Visitors Hiding Out in the Woodpile

A few days ago, Todd discovered some kittens in our woodpile under our deck. They're NOT young, and we've seen Momma Kitty only a couple of times. We're pretty sure they've not been raised there, but Momma has brought them there recently. Since we're in a pretty rural area, it's likely they migrated from the pasture next door, or the field below us.

This morning, it was time to decide if we should welcome the visitors, or evict them. (In the woodpile, eviction would be nearly imposible). When I peeked under the deck for the first time, I was met with these two little faces looking back at me:

So we caved, and set out some water and a can of tunafish, and waited. They're VERY jumpy and cautious, but hunger overcame them and they ventured out. The black one is more brave, and came first. But then when the gray tabby stepped in the dish, it fell down. You can't see her, but she's below, still eating.
And when she was done, she washed up:

It was some time later when the other black one showed up for the party. This makes three for sure that we know of. There could be four.

We hadn't really planned on kitties, but if they turn out to be good mousers, I think they can stay. OUTSIDE. I am NOT doing indoor cats.

The House Moves

It's as simple as that. The house simply MOVES.

You can actually hear it move, too, because it creaks when it does. And it does its major moving in the Spring and in the Fall, when the weather changes (either from cold to hot, or hot to cold). At nights, we can lay in our bed and listen to the house creak .... you can hear it go from one end of the house to the other. (It would be pretty scary if you'd just watched a horror movie!)

#1 Evidence that the house moves: our shower door. Every summer (read: now!) the door in the frame becomes so tight, that it takes the army of Troy to battle your way out. Or in. It's great if you have fantasies of being on a S.W.A.T. team. All you need is a water pistol to defend your corner of tile. Which is actually a cheap tile wannabe. And then every winter, the door is so loose that if you bend over wrong, it goes *tink*! . . . . . and swings open to expose you in all your glory.

We actually have similar cases with other interior doors, but not to that degree. The others just stop latching when closed.

So two days ago, the Master of the Haven decided to do something about that shower door. There wasn't much room to adjust it any smaller, so he put it to the grinder and ground the edge down a little more. It has helped some. (Thanks, Babe!!) I am posting NO photos on it, because this is one shower stall in sad need of some help. And what will truly solve the problem is remodeling the bathroom -- which is definitely on the list. But it's a long list, so it's not on the radar. Yet.

The Snackmaster

Ages ago, I wrote in an old post about some of my antiques and antique wannabes. Although I have wannabes, the real thing beats them, hands down, every time. Since I'm pretty stingy on my antiques budget, I tend to adopt, rather than purchase. Sometimes you see stuff in unusual locations. Like this last weekend, when I was snapping photos at the 16U Regional Softball Championships, I turned around and saw this:

It was sitting in some other team's supply wagon with their other coolers and gear. There's a few reasons why I love this. It's that green color (I call it Martha Stewart Green) that I like, although I'm not sure why. I love the old logo on the front. I love that it shows its wear with the big dent on the front and the scratches all over it. But the best part is that this old picnic cooler (I think they date from the '50's) is still being used. It's not sitting on some shelf somewhere, collecting dust. They sure don't build things like they used to! (However, if you do a search online, there's a company that makes replicas of these things. How cool is that? A wannabe for me!!)

How Minnie Mouse Got Her Start

Am I the only person who has noticed that Minnie Mouse has huge feet? And she has huge shoes, to boot! (Pun intended!) I'll give it to her that she's always a stylin' mouse. But dang, those shoes!! Since I also have big feet, I can sympathize with Minnie. And I have passed my big feet on to my daughters. Big feet mean big shoes, and apparently, we need a lot of them! Alyssa, in particular, also has a pretty healthy shoe collection. When she was in Nampa for the state softball tournament, Todd took her shopping, and she got a couple more pairs.

Emma is ok with that, because Alys has great taste in shoes, and Em seems to think she can borrow them whenever she wants:

(Notice the Minnie Mouse t-shirt?)

She's showing off here, but she actually walks very well in heels. It just reminds me of Minnie Mouse: big shoes on such a little body!!

And the fierce pink pumps here are just the kind of shoes Minnie would wear, right?

Alyssa does have great taste in shoes. She has very few clothing items that are as bright a pink as this, but she wore the shoes the other day for a "pop of color" to her outfit.... as Stacy London would say.

Its nice to see that Alyssa fills the shoes better than Em:

And besides -- we wear the same size. I wonder if it would look too bizarre for a woman of my age to rock out some bright pink pumps?

If You're Ever in a Jam, Here I Am!

When I grew up, being the baby of the family, my mother had.... shall we say... relaxed a bit on her Suzy Homemaker activities. She cooked more out of boxes, and rarely home-canned her fruit. She was even known to purchase store-bought bread on rare occasions (!!!), but that's a different post. So I didn't grow up watching my mom can a lot, or ever make jam. The only canning memory I have is of once going to an orchard where we gleaned peaches, and Mom went home and canned them. I still recall that hot peach smell that permeated the house for days. I'm still not a fan of peaches.

So a couple of years ago, we planted a row of raspberries at the Haven. It was pretty sad-looking that first year. Some didn't make it, and the ones that did were pretty sparse. We had to replant more. (Got starts from Todd's parents) Last year, we got berries, but not a lot. Maybe about a cereal-bowl full.

This year, it's a different story. The raspberries are producing, and these babies are gorgeous! It's jam-making time!

When I discovered how really easy it is to make homemade jam...... I wondered where I'd been all these years. And now that I've got the raspberries to do it..... we're in business!!

It takes about a serving bowl and a half to have enough berries for jam. Ok, so it's about 6 cups or so of berries. Here's where I make the confession that I cheat at this, too. For jam, you're supposed to mash or crush the fruit, and measure the fruit and its juice for the recipe. I use the blender. (Seriously, with raspberries? They're so tender they go to moosh anyway!) It's a huge timesaver
But before that, you've got to prepare everything you need in advance. It's kind of like watching a cooking show on TV. Everything is pre-measured, all utensils are there, and it's ready to go. Once you're cooking and canning, there's no time to search for something. Here is my measured sugar, pot, steam canner, tongs, pectin, etc....... all lined out & ready to go.

After blending the berries to smithereens, you need four cups of pulp. (This varies with the brand and type of pectin you use. I think I'm hooked on liquid pectin now, though-- this stuff is awesome!) Pour that in a really big pot, and add the sugar. Don't start lecturing me on how much sugar is going in there. This is MY jam, and I prefer it sweet! Actually, if you mess with the sugar amounts, it messes up the jam. Just saying. Weirdly healthy people can go use the low-sugar pectin recipes.

Cook and stir and get the mixture boiling hard. Now is when you take a minute and admire the GORGEOUS bright color of the jam. You can't buy stuff like this in stores!

After the pectin is in, and the cooking time is up, you start filling the hot jars. They make a cool canning funnel to keep things neat. But you still end up wiping the jar rim before you put the 2-piece lid (also hot) on:

Now the old-style method is really easy. After the jar is filled, you flip the jar upside down and let it sit that way for 10 minutes or so, then flip it right side up again. The heat of the hot jam against the lid makes it seal the jar. The USDA wasn't happy enough with that, though.... so the new method is to process it in the canner for 10 minutes.

I'm ok with that, because I love my steam canner. Don't start lecturing me on canners, either. I am a rebel on this one. (Don't tell the USDA!) When the processing time is done, you remove the jars from the canner and let them cool on their own. And listen for the cool little "ping" sounds as the lids seal, one by one.

And let me take a minute to say how proud I am of the Ball canning company, who is obviously diligently working to keep canning supplies from looking like your grandma's canning stuff. Sure, they update jar styles here and there, but this year, they came out with silver-toned lids/rings!! I L-O-V-E these things!

These are the hot jars, fresh out of the canner, so they're a little wet still. And the lighting isn't so great, so the jam looks darker than it really is. (The blue thing is my canning funnel) Do you love how there's a lone gold lid amongst all the silver?? When I filled the jars, I didn't expect to have enough to fill another jar, so I was scrambling to get one ready -- and had to use my old lid & ring. I guess we'll save the gold jar for home-eating, and give away the silver ones as gifts!!

Barefoot in the Berries

This post shows my second batch of raspberry jam. Raspberries are one of those plants that you have to keep picking, because they keep producing fruit over a period of time. Like beans. So last night, it was time to pick more, and I've got enough for another batch of jam. WOO HOO!

There's something about picking berries that is very earthy and farmgirl. It's not an elegant or citified task. Emma was fussing for me, so I took her out to the berries with me. Light was falling fast and I needed to pick before it got too dark to see. She had no shoes on, and didn't want to stand in the dirt or the grass out there. So I popped off my flip-flops and told her to walk in Mom's shoes. Still more fussing, but she actually did it!! Meanwhile, I walked barefoot through the berries. That was alright for the north side, which had been rototilled by Todd, and was nice soft dirt. The south side was a different story, and I came back in with a raspberry sticker buried in my heel!! Serves me right, as my mother would say.

The Finished Product!

So here's the final result on our new front patio:

Since this photo, we've cleaned out the extra gravel, filled in with topsoil, and leveled it. Then Grand Plan is to have blooming plants all around, and we'll put in a little bistro table & chairs there. Close your eyes and imagine it there......... !! I'm SO excited to have this spot, which sits just the the side of our front door. This is gonna be GREAT!!

Haven Improvements

We know every family that has ever lived at the Haven. (Todd's parents built the house) The family previous to us kept things up, but did not do a whole lot to advance or update the property. But, one thing they did was create a sort-of cottage garden look in the front yard.

I like cottage gardens. I really do. They're so carefree-looking and the blooms are gorgeous. I like them best in someone ELSE'S yard. I personally don't do well with upkeep on a cottage garden. And it showed. It wasn't long before we had two overgrown weed patches bordering our front sidewalk. It was ugly. It was pathetic. It was way overdue for a change.

It took some work (cough-Todd and cough-Cameron) to move the few plants we wanted to save. Then came the contractor. We decided to put in a patio -- there's nothing like a little concrete to keep the weeds down! Actually, one weed patch got the concrete. The other got a little bordered planting island and the remaining we started grass seed. We can do lawn.

So I thought you might be interested in the whole patio process. It started with the outer framework. This is one of the guys compacting the gravel they brought in:

Then they framed for a circle with four legs on it. Confused? Stick with me, and you'll see what I mean. In this picture, they're plotting North with a magnetic compass:


(It was more complicated than this -- the rebar in the forms threw off the magnetic compass, so they had to remove the rebar and place the compass again!)

Then they did the first concrete pour. It came colored with an integral dye. Yes, we planned it that way. I must say, our contractor was excellent to work with on the planning of this spot. (He took finished photos too, so I know it was something unique for him!)

(Hmm, shirtless construction workers.... it sounds better than it actually was. I didn't include any of the photos with the 6" of Hanes showing!!)

Then the concrete is smoothed:

So this is the really cool part. Here's one of the guys shaking on a powder. It did 2 things: it hung in the crevices for a dimensional color, and it also helped release the concrete stamp.

Then the stamp was applied to the center of the circle, and tamped down:

Can you tell what it is? (Facebook friends already know -- sorry!)

It's a compass rose! Well, it's kind of hard to see in that picture. The "legs" on the circle are there to create some stress joints (places where it can crack apart without damaging the whole). This way, there's no stress joints in the middle of the rest of the patio. But wait, there's more! A few days later, they stripped the center forms, and poured the remaining sections in concrete (imagine big cement truck here again). After smoothing it, they stamped it with the stone pattern we chose. There were four interlocking rubber stamps for the stone, plus a long strip that filled in blanks on the edges:

That evening -- a HUGE rainstorm!! It was coming down so heavily all at once, and you can see the dust rising off the new concrete. (And it washed away some of the grass seed. I guess we re-sow! Grr!)

And then, another fun part: The dying process. The colors look a little intense here, before the sealing happened. The compass rose was dyed first, and the blocks around happened later. It took him 8 hours just to dye all the blocks -- individually.

The curved sections on the corners are for future shrubs to be planted. In fact, the whole thing will be surrounded by blooming things.

So here's the compass rose close up. I was able to work with him on choosing the dye colors, to achieve a 3-dimensional look. We are so pleased with how it turned out!!

(Ok so I forgot to upload a photo of the entire thing. I'll stick it in a new post!)

My Blogging Birthday!

Wow, it dawned on me as I started a post, that today is my blogging birthday! Yes, it's been one year since I ventured on the blogging scene. It all started with this post: A Score and Four .

(I only remembered, because I knew I started right around our anniversary. I'm NOT that on-the-ball!)

Who knows if the blah I write is worth reading by any beyond a very few. But it's been a good experience for me to write it down. Even if it's not on real paper. Here's to more years of blogging ahead of us!

Can She Make a Cherry Pie?

There are a few weeks when the travel & tournaments of softball overlap with the harvest at the Haven. We have officially REACHED those weeks!

At the end of June is when the cherry tree is "on", and we head out for picking. I was so glad that Todd got a new fruit picking-ladder for us. What is a fruit-picking ladder? Well, I'm sure there is probably some technical name for it, but it's basically a ladder with a tripod base, as opposed to being a straight or step-ladder. It looks like this:

They come in different heights, and when you have a good, tall tripod ladder, it makes a world of difference (you can tuck it into the branches for access to the upper tree levels). We've used an OLD, OLD wooden version, which came as a bonus with our previous house. Can you say rickety? Oh, yeah. The new aluminum one is steady, and has great treads, too. I love it.

Not all Haven cherry pickers use it. Cameron opted to climb the tree:

Which would be fine, but ever since Brandon slipped & fell in this SAME tree and scraped himself up pretty bad, I'm nervous about the kids up there. This is coming from the girl who spend most of her childhood summers up a tree in the backyard.

But if Cam hadn't been up the tree, he wouldn't have found this:

Yes, at the risk of sounding a little too obsessed with birds -- there was a nest in the tree.

These guys weren't quite ready to fly the coop, but it was coming soon. One didn't make it: he crashed at the foot of the tree. Um, permanently. The other flew off quite well a few days after this shot was taken.

We got quite a few cherries this year, which looked great, since we were able to spray the tree. Birds are not as big a competitor as bugs are. I made a cherry pie, and two batches of jam, before running out of time with other things in life. What? You haven't had cherry jam? That's because you almost NEVER see it in stores. But it's really, really good! We also gave cherries away, and could have given away even more, if those we offered them to had shown up to get them.

(Ice cream buckets make great picking buckets)

And Emma helped.

AND -- I was so excited to find a product I'd never used before, called Clear Jel. It's not available in regular stores, so I bought a package online from a company called KitchenKrafts.com. And, kudos to KitchenKrafts, because I ordered it on a Monday, and it arrived (Midwest to Northwest via regular shipping) on Friday. I love when a company is on the ball!!

Clear Jel is a modified corn starch. It looks and acts just like regular corn starch, except it is freezer and canning-stable. So it won't go watery on you. I LOVE this stuff!! I used it to can six quarts of cherry pie filling!! Next year, I'm getting even more, and can't wait to have pie filling on the shelves. (Have you SEEN the cost of commercially canned pie fillings???)

I've also got an idea that I want to try with cherry juice (shhh, I'm not telling!), but it will have to wait a year, because the cherry tree is done for 2010. Besides, it gives me something else to do with the juicer!

P.S. KitchenKrafts also sent a copy of their catalog with the Clear Jel, and now I'm drooling! What cool toys for playing in the kitchen!!!