Foggy morning

 We woke up this morning to fog! Fog to the right of us, fog to the left of us, fog everywhere! Pa went to town to get a load of water while I stayed home and did domestic stuff.

 Yesterday or the day before I made this coupon holder so I could organize my grocery store coupons.

 This is the fog from the kitchen window, looking out to the back yard.

 This is looking out toward the driveway. See the frost on my truck?

 This is a view out the front window looking at the garden. I ordered 14 pounds each of blueberries, blackberries and boysenberrys. My freezer is jam packed full so I have till the first of March to make room for 3 boxes of fruit. Someone in SnowFlake orders from Bithel Farms in Oregon and then a truck rolls up at this persons house and we are all waiting in line to get our berries. They order three times a year. I still had peaches and apples from the previous order last fall. Sooooooo, I decided to do something with the apples.

 I made an apple pie but that didn't make too much room in the freezer so I proceeded to make applesauce and the can it in my new waterbath canner.

 Bubble, bubble, toil and touble..wait, I think it's the wrong season for that saying.

 The peaches soon met the same fate.

and there ya have it. 4 quarts of apple sauce, 2 quarts and 1 pint of peach sauce. The recipe called for all spice and all I had was whole all spice. I got out my handy little food processor and made all spice powder. When you live in the boonies, ya have to do with what ya got. By the time I was done, 4 hours or more had gone by and I was exhausted being on my feet for so long. I made chocolate chip cookies yesterday. A couple of days before I made chocolate chip oatmeal ones but Pa didn't like them and if he doesn't like some kind of food, it will just sit there. I threw them away. He was very pleased with the chocolate chip ones. I've switched from Nestle Chocolate chips to Hershey chocolate chips. They are so much better and the recipe on the back makes better chocolate chip cookies than the Nestle recipe.
My back is slowly getting better, hardly any pain but my hips still feel jammed into my lower back. At least I won't have to go to the bone crusher and deposit my hard earned money into his pocket.
My friend, Pam sent me the most yummy bar of soap that she made. I emailed all of you the brochure so you should really order something from her. You won't be disappointed!

Thunder and Snow

We invited Lil Abner and Daisy Mae over for dinner Monday night. Pa did the cooking and made a chocolate meringue pie, from scratch, no less!

 He also made Swiss Steak, a huge pan of it. He wanted to make sure there was plenty left over for us the next day. It's always better the second and third day. Boy, was it tasty! I love it when Pa cooks. I wish he would do it more often because I get so tired of having to figure out what to cook for dinner every night. I'd much rather do the dishes.

 We got two or more inches of snow yesterday. Very unusual to get a snow storm with thunder. Tilly decided to take advantage of the sun coming in thru the kitchen window.

 Here is the snow coming down. Pa made it to town and back to get the mail and a load of water. It sure would be nice to have a well so we didn't have to make water runs. But they are very expensive and water from the ice plant where we get water is 2 cents a gallon so we can make a lot of water runs for what it would cost to put in a well.

 This is looking out the kitchen window. After living in Illinois for 15 years and surviving the "Winter of "78" I swore I would never get near snow again. Old age must have mellowed me because I don't mind it at all now. It makes a difference not having to go out in it.

 The Bronco might think differently about the situation tho.

It's so pretty with the sun shining on the snow. I saw a couple of bunnies in the driveway, frolicking in the snow. Good thing Pa doesn't have his pellet gun at the ready. We are supposed to have a couple of  nice days and more rain or snow for a couple days after that. At least my onions are getting watered! It's all I can do to keep from starting my seeds indoors for this years garden. I need to wait for at least two or three weeks unless I want them to start producing in the guest bedroom. Last year, I was getting peppers while the plants were still in the house.
I asked Pa what his plans were for today. I slept in till 8 so my plans are to make no plans at all! I think he is leaning in the same direction. I wish he would find a hobby to keep him busy. Me? I just hang out in my craft room and play with paper. It is so nice being retired. I recommend it for every one. I've been reading Acts in the Living Bible. You could be reading about modern man, people never change down thru the ages.
That catches us up for now. Thanks for hanging out with me.

Maggie Miss Behavin'

My Scottie, Maggie who is 11 years old had to go to the vet last week while Pa was out of town. She didn't act sick in the least way. Her appetite was good, she was sprightly and active, did I mention her appetite? She will be just like me and raise up off her death bed and ask for pizza! She was peeing blood and drinking huge amounts of water. The vet said she had a bad bladder infection and was very surprised she acted like she felt so good . Turns out she also has cataracts and the muscle on one side of her jaw has atrophied, causing her eye to sink into her skull a bit. Can't do anything about those but she is now on antibiotics and something to get rid of the ash in her blood. We've been feeding the dogs Walmart's Old Roy and the vet says it has a lot of ash in it which can irritate the bladder and cause crystals in their urine. I have 25 pounds of dry Old Roy but have switched the dogs to Purina Smartblend until I can get to Show Low and get them something better.  I have spent more on my four dogs in the last 6 or 7 years than I did on my three children in their entire lives!

Pa made it home from Vegas in good shape with a new mother board in the generator. The generator guys know where the problem is but don't know why the problem is. Not even the engineers for Generac know why the mother board keeps going bad. Seems to me they would come to the conclusion that we got a lemon and offer us a new generator. The guy in Vegas said next time bring it back and he will replace it again but he doesn't seem to realize that it is expensive to go to Vegas for repairs every six months. Pa did have to go back on his eye drops tho.

I am so glad that I brought my geraniums inside for the winter. Aren't they pretty? Even the petunias that reseeded themselves in the same pot are doing great. Vegas about killed my green thumb but it has come back since moving here. I love plants and wish I had more windows to fill with them.

While Pa was gone, I had to haul in wood for the stove. We use a laundry basket. When I woke up yesterday, I could barely get out of bed. My lower back is sooooooo sore. I spent most of yesterday with the heat pad on my back and from time to time would go hang upside down on my reclining board. I couldn't get it to pop. I'm still lame today so I am not doing much. I told Pa he would have to get the neighbor to come down and help him unload the generator. I really hurt!!!!!

One of the things we are blessed with out here at the ranch is beautiful sunsets. We need to spend more time outside in the evening instead of watch TV. Really, is there anything worth watching anymore? I am so sick and tired of politics. While Pa watches O'Riley and Hannity, EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, I play in my craft  room. We got our ballots to mail in early and will mail them tomorrow.

Pa put up Old Glory. Beautiful, isn't she? I hope and pray she will be able to fly after the election. It seems our current prez, isn't too proud of our country and what she stands for.

I'm sorry I don't blog more often but really, not much happens out here. Then it seems when I do have something to say, I don't have enough megabytes left with Verizon to be on the internet. I will be so glad with our contract with Verizon is over. I really have no complaints about Verizon. We always get good connections but to get more megabytes each month would cost an arm and a leg and we've already given them our firstborn.

Guess that covers it for now. If any of you have any specific questions you would like answered, let me know and I will answer them next time.

Onions

Yesterday, Pa tilled the garden again and I planted onions, about 50 of them. Half red and half yellow. It seems kind of early but it was 68 degrees yesterday. A regular heat wave! I put a sheet of plastic over them to keep them from getting frost bit. I can't believe the great weather we've been having. Even if it snows a foot, being this late in the winter season, we know it won't last but a day. I can hardly wait to really get started on the garden. I have my 100 jiffy pots, my shelves to put in the guest bedroom to put my starter plants on, my seeds, fertilizer and I am ready!

 We've had a variety of birds visit our bird bath and to munch on the bird feed we put out. Altho we have seen Mountain Bluebirds at the ranch, they've never visited our property before. Until now! They are so pretty and sooooo blue!

 Various finches. They have red on their breasts.

 The female Mountain bluebirds are not blue but brown. So are the immature ones.

 I was really excited to have these visitors. They are bug eaters, not seed eaters so they only come to drink.

Here is one of the two Scrub Blue Jays that come to eat. They are such pigs! They stuff themselves with seeds. I'm thinking they take them back to where ever they are living and store them there and then come back for more. They make the phrase "eat like a bird" have a totally different meaning because boy can they eat! They can make a slice of bread disappear in two seconds flat.

I forgot to show you what Pa got me for Christmas. It is a Silhouette Cameo digital cutter. It can do so much more than my old Cricut cutting machine. It can do a feature called Print and Cut where I can print out a graphic and the machine will cut it out perfectly around the edges. It sends the picture to you printer and includes registration marks that the Cameo can read so when you put it in the cutter, it reads those marks so it can find the image to cut. It is so cool! I'm going to keep the Cricut and use them both. The Cameo hooks up to your computer so you can get images to cut right from there. I'm so blessed to have my own craft room. I have a place to hide while Pa watches O'Riley and Hannity every single blasted night! I AM SO SICK OF POLITICS! and we only have 11 months to go!

We have decided to sell the water truck. Now that the water tank is full and we go to town often enough to keep it filled using our 250 gallon water tank, we can't see paying insurance on it just so it can sit there. And whether you use it or now, you still have to have it insured. Hopefully it will sell soon.
That's about it for now. I think I'll go out to the garden and see if my onions have grown since yesterday.

Interesting Week

   Just a quickie to fill you in on this weeks activities. Monday started out with a mouse doing the back stroke in the toilet. There is no way he could have climbed into there so we were thinking he might have climbed up the shower curtain and then did a swan dive into the toilet. I took pity on him (yeah, right) and flushed him down. Now he has a big swimming pool to exercise in. Every time I used the facilities, I worried that he would swim back up and bite me in the butt! Remember when we were young and we would worry that a snake would swim up the toilet and attack us? Ok, maybe you didn't think along those lines, but I did.

   Tuesday, I set a tree on fire. Monday night I cleaned out the wood stove and set the ashes outside to cool before tossing them out. Pa had mentioned that he had dumped some out by some trees so Tuesday in the late morning, I took the cold ashes and dumped them in the middle of a hollow tree. Tom came over later and as I was outside talking to him I looked over and noticed smoke coming out of the tree. Pa, Tom and I managed to put it out using buckets and a squirt bottle. Flames were clear up in the top of the tree. Luckily there was no wind. Usually Juniper burns quick and hot. Most of the tree was hollow and filled with a sawdust type of stuff so I dug that all out. It was hot so would have started up again eventually. I'm telling ya, we were so blessed and God was watching out for us because the surrounding grass could have ignited and burned the whole place down or the wind could have kicked up and set other trees on fire. Obviously the ashes weren't as cold as I thought they were. I had been dumping ashes in the garden but thought there was enough ash in there. Pa forgot to mention that when he dumped ashes around the trees that he had watered them down a lot. Tell me the whole story, Pa!!!!!

Thursday, we picked up Tom bright and early and went to Gallup to check things out. We found a nice Goodwill and had fun poking around in there. We checked out the Ace hardware, Safeway, Big Lots, Home Depot, Walmart. We ate lunch at Golden Corral. As we were sitting there eating, a couple walked in with an old Indian woman, She looked ancient with all kinds of wrinkles and in a calico skirt. Typical of what you would picture in your mind. She was so fascinating to look at but I didn't want to stare. I finally asked the younger woman if that was her grandmother. She said it was her mother in law. I told her that she was so beautiful. And she was. Her entire life was etched on her face. The majority of people you see in Gallup are Indians.

  Yesterday I ran into town and got a load of water and the mail. I usually make Pa go since I don't like going into town. I've become a regular hermit. Next thing you know, I'll be walking around in clothes made of bark and my skin will be weather beaten and the texture of petrified wood. Oh, and my teeth will be all black and chipped and I'll walk with a hunched back and have a runny eye that looks a different direction than the other one. Ain't I pretty?

   Plans for today include loading up another load of horse poo from down the road and till it in the garden. Our big generator blew the mother board again so Pa has to haul it to Vegas for repairs. We can't figure out why it keeps doing that, 2 in a year so far. We don't use it very much so it is very discouraging. I'm hoping we can fix it, then sell it and get another brand.

  One morning Pa took a shot at a rabbit with the pellet gun. He hit the dirt right under the bunnies tail, the tail flew up and the rabbit didn't even know he had been shot at. It was the funniest sight I ever saw. The bunny continued to sit there and then ambled off like all was right with the world. I saw an eagle on my way to town yesterday. It flew right in front of my truck window. So beautiful!

N E Arizona is being ripped off!

Pa made it back from Vegas all in one piece. He had some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the eye doctor is taking him off his eye medicine for a month. The bad news is that he has to go back to Vegas in a month to have the eye doctor check him out. If he gets a good report he can go off his eye medicine and not report back for a year. In the meantime, he will look for an eye doctor in Arizona.
Of course while he was there, he had to go grocery shopping. One of our favorite stores in Vegas is Liberio which is a Mexican chain store originating in California. Ok, so here are some of the prices he bought some stuff at and the prices here in NE Arizona.
Vegas....Brown Onions, 4 pounds for .99- Here.... .99 a pound
Vegas...Green Beans, .59 a pound--------Here .$1.89 a pound
Vegas.....Yam, 4 pounds for .99----------Here .99 cents a pound
Vegas.....Romaine Lettuce , .69 each-----Here $1.59 each at Walmart!
Vegas....Iceberg Lettuce, 2 for .99------Here, .99 cents each or higher
Isn't that unbelievable? I can understand adding something for transportation but that is ridiculous!  I had him get me some De-Sol-Vit at Walmart in Vegas for $4.97. At Ace Hardware which is the only place I can find it, they want $8.97. I am just dumbfounded.
Our beautiful weather has gone south, or east or west....anywhere but here. High of 40 something with snow flurries and more on the way by the middle of the week. That is, if you can trust the weather report. Like I said before, ya never know.

 I was playing in my craft room today and made this teapot. The lid comes off so you can put things inside. My mom's birthday is at the end of the month so I thought I would put different types of tea inside and send it to her for her birthday. It is one of the hardest files I have to put together. I bought it a couple of years ago.

I also made this one but Pa said it looks more like a sled than a tea pot. It's supposed to be a tea pot in the shape of a strawberry.  One thing about Pa, he'll always give you an honest opinion!
We had another store closure in Saint Johns. The movie rental place shut it's doors. Couldn't compete with Red Box, I guess. Since we are on Dish Network, I signed up for Blockbuster movie rentals. We got our first movie, Horrible Bosses. It was funny in places but the language was way over the top. I don't know why they make movies with the F word in every sentence or worse. It really doesn't add anything to the plot.
Pa said for me to order my Christmas prezzie so I did. Can't wait to show it to you but ya have to wait. I also ordered my garden seeds and my onion plants came yesterday, right when the weather turned to...... winter.
Well, it is that time of year. As soon as the weather warms up again, I'll plant them.
Ok, I vented about the prices and caught you up on Pa. The VA doctor said he was as healthy as a horse. Now you are all caught up.
Oh! hi to my cousins in British Columbia. I heard they were reading my blog.

Got Milk?

I was transferring flour from my 25 pound flour container to my canister and spilled some on the floor. Before I could sweep it up, Tilly tried eating it. The first thing that popped into my mind was "Got Milk?" She looked so funny!  Now that Christmas is over, I can post the journal cover and monthly covers I made for my grand daughter. Not that she reads my blog!

 This is the main cover. Some of the die cuts I made, some others came from SVG.cuts.com and some came from various others.

 This was for January. The background is blue glitter cardstock. I hadn't put the month stickers on the tabs yet.

 The cascading hearts was made by my friend Todd. He posted it to a forum we both belonged to.

 I thought this was too pretty to add anything else to. Just some fancy cardstock.

 Can you guess what month this is? Where's your umbrella?

 She loves to text and would rather text than talk on the phone. Why not send email or get on an online chat? The younger generation!

 I think I got this file from Scrapping Table and the words from some other site.

 Same for July. I love glitter paper but it sure does ruin your cutting blade.

 My grand daughter wants to be a writer so this fits the bill

 another one too pretty to add to

 I love this one. It's from SVG.cuts also. They have great files to cut.

 The turkey has a googly eye!

Cute snowman is from SVG.cuts also.
 Other than an elf sticking out of a chimney, these were our only Christmas decorations. I got Pa a couple of tools for presents and he gave me a promissory note to get me something after Christmas.
On New Year's Eve, Pa went to Lil Abner's to help him put a transmission in Lil Abner's big honkin truck. They ran into all sorts of trouble so it took most of the day. Pa came home exhausted and went to be way before midnight so Tilly and I stayed up and saw the New Year in. Living out here, there wasn't much excitement! I gave Till a kiss and we went to bed at 12:05 am.

Our weather has been so beautiful. Freezing at night and in the high 50's during the day. This morning in the house it was 64 degrees and freezing outside. How's that for insulation? I didn't need a morning fire but made one anyway just for that cozy feeling.

Pa left for Vegas this morning. He has two doctor appointments in Vegas tomorrow. Just his twice a year check ups. It about bankrupts us  buying gas with these trips so he is considering finding some doctors closer. He can go to the VA in Show Low for his general health. He needs to find a good ophthalmologist and if he can't find one in Show Low, Flagstaff would be lots closer than Vegas. I know he enjoys going to see everyone but ya'll will just have to come here!!!!  I don't mind being out here alone except for watching all those shows yesterday on Finding Bigfoot. They did find prints in White River which is 50 miles from here. Anyway I have a BIG gun so I'm not afraid. I love the peace and quiet. We upgraded with Dish net work and got a DVR and I can hear the thing humming even when it is off. Being used to the quiet, everything sounds loud.
I cooked a couple of those bunnies the other night. Fried their little butts in the frying pan in olive oil. They were pretty tasty but tough so next time I will pressure cook them first and then fry them. Come to think of it, it's about time for them to start their evening foraging so I think I will get the pellet gun and go hunting. Until next time!!!!