sunny day?

 It looks like today will be a sunny day and so I will be able to take bear pictures for the December online bear show!!

The last few days have been so gray and occasionally wet that Bob and I were a little down!! Our front lawn is covered with wet oak leaves! Bob will have to start picking them up for our "green stuff" trash bin pick up... though there have been ads on Facebook saying they will pick up one's leaves if curbside... wonder what that would cost?

spent time this afternoon adding Pay Pal buttons for the next online bear show... a week from tomorrow. Also cut up fabric for a red cat for the December show...and read a JAJance  JP Beaumont book. 

October 26th 1962

That date is a big one here... it's the date when I picked Bob up at a Halloween get together my freshman year at Syracuse.... yup  63 years ago!!

He was wearing a dark aqua shirt and the baggiest tan corduroy pants! Me? I was wearing a madras plaid shirt waist dress... oh well.

Next February will be our 60 wedding anniversary...  

Keeping Harper in the back yard

 Harper loves to chew and to get out... and combines the two. First she chews on the bottoms of the cedar vertical boards ( which go to the ground) and when she has chewed  enough she digs under the fence.

Bob thinks he may have a solution..... a horizontal board screwed into the bottoms of the vertical boards going from post to post. If Harper can't chew she won't be able to dig!!

Fingers crossed.

This last time she got out she wandered down the road with a line of traffic behind her! 

Gray outside

So far this day has been a gray one with mentions of rain for the next few days by local weather people.

Gray means I can't take bear pictures ( for my online bear shows)... my flash does nasty things to the bears colors so I prefer natural light. I have to find other things to do.

Did... finished a new bear and made a big pot of chicken vegetable soup for dinner and leftovers. 

 

 

 

Harper ... the escapee dog

Bob received a text from our daughter... Harper ( her large hound type dog) had managed to escape again. Would he find out where and do a repair? I went with him.. to keep him company etc. Harper had dug under the cedar fence gate and chewed the wood to boot. Bob screw new boards across the chewed ones and placed heavy concrete blocks too. There was more he did... but one would have to look at the fence! 

Saturday we are going to see what else might need repairing... 

 

Halloween ! Robb and Phoenix Family ... and hs sister

Our son's birthday was Oct 30th and we always combined it with Halloween. His sister donated to her non-profit's ( Phoenix Family) trick or treat event!!

Hard to keep track

There are days when I'm not sure what day of the week it is. Our days are pretty much the same..but today had some different things. Our grand daughter called ... just in case.. her apartment smelled of smoke and since the complex has a history of fires, she called the firemen. She did check all over  and the phone call was if she needed help getting things ( including her cats) out. 

The firemen came... they checked all over and found the smell was coming from the HVAC's fan.  They turned it off and told her to call maintenance and not to turn it on ! They admired her artwork while looking around! She's an artist and art history major!!

After she did what they told her she called us back again to report and to tell us she didn't need our help !

Dinner turned to to be a good one... salmon with home made cranberry sauce, mashed butternut squash and scalloped potatoes...left over raw veggies and dip too!

 

Yesterday's protests

The numbers of protesters is amazing.. They are saying there were 7,000,000 marchers ( my daughter and her family were part of that!) 

Kansas City's official tally is 18,000.... the biggest protest numbers ever! 

Aside from this..

Today is much cooler. It is only 58 early this afternoon. I went to the grocery store earlier and was shocked at how cold it was. I wore just a T-shirt... not enough! I wanted to pick up  a few things for the new soup recipe I had found... a creamy cauliflower!  Plus wanted to pick up a few more things from the 3 day sale. We now have 16 cans of Progresso soup stockpiled. That's an easy peasy dinner with grilled cheese, tuna fish, or egg salad sandwiches and so on!

Finally made cranberry sauce from the berries I had bought the other day. It really turned out well and it is so easy. I think I may buy some more cranberries and freeze them. Currently they are quite cheap.

Green Dirt Farm https://www.greendirtfarm.com/.. about an hour west and north of us... makes wonderful cheeses from their sheep. and hosts chef cooked dinner events.. We had an email from them today saying they had decided to take the wool they had sheared from their sheep and have it processed and turned into wool pillows and duvets. Oh so tempting...   They also have a store in Weston and one in KC. 

 

 

 

No "Kings"

 Neither of us can manage going downtown KC to the protest... finding parking... standing for hours and so on. So a sign on our garage doors will have to do!!

But looking at Facebook's postings of all the protests is amazing! All those US cities plus Ireland, Paris, Amsterdam . Really wish we had been able to go... Our daughter and her family went. They went to the last one too but this one was way bigger. More diverse!  There were lots of booths.. food and water, first aid, protest signs and so on.

Fingers crossed that today's lower temps are just the beginning.  

 

 

Quilting group

My quilting group has shrunk and morphed into a craft group.. so what. We all get out of the house about every two weeks and TALK and work on whatever we want to. Lately it has been those dot pictures but some are switching to Legos...I usually work on a bear or a friend or bear accessories. Another of us corrects high school papers/ home work. I think my daughter is going to make more Halloween teeth from polymer clay tonight.

Bob helps  ready the house for them... partly I think because he enjoys participating and the refreshments!!  Only man... and only when we meet at my house.

Our temperature has gone up again... currently 81... miss those 60's and 70's of last week.

The craft group was good...refreshments were enjoyed... lots of talking. Things like parent teacher conferences mean that the next meeting won't be till Nov. 5th. 

errands plus doing very little yesterday

 We started our morning with a round robin errand trip... first to Target/CVS for our prescriptions mine and Jack the cat's... then Michaels for acrylic paints... the Disabled Vets (Thrift) .. then Ace Hardware and then home!!

The paints were for my "No King" protest sign. Going to downtown Kansas City for the big protest  on Saturday is just too much for us, so I made a sign to go in the front yard!!  I finished it and will put it out Friday or Saturday .

Blue Springs is pretty red (politics)  area and when I mentioned why I was buying yellow, red and black paint for my protest sign at Michaels...the cashier had no idea what I was talking about!  My daughter and her family will be going to the protest downtown KC.

So after the errands  and sign painting it was tidying up time ( quilting/craft group Wednesday) and finishing up a new bear.

Didn't even have much to do for dinner... green salad, leftover sausage and leftover taquitos  from MooChoo in Oak Grove. Of course that means I will have to cook something tonight!

Another morning of errands

This morning was errands... grocery store ( the Neighborhood Wal-Mart), car wash and library. We headed out early after a text asking us if we could be available to sign a petition... about the gerrymandering proposal.. of course we could!!

So we signed and then spent time talking to the person bringing the petition!!

Then came a phone call asking for dog fence repair help. Evidently Scout ( my daughter's black dog) wanted OUT of the fenced bacy yard in the worst way. She chewed the vertical boards and the horizontal one too trying to get out. No one has any idea what she wants to get at!

So Bob is repairing the fence and doggy-proofing that section. Luckily he and our daughter have leftover boards from the last repair/gate area repair!!

I'm not needed so was left at home...

BTW... a sign that fall has arrived. Mesh bags of fresh cranberries at Wal-Mart!! Only $1.42 a bag. Bought one and will be making cranberry sauce soon!!

Bob is back... the fence taken care of and Scout no longer is interested! 

 

Thursday...

 Its a little warmer today though Bob had turned on the heat a day or so again and we  added another quilt! And I am wearing a sweater.

More pieces of my friend's mohair I listed on etsy have gone to a new home in Washington State. I have been wondering what she will do with them!! All these pieces have been bought by one person.

The non-mohair.. non-listed on etsy .. pieces.are piled on the living room couch. I am going to offer them ALL on FB Marketplace . Pick up only and must take them all!! Hope I can get a good enough picture to tempt buyers!!

It is going to be another soup night..  the Italian sausage, tortellini and spinach one. I will add a few items to the basic recipe! After finally eating all the leftovers in the fridge it will be nice to have something new! Add to that ... a small green salad. Dinner was good.

Bob has gone off to a ham radio group meeting. Tigger has decided that he needs to follow closely the one human left in the house ! He was on my lap for awhile but didn't like my kindle and moved to the floor by my feet.

 

cold started??

 Currently it is 57 degrees out and rain is supposed to be on its way. We had errands to run - prescriptions and cat food from Target and special dry cat food from the vet (the kind made for male cats with urinary problems) and surprise we had to turn the car's heater on!!

The leaves haven't turned but are falling. It must be this crazy up and down weather cycle.

Our subdivision has loads of Halloween decorations up. I will have to bring down our box of decorations and put up the spider web and spiders on the front steps. I saw somewhere that people are not doing "trick or treat" because candy prices are so high...but I have seen on FB local churches, charities, businesses are going to be doing "trunk or treat".

So after our errands I spent the day making things and reading... Luckily dinner was another attempt at cleaning out the fridge's leftovers. I made a green salad and carrots to go with the leftovers and as usual it was too much. So these are the new leftovers...lol 

 

 

Still busy

I spent the morning at work on my friend's stash...a box from etsy sales and a box to go to a bear making friend in Alabama. Put them both on the front steps for the mailperson to take.

Then it was off to the grocery store. Bob dropped me off and he headed to ACE hardware for a new smoke detector. The old one - more than 30 years old - finally bit the dust. And then he came back for me! 

Then to work sorting through more of the stash. I actually threw some pieces into the trash...either too small to be useful or from someone's fake fur coat ( who wants that?)  There's still LOTS in my living room!! 

I think it's time to do something fun or to start a new book..... which I did!

Where the money goes

 The money from my etsy sales goes to my friend ( minus the USPS shipping costs).. the retiring bear maker  has moved into a senior living facility. She is 94. I was so amazed at just how much fabric/stash she had.

I have my doubts about being able to sell some of the stuff.... and I don't know what I will do then.

Later... two more pieces sold 

Another one...

 I didn't expect to have another busy day. When I returned from my quilting group's meeting last night I found that I had sold more fabric from my etsy shop.

So today it was pack things up and get the box ready for the mailman!  I will write a check for my friend. It makes me feel good to make some money for her!!

Then for my own bears I went off to Office Depot for more packing tape and then next door to Hobby Lobby for Christmas stuff for my bears' accessories.  The Halloween section was tiny.. but Christmas was all over. About half of the store!! 

Driving home I discovered the new coffee places were either open or just about to open. There  are now 5 along 7 HWY from Tim Hortons at the north to the new 7 something ? to just in front of Hobby Lobby.. Starbucks was pretty empty .. no one in the drive through!! It's going to be interesting to see how things settle out!!

Getting home I posted more fabric. 

Didn't feel like cooking so we went to the Texas Roadhouse. We had tried the fried pickles when we were in Rochester so I was determined to see if the Blue Springs ones were as good. They were...the  Ranch dipping sauce really added to it all. Don't have to cook tomorrow either...lots of leftovers!

 

Another busy day

 I thought I was going to have a quiet day with Bob off to the dentist... but no such luck.

 Packaged up the sold bear fabric and put it outside for the mailman.Then  I took pictures of some more. So 5 new pieces up on my etsy shop. That's easier said than done... each piece has to be measured and described and all the stuff etsy requires.

Yesterday's buyer emailed and asked whether I had anything else... wrote back telling her about the new postings.

I am going to give myself a break and not post any more till this weekend. But if more sell I may have to change my mind... The living room is looking a little less crowded.

I am looking forward to giving my retiring bear maker's daughter a check!

When Bob got home from the dentist we went off and voted...