Thimbleanna

Around the House

November Already!

Kind of scary, huh? Did you all have a good weekend? It was very busy here and I had a great weekend! I even got a new blog banner done — extra special for my QueenNagger (with the spiffy new blog banner herself!)  Bye, Bye Coneflowers! And just to clarify, that is not photoshop, those are REAL thimblecorns!

My weekend consisted of

Cleaning:

WalnutShellJar

(Especially the dungeon where I had a big bag of walnut shells that I use for pincushion stuffing and I didn’t want it to spill all over, so I got a new jar and scoop to hold it all. It sits on my cutting table and I love it!)

Sewing:

SewingWithPie

(We were lucky enough to have a visit from SweetiePie — she worked on a project at one end of the table while I worked on my nine-patch at the other end.)

Sleeping:

SleepingKitties

(The lazy kitties upstairs, while we were toiling away in the dungeon.  The fat EmptyNestChild on the left, Paul on the right.)

and,

Playing:

Leaves

(We went to MeMum and BigDaddy’s to help rake leaves, but ended up playing more than working.)

And Halloween and lots of candy to boot.  Now it’s over and the full on sprint to the holidays starts.  I’m. So. Not. Ready.  Are YOU???

XOXO,
Anna

The Weather and Such

Oh Dear, I’ve committed a blogging faux pas.  In my last post, I said “when you start talking about the weather, you’ve run out of things to say” and several of you rather eloquently proved me wrong!  I take it back.  I’ve really enjoyed reading your weather posts and I look forward to many more!

Maybe it’s just that our weather has been rather, well, boring this year.  Beautiful, but boring.  Well, until this weekend  — now we’re back to our regularly scheduled summer weather.  Hot and Humid.  Hot.  Humid.  Ick.  I mowed the lawn this weekend in the heat and humidity.

Lawnmower

You can just see the humidity in the air.  That’s me on the mower — see how straight and stringy the humidity makes my hair?  And sweat.  You just have to walk outdoors and you’ll start sweating.  That’s why I’m a mere shadow of my former self there on the lawnmower — I’ve sweat myself into peoplestickdom.

Ewwww.  See?  Weather-talk just doesn’t work very well here, at the moment.  I’m pretty sure you didn’t tune in to read about sweat.  I’ll try to make up for it by giving you one of our favorite summer on-the-grill recipes.  It’s fast.  It’s easy.  And there’s no clean-up, other than your dinner plates.

Kielbasa Grill Packet

Kielbasa and Vegetable Packets

1 ring (1 lb.) fully cooked kielbasa sausage, cut into pieces
12 new potatoes, cut in half
1 green bell pepper, cut into pieces
1 medium onion, chopped into wedges
2 medium zucchini or yellow squash, cut into pieces

Seasonings (add what you like):
Cajun seasoning
Garlic salt
Salt
Pepper

1. Tear off four approximately 18 x 12 inch size pieces of aluminum foil.
2. Place 1/4 of each of the sausage and vegetable groups onto each square of foil.
3. Drizzle each packet with a little bit of olive oil and some of your choice of seasonings.
4. Fold foil over kielbasa and vegetables and seal to make square foil packages. Leave a bit of room for heat circulation and expansion.
5. Place packets on medium-hot grill and cook for 30 – 40 minutes. When done, open up packets and serve.
::Makes 4 servings.

Kielbasa Grill Packet

You can make these no matter what kind of weather you’re experiencing. Well, ok, it might be a little difficult in Jody’s hail — I hope your weather this weekend is less exciting that that!

XOXO,
Anna

True Crimes

9-1-1: Nine One One, What’s your emergency?

Me: We have a toilet paper molester.

Shredded TP

9-1-1: A What?

Me: You know. “Some”one has molested our toilet paper. Shredded it.  Left it for dead.

Shredded TP

9-1-1: Do you want me to send a squad car?

Me: No. It’s too late. We just need help finding the perpetrator. We think it has fur.

9-1-1: Well then. You can come down to the station house and look through our mug shots.

Suspect 1

Suspect 2

Suspect 3

We think it’s the monkey.

XOXO,
Anna

Where the Mulch Went

Wow — you guys are all so very cool. Thank you SO much for all of your wonderful comments on my giveaway. I’ve had a great time reading every one of them — some of you are pretty darn funny too. Those of you who are regulars here know that I try pretty hard to answer all of my comments, but I always call a truce on giveaways. I’d like to figure out how to possibly visit all of the new-to-me blogs that have made such kind comments. Wish me luck! If you haven’t been here in a few days (or ever ;-) ), scroll down to the next post and enter my little giveaway if you’re interested.

In the meantime, after the mulch post, I had a few requests to show you what we could possibly be doing with all that mulch. And several of you suggested that all that mulch must be indicative of some sort of gorgeous garden.  Around here though, it’s more the case of lots of trees that block the sunlight that keeps the grass growing. If we had more sunlight, I’d hope to have a ton of flowers like so many of you do (Isabelle, Miss Jean, and Mrs. Staggs, just to name a few.  And MyDadLovesMeBestSister — you should seeee her garden this year!)  Anyway, we end up mulching to keep the weeds down. This first picture shows two of our larger beds. You can see the struggling grass around them. We’ll probably try to re-seed in the fall (we’ve found that re-seeded grass in the spring just dies in the summer heat.)

Mulched Yard

Here’s one of two beds by the front door.  There used to be a few more hostas and bleeding hearts in this bed, but some obnoxious friendly bunny has had his way with them.  Hopefully by the end of summer the impatiens will be big and pretty.

Mulched Yard

A very hard to decipher bed in the front yard.  The big unruly bushes are a variety of hydrangea  and towards the front is that wild grass stuff that sends up tassels — it will be almost as tall as me by the fall.

Mulched Yard

My favorite bed, with a sideview of the wild grass bed in the background.  This bed actually gets lots of sunlight during the day.  Coneflowers to the left and some lilies that will be pretty and pink in July on the right.  I’m hoping they’ll bloom this year — it’s hard to tell from this angle but my buddy the Ugly Tree has grown up over those lilies.  It’s almost like he’s protecting them.  I wish I had small children around — they’d love to make a little playhouse under the Ugly Tree.  (Btw, the last time I called it the Ugly Tree I had several comments saying it wasn’t ugly at all.  I think it’s a Weeping Norway Spruce and I think it’s a beautiful tree too, but TheManoftheHouse hates it and so we jokingly call it the Ugly Tree.  All his taste is in his mouth.)

Mulched Yard

There are borders along the house and hedges and other random trees that require lots of mulch.

Mulched Yard

Our hydrangea bed.  The mulch edging here is looking a little ragged — apparently we had a big downpour here today (which explains the leaves and crud all over the mulch under the trees) and that edge becomes a trough where the mulch attempts to float away.

Mulched Yard

This is about 1/3 of this bed.  I just finished planting the begonias tonight which will wrap up the spring planting this year (Yay! — except for a quick planting this weekend of some hollyhock seeds that Jody sent me last fall — I’m really excited to see if I can actually grow them!)  When we first moved here, this bed got some good sun but now it only gets about 2 hours each day.  The peonies on the left get almost no sun, yet they still manage to bloom (see the big pretty buds?)  The daisies have been blooming with very little sun too — we’ve been really lucky.

Mulched Yard

So, now you know where all that mulch went.  And we mustn’t forget Winnie and the herb bed.  They’re very happy tonight as we had some good rain today.

Mulched Yard

We’re escaping on Saturday to collect TheSecondChild and move him back home.  We’ve all missed him and we’ll be glad to have him back here for a little bit until he finds gainful employment.  Paulkitty is especially excited and has been keeping his bed warm — that mean ol’ EmptyNestChild won’t let Paul on our bed at night.  ;-(  I hope you all have a great weekend and we’ll see you back here on Monday with a giveaway winner!

XOXO,
Anna

Oh P.S.  I almost forgot to tell you I had one of those breath catching moments this morning just before I left for work.  I glanced out my back windows just as a beautiful small coyote trotted through the yard — in one side and out the other.  At first I thought he was a little fox but as he ran right by me I could see his mottled coat.  I think his  size and un-scraggly coat meant he was pretty young.  My first instinct was to grab my camera, but I realized that if I ran for it, I would miss him, so I just stood there and enjoyed the moment.  And I was happy the cats are indoor cats.  ;-)

Mulch Gulch

Well, there’s just not much Thimble in Thimbleanna these days.  It’s so, so sad.  It’s always hard in the spring and fall anyway, because of the extra yard work.  Add a graduation, two kid moves this month, and the every-other-year mulching and it’s just hopeless.

Mulch

The big truck rolled in this morning and dumped the mulch in the driveway.  See all that smoke?  That wasn’t dust — the mulch was steaming HOT.  (???  Did they cook it before they arrived?)  Mr. DumpTruckMan managed to dump some of the mulch right on top of a few of my coneflowers so I was scurrying to rescue them before they were fried.

Mulch

Can you see the pretty green of the trees peeking into the picture?  After a cool, wet spring, our spring colors are brilliant and gorgeous this year.  Aren’t the green and chocolate brown pretty together?  I’d love a quilt or some socks out of those colors.  And throw in some robin’s egg blue — yum, yum!

Mulch

Well, now you know how I’ll be spending my weekend.  I’m hoping we’ll be done by Sunday night so I can at least have a free (ha!) day on Monday before returning to work on Tuesday.  Wish us luck!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

P.S. Talking about those pretty chocolate and green colors reminded me that I forgot to show you the cool sock yarn that I picked up at Cami’s when we went to TheSecondChild’s graduation a few weeks ago. They are Lorna’s Laces custom colors. I vowed I’d stop buying Lorna’s Laces because of the problems I’ve had with pooling, but I couldn’t help myself with these pretty yarns (this picture doesn’t do them justice.)  When I left the store, Cami had lots more of this yarn and I’m sure she’d be happy to ship to you, so if you’re feeling the need for some pretty chocolate + pink or blue, ring her up!  (Hey, she’s not paying me to say this — I just don’t know where else you can get this yarn.  ;-)  )

Yarn Cakes