Fall is here and I love every minute of it!

 These are Pumpkin Scones - I found the recipe on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog and OH MAN were they delicious!!!!!  You'd better get right over there and scroll through the posts until you find it and make them right away! 

I'm totally into Fall mode now, and these were perfect with coffee and a 'Cinnamon Roll' scented candle on the table.....

I LOVE FALL.  Leaves, squirrels, acorns, Oak leaves, Maple leaves, pumpkins, quilts......

 This is Tunyr.  (Pronounced Tuner).  He is around 17 years old now.  He owns my younger daughter.  Years back, when both he and my daughter were younger, he caught and was bitten by a bat.  Because she is spoiled loved, we actually sent the bat to a laboratory to be tested for rabies, so that she wouldn't lose her ridiculously expensive beloved pet.  Fortunately, the bat was not rabid and Tunyr lives on.  And on.

 This is part of the view from my back porch, looking to the south.  The hill to the right in back is about 3100 feet in elevation.  The cool fir tree in the fog is mine.  I have claimed it and named it The Feather Tree.  It's actually Weyerhaueser Timber's tree, but it's on the property line and I love it more than they do :-)  I made a wall hanging of it (quilted) even.  Have they done that?  I don't think so.

Wasn't this a grand Autumn morning picture???

 This is a sideways picture of my weaving loom.  (?)
It was at my son's house and had to be moved, so I dismantled it and put it back together in my own sewing rooms.  UGH.  It was heavy and FULL of parts!  The good news is that it went back together with no parts left over, so I probably did it right. 

Soon I shall begin to learn the art of weaving.  When canning season ends.  And our building project is finished and my daughter moves into it.....

 I've had these pumpkin primitives started but not finished for awhile now, so today I got to work on them and got them listed on Ebay.

We occasionally traipse through our woods to gather moss, sticks, nuts, pinecones etc.  My younger daughter & I both have artistic bent.  My older daughter refers to it as 'gathering with nuts in May' and thinks we are just plain bent, forget the artistic part ;-)

Our woods is a wonderous place and we just beat the rains on Friday, gathering baskets of really nice

mosses, twisted sticks, hemlock & cedar cones.

Saw signs of bear, scared a flock of wild ducks out of the beaver dam and just missed running over a chipmunk with my truck, but that was the extent of the livestock we encountered.  The rains held off and we barely needed the 4-wheel-drive to make it back up to the house from our valley.....

I'm trying to learn to tat.  I think I've finally figured out the basic double stitch & picot.  I'll practice on that for awhile and then watch a few more YouTube videos & see if I can figure out what's next.

Well, that's it from this hilltop for today.  Tomorrow we need to make pie filling out of the 7 boxes of King apples we picked yesterday.  I'll try to remember to take a few pictures.....and make a pie while we're at it!

Fall is in the Air (and on the ground, too.....)

 Well, I would say "I'm back!", because it's been 12 days since I posted, but most likely no one would notice.  You know how some people stand out in a crowd or at a party?  Well, I'm a blender.  I blend with the scenery or the background.  Not necessarily a bad thing.....just sayin'.....

I love the twirly top on this sweetmeat squash.  The squash grew fine, but  it's been a weird garden year - too much humidity or something and lots of the veggies grew strangely or not at all.  

 We're not in danger of starving, however.  Fall has definitely set in, the rains and cool temps are darting in and out.  We're starting to plan when to put our beef in the freezer and where to park the hay equipment this year so it won't get wet. 

Today we canned up the potatoes that are too small to keep long.  The King apples are about ready to be pie filling but today is a cancer treatment day for my mom and a bit of grocery shopping, too.

 A fabulous use for leftover mashed potatoes (or in this case, ones that cooked a bit too long for canning) is to make Potato Cheese Puffs!!

Just mash up some cooked spuds with an egg, a little flour, some grated cheddar and garlic....drop by spoonfuls into your deep fryer (you DO have a deep fryer, don't you???) and keep warm in the oven until......

 .....you have enough for an ARMY and you've made sweet-n-sour sauce to go with and VOILA!  A delicious lunch!

Easy peasy, boss.

 We canned about 21 quarts of little spuds.  The sad thing is that the red spuds and the purple spuds all blend with the rest after they're canned :-(

This is Boris & Natasha.  I'm still making Fall primitives.  I LOVE Fall and wish it lasted for 6 months instead of just a couple three. 

Autumn, falling leaves, cooler days....pumpkins & squash, flannel shirts, warm sox!!  A bit of melancholy always goes along as we reflect on the changing seasons - both the calendar seasons and the changing seasons of life.

Psalm 118:24 says, “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” 

Apple pie, canning salmon & other stuff

 I have a 'new to me' Newcomb Loom - the Studio model.  Apparently the factory in Davenport Iowa closed down many years ago after having made looms from at least the late 1800s into the early 1970s.  I finally located a really nice lady who is sending me the manual & instructions for it!  (Thank you SO much, Jeanne!!)

Try to say 'Newcomb Loom Co.' a few times and you'll understand why my family keeps laughing at me.....

 It's been kind of an odd garden year with the weather a bit off this year.  A lot of the apples have fallen off before ripening, but I did pick a basket full of Chehalis apples & a few Gravensteins and......

 .....oh yeah!   made a couple of fresh apple pies.  Is there really anything more delicious than fresh apple pie?   With coffee, of course.  It's good for breakfast, too!

 My husband has been enjoying the local fishing and keeps bringing home salmon to be canned or frozen.  I believe some are pink and some are silver.  All I know is they all take a loooooooong time in the pressure canner!  About an hour & 40 minutes, to be exact!

 We decided not to buy & can albacore this year, but to can the salmon since he's able to catch those. 

We did drive out to Westport WA on Saturday to buy a little cod & halibut and to play!  We walked on the beach - the temperature was around 76* and NO WIND!  For those of you not familiar with the Washington coast, this is practically unheard of!  Usually it is cold and windy on our coast line!  We had a marvelous day, ate a delicious steak dinner at Bennett's Seafood Restaurant and found.....

 .....not this............

 ......but this AMAZING find at one of the shops!!  I am SO thrilled with this one!  One one end it is stamped New York/Great Britain.  It is a shipping container that no doubt made its way by cargo ship from the Scotland factory with  a new Singer Sewing machine in it destined for a housewife in the United States!  Wish it could tell its story!

Maddie the chihuahua was unimpressed.

Then yesterday my mom, daughters & I decided to have a 'ladies shopping/lunch' day out and I found some fun primitives to work into my ebay primitive sales and decor.

We had a wonderful day together and now today it's back to the grindstone - housekeeping, cooking, sewing and more construction!