 

A Florida Room breakfast, the above plates plus a bowl of fresh fruits.

Last year I was able to round up boneless, skinless turkey thighs, (our favorite part of the bird), but this year the grocery stores were complaining that they were only receiving necks and wings from the meat processors, who stated that they have been short staffed due to covid - bummer. 

As a result, I waited until Monday of Thanksgiving week to decide on Plan B. By the time I got to the grocery store all they had left were 18+ lb. frozen turkeys for wa-a-ay more $$'s than I wanted to spend. Besides which, much too big for 2 people! Instead I picked up a pair of Cornish hens and endeavored to do them proud. 

I had never done a "dry brine" before but decided to give it a shot. The day before baking, I washed and patted dry the birds, placed on a small baking sheet, then piled on the brine (including the cavity). The brine was 1/4C each kosher salt and brown sugar, with a heaping tablespoon each black pepper and garlic powder. I then covered the birds with a layer of plastic wrap and refrigerated them overnight. In the morning I rinsed them thoroughly, and again patted dry, then let them rest, covered, in the fridge for about 45 minutes.  I used some of my homemade garlic & herb compound butter under the skin of the breasts and slathered it all over the rest of the birds. Dusted with paprika, salt and pepper and baked @425° for 55 minutes. Oh wow, they really turned out great! The flesh was nicely seasoned and very moist. A definite winner.

We split one bird and paired it with cornbread dressing, rice & gravy and roasted carrots, plus cranberry sauce, the relish plate and a nice Pinot Grigio wine. AAAHH... stuffed and replete for sure.

What are we waiting for, I'm ready to dig in!

To any readers out there that get bored with food-related posts, sorry, but that's the way it goes. We're not travelling right now and not much else is going on, so "foodie-ism" is the way it is.

I caught a modest yet pretty sunrise a day or two later. It hit a cloud layer and fizzled out pretty quickly.

A promising start but it didn't last long.

And lastly, I've been playing around with my dehydrator from many, many years ago. Just checking it out and trying to reduce the carrot load from my vegetable drawer in the fridge. We'll see whether or not it's worth it.

Amazing just how much they shrink when dried!

I thought I'd round things out with a shot from this time in 2012. We had a bigger crowd than now, for sure, and as usual, my wonderful mother-in-law hosted it at her house. We sure miss her!

Thanks for checking in with us, and feel free to leave a comment!