Happy New Year

I decided to skip Sunday's usual posting for today, since it's the last day of the year.

I pondered for a while to see if I had anything profound to type. The result is: not really. It's too rainy and too uncaffeinated out for deep and meaningful thoughts. One or the other, sure, but not both.

I just hope the next year sees more kindness, love, and humility around the world.

See you next year!

Back to Busy

Chess pies I made last Sunday.

They were absolutely perfect. Still need to type up my final recipe.

And now I leave you with critters in silly places being adorable.

Have a safe a happy holiday!

A Quick Bit of Downtime

Because bacon and caffeine are more important than pies, I've got a bit of downtime while waiting on access to our smallish kitchen.

This week started normally, but Tuesday one of my doctor's offices called asking if I could come in for a procedure we were planning that afternoon. That was more than a surprise. Fortunately not one I needed to have fasted for. I spent the rest of the week taking it easy and letting the FuzzyHusband bring me white chocolate milkshakes.

Words of wisdom from my doctor's office! Made me giggle!

Thursday our nephew "Little D," who's not so little anymore, let me know he was on leave and in the area. So we went out to lunch and ran around town together. His wife couldn't come because she busy prepping for them to both be deployed overseas. I did get to chat with her on the phone for a bit. We really like her.

By Friday I was back to catching up on laundry and other lighter chores. Oh joy and rapture. Ellie Bean was so helpful in this endeavor.

I did find some time to play with this little room setting though. I put it together to decorate our hutch in the kitchen. It still needs some printies and a clock. But I'm happy to get more things out of my stash an into displays.

I've misplaced my notes from perfecting chess pies a few years ago, so I get to start over. This time the custard gets made with fresh eggs from a friend's hens and ducks. I made my crust dough Friday but was too tired to do anything with it.

Saturday was another burlesque photoshoot, so I had my hands full all morning and into the afternoon. But! The shoot was set at the previously mentioned friend's home and I got to visit with the birds when we were done. Silly me got so excited to pet the female turkey I forgot to take any pictures outside. My friend has so many varieties of fowl and they're all so gorgeous. I did get this picture of the youngest birds who are about to transition out of the mud room and into the barn.

I love those poofy feathered heads!

When we got home, Pixel decided to watch FH oh-so-carefully as he trussed up a chicken for roasting. I promise it was not one we'd been admiring earlier!

Himself is about done in the kitchen which means I can start rolling out my crusts and making custard filling. I've got rehearsal tonight which means captive taste testers. 

See you next weekend!

Contents of the Green Bin

I'm running way late. Shocking, I know. It's been a busy day. I also need to make this a quick post so I can collapse into bed.

These are the treasures that were hiding in the green tub in last weekend's post. I"m looking forward to playing with these!

See you next weekend... hopefully before a lengthy photoshoot at burlesque rehearsal.

Why Are Sundays the Busiest Days?

 That's what we woke up to last Monday morning. FuzzyHusband worked from home and I cancelled my appointments for the day. Our neighborhood wasn't plowed at all until much later in the afternoon. I spent the day adding more things to the curio cabinets.

On Tuesday I went and saw a friend who's been having a rough patch. They have three kittens. The kittens decided I was warm and soft. I was more than ok with this.

Wednesday we finally moved Victor upstairs. He's still not thrilled about his change of scenery.

Friday I did some more cleaning and rearranging. This chest used to sit in the dining room, empty. Now it's home to various hair clips and cards from FH. I also hung our wedding photo on the wall, further freeing up space on the dresser.

Saturday I baked. I baked a lot. Two of Mary Berry's Tunis cakes, but decorated in my own way. I was quite proud of the snowflake/flower mash up I created with the holly leaves on this cake.

I forgot to get a photo of the second cake before it was cut. I used the 8 cut away sections from the first cake's holly leaves to decorate the second one, along with more red berries. I did did a photo of the last slice with a little help from FuzzyHusband.

The reason I was baking was a "Friendsgiving" celebration, hosted by a dear friend. He doesn't really have family in the area, so he decided to have a celebration with close friends after the holiday when everyone would be available. Much fun was had AND he cooked one of the best turkeys I've ever eaten.... and I loathe turkey. I went for seconds. The best part was he'd never cooked a turkey before yesterday!

Another friend did some baking too. He brought a Cherpumple. You might have heard of a turducken, right? The chicken stuffed in a duck that's stuffed in a turkey and cooked together. Yeah. This is a baked goods version. Three different pies baked into three different cake flavors. It was a heck of a thing!

Today's been full of cleaning, a niece's choir concert, and a burlesque rehearsal. I still haven't gotten around to sorting through this bin of treasures gifted to me by a mini friend who is transitioning out of 1:12 scale and into quarter scale.

That will be something fun for next weekend! We've got another Friendsgiving party next Saturday too. And I still need to put up my decorations. So yeah. I'd better get to it! See you next Sunday!

Ice Ice, Baby

That's what we've got at the moment. Along with blizzard winds and a forecast involving up to 8 inches of snow. Joy and rapture.

Anyhoo, we've been busy with traveling for the holiday. We came home early because of the storm... so glad we did. We were able to get groceries stocked up yesterday before the rush too!

Michelle asked about the cheesecake recipe I used last week. I had planned to use this recipe from Fischer nuts, but I couldn't find it in my bookmarked links. I made it two Christmases ago and it was awesome, if a little sweeter than it needed to be. What I found this time was this recipe from Taste of Home, which is almost the same as the one from Fischer. Also great, but a tad on the sweet side.

In both cases, I made my own salted caramel sauce starting with this recipe, but using 10 tablespoons of water and a small squeeze of light corn syrup to help prevent the sugar from seizing.

I think I personally prefer the nutmeg that the Fischer recipe uses in the crust. I used Gala apples the first time, per the Fischer recipe, but this time I used Cripps Pink (Pink Lady) apples. I think the Cripps apples retained more crunch through baking, giving you a lovely texture difference in the cheese mixture.

Next time I will be trimming back the amount of sugar in the crust, trying for the Cripps Pink (Pink Lady) apples, remembering to use nutmeg in the crust, and still using the homemade salted caramel sauce.

Now that the recipe bit is out of the way, I've been a busy bee today!

We've said goodbye to an old dresser that was in the guest room and in its place installed two curio cabinets and moved a small bookshelf to that wall.

In a perfect chance of fate, our groomer needed a dresser so she came and picked it up today!

I've got more miniature scenes that I'll be moving out of my studio and into the cabinets soon.

The furniture shuffling continued...

And we we have a huge empty space in the dining room!

Victor bunny will have his house moved into that space to make life easier when taking care of his needs. He won't have to be downstairs in the sewing room anymore. Plus he's unphased by linoleum, so it won't matter that he won't be on the carpet anymore. And it will be easier to keep the area around his house clean too!

I need to get back to finishing up the cleaning aftermath of moving furniture and do more laundry. I'm hoping to not only do some more baking in the next week, but also get the Yule decorations up. We'll see how that goes though.

Stay warm!

Running Late

Barely going to get this in for Sunday, but I'm feeling much better. Finally finished the antibiotics and the side effects were mostly gone by Tuesday night.

Wednesday night I went to an open mic night at our favorite bookstore. Had a lovely time and met some wonderful folks. I did read a few of my poems, which was less terrifying than I thought it would be.

Thursday was the last day for setting up Festival of Trees. Since it's all said and done, here are two of my favorite trees from this year.

Fuzzy Husband went camping Friday night (in the snow) so I got to plan out my day of baking.

Saturday I made two salted caramel apple pecan cheesecakes for a party today.

Hence why this post is so late. Himself made sausage stuffing and hummus to take along as well.

I need to go collapse so I can take Mercedes for her spa day in the morning. Then I need to start reviewing my recipe for potato bread dinner rolls to see about starting those for Thursday.

Have a safe holiday!

Feline Filler Post

I'm still under the weather.... these antibiotics are such a doubled edged sword. Last dose is Tuesday. Will be so happy to have this nausea gone. Have some cuteness for now!

Blergh

I'm currently under the weather, and have been most of the week. This is round 2 with a bladder infection that we thought was gone and has returned in force.... which also means it's not going to play nice with the antibiotics that I finished before. So I'm on stronger ones that make me carsick and require me to eat large meals with them to protect my stomach. Joy.

We knew I was fatigued, just like before with the initial infection so FuzzyHusband and I decided to take advantage of the last early voting day in our state. That's how we figured out I'm getting carsick. Happily I've now voted before the side effects really start kicking in.

Before the infection popped up again, I was happily getting things done around the house and spending lots of time writing. Now it's playing games on my phone, writing, and napping with kitties.

We're almost done with Festival of Trees for the season. Next week will be packing the shop and the week after is set up! I'll be glad when it's over so I can spend my time with quilting and miniatures again.

I think next year I'm going to scale back the amount of time I give Festival so I can focus on some other interests. I've been chatting with the owner of a local, independent bookstore about starting a creative writing poetry group. I'd really like to focus on that more, as well as having more time to sew commissions.

That's all for now. I promised FH that I would try and help him with a couple of things. We'll see how successful I am in that endeavor.

Hi! Hi!

Dis bees Ellie Bean! Mama an' Daddy went to a place with lots of chili an' Mama said I could do da blog.. but I forgotted an' went to sleepy. But I woked up!

I go back to sleep sleepss again! Nice nights!

Busy, But Not Boring

We've been busy this week. There was a fundraising event for The Center For Prevention of Abuse at one of our favorite local bookstores that FuzzyHusband and I attended.There was an open mic where survivors were invited to share anything, so I read a couple of my poems. We won some lovely items from the silent auction and a doorprize as well.

I wish the needle artist would've signed this piece.

Stupid camera didn't rotate.

Lovely doorprize won by FuzzyHusband who gave it to me... after determining that the chain was too small for him. ;-)

Otherwise we've been cleaning, doing chores, and other boring things for most of the rest of the time. Also we're getting down to the wire for Festival of Trees this year. Only 2 more large trees to decorate, possibly 3 if another one gets sponsored. 

I did get to take Mercedes on a long walk and play some Pokemon Go though. She enjoyed herself.

And got some cuddles in with Pixel Pea.

I've got a bunch of laundry that needs doing, so I've got to get off here. 

Yet Another Weekend of Traveling

Another two friends were married this weekend. And again they opted to request we all let the pros do their jobs when it came to photos of the wedding and performances. Yes. Performances.

Because what happens when two beloved performers get hitched, and MANY of their friends are performers in their own right, is a festival atmosphere that includes: Lyra and other aerial acts, dancers, fire spinners, and singers.

The BEST part though was the event was pet friendly, so Mercedes got to go along and make new friends!

Photo credit goes to "Jet's Dad." Jet is an adorable corgi that I was too busy playing with to remember to photograph. Also I was too busy wrangling Mercedes to get my own picture of her. 

Everything was fun and amazing and I hope to have some shareable (with proper credits) photos soon. We'll see what the happy couple's ruling on that is though.

The trip was a great way to cap off a weird week where is snowed. In October. In a place where we're usually going between jeans and shorts this time of year.

That's all for this week! See you next time!