Getting better!

My cough is almost gone!  I actually slept through the night last night with only two coughing fits. My voice is almost completely back and my energy is getting back to normal.  

The great news is that my camera is here and all set up to start taking real pictures.  I’m still not worrying about getting that beautiful studio-esque shot, but hopefully we can at least get away from all the blur!

I didn’t get much done today, but I’m not too worried. 

I did get some wonderful banana cinnamon muffins made…

And I helped Stepdad get our coldframe into the barn…

And I started mowing the leaves, but the mower broke, and I wasn’t up to raking them…

Otherwise it was an absolutely beautiful fall day.  Look at the last remaining colors behind the goat barn..those trees look like golden spears.  It’s incredible. 

I did do a very little bit of cleaning, and of course laundry.  But I’m tired now, and I’ve got to be up at 0400 for work tomorrow, so its off to bed I go…

Goodnight!! 

Not too demanding.

Well, I’ve been fighting with a cough for a few days now, and yesterday I was awful hoarse.  Today, though…today I have no voice at all and I’m starting to get a headache to go with it.

I’m definitely a little under the weather, so we’re going to take it real easy. 

1. 10 Minutes a Day + Laundry

10MaD today  isn’t going to be timed.  Just a quick pick-me-up in each room with a sweep/vacuum and I’ll call it done. 

1. Bedroom:	done!	5. Dining:	done!
2. Office:	done!	6. Bathroom:	done!
3. Studio:	done!	7. Hall (5):	done!
4. Kitchen:	done!	8. Stairs (5):	done!
-> Laundry:	done!

2. Applesauce!

Mom and I were both buying apples left and right for a while, and we ended up with a bowlful that were starting to go bad.  Well, we can’t let that happen, can we? 

So first thing this morning I set out to make applesauce. I love applesauce.  Unsweetened, of course.  And since this was a tremendous variety of apple types, I just knew it would make an excellent sauce.

Here I’ve got my bowl with lemon water to put the sliced apples in to keep them from browning.  Behind that is my scale – love that thing. On the other side of the cutting board is my bowl full of apples to be used – I had exactly enough to do a half-batch.

Peeled, cored and weighed apples on the left, and happy goats on the right!

Everyone with even the slightest interest in cooking needs an immersion blender.  So much easier. 

All done!  Six pounds of prepped apples gave me four pints and two half-pints (ran out of pint jars!).  Beautiful color, amazing flavor. 

And boy, do I need a real camera. My cell phone really isn’t adequate for this…

2. Schoolwork

Nope, none today.  Just couldn’t bring myself to concentrate.  I’ll be paying for it tomorrow though…

3. Craft! 

I got the mock-up of the Target bag done!  I’m very excited – it came out exactly right on the first try.  That never happens!   But I’ll take any small victory I can get. 

Unfortunately, my mock-up was made out of an old white hospital sheet; guess I should have gone ahead and used good fabric.  No problem, though – I’m just glad it all works and looks good. 

Above, you see the original bag with the pattern I made from it.  The white fabric is from an old hospital sheet – perfect for a mock-up. 

And here’s the twins!  Sorry for the horrible picture, you’ll have to trust me that they’re identical.  I’m so proud!

Been a good day.

 

 

A day off…

And so much to do!

1. 10 Minutes a Day

before: Today’s 10MaD will end up being a 5MaD.  Not up to doing the whole bit, so I’ll just cut it in half.  It will still make a difference.

1. Bedroom:	done!	5. Dining:	done!
2. Office:	done!	6. Craft:	done!
3. Kitchen:	done!	7. Hall:	done!
4. Bath:	done!	8. Stairs:	done!

after: So what did I learn today?  Well, five minutes just isn’t enough time.  I ended up stressing out more than if I had just taken the full 10 minutes.  Interesting.  But it did make a difference.

I suppose that with 5 minutes I was able to get everything picked up.  With 10 minutes, I am also able to do additional work, be it scrub the tub or organize a drawer or cupboard.  Its the difference between treading water and swimming toward land I guess. 

2. Harvest gourds

My big project today was the get the gourds harvested and do a little work on cleaning up the garden.  I’m still a little sick, so I wore out quickly – but I did get those darn gourds in.  And they’re beautiful!  I’m really hoping they’ll dry and not rot…

The fall vegetable garden is always so depressing and ugly.  But look, there’s treasure under those dead vines!

Not a bad harvest.  The cannonball gourds are a kick – I’m looking forward to making baskets out of those.  And some of the luffa are huge!  If they dry properly, they’ll be very useful – nothing like home grown scrubbies!

All lined up and pretty outside the greenhouse.  The larger luffa are hanging in the goat barn.

3. market bag

I bought these fabulous bags at Target when they were on clearance.  I think I’ve got six of them.  I’m sure they were designed to be purses, but they’re perfect grocery bags.  Now I want more so I’ve got to make them.

I made the pattern a few weeks ago.  I only have time tonight to cut out the first draft (thus the white fabric) and will try to sew it up on Monday.   That’s fine – it’s a start!

4. menu/food

I managed to get food together to get me through my 36 hour shift starting tomorrow.  If we’re not busy, I’ll get a menu for the rest of the week together at work.

5. string the black peppers:

I’m not sure this is going to work, but I thought I’d give it a try.  They certainly look pretty…

They’re Hungarian Black Peppers and we really didn’t get to experiment with them as I would have liked.  The weather didn’t give us a very good pepper harvest though we had beautiful pepper plants.  Supposedly they make a good spicy paprika when dried, so if this works that’s probably what I’ll do with them. 

Lovely day.  Hope to have more like this!

Never enough time!

But instead of complaining about it, I’m gonna just go with it…

Work with me, here, okay?

1. 1o Minutes a Day

1. kitchen	done!
2. bedroom	done!
3. dining	done!
4. bathroom	done!
5. craft/living	darn it…
6. office	done!
7. hall (5 min)	done!
8. stairs (5 min)	done!

2. Schoolwork:        Done!

3. Laundry:               Done!

3. Craft?                      Nope, not today.

Okay, that’s not what I expected…

I have a little more time today than I thought – I guess I’d read the schedule wrong.

And I am *not* complaining!

1. 10 Minutes a Day

I’m going to experiment a bit today.  Since I am quite caught up and have several other things I want to do today, I’m scheduling some areas to only take five minutes.  Let’s see how that works.

1. Office:	done!
2. Bedroom (5 min):	done!
3. Kitchen:	done!
4. Dining (5 min):	done!
5. Living/Craft:
6. Bathroom (5 min):
7. Hall (5 min):	done!
8. Stairwell (5 min):

2. Finish Laundry:        done!

3. Study:                           done!

Today’s assignment was to *learn* two registry sheets and review medication dosages.  Well, I got one down pat, so I’ll take it.

4. Gym:                             done!

My doctor made it quite clear that I need to be working out.   managed to put in 30 minutes on the elliptical and about 45 minutes lifting weights.  Not too shabby.

 

music: The Damned (again)

Recap…

10 Minutes a Day:

1. Bedroom:	Done!
2. Bathroom:	Done!
3. Office:	Nope, not today…
4. Kitchen:	Done – including the top of the freezer!
5. Dining:	Done!
6. Living/Craft:	Nope, not today…
7. Hall:	Done!
8. Stairs:	Nope, not today…

Laundry:

Whites:	Done!
Colors (incl. uniform):	It’s in the dryer!
Rugs:	Done!
Sheets:	It’s in the washer!

Other:

I did find time to sketch out a bracket design…

…and even got much of it cut out on the scroll saw; unfortunately, my one saw blade broke about halfway through…

Oh well.  I’ll go order some blades now.

 

Music: The Damned

What to do today?

Well, there’s always 10 Minutes a Day to start…

And there’s a pile of laundry…

And schoolwork…

That might be it for the day.

Sweater pillow!

Had a little time to just chill last night so I decided to throw together a sweater pillow.

What’s a sweater pillow, you ask?

Well, I went to the thrift shop and bought some old 100% wool sweaters.  When I got home, I washed and dried them a few times until they became very felted.  Each washing made them softer, denser, and of course smaller.

I cut it apart and sewed it together again, this time with a pillow form stuffed inside.

I didn’t remember to take photos of the step-by step, which I’ll remember to do with the next one, but here’s a bad picture of the finished product.  Okay, almost finished – I want to move the flower a little away from the corner…

It’s a fun, cheap and rewarding project.  I’ve got several more to do before they end up in the Atlanta apartment…

later…

Okay, so I moved the flower and it’s much better.  It still needs something…I’m not sure what…but I’ll call it done for now:

Fridge/Freezer doors: DONE!

My wonderful husband got my fridge/freezer doors switched to the other side for me this morning with much glee from me – its going to make life so much easier! 

Garden Huckleberry Pie

Today has simply *flown* by. 

10 Minutes a Day hasn’t happened yet, and I am not sure that it will today.  And honestly, I won’t be upset with myself – it’s been a wonderful day.

Spent a few hours this morning working in the garden.  It’s been a rough year for it, and now I’m trying to get it cleaned up and prepared for winter.  One of the chores today was to figure out what to do with all these Garden Huckleberries.

Amazingly, one plant gave me 9 cups, or 3.5 pounds of beautiful purple-black berries.  They were very easy to harvest, though pulling off all the little stems took some time.  I found two recipes, one pretty complicated, involving cooking them in baking soda and rinsing, and another that simply simmered them for a while and added sugar. 

Goodness, I had more than enough berries, just from the one plant (there are four more out there) so I figured I’d try them both.

Unfortunately, neither recipe yielded satisfactory results.  The first recipe had a residual baking soda taste and the second was still too bitter.  Of course, that could be because I simply couldn’t bring myself to use all the sugar that was in the recipe.

I’m looking forward to experimenting with these things more.  There is a blueberry pie recipe out there that I’ll try next to see if the garden huckleberries will work for.  We’ll see – maybe I’ll do that tomorrow. 

Fortunately, the berries are supposed to get better after a light frost, so the rest will wait until then. 

The other good news is that I pulled a wonderful potato harvest today.  All the sweet potatoes came from a grocery store potato – not bad for free!  And I can tell you for a fact that they are super yummy!  The red potatoes gave an excellent harvest, though the whites were a bit disappointing.  Honestly, I can’t complain for never having grown potatoes of any type before.  And they all taste so good…

 

Music: Siouxsie & the Banshees

Nothing doing, today…

Today is spent doing a clinical and then class, so I’m afraid nothing new is going to get done.

I am pleased to report, however, that my work is paying off.  Coming home has been so much more pleasant.  The house has been clean, it smells wonderful, my table project greets me every time I walk in the door. 

I am eager to continue like this.  The payoff is so well worth it.

Recovering from distress

This has been a rough few days, and I apologize for not writing.  I haven’t been able to do much toward my goals, but hopefully things will start to turn around now.
Today I will be working on 10 Minutes a Day as my break during the massive load of schoolwork that I have due tonight.  As usual, I don’t expect to get the entire house done, but whatever can be done will be a good and welcome dent. 

1. bedroom	done!
2. office	done!
3. kitchen	done!
4. bathroom	done!
5. dining	done!
6. living	done!
7. hall	done!
8. stairwell	done!

I’m starting to think that the craft area of the living room may need it’s own time, but we’ll see what happens.  As it is, I’m terribly impressed at how much nicer things area already.  I am able to make a little more progress each time, and without tiring or getting bored or overwhelmed. 
Thought I wasn’t going to get any craft time, but ended up with an odd hour with nothing to do (unbelievable!).  Well, that’s just enough time to finish a project that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. 




Now doesn’t that make a HUGE difference?  Wow – I love it, and so simple to do. 
Yay!  Check one off the list!
Music: Interpol

Daily recap

1. 10 Minutes a Day + Laundry
- Done: Bathroom
- Done: Bedroom
- Done: Kitchen
- Done: Dining
- Done: Living/craft
- Office
- Hallway
- Stairs

Since I had already done so much on my last 10 Minutes a Day, I was able to scrub the bathtub and clean the outside of the fridge doors! All within the allotted time! That's pretty nifty and it sure feels good.

2. Schoolwork
Got what I need to do done, but didn't get to review or move ahead. This semester is kicking my tail.

3. Fix The Sun
Well, I didn't get to the sun, but I did get several sweaters washed for the sweater pillows. Forgot to take before pictures though...doh! But that's a fair trade.

Not bad! I'll give the day a B+.

Love to you all,
Petunia

Plan for Today

1. 10 Minutes a Day + Laundry
2. Schoolwork
3. Fix The Sun

Music: Abney Park

Love to you all,
Petunia