T Stands for Tuesday-Mostly Lake Views and Henry

 Welcome to T Stands for Tuesday and our new month of August.

  I am so happy to see August has arrived as next month brings us closer to Fall-I am soooo ready. This has been such a hot summer for us. 

  Good news though, last week was much cooler with lots of rain, but no flooding here at the lake as in other parts of Missouri.

  To cut down on my blogging time I am considering  linking up to T once or twice a month going forward-will see if I like that or not. 

    I am enjoying Rains Thursday Art and Dinner date since she took over my Food Wednesdays-lots of lovely art and good eats there on Thursdays. I posted early today again as Tuesday I will be at the polls voting, if I post early gives everyone the chance to visit early so not so many links to visit in just one day.

  We did get our new lift put in. So happy with the company we chose, very professional and courteous staff. Haven't gotten help to get the boat on it yet. I am not a strong driver especially a big vehicle with a boat trailer on it so we are still waiting for help with that. What Larry liked about this lift no metal moving parts sitting in the water. Also the boat will sit up out of the water on this lift. This lift is designed to move with the waves. from HydroHoist

This was a two brothers team

Lake photos over the weekend

   Pre sunrise

 Fast boats too close to the docks on Saturday

Haven't seen the pirate ship going by in awhile, an adult red headed woodpecker

For my drink share I had a mug of hot decaf black tea and also a peek into a watercolor I painted with stamps, early Sunday-if interested will post the finished piece on Thursday

I also bought some new coffee for us. This company uses the profits to help veterans and also RSBN network (which is privately owned with no corporate investors) It is one of the few networks I have found that shows the truth live-I watch them on Rumble This one is a bag of decaf for me and I bought two of their dark roasts (lots of caffeine) for Larry

and Henry visited my mailbox all the way from Germany-thank you Iris-love him

Happy T and new week and new month

T Stands for Tuesday Book and Coffee

   Another Tuesday is upon us-Wow we are almost at mid December already. You are welcome to join us for T with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth-link in my sidebar. Just show a  drink related photo.

 This past week seems like I have been busy-but not sure what I have really accomplished to share. haha I have been bouncing around with different projects.

  I did finish the book The Rise of Wolf 8 by Rick Mcintyre. So far this is a three book series of the author's observations with the Yellowstone wolf project. I found it very interesting and would recommend if you enjoy knowing about wolf family behavior.  I am going to take a break from this series and will read a book that was gifted to me from one of my slow mail and blog friends: O Rugged Land of Gold by Martha Martin-a true story living in Alaska The Foreword says it is a book about Spirit-I am anxious to get more into this one.

I have not done any Holiday baking or candy making as of yet. Have you?  We don't really have anyone to share these goodies with anymore so I am not going to bake too much. I will start this week to make up a few things for us.

   I love cut out cookies so will do gingerbread for sure and perhaps the sugar cookie cut outs as well.  I make peanut brittle and give that away to one of our workers-whom we haven't seen since early summer but I am sure he will check in.😀      I may play around with walnuts or pecan brittle too.

I did break down and buy a quart of eggnog-it was an off brand but was mostly natural ingredients, So have been enjoying a glass of that in the evenings.

  My drink share is my decaf coffee with half and half in this pretty Harley mug. Larry dug it out of the cupboard one day, it looked like Christmas with all the gold on it-which is not showing up well, so I snagged it the next day (smiles)

Do you grind your own coffee??  I have always searched for quality coffee beans and then grind up a container full. Over the years that we have been married in the past I had joined Gevalia coffee club. They always gave away really nice ceramic coffee containers-shown in photo-and also coffee makers. One year I even got a ceramic pour over coffee pot set up. We like the dark roast European style coffees and they had allot of those.  

Now I just look for quality coffees mostly online. This one was at Sam's Club and was such a bargain price wise-and it smelled really good too Last time I went to order they no longer carried this one, but I found two other brands for Larry to try

Gevalia even sent along this coffee measuring spoon one year

I wanted to share a photo of this tea bag after dried-I had shared this tea last week. As you see, these dry with lots of art possibilities

and I did treat myself to a few items from Crayola online. Around this time they have a very good sale So if I want something that is when I pick it up. Thought these would be nice for journal pages-as the few gel pens I have left have all dried up on me and are no good now.

I picked up this adult coloring book from Crayola too-I think I will enjoy this one

  I am not the greatest with coloring but I thought it might help me with colors for when I try painting again

This is a photo of what colors are included in each set

Years ago when my husband bought a very antique ladies desk for me, we also ran into two of these ink pots-Now I can finally use them.  I picked up the nib and this pen on Etsy-the pen was handmade

  I have been playing with calligraphy the last several days-this will take much patience on my part for sure. I have tried different things-I have the feather dip pen, then I found the two pilot parallel pens I had forgotten that I picked up last year. Even after watching videos online I am not doing well with the pilots at all-switching from the thin edge to the thicker side of the pen is not going well. I have given up on those for now.  

  Yesterday and today I set up my oblique dip calligraphy pen (in photo) and have been watching a lesson on Craftsy - Calligraphy 101   I love the feel of this pen allot but so far having trouble going from thin lines to thick The strokes are all mostly thick sigh.  So I am taking a break and will go back to it soon.  I know from reading and listening that I need less pressure for thin strokes but when I go to thick and back to thin-I can't get the thin line again.  The Craftsy class suggested to buy a zebra G nib to start--CJ if you lived closer I would pop over to you for a quick tutorial-hugs

I don't have a new sky photo to share so I am sharing one my favorites that was mostly purple from last month.  This one inspires me to try again at watercolor painting.

Happy T and new week everyone.

Cast Iron Saturday-Breakfast

  Good morning and Welcome to Cast Iron Saturday 

     This week I wanted to share breakfast recipes over a camp fire.  If you are set up to cook or bake in your backyard-would be fun to do, or if you are camping out-these may give you some recipe ideas

Biscuits and Gravy

   I would bake biscuits from scratch, but this was a neat set up so you can bake your biscuits while making the gravy at the same time-or if you are set up with a grill over your fire and coals-your biscuits can be baking in your dutch oven, while your skillet is on the side over the coals and not stacked up

Cowboy Skillet Breakfast

This one also had a link to gluten free recipes. Online search shows many different recipes for a breakfast skillet.

 Of course while cooking up breakfast we need coffee. Here is another recipe for Cowboy Coffee or if drinking tea-just heat up some hot water over the coals for your tea

Pancakes 

Cast iron Dutch Baby Pancakes

  this recipe is using a pellet grill but can make this over your bed of coals as well-need a baking set up with coals top and bottom

Cast Iron French Toast

  The recipe looked delicious-he is using his propane stove, but can make this over your camp fire coals as well  The recipe looked good, if needing gluten free just search out a gluten free loaf of bread

Cast Iron Red Potato Hash

   This recipe sounded really delicious too-it was for Father's Day-but would be good any morning The author is baking this in the oven, but you can use your dutch oven or if you have a lid for your skillet bake outdoors with coals top and bottom

  Camp Fire Donuts

   This recipe is using Pillsbury biscuit dough but you can make yours from scratch if you prefer. This would be fun if you are camping out to fry up so donuts over your camp fire-just watch your temperature with the oil

I will close on how to make the perfect eggs over your camp fire

Happy Friday and Weekend

T Stands for Tuesday & Coffee

  Hi everyone, I am later than I like to post so this will be a short one.
      Tuesdays is where we get together and share a drink related post with friends.  You are most welcome to join us at our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth-find link in my right hand column.

  I knew Monday could probably be a long day back at the woods home, as I had an appt. with the Sears repair service for my washing machine-and they won't give you any idea when they are coming-just 8am to 5pm.  So I left Hubs home at the lake house so he could take their phone call (no phone service at the woods any more-and if you don't answer they don't come out) and I drove down early so I would be there by 8 am.

   I did some cleaning in the kitchen-mostly my two Norwalk dehydrators (which are now called Excalibur)  I am keeping one and we will give one to a friend. These are 40 plus years old and still work great-I used to run both at the same time and pretty much get most of a  bushel of sliced fruit between the two of them. Now these are more pricey but they are the best on the market in my opinion-mine are not as fancy as these newer ones.
   These sat on top of the refrigerator-easy to use-but next to the big stove so they had gotten a greasy film on them-so I had a job with cleaning everything.
    Here in the states they have been running a Dawn dish soap commercial that says it will cut through tough grease-even greasy tools and tires. So I gave it a go as my spray kitchen bleach solution did nothing to cut the grease. Wow I am very impressed-it did a fantastic job and with no harsh chemicals-so wanted to share that. I pretty much only use baking soda, vinegar, and borax to clean my house with. Although for the tile floors I do like the swiffer instead of sitting on the floor to scrub.

   The Sears guy did not arrive til 4:30 He managed to manually get all that water out-and lots of things are broken. I have needed to purchase a repair agreement all these years do to their computer boards are super expensive. This is the 4th one since 2005-he had a whole list of parts that he needed-all covered-so this washer will be working good for the next owners.

    I have been wanting to bring the commercial coffee pot up to the lake house. It is filled with water (I use distilled) so it is always hot for coffee or teas. Just pour threw the top and it pushes the hot water through instantly. We love these machines as Hubs drinks a pot a day, and was great when we had sleep over company. I can also make me a pot of my beverage as there is a warmer on top.  So I did that yesterday. Hubs wanted to pour off the water I did not want to do that-so I found that this would fit perfectly into a cooler and I did not lose a drop of water-yeah.
  Now getting it down the stairs at the lake house was fun but I did it.
and it fits perfectly next to these upper kitchen cabinets and to the right is the sink.

Here is the view outside this window-you can see Miss Calico sleeping

I have been really enjoying my decaf. coffee. This week before I brought down the coffee pot, I make Hubs in the china pour over, and mine in my french press.
    That blue pottery cup brings back memories. In the late 70's when I lived in Denver Colorado, I would sometimes eat at this restaurant that was christian based. They grew most of the food served, made the handmade pottery dishes too and you could buy them as well. I bought four of these cups and four of their soup mugs.
   They had helped me so much back then, My little sister was killed by a drunk driver while she was on vacation when we lived there.  While I was waiting to get my transfer with the phone company back home to Indiana I would eat at that restaurant. One of the waitress's saw me holding back tears-and she just helped me get through things.  (was not planning on sharing all of this but my fingers just typed away-these cups remind me of good times back then and the comfort I received).

I have lost 15 pounds and keeping it off-but am at a stand still again not losing any more weight that last couple of weeks. My goal is 10 more pounds to get me back to around 135 pounds-see how I feel and drop back to 130 which I would love to get to eventually

When I am not eating eggs for breakfast I am enjoying greek yogurt with fruit or a jam with no additional sugars. This one is soooo delicious. I found it in West Yellowstone two years ago and now buy it online.

Happy T everyone!!