This Moment

This Moment.
A Friday ritual.
A single photo- no words- capturing a moment from the week.
A single, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savour, and remember.

A single, dee-lish, mama only moment.

Yarn Along

It's Wednesday and that means it's time for the weekly yarn along.  I feel like I got a bit accomplished this week.  I finished my second Miranda hat.  I worked on my Linus Project blankets.  And I got sucked into Ravelry.  I decided to knit my sister in law a cowl for Christmas.  I found a shaw pattern instead.  Of course I had to run right out to the yarn shop to find the perfect yarn.  I did.  But it was $30 and I needed two skeins of it.  $60 is a bit out of my budget right now.   I even went to JoAnn Fabric to find some cheaper yarn but nothing jumped out at me.  On Saturday I went to a different yarn shop with out the munchkin so I would have uninterrupted yarn time.  I did find some nice pink wool silk fingering yarn.   I plan on packing this yarn and starting tomorrow on my first layover.
This is my finished Miranda hat.  (I tried to get creative like Tracey over at Clover, but it just didn't work).

Tuesdays is baby story time at the library and since we got there early I had to time to peruse the bookshelves.  I found two books to read which is silly, really, since I'm already reading two books.  Now I'll have to put those to the side since the library books are new and not renewable.
Happy Yarn Along Wednesday!

A Foster Failure?

This past weekend while running errands I saw a sign at PetSmet that foster families were needed.  I was once a foster parent for a little black kitty.

It was 2001 and I had just moved into an apartment that allowed pets with a small deposit.  Being a flight attendant I am not home enough to have a pet.  But I really, really wanted a cat.  I had seen a sign that the Denver Dumb Friends League needed foster parents.  I immediately signed up.  I had to have an interview and a home visit.  I fibbed a little when I told the lady I was home everyday.   But it worked I was approved to be a foster parent.

A week later I received a six month old all black kitty.  She had just had a litter of kittens and had gotten fixed.  She followed me around the house and I named her Shadow.  She lived with me for one month which was the assigned time.  I wrote up a little blurb to put on her kennel at PetSmart .  I wrote it from Shadow's point of view.  I met the coordinator from the DDFL at the PetSmart location that had room for kitties up for adoption.  And I cried like a baby.

It was very hard to give up Shadow even though she wasn't my kitty to begin with.  I knew that.  I guess I could have applied to adopt her, but I just wasn't home enough for a single kitty.  (When I bought my house I did adopt two kitties who I still have).   I've never given up an animal that I owned and I hope to never experience that feeling again.   I felt responsible for her and I felt like I was letting her down.  

The coordinator walked me to my car, gave me a hug and basically told me that I should reconsider being a foster home.  In fact I should find an entirely different avenue of volunteering.   To this day every time I go to PetSmart I stop in and visit the kitties up for adoption and tell them I would take them home if I could.  I don't volunteer in any capacity at the shelter, but I do take in pet food occasionally.

The Garden Today

Happy first day of Autumn!

I love this time of year.  At night there is a chill in the air.  We've turned off the AC and opened the windows and doors.  It does warms up quite nicely during the day and when it does warm up, I've been slowly putting the garden to bed.  The poor garden was a bit neglected this summer.  The lettuce went to seed, there were weeds everywhere and only three onions grew.  I picked the last (giant) zucchini, looked for any cucumbers worth picking and pulled up those plants.  

There are a gazillion tomatoes but half of them are not ripe yet.  This is the time of year to keep an eye on the weather.  It hasn't gotten cold enough yet to freeze, but in Colorado anything is possible.  Even though I don't like tomatoes, I've got plans for them!  Salsa, tomato sauce....mmmmmm....dee-lish!  

We've eaten a lot out of the garden this summer.  We've given away bags of produce to a couple of friends who make juice.  However.  If we were to make many meals out of the potatoes, we'd starve.  
This is my potato harvest.  And this is DOUBLE the amount of potatoes that grew last year.  Now I totally understand why my Irish ancestors starved during the famine.  OK.  OK.  I know it's not the same thing at all.  Better luck next year is all I can say!!

Yarn Along

It's Wednesday and that means it's time for the Yarn Along.  Books and knitting.  Two of my favorite things.  I didn't get much time to read this week.  I got a little bit of knitting time last week when we got home from vacation.  It was a rainy day and we were suffering from jet lag.  I started another Miranda hat.  The Miranda is a baby size.  I finished the birthday aviatrix.
I'm using stash yarn for the Miranda.  This is white cotton that I used to make a baby blanket many moons ago.
Corrine is modeling the birthday Aviatrix.  Orange is not her color, but I think it turned out pretty cute.  We'll wrap it up and deliver it this week.

I've been reading A Turn in the Road by Debbie Macomber.  I've been reading it for several weeks and I'm only on chapter four.  Let's just say that by the time I get to bed I am asleep so there is no reading.

This Moment

This  Moment

A Friday ritual.
A single photo- no words- capturing a moment from the week.
A single, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savour and remember.


Joining with SouleMama.


VA.CA.TION!

I had every intention of blogging while we were on vacation.  I paid for the global data plan on my phone so I could blog.  Or at least post photos.  I even had a partial blog composed in my head.   Never even got around to opening the blogger app.

Switzerland was amazing.  And very expensive.  (We went to Burger King in the Zurich airport for coffee- the cheapest value meal was 15 CHF and the franc is stronger than the dollar!).  I bought us a Swiss Pass before we left the states.  It was a four day pass and we made good use of it.  Two days of travel to and from the Zurich airport.  One day of fun travel in the area we stayed.  And one day from Interlaken to Lucerne, plus a boat trip on Lake Lucerne.

We stayed in Wengen Switzerland which is in the Berner Oberland.  Wengen is on a hillside above Lauterbrunnen.  You can only get to Wengen by the train.  There are cars there, but mostly for the hotels to shuttle guests to and from the train.  There are carts to shuttle cargo and golf carts, but most everyone walks.  It's not hard, it's a small village.  We walked a lot.  We hiked a lot.  My feet hurt.
This is the view from our dinner table at the hotel we stayed at.  The mountain is the Jungfrau.  
This is the North Face of the Eiger.  For a long time the mountain was thought to be impossible to climb.  We are in Kleine Scheidegg.  That day just happened to be the Jungfrau Marathon.  The last 13 miles are uphill.  No thanks!  We hiked around on this side of the valley for a day.  
On the second night we were there, they had the Wengen Folk Evening.  It didn't start until 9PM, which was late for us since we had hiked all day and we were pretty jet lagged.  But we are glad we went.  Fascinating evening.  They had yodelers, dancers, bell players, and the big horn.
The big horn makes such beautiful music.  
  
It was a fast week.  We hiked for four days, spend a day in Lucern where we did a lake cruise and then traveled for 24 hours (between flights and layovers) to get home.  Corrine did amazingly well traveling that far for that long.  She's flown a lot, but that was the longest trip she's done. 
This is Corrine riding the train from Lauterbrunnen to Interlaken.  She was the welcoming committee on the trains.  She said hi and bye to everyone who got on or off the train.  

As much as I love to travel and experience other cultures, there is nothing like coming home.  Home Sweet Home.  

Apple Butter

We put apple butter on just about every bread product we can.  I use it in place of syrup on pancakes and french toast.  We put it on PB&J's, biscuits and toast.

The apple tree in our back yard is a Gala apple.  We got so many apples this year.  I find Corrine under the tree happily munching away.  (And of course if Corrine is eating so must Henley so he follows her until he can take the apple away from her).  
Last week I picked a basket of apples and dehydrated them.  
This week Bryan picked two brown paper bags full of apples.  In one bag, the apples were not perfect. Those were the ones I used for applesauce.  Bryan was going to dehydrate the other bag of non blemished apples, but ran out of time.  So I cooked those down for applesauce as well.  I canned six jars of applesauce.

Today I made apple butter from the second batch of applesauce.  I usually follow this recipe from Pick Your Own.  OK, I don't actually follow it, I use it as a guideline.  The apple butter I made today has cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves in it.  I also used about a quarter cup sugar.  No measurements, really, spice it up to your own taste.   Mix the whole mess and bake.  It doesn't need a lid, the juice from the apple sauce needs to cook off and the sauce needs to thicken up.   I do like the crock pot version from PYO, but I didn't have time, so I baked it.  Bake at 350.  I set the timer and stirred it every 30 minutes.  It ended up baking for 3 hours.  I jarred it and put in the water bath for 10 minutes. 

This is what I started with...

And this is after 3 hours of baking...

Dee-lish! 

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