Things We ALL Deserve...

Bringing In Lilacs

In January I had Himself prune my lilacs way back.  They were four to five feet higher than the eaves of the shed and blooming mainly on the top.  That wasn't helping me get cut flowers for inside!

I was afraid I wouldn't get many blooms this year but they responded beautifully!

However, Spring didn't respond so wonderfully.  We had snow on the 7th, with sub freezing temps predicted for several nights following.

At least I was able to enjoy a few vases full of lilacs...

London Fog

Have you ever had a "London Fog"?

I just recently heard about them and decided it was worth trying.  Not sure if it should be called a flavored steamer or a latte tea...

Here's how you make one:

Heat a cup of milk.  I did mine on the stove so the flavors would have time to blend.  In that cup of milk have an Earl Grey or Lady Grey (has lavender) tea bag or use loose tea as I did (you'll have to strain it when you are finished) and a portion of a vanilla bean or some vanilla extract (my choice).

Heat to your favorite temperature.

Pour/strain into your favorite mug/cup.

Add your favorite sweetener.

Curl up in your favorite chair wrapped in your favorite quilt/afghan.

Enjoy.

Visitors from North Dakota

Earlier this month we had friends from North Dakota come down for a visit.  C has come several times before but this year her hubby W was able to come too.  When they left their home it was 8*F and had a blizzard a couple days before.  

Our temps were in the lower 60s...

... until they brought the cold with them!  This is what we woke up to the morning after they arrived.  Temperatures dipped down to the 40s and low 50s.

I'd had a couple things on my schedule during the time of their visit... first was to help take in entries for the area wide Extension Homemakers cultural arts contest.  I had volunteered Himself to help but C stepped in to take his place.

While we were logging in quilts and pillows the guys headed a few miles over to Fairview, KY.  The Amish auction was having a special sale of farm equipment... from horse drawn to tractor pulled.  They loved it!

Next afternoon we headed up to Clarksville to visit its Civil War site Ft. Defiance.  We had a treat of an impromptu group of Civil War reenactors.

The guys climbed around the trails while C and I visited on a bench in the sunshine.

On the way home I thought we were going to have a bit of excitement.  The river is high and the swing bridge had been opened to let this tug and barges through.

However, the captain for some reason didn't go through the open part... he headed under the main span.  The bridge operator seemed very concerned as it watched (and got on the phone to someone).

We pulled over to watch the show.  I started snapping photos in case something happened... maybe I could get them published in the paper!

He made it under... just barely!  I'm sure he was reported to the tug company for ignoring the bridge master.

OK, one snow was funny... two in a week is not!  Yep, we had a second snowfall 3 days later.  Of course with the temperatures it was melted by mid morning... but still...

On another day the guys went back to Ft Defiance to hit the museum and we ladies went to a local flea market type place.  I had to laugh at this note on a hat for sale there.

Their last day here we made a run to Nashville to have supper at a 'regional' restaurant; the famous Loveless Cafe.

Then we buzzed over to our bonsai club meeting where we had a guest demonstrator showing how to repot a tree.

It was a fun visit in all.  Looking forward to next year!

OH - the day they left it was 42*F.  Next day was 72*F!  LOL

Bye Bye February

Our snowy January turned into a rainy February.  We had over an inch of rain every week (18 of 28 days) ; to a total of 10.46" here at The Sticks.  Plus our town was hit by TWO tornadoes on the 24th (more or less on either side of us).

Needless to say, we got nothing done outside.  It's a muddy soggy mess.  That 'river' you see thru the trees is actually a small creek that you usually can't see at all!

On the bright side, that gave me more days to work on my studio KonMari and organizing.  It's all over but the decorating.  Decorating will be done at my leisure and my pleasure.  I'll show you how it turned out tomorrow.

I finished decorating the storm shelter/prayer closet.

And I pulled out all the stored items way in the back of the closet during the KonMari.  We decided that would be a good place to store things that we really should get rid of but won't.  (The curtain you see in the photo 2 up hides this stuff).  On the left are pillows to sit on during a storm and the weather radio.  On the right is Persia's stuff.

I also pulled out all the "spring months" decorations and gave them a KonMari.  I went from two 90 quart containers down to three 18 quart containers (Valentines, St Patrick's, and Easter).

Got the Valentine's decorations up on the mantle too!  (Even if I'm not quite done...)

With the January upstairs KonMari done, I've started my room by room "make it sparkle" (with personality) challenge.  I started with the hall bathroom basically because it was the easiest.  Paint and stain touch-ups, getting lime off the sink, and some redecorating was all that was needed.

And I figured out the perfect way to store my tea selections.  Instead of keeping them in the bags and boxes I bought them it, they are now stored in canning jars.  And if they came in a box, I cut the box label to fit over the lid.  Otherwise I wrote on the lid what was in the jar.

In November 1981, as a newlywed who knew nothing about cooking, I attempted to cook a beef brisket.  I broiled it...  Prettiest piece of rubber you've ever seen!  Even the cat couldn't chew it.

In February 2018 I tried again following the instructions of the meat cutter where we buy beef.  Success!!  

We got in a couple classes too.

First was at bonsai club where we learned how to collect trees from nature or yard more successfully.

Second was a Whole Foods class for Valentine's Day.  Individual Beef Wellingtons, Citrus Asparagus, and Potato Fennel Scallop.  Recipes for the last two will be coming this month.

February also brought the personal discovery that I was way, way too ambitious with my challenges.  I ended up throwing out about half of them!  I kept my home (ie "make it sparkle), yard (curb appeal), kits, KonMari, and my spiritual challenges.  In the creative area I went from 36 different things in 3 areas to 6 in one overall area ~ with those 6 being creative outlets I'm building a portfolio around.  But more about that later...

And now it is March... which looks like it will be even busier than February!

Deleting a Third of a Million Digital Photos

Did you know that a few days ago was "National Clean Out Your Computer Day"?

"DAY"... yeah, that one made me laugh.  I've been cleaning out my computer and external hard drive since the beginning of January.  Just in photographs I have deleted ~ brace yourself! ~ about 350,000 photos!

I've mentioned this in a few of my Facebook groups and have had many ask how did I do it?

First thing was for me to come to an understanding of just how that mind blowing number came to be.  The answer: laziness.

Remember the old days (and some of you probably don't...) when you loaded film into your camera?  You might have 12 shots you could take, or maybe 24.  The very most was 36 and that was almost decadent.  Then you very carefully selected what you wanted a photo of and very carefully took one...maybe two shots because that film was not cheap!  When you took all the photos for that roll of film, the next step was to take it to be processed.  More not cheap.

Picking up your photos was always a butterflies in the stomach time.  How many turned out OK?

Digital photography.  If you feel it, you can take 1000 photos of your kid's soccer game.

Here is where the problem arises.

I didn't have 350,000 photos to delete because I've taken a half million photos.  I had that many because of lazy back-ups to my external hard drive.  I'd just keep backing up and backing up and backing up the same darn thing with only a few new ones each time.  And I never went thru those photos I had taken to pick the best 2 or 3 from the 200 or 300 shots I'd taken at that soccer game.  Ditto the trip to the park.  Ditto again the birthday party.  See the problem?

And trips... oh goodness.  My 30 day trip to Scotland produced 9000 photos.  Now it gets really sticky because 8000 of them were good photos of amazing places.

Folks... I travel a lot...

So it goes until I was completely overwhelmed with where to start.  Here is how I accomplished my sorting and culling...

I started with just looking at what sort of things I take photos of.  What are my main topics/themes?  These I wrote on paper first.

Yearly is a no brainer.  Sub files of each year (ie 2011), then sub file that with the months.  That to me is the most basic organization.  

The next major file for me was Travel.  Sub files Overseas or US trips.  Within those sub files for locations.

After that I just came up with various topics that I do... "Family and History", "Creative", "Blog", "Photography" (those shots I want to use for selling/contests/etc), "Home", and so on.  You can always add more as you work~ these first one just help make for faster sorting.  

Now I was ready for the big sort-cull-organize to begin.  I started with my external hard drive.  I had done save after save of the same files, so I picked the largest and latest folder to drag the duplicates into.  "Merge" and "Move and Replace" are wonderful time savers.

I kept busy at that until I had one large folder of unique files.  

Then I copied over laptop drive files using the same method.  This way I ended up with files on the external drive of every single photo.  Oh... I added Dec 17 to the end of every file name (cause I started this the beginning of Jan).  An incredible amount of photos were deleted during this time as I ditched the duplicates or sub-files I knew I didn't want to keep.

Now back to the laptop drive...

First folder I made was 000 Hold (those are zeros).  So named so it would always be at the top.  Due to extreme paranoia, I dragged all the photo files into this folder for safe keeping ~ even tho technically I also had them on my external drive.  Don't know if that was needed but it made me feel better!

So at this point, I had one folder showing in my file tree.  

Then I added in all the new files I had brainstormed earlier.  

At this point I dragged over one folder at a time from the external drive... adding 00 to the front of the file name to put it on top.

I worked on that file one photo at a time, until each photo and sub file was completely culled to just what I wanted to keep.  The finished files were dragged into the new blank files.  

Once the transferred file is empty, I deleted it.

I did this over and over for several weeks until I had gone thru all the photos I was going to.  As I finished each yearly folder I renamed it with DONE at the end of the name.

OK, that sounds a bit strange when I say I'm done culling my photos.  Except for the travel photos, (which I am working thru month by month making photo books out of after which I will do the cull), the important photos are done (ie yearly, family history, etc).  

I discovered as I worked there are photo files I really don't consider important such as "projects" (photos grabbed from the 'net that I want to do) and I don't care about backing them up per se.  Maybe later but probably not.  I can always go to Pinterest.

My final steps were to copy back to the external drive all my finished files or untouched consolidated files (like "Travel") that now had the name ending Feb 18.  The files named with Dec 17 on the end were deleted.  One last check to make sure I had all files in both drives, and the final copies were deleted.

Was it fun?  No.  Was it easy?  Oh no.  Was it needed?  Absolutely yes!

I worked on this almost every day for 1 to 4 hours a day.  When I was tired of it, I walked away because that is when you start making stupid mistakes.  But when I started this I pledged to myself I would complete the task, which I did.  It might have taken less time to do if I hadn't been simultaneously going thru those 8000 Scotland photographs for my Blurb book of the trip.

If I could go thru that many photos and get them arranged, so can you!

Easy Fruit Puff Pastry Tarts

Here's a fast, easy, and spectacular looking dessert for a few or many with just a few tweaks of the recipe.

It's starts with pre-made puff pastry shells.

Doesn't it look great?  It tastes even better!

From Resolutions To Challenges

As I explained at the beginning of the month, I'm doing monthly challenges instead of resolutions this year.  January is at its end so it's time to see how it has gone for me.

Overall I am very happy with what I have accomplished.  I've discovered I was a bit ambitious in just how much I can do in a month so I have made adjustments here and there.  And as I explained to Himself, some challenges are to be finished by the end of that month and for some challenges the goal is to get started and continue... perhaps for the rest of my life.

My 'home' challenge was to KonMari the upstairs and our downstairs laundry room.  Got it done!  I was amazed at what I missed from the first go around.  This is one of the challenges that continues after the first month.  February I will finish my studio.  I've already started and am making huge progress.  A big part of that comes from deciding what creative projects I really want to do and enjoy doing.  Stash that doesn't work for those is going away.

For the yard I planned on pruning my lilacs.  They had gotten WAY tall and Himself took down about a third of their height.  I realize I won't have the best flowering this year but I'm OK with that.  And while he had the pruner out, he lowered the crepe myrtle and the hibiscus.

Making a shopping price guide was the kit of the month.  I'm not done with this one because it is pretty labor intensive.  I will be finished by mid-Feb and will show it then.  But so far it is proving rather interesting...

It has been so cold that my "sloth running" has been more like "stone running".  Snow, ice, and temperatures that didn't get above freezing stopped that.  Even the elliptical was a no go... my basement studio where it sits average 48*F.  No thanks.  

A new hair and skin routine didn't get far either.  Kept forgetting.  But earlier reviews of the coconut oil for skin is good.

In the creative challenges, that went a bit slower.  Didn't do a thing with my assemblage projects.  Again, too cold to work in my studio.  The quilting project I got started... the components for the two quilts I'm going to do this year have been gathered and put into a tub each.  And I decided to do a small lap quilt for Himself's auntie in MN.  It's called a "Fidget Quilt" and is a very tactile quilt that calms dementia patients.  That will also be done in a couple weeks and you'll see it then.

My writing challenge was haiku and this was definitely a 'starter' month.  So easy but so complicated too.  I'm working on a piece for an EHC writing contest, the deadline is the end of Feb.

Photos... oh my goodness!

For basic photography I made my first challenge to deal with the photos I've already taken... both on my laptop hard drive AND on my external back-up hard drive.  What a nightmare.  Double...triple... even quadruple mass saves from different times.  It all had to be consolidated and then the duplicates deleted and then deleting of all those photos I just didn't want (like when you take 50 photos of the baby playing with her new toy).  I worked every single day of January on this.  Seriously, I have deleted at least a quarter million photographs.  I have learned a lot in the process.  Not quite done, but I will be by mid month Feb.  This is NOT going to get this way ever again!!!

I finished ~ as in done-stick-a-fork-in-it ~ my photo album from my Mexico trip in 2006.  Journaling is complete and excess photos have been dropped in the trash.  Done!

My photo book on the Scotland 2011 trip is also done.  Blurb has put up a 40% off coupon so I am doing my last proofreading today and hitting 'publish' tomorrow.  (I'm only going to publish when they have a good coupon!)

And finally my bonsai.  I have planned my new bonsai garden for when they wake up in a couple months.  I've cleaned up my tools, taken stock of my pots, and reorganized what I have.  I'm ready for spring!

How Are Those Resolutions Coming?

This first month of the year is almost over and most people's New Year resolutions have already been abandoned.

Consider this...

Snow Time for Marmalade

I've had enough winter for the year!  Remember my last update on Monday the 15th when I said we were going to see if we could drive up the hill?  The road was good and we made it to the Dollar General to get my eggs and some milk.

Good thing... it snowed that night. 

Around 4 inches, part of which melted on the road and froze ~ leaving us yet again with an impassable hill.  We didn't get out until Thursday.  The below video was taken on Wednesday afternoon.  See the issue?  LOL  

So we entertained ourselves by making goodies!

Orange marmalade goodies to be exact, from the bag Cara Cara oranges I'd bought before all this snow stuff started.

First batch gave us 17 half pints of vanilla orange marmalade.

We had some Amish sourdough bread to try it out on.  It passed the test.

A year's worth of treats.

Then I got to thinking on flavors.  Wouldn't lavender orange be pretty good?

Yep!  It was delicious ~ especially on Himself's fresh hot homemade biscuits.

Hmmmm... maybe this snow stuff isn't so bad after all...

Looking Back and Looking Forward

It is kind of hard to write a retrospect of 2017.  It has been a year of extremes...some good, some bad.

As Jimmy Buffet said, “Breath in, breath out ~ move on.” 

As some might remember, I started the year with two different groups doing a year of monthly challenges.  There was the homestead skills group.  First third of the year was great fun.  However by May the leader was getting tired of it and by June she went bye-bye.  The other was the food preservation group.  Being ‘pressure canning’ was in the late fall, everything to that point was hot water bath... which means pickles basically.  I left both groups by late summer out of sheer boredom.  It wasn’t all for nothing... I found some things I really liked in the food preservation challenge that I will continue to make.  And I came away with a few tid-bits from the homestead skills group... one of those being I do not like to garden in the bug infested South.  The Amish produce auction is where it is at!  (BTW, the Worm Guys are doing great).

However I did find that I really liked the ‘yearlong challenge’ thing.  It was really fun exploring each month’s topic and experimenting with the activity. 

So this 2018 will be my year of challenges.  I am going to focus on my world and less on what’s going on ‘out there’.  Because frankly I am completely sick of the idiots out there.  I’m cocooning to take care of myself and my own.

Each month I’ll challenge myself in 12 different areas:

1.  Home - Thing to make my home 'sparkle'.

2.  Yard - Gotta get that curb appeal going.

3.  Kit - Making a ‘kit’ to make life more simple.

4.  Fitness - Adding each month something physical in my life.

5.  Appearance - Being more mindful every day.

6.  Spiritual - Getting back to my core.

7.  Assemblage/Mixed Media - My favorite creative expression method. 

8.  Creative Focus Project - Working on a creative outlet other than the above.

9.  Writing - Study and practice.

10.  My photos - Time to cull and organize.

11.  Photo albums - Getting the printed photos into finished albums.

12.  Photo books - Getting the digital into books published on Blurb.

An additional challenge is to simplify down/declutter 2018 things during 2018 (more on that later).

There’s going to be more cooking as we both enjoyed doing the country cuisine explorations.  But instead of being rigid about the whole thing, cooking will be spontaneous. 

To be able to do this means I will be spending a lot less time on the computer. 

Let the cocooning begin!!!