Watcha Workin On Wednesday

Shew!!! I know I am posting late as normally I post in the morning, but I wanted to get things done to be able to show you. Yesterday I had fun working at my friend's shop. She had me putting lights on the Christmas trees. I now remember why I normally buy trees with lights already on them. LOL. Then she said I could move things around if I wanted so I did. I set up a new display for her because I couldn't stand the bare spot she had in one room since she sold a cupboard. I didn't take a pic sorry, but I did take some on my way back home.







So now on with what I worked on today...

I finished all 12 of my little crocks.









Ok not a crock, but it will be an ornament. I think I'm going to put bells on the branch tips, but not completely sure yet.



That's it for now... I need to go get dinner. Thanks for checking in!

Happy Monday!!!!

The trees are finally starting to change color here in my neck of the woods. Like I said I took a drive last Thursday through Amish Country and it looked like this...

Not much change...






This is actually my road...






But then I woke up Sunday morning and looked out from my porch and saw this...








See where those three trees are that is where my house originally sat back about ten years ago.




Our furnace is not yet hooked up I guess we need some parts from Lowe's. Yesterday was quite the day. How many of you can say you grocery shopped twice in the same day. Now I do not like shopping so this was a nightmare. We went to Wally World in the next town over. We spent an hour or more walking through the mecca which has just been remodeled trying to find stuff. We get up to the check out line and low and behold the electric goes out for no reason. It is an absolutely gorgeous day not a cloud in site and of course no back up generator either. Wally World???? Of all places no back up. They yell that it will be another 3 hours until they can get it back up. They tell us we can leave our carts and they will put everything away. It was like a concert just let out. A mass exodus out of the store and then of course all the traffic lights were out too. It was a mess. My hubby got so mad. I am trying to learn to shrug things off that are beyond my control. So we came home and I had to drive another 20 minutes the opposite way to go grocery shopping again by myself because he was too mad. We needed food so I had to go. My in laws came over to check out the furnace last evening so we had a good visit.

I must get going it is bedtime and I need to get my kids to bed and get some sleep tomorrow to work at my friend's shop and then my DD has a choir concert tomorrow night.

Thrifting Finds...

I know I missed Fat Friday again, but I was working and Thursday I went to my friend's shop to make sure I knew what I was doing. She asked me to run the shop on Tuesday since she is going to a trade show. She will be looking for me a shelf/cupboard for one of my walls amongst other things of course. I am so excited!!!! This is one of the things I'm working towards in her shop. LOL.

Well, I have not been thrifting in awhile to try to save money. But since my favorite thrift store is along the way to my friends shop and it opens an hour earlier I headed out. It was Thursday so all the good stuff was put out on Monday. I did manage to find some things...

More stencils for my floor cloths or walls...



Thought I would try some stitcheries and all of you seem to use hoops so I bought a couple. I know most people don't like the metal ones because of rust, but I do because they seem to hold tighter.





Last but not least I found this hand quilted wall hanging. Yes it's a bit bright, but I think I'll use it in my upstairs hallway which is dark. I just love it!!!! Get this $1.00 yes you heard me a BUCK!!!!! Couldn't pass it up.



Remember that empty cement pad I showed you. Well, it finally came yesterday. My new outdoor wood furnace. This is what will heat my house this winter and hopefully help save us a ton of money! You load it up twice a day with wood and voila heat. It actually heats up water that will run under ground in pipes into my home then into my existing furnace that has an exchanger on it that will change that hot water into heat. We are also hooking it into our hot water tank so I will have a better supply of hot water. After all I do have a teenager that likes to take long showers. Can you tell the trees in the background still haven't tarted to change yet.



If you want more info check here. There are laws in many cities against these, but since we live in the country we can have it. I love the smell of burning wood. I'll let you know how well it works when it really starts to get cold. Hubby is working on getting it hooked up today.

Hopefully I'll have another post for you on Monday if all goes good. LOL.

Better Late then Never

Yesterday was Watcha Working on Wednesday and due to workin' I didn't get a chance to post. Normally I write them the day before and schedule them, but I was busy on Tuesday and didn't get the chance. I was busy working on Christmas items for the stores I wholesale too. I am trying to get done what they for sure want then I get to work on my one of a kinds. LOVE doing one of a kind work more than repeating the same stuff over and over. I am going to work at my friend Kim's shop today so I wanted to get some of her things done to give to her since her Christmas Open House is Nov. 7 & 8. I have put a lot of pressure on myself to get them done.

First up I showed you my snowman ornies last week, but they are now done all 12 big ones and 12 small ones.






I finished up all 12 of my Gingerbread men. I did these last year, but the one shop asked me to them again this year because they did so well. The red is not that red it is really a lot more grubby.



I also made up this little picture with the Night before Christmas poem. It is very hard to see in the picture but it looks awesome.




And now what I'm still working on because I didn't get them finished is twelve of my little crocks. I need to re stain and grubby but you get the idea. I also need to decide how to finish them. What to put in them... I'm thinking cinnamon sticks with little candy canes attached and greenery. But who knows. LOL. Then how I'm going to hang them because the shop wants them as tree ornies. Are you thinking rusty wire like me? Just curious.



All in all not bad for doing it all on Tuesday. I still have a lot to do, but once the beginning of November rolls around things will slow down for me.

Louisiana Part 3...

Well I thought you might like to meet the main characters of this story. Sure you know our names, but you can't quite visualize us. So here we are... me and my partner. I would be the girl. LOL. Oh wait the one with the long hair. LOL.



If you aren't quite sure what this post is about you can check here and here to catch up.

The infamous tire blow out...




So where were we, ahhh yes, sleeping after our rough evening. Like I said my partner and the chief that was with us went out to grab something to eat and plan the route we were going to go to meet up with everyone else. Good because I am not good with directions. Just tell me to look for the gas station or the big tree on the corner and I'm good. Don't say turn north, south, east, or west unless you don't want me to get there. There were also a lot of phone calls being made both to our chief (not by me because I would have been fired while standing along side the road) and the State of Ohio EMA, our unit commander who was with the other group of people. They were trying to decided what to do. I slept and didn't want to be in on it. I figured my partner could handle the truck maintenance part of the trip if I handled everything else. AHHHHH... that bed never felt so good.

Skip ahead to 6am wake up time. I get up do my thing and wake my partner up. Before all of you get excited, yes we slept in the same room, yes we had 2 beds, and yes it stayed that way, and yes my hubby knew. Like I said we are partners that's it. We meet up with the chief and go for a nice continental breakfast courtesy of the motel. I'm betting that the rest of the group didn't get a nice breakfast like this. LOL. Ahhhh.... this is nice we're watching the hurricane report on the TV while we eat and hear that the winds are starting to pick up a bit. Great!!!! Then we need to hurry to get to the shop for our truck. We arrive just as they open and one of the guys was taking our shredded tire off. We had blown out the side wall of it. Of course we get the "Where ya'll from?" And we explain about 1 hour south of Cleveland. "Oh, why are ya down here?" "We came just to meet you so you could change our tire." I said. He laughed and I told him about the hurricane. Next words out of his mouth "So, you ever been in a hurricane?" "Nope I live in Ohio the biggest body of water is Lake Erie." "Well, there's just lots of wind and rain." "So do you actually get hit here in Clinton with hurricanes?" "No ma'am (I'm starting to get use to this ma'am stuff), but we do get hit with the tornadoes that go along with the hurricanes. " WHAT???? Now I'm standing there and the wind is picking up and blowing pretty hard. "You're kidding me right?" "No ma'am" UGGGHHHH of course tornadoes now!!!! By then the tire was fixed and we also had them check out our transmission. There was nothing wrong they told us that we ran it to hard for too long in the heat and it boiled over. SHEW!!!! That's the best news so far I can continue on with the rest of the team. We go to pay and I open the door and the biggest black nasty bug (swear it was as big as a dog) ran in front of me in the door. I scream and they all just look at me. We don't have bugs that big where I live. I asked the lady sitting there waiting for her car if it was a cockroach. "Nope I've never seen one of those before." YUCK!!!!! big bugs I hate bugs. So lets see we have snakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and huge bugs to worry about what was I thinking.

As Willie Nelson would say "on the road again, I just can't wait to get on the road again." LOL we set our Tom Tom for Zachary,La. The chief says he likes to follow so we should lead. OK. We have about 3 hours on the road to meet up with our team. Wow isn't this pleasant driving through these little back roads our Tom Tom showed us. This is quickest way according to the device. Turn Left it says. OK. Hey partner isn't that a dead end sign up there. Hey partner that is dead end sign!!!! Now what??? Yep our handy device had us go down a dead end street. NICE!!!! Once again the two manly men confer and decide to follow the chief's Garmin. By then he knew the exact address of where we were to go. We would be staying in a church for the next few days.

This is what we saw along the way...

A terrible rain storm that we could not see but 20 feet in front of us. Would have been nice if we had new windshield wiper blades. LOL We discussed it at one of the gas stations, but didn't do it.



Lots of homes with tarps for roofs thanks to Hurricane Gustav.



Finally, a few hours later we arrived at the church courtesy of FEMA. This would be our home away from home for a few days.








This place is huge. When we arrived I'd say there were at least 200 people there with only 2 showers. Yeah you heard me right 2. Luckily at this point the women were in the minority still. After we were done the men started to use ours.



These are not my feet.... LOL. Are ya kiddin I would have at least shaved my legs for ya. And the shoes.... don't get me started.



SHHH... I don't know who's stuff this was, but this is how it looked all around the church. (I borrowed other peoples pictures that went with me. hehe)




This was another church that would serve lunch to those who were around. Ummm... my partner and I missed lunch the first day do to our breakdown. Luckily they had left overs and I got my first taste of dirty rice and I LOVED it.



We arrived safely and were met by the other team members with lots of hugs for me, not so many for my partner, and glad your back and safe. I was never so happy to see people I had only known one day. At this point we were still awaiting our mission from FEMA so my partner and I unpacked and reorganized the truck. The weather reports were moving in that Ike would be hitting that night. Now we had the option of either sleeping in the truck or in the church. My partner and I decided we would stay inside. I figured with the way my luck was I'd be Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz or a huge tree would fall on my truck. Hmmmm.... I wasn't taking the chance.

So we found some FEMA/Red Cross cots and scoped out our spot with the rest of the team along the wall of the huge gymnasium. Well let me tell you this place got extremely cold at night. It was so cold I couldn't keep warm so therefore I was awake most of the night along with the rain pelting the roof of this building. What was worse is that our one team was broken down in to 3 smaller teams of 5 each. Well, teams 1 and 3 were given their assignments and had to leave at 11pm. They were going to man shelters and fire stations to ride out the storm. They were our night shift guys as I call them. My team was on days because the commander was our boss and he needed to be able to communicate during the day with both Ohio and La officials. Well, of course I could not be left to try to sleep now could I. Team 1 and 3 came and woke me up to ask me what team I was on knowing full well I was on 2. Oh wait I know lets shake her cot and scare the crap out of her this'll be fun... Psssttt... Mary are you awake??? What do you guys want??? Hey what team are you on... 2 why... Never mind... GRRRR... I'm awake now what do you want. So I was told since I was up I needed to see them off. What am I your Mother??? But being the nice person I dragged myself outside to see them off. The wind was blowing and the rain was beginning to come down. I waved to them and took off back inside where it is dry.

As the night goes on people start doing stupid stuff like take pics when you are sleeping. I hate people who take pics when I'm sleeping... I'm the second white blob in the blankets... that didn't bring her sleeping bag because said partner said I could use his and not to take mine. The poop hogged his sleeping bag for himself. That would be him laying ON TOP of it next to me with the leopard pillow and feet you see. Let me just say this he is a snorer. OH MY WORD!!!! I can not stand people who snore. I am a light sleeper so any noise just bothers me. This will be important later on. Gee I hope the other guys are ok that rain is just echoing off the roof. Boy am I glad it's not me working out in this. LOL. Oh wait we're a team here right??? LOL. Not so much when it's raining and blowing this girl looks like a drown rat in rain. LOL. Besides we have to be up and ready for briefing at 0700 in the morning for our mission specifics.



This is it for today... Whew this got long winded. Another part next week. And the drama intensifies.

Fat Friday... and a Trip

I have missed several Fay Friday Recipes, so I thought it was time to post one. With apple season upon us I thought I'd share my paper bag apple pie recipe.

Paper Bag Apple Pie
1 unbaked pie shell
peeled & sliced or shredded apples (enough to fill the pie shell)
1/2 c sugar
1 Tbsp flour
cinnamon

Mix together everything but cinnamon and put in unbaked pie shell. Sprinkle cinnamon over top and slice butter pats here and there. Then put on topping.

Topping
6 Tbsp butter
3/4 c brown sugar packed
1/2 c flour

Mix together (I use two knives to cut it in together) and put on top of apples. Should be crumbly. Slip pie into a brown grocery bag or heavy paper bag and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Watch closely if using a gas stove so it doesn't catch fire. The bag might start smelling funny in the oven but it'll be ok you won't taste it in the pie. Enjoy!

My hubby took my son to a farm nearby that each fall has corn mazes, pumpkins, a playground, etc. I wasn't able to go do to working and my DD thought that she was too old to go. It was a Dad and son outing. I told my son to be sure his Dad took the camera so I could have pictures.







I think he's still waiting on Cinderella...









I'll take one of each.





Couldn't we all do this. Sell the bags and clothes for scarecrows. Who'd a thunk... LOL

Watcha Workin On Wednesday

Shew!!!! Wednesday already... I have been busy working, but have gotten a few things done by choice and some not so much by choice. Don't forget to check Leslie for others who are probably working on better stuff than me.

Lets see hubby was hunting all weekend since bow season started. He hasn't shot anything, but he saw the BIGGEST deer you've ever seen. I think it's kinda like the big fish that got away. I'm not so sure he saw it. LOL. Anyway, so I thought I'd get busy working on Christmas. So, my one friend asked that I make her snowman ornies to sell. She wanted two sizes. So this is what I came up with. I know the stain got blotchy, but I screwed it up. Yep imagine that. O alright I tell you what I did you twisted my arm. Now I have been staining for a long time so I have no idea how I did this. I put some cold coffee in the microwave to warm it up. hehe must have put it in a little too long because when I went to add some more instant coffee it bubbled up over the top of the container I had it in and ran everywhere. So... to all of you don't put instant coffee in really hot coffee. LOL. Lesson learned!!! So, I clean up a little a one not to waste I used what was left. I also let these out in the air to dry, not in the oven like I usually do. Oh yeah right the picture... They are not done yet of course (the hand was for size for my friend so she could tell how big they were)



I am also working on gingerbread men. I have only sewed them not clipped and turned so I'm not going to show those yet.

Let's see... oh yeah remember this picture??? AWWWWWW how cute.... looks great.... right???



This is how it looks this AM...



My hubby and I decided to go to Lowes to get a few things. I found my matching microwave to my fridge and oven. Ohhhhh I was so close to buying it, but didn't. OK what does this have to do with my fridge you're thinking... well my fridge must have heard talking about this new member of the family. Huh??? Well, when we got home my hubby noticed some water running down the front of my freezer door where the ice and water come out. He goes and wipes it up. Opens the freezer door and what???? why is our stuff melting??? Yep my NEW fridge took a poop. We bought it last April when we bought the house. Oh I was furious. It is Sunday, I can't find my extended warranty paperwork, and now what am I going to do with the the fridge and freezer stuff? GRRRRRR... look at my last post can it get much worse???? If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all. LOL. So luckily we kept the old fridge that was in this house out in the garage for pop and water and freezer jam, etc. Just over flow stuff. We shuttled everything out there to save what we could. My hubby is now on the phone with Lowes asking them what to do. Of course they give him another phone number to call. So he calls it and tells them the problem and that we can't find the paperwork. No problem the guy says if you say you bought it I believe you and put us down for the four year warranty. Thank goodness for nice people. He said I'll call the repair people and we'll call you tomorrow. Great!!!! The call came in they can't get to you until Tuesday (yesterday). Fine please call when he is on his way since it would be somewhere between 8a-5p. Well both my hubby and me had to work so no one could be here. Hubby can be flexible since he works for himself. Well, he gets this call that the guy is at our house and never called. My hubby was about 30 minutes away and asked now what? The repair guy said he had another repair to make in our town and that he'd come back. My hubby was so mad because the place promised to have him call BEFORE he got there. Hmmm... bad customer service I'd say. Anyway, long story short, my freezer is fixed (some kind of fan on the back of the freezer) and I don't have to pay for it. YIIPPEEEE!!!! Now I just have to redecorate, but luckily I have pictures to do it the same way. LOL.

We have poured our concrete pad for our new outdoor wood furnace that should be arriving any day now. We decided that this would be the best heat source for our home this winter since the price of propane and natural gas are going to sky rocket. Last year we paid between $500-$800 a month for propane. If you don't know what this type of outdoor furnace is wait and I'll post about it when it gets here. I am so excited and hubby has been busy cutting wood. I might be able to stay warm.



Other than that not much has happened. I plan on getting some stuff done today and tomorrow since I'm off. You know laundry, baking banana bread, cleaning, redecorating. LOL.