Mid Week Post

    Hello Friends,

  I was able to get something checked off my list today (Tuesday). I had bought everything for an oil and filters change for my old mountaineer suv quite awhile ago. The person that was going to do it for me never followed through so I made an appointment with a small auto business not too far from us.  My car is really old, but it was an expensive one in it's prime-I bought it used from a friend. It's done me well for many years now. So for $15.00 she did the oil change and two filter change (with my products), checked and aired my tires for me and I asked her to check out all the belts to make sure ok.  

   I had been putting this off as I just didn't know where to go. Here in Missouri we have to get a vehicle inspection every couple years so I used them for that last year and liked them. They have a lady mechanic that did my car. I was happy with myself getting this done. haha  I am realizing the older we get the slower we are at stuff like this.

  I decided to go on into town for a couple errands and stopped at the sav a lot store. I needed to pick up a few things before the holiday weekend and really didn't want to drive the other direction to the small Wal mart store.   While I was gone this morning we had friends that came up from the woods house area to help Larry with the dock project. They got quite allot done before it got too hot.

  It has been soooo quiet here with the speed boats gone here is the link to the boat that went the fastest. 207 MPH  I watched it live on tv-we have a lake channel with our tv package. The link has a photo and video. The race was cut short on Sunday as a big storm moved in with lightening around noon. We didn't get much here where we live-which is about 30 minutes from that event.

and here is a link to a mishap at the end of the race, I missed this when I was watching-they race these boats too which I think is crazy-but the driver fell out of the boat and wasn't wearing the device to cut the engine The driver was safe

 Those of you in the States-any plans for Labor Day Weekend?? It will start getting busy here again probably Thursday.  I decided to make baby back ribs for us and the couple we met recently. Will also make Larry's Mom's mustard potato salad-his favorite. She will bring a large fruit salad--sounds good. I may look for a from scratch gluten free brownie recipe to bake up Our new friend Mary loves chocolate I have a very dear slow mail friend Mary, so this was a surprise to meet another Mary in person. 

 The cooler early mornings have been so inviting to sit on the deck and listen to the sounds on the lake. Have you noticed there is some insect that is making noise now once it's get dark?-we hear them early mornings too til the sun comes up. This just started-a sign of Fall approaching??

  Larry's old digital camera takes better photos with the reds than mine does These are before sunrise one day this week.

Below is my photo-my camera changes the red to yellows if the sun is beginning to come up

We have been enjoying the ducks and geese early mornings now too They either swim by or fly by.  We have watched an eagle hunt for fish this week-which is very cool to see

I just uploaded this video I took that early morning when Larry and his new friend went out fishing before sunrise. You will see a closeup of a little hummer.  I had brought the camera down to the hummingbird feeder-but I missed getting the hummer in that frame. The fisherman are in the video too.

  I also wanted to share a new journal book I just received in the mail. Some of you may enjoy visiting Soma too with her lovely art at Ink Torrents Graphics  Her posts have been an inspiration for me.

   I have been looking at her journals-they are handsewn-and wanting to purchase one someday. Well someday came when I saw her post of her carving to print the covers with. Isn't this lovely? And she offers different colors for the cover. Soma also sent samples of the paper so I could test out out my black walnut ink first  before writing in the journal-very thoughtful  

  Today when I was carrying the groceries in from on top of the hill-I spotted a monarch butterfly-that really makes me smile to see the butterflies. Hopefully I can get more planted next spring. Not sure about this Fall for working on the gardens, as we have much to do the next couple of months-doctor visits, and work on getting the woods house ready to sell-finally. covid really messed that up for us.

    Happy Midweek

  

  

T Stands for Tuesday & Rain's Art and Dinner Date

   Hello everyone,

     I thought I  would combine a couple of link ups in one post, as I have seen that many do this all the time. Will see how this goes and if I like it or not.

   T is where we gather with a drink related photo and share with friends over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog. Link in my sidebar

  Rain's Art and Dinner Date is sharing any form of Art and Dinner is sharing foods which was my Food Wednesdays  I am looking forward to this new pairing, as I am learning more about painting from Rain's videos and she always shares foods too, so I am excited that these are together now. link in my sidebar

  Thinking allot of you have been experiencing a very hot summer too. We are either in the mid 100's or high 90's F, but the good thing is, about every 10 days or so we have been getting a good rain shower, which has helped to save the flowering plants. I am very grateful for that, as one of the first years that we had moved to Missouri, we went from end of spring to late September with no rain.  So I am so thankful for the rain this summer when we get it. My perennials are doing pretty good considering.

 This has been one of those weeks for us. I didn't get photos as I was just too freaked out with the whole situation.  Long traumatic day but the short version our boat lift broke-an all day process to save the boat and get it off the lift- drive down to the conservation access, put on trailer and now safely in our driveway whew  This was a 104 degree f very humid day-with Larry's health on top of it-a freak out day for sure for the both of us. I thank our new friend that lives in a cove near us, and to our new good friend that was vacationing at his family's lake house that helped Larry accomplish this. I prayed for help and we got it.

  I suggested to research out the main companies for a new lift and just do it, if we have the money-we don't go in debt for anything any more.  So pretty fast I thought a new lift will be installed end of this month.  We learned that our old lift was on record from the company we chose to purchase from-50 years ago-so being on a main channel of the lake that gets allot of rough water I would say that was pretty good for that old lift.

   On to more fun things I am sharing this with T and also for Rain's Art   Last Thursday her video was sharing an easy technique with acrylics inspired by Bob Ross.  I really wanted to try this out, suppose to be easy-well it was easy but I had trouble with the white in some areas, and I was not totally happy with my trees but will try this again for sure-I used my wolf stamps and I made two paintings.

The painting below ended up with those footprints-loved that

Last week I saw posts of pizza-yum-I had not made us pizzas in quite awhile, I checked and I did have the shredded mozzarella cheese in the freezer. I wanted to try a thin crust instead of the thicker Chicago style I usually make. I asked Marie my Wisconsin friend-who also cooks and bakes allot-if she had a thin crust pizza recipe. She sent me two different links-I chose this one  It came with a gluten free flour option, and you could proof for 30 minutes or not. I chose to proof it. 

   Next time for the gluten free version, I forgot that it is better to roll out the dough on to the baking pan or stone and then let it rise for the 30 minute. If you do it before hand like for the wheat dough you will lose all the rise when rolling out.

  My pizzas and recipe are for both T and Rain's Dinner Date

Wheat crust  

     The toppings were simple I fried up Jimmy Dean's Italian sausage, added a natural and less salt sliced black olives, and lots of cheese.

Gluten free crust-and it was baked through and delicious. Many times gluten free doughs like this do not bake through So a keeper recipe for sure and simple and easy too-so many gluten free crusts are more complicated and do not need to be

My drink share for T 

     I grabbed two beers-gluten free to the left and Larry's favorite to the right I think this is the last bottle of Guinness that was in the frig-the original 6 bottles were in there now for at least 4 years haha

Monday morning in my inbox a newsletter from Dave's Garden featured this article How to make sun tea safely  Thought I would share as many of you like to brew sun tea.

I also wanted to share a video again. Saturday morning around 6 am I made me a cup of decaf black tea, fed the birds and grabbed my camera. You can hear the birds singing, the crows came in at the neighbors dock so you can hear them too, and the swallows were active that morning. This video is around 5 minutes long

Thank you so much for visiting, hugs to the T group and to Rain's community

Sounds at the Lake Today & Watercolor Practice & Sashiko

   Hi everyone, here in the States we have a long Memorial Day Weekend honoring our fallen soldiers. This is also the weekend that opens up summer, especially on lakes and oceans.

  We were bracing for the onslaught of numerous boaters today, since the weather finally broke into sunshine and no rain-it has been raining for days again.

   We still sit back in the early mornings and enjoy all the birds that come for their seed-at day break, very peaceful still in early mornings.

  A batch of lilies are blooming today so I grabbed my camera and also decided to take a video so even on the backside of the house-not the lake side-you can hear all the boats-surprise hummingbirds flew in and I was standing very close to their feeders. I filled them back up after the video

   I haven't gotten back to weeding in this area as it is loaded with poison ivy and poison oak-just can't get into that again Allot of the iris's that I had seperated out last fall did not bloom this year, so thinking next year I will have allot of blooms.

  Do any of know what kind of lilies these are? They were here already I divided them up last fall. Tiger lilies?

Here is the video I took and if you enlarge to full screen you can see the hummingbirds up close.

  Above is the neighbors dock

      I have not tried wet on wet watercolor yet and wanted to try that this morning.  I used watercolor paper instead of mixed media paper and I think it turned out pretty good, although the paint did not run as allot of videos I watched showed it would.  I wanted the sky to go into the water and I am liking this so far.   Not sure how I will proceed  Perhaps a mandarin duck practice from the book I have been using It needs a few clouds added too.

  For a couple years now I have been wanting to try Sashiko embroidery from Japan.  I have the needles already so I traced out a pattern onto reclaimed jeans fabric and I am using 6 strand embroidery for now. I just ordered a marked pattern of a dragon fly and Sashiko threads but I wanted to try it out today. Jeans fabric was not a good idea to try this out but I think I will enjoy this-more later.

    This is just a running stitch but unlike a hand quilting stitch where the goal is to have top and bottom stitches the same size, Sashiko wants smaller stitches on the bottom.

   In my sewing supplies I found tracing paper for fabric-very cool find. This was probably from my Mom's or Grandma's sewing stash.

   and this is a photo of what I ordered, found on Etsy

  A few days ago I messed up my lower back-stretching for groceries in the car. So it's been very painful, getting a little better today finally. I slept on the floor last night so my back would be straighter.  This is not good since I have so much work to get to outdoors.

  Those of you in the states any plans for your long weekend?

T Stands for Tuesday & Another Birthday & Weaving

   Hello everyone,

      This morning (Monday) we have the autumn feel for sure. The air is crisp and with the fast storm that came through late yesterday everything is wet and damp.

  This is also my T post where we gather over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's with a drink related photo. Link in my sidebar.

     Yesterday was my birthday (72 now yikes), so I made us homemade Belgium waffles-they are one of Larry's favorites that I don't make too often as it is a heavy carb and sugar meal. I don't really have a favorite food except for snack foods like potato chips. haha In my 20's I lived on potato chips because I liked snacking more than sitting down and having a meal. Back then I was the head cook for a year long camp outside of Chicago where me and an assistant made all homemade meals from scratch-I was full just tasting and smelling the foods so by the end of the day I just grabbed a big bag of chips (smiles)  So that's where my love for snack foods began, as growing up as a kid at home my Mom never bought snacks. We did make popcorn though.

I forgot to take photos of my Belgium waffle iron. I divide the recipe in half and make a bowl of gluten free and one of wheat flour.

  I served these with pure maple syrup, sliced peaches, and blueberry preserves. Also sliced up Jimmy Dean's sausage into patties. We will have left overs today.

   For my birthday morning instead of working outdoors I worked on my loom. I spent the morning getting it all tied up in the back, then started winding on the warp. Well of course this did not go smoothly-haha it's this project for sure.  Some of the threads were getting crossed which was a surprise to me. Looking at the knots somehow a few of the knots had twisted the threads-strange another first for my weaving. Well a learning process, and it had to be redone. I am thinking getting older now and getting back to my weaving from about 15 years ago I have forgotten about some of the finer details that was just second nature to me when I was weaving allot. So I redid it this morning and going well so far Oh and someone had asked me on last week's T what yarn I was using. This is 8/2 un mercerized cotton and is also very soft.

This shows the back of the loom where these threads will get wound on 

This is what the front looks like.

As I wind on a few inches from the back-this area scoots up to the front reed, so this is a slow process-untangling threads and advancing the threads to the back

This is the back getting wound on-there will be 8 yards being put on

Mother Nature offered up a lovely morning for my birthday-I took two videos For better viewing expand to full screen and have your sound on-the ducks were vocal in these videos.

                                                                 

For my drink share this week, I am still brewing up a cup of mullein tea for my asthma in the mornings. I have been waking up very congested this month. I just ordered more of the herb mullein leaves and also the herb marshmallow root which is to work well with the mullein.

Happy T and new week 

T Stands for Tuesday @ the Lake

    T Stands for Tuesday-welcome everyone, and also welcome in October.

Find link to our hostess in my right sidebar for T. October is one of my favorite months-it's my husband's and my birthday month and depending upon where you live it can be a gorgeous month. Here in Missouri the leaves slowly change, our average frost is mid month but some years it will hold off til almost the end of October which I am thinking it will this year since we had such a hot and dry summer.

   The leaves are just now beginning to turn, the black walnuts and acorns are constantly falling 

Here at the lake it's been a gorgeous first weekend. No super large vacation boats and no speed boats, instead  lots of fishing boats and even a sailboat. This was the yearly weekend bass fishing contest where the winner takes home the big prize money of $100,000.00-that's allot of winnings for a fish. Last year two very young men took home the prize.

Monday morning very early-surprise the moon was over the lake

  While I was eating my breakfast Monday morning after the sun came up on the deck-visitors swam by

During this past week, much more work on my landscape project was done and I was careful with my knees-sitting down for most of the work We finally got much needed rain Saturday-we have been soooo dry here.

I opened up another red wine-I enjoyed this one much better than the last one.

Now is the time the eagle pair will be visiting much more often. I took this photo after the male flew off.

Happy T everyone, enjoy October 

T Day Stands for Long Weekend-Boats and Good Eats

   Tuesday came quick this week with Monday being Memorial Day here in the States. We share our beverage in our post and gather for T over at Bluebeard and Elizabeths-find link in side bar.

   Friday and Saturday here was cold and very stormy. I am thinking those opening up their lake homes for the summer were not too happy, or those coming up for the long weekend. This was a very unusual cold Memorial Day weekend for this area of the country.

   Sunday mid day the sun finally came out, still in the mid 60's F though, but Wow did the boats all come out-as we knew from last year they would. All sizes, race boats, pontoons, fishing boats, huge ocean boats and cabin cruisers of all sizes, the personal water crafts-it was all on the lake all day Sunday and quite a few braved the cold late afternoon Saturday. Today Monday most had to go back home if they were working so the lake was more normal-the weather warmer, perfect for sitting on the deck enjoying the views with less boat noise. Safer too for swimming and fishing off the dock.

  I invited just a few people that had helped Larry with the dock project over for foods today (Monday Memorial Day) and fishing or swimming if they chose to, and they brought their families.

  I roasted a 10 pound Boston Butt pork roast on Saturday-and then when cool shred it all-that was allot of work-much more so than a beef roast would take-took me over 3 hours. So I was tired for sure.

   This morning I added it all to the crock pot, added beef stock to keep it moist and lots of pepperoncini peppers. I made sloppy joes from scratch just getting spice ideas from a couple different recipes-turned out really delicious. I made a pot of beans of different types, added  little of this and that-let cook slow on the stove for over 6 hours to cook off the liquid-that turned out really good too. This morning I also made gluten free brownies, cleaned house, washed and dried all the throw rugs-by the time our meal at 2 pm I was tired lol.

   The kids brought a change of clothes so they could swim in the water after we ate. One lady brought her fishing pole-she is a really good fisher-woman and came away with a big stringer full of croppies-she fished off the dock while the kids were swimming. Found she was a life guard in her younger days so the kids felt more safe.

   Saturday morning early when it was really cold and windy our friend and his Father (father drove up from Colorado) came up to to see us and go fishing. It was too rough to take the boat out so they fished off the dock. This is our friend's catch along with his father's catch--Good Eats It was really really cold and windy Larry only stayed out with them for about an hour.

We saw the pirate ship go by today, and this is something new-an ice cream boat

  This morning's bake-Gluten Free brownies cooling

The peppers and shredded pork just going into the crock pot early this morning

The beans cooking slow-these ended up nice and thick-and delicious

Sloppy Joes simmering early this morning-this got really thick too

I was pleased that the foods were all a big hit. I grilled the mini (for sliders) buns, and had slices of provolone cheese to add to the sandwiches. I even found really nice gluten free buns for me from Udi foods-they make good gluten free breads.

The pirate ship going by-

Girls swimming

One young girl was leery of jumping off the diving board, so she jumped off the dock-here father taking photos  Her friend did have fun jumping off the diving board.

One can enlarge the videos to full screen-then press esc on your keyboard to return

 A video of one of the smaller ocean boats we watched go by us this weekend

I took a couple videos-sorry not the best of videos but you can see some of the boats-these were taken just before it got really busy on Sunday 

This video shows a wave boat-which I had never heard of before last year. It makes waves so someone behind the boat can surf-or learn how to surf.  I does make allot of waves too.

I totally forgot to take photos, but after we ate, I made us adults fresh mango margaritas-sooo- good and perfect to end the day and weekend.

  I did grab a photo of this beverage that I finished drinking on the deck Thursday-I picked it up at the grocery store while shopping for foods for this weekend. This was a new to me beverage-the flavoring was up on top-after taking the cap off-you push down in the middle which releases all the flavors into the sparkling water-was pretty good

and I spotted this guy on our brick walkway in front of the house

Happy T and new week everyone

T Stands for Reflections on the Lake-Photo Overload

  Good morning, and Happy T

      Any one is welcome to join in, just share a drink related photo on your post and link up over at our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth-link in side panel. a nice way to share a post amongst friends with a beverage.

     We have had soooo much rain most of this month so far, and much more to come if the forecasters are correct. However over the weekend once the rain cleared away mid morning Saturday, the boaters were on the water-and in force. Memorial weekend will be totally bonkers if last year was any indication.

   The dock project has been slow going do to cold, rain, and then no shows. Today-Monday the plan is get the two old docks welded together-and then I won't be cringing when the high waves come rushing in from all the boaters-I am someone that is a worrier and stresses out too much. 

  I grabbed the camera over the weekend. Took several videos just kept one that was so so on Sunday, a few photos on Saturday and also Sunday when friends stopped by and fished for a bit off the dock, and this morning-calm, birds singing, pretty reflections. 

This was such a good idea of my husbands a few years ago-in our much older years to move out of the woods and on to a lake-it's been a blessing during lockdowns for sure as we could see people on the lake fishing and boating.  We have always been early risers-and Larry is always up very early, by 5 am at the latest he is enjoying a cup of coffee and enjoying lake views and especially all of the numerous birds. I have been joining him these last few days with a cup of (decaf) coffee as well.  This morning a piliated woodpecker flew in, ducks and babies swam by, red bellied woodpecker-a regular now-sipping on some hummingbird nectar, fish jumping, and we are really enjoying all the swallows and purple martins-we now have a repaired bird house, and we added a new one.

I took a photo of my coffee and cream before heading out to the deck

Larry and his helper added in this extra support arm-built that concrete support "box" 

I love this reflection-neighbor to our left's dock

I loved this reflection of the homes in the lake

The sun this morning just  coming up above that hill of trees

I couldn't resist this new find at the local grocery store

and sharing one of the videos I took on Sunday-this one doesn't show any of the very loud-fast-beautiful cigarette boats that were in abundance-I think they were out practicing this weekend for a race coming up It does show some of the activity out there on the lake.

Happy T  and enjoy your  new week ahead