Fall beauty!

It is gorgeous outside! The leaves have turned orange and red and the ground is covered with these bright colors. It looks like someone spilled sunshine all over the ground. It looks beautiful and I am reminded why this season is my favorite.

 The trees are turning all sorts of beautiful colors, and I just can't help but want to be outside enjoying the last of these beautiful days before we must hibernate indoors for the winter.

The air smells so crisp and fresh, with chilly mornings and gorgeous days it almost makes you believe that winter is farther away then you know. We had a few frosts, which made me cover my tomatoes and pull the rest of the garden, but then it turned around and got gorgeous again with daytime highs in the upper 60s and nights in the 40-50s. Indian summers they are called, I don't know why but I am grateful for them all the same. All of the windows of our house are open, catching the last of the fresh air before we have to close up for winter.

I think that it one of my main pet peeves of winter, you can't open the windows and get any fresh air inside so everything goes stale and musty. I have a lot of different scents that I open, yet you still can't beat that fresh, crisp, and clean air outside.

So I am outside as much as possible, and with a full time day job you can bet that's not a lot, especially when one has two night classes to sit through as well, but I make do and enjoy what I can knowing that soon the winter will be here and the earth will tuck itself away for sleep for a few months to again be refreshed and ready to grow my garden in the spring.

                          But these views are something to be enjoyed, and so I will.

Reusing and Repurposing

So I have been trying very hard lately to find ways to make do and reuse things around the house and try to help save some money. One thing that my family has done for as long as I can remember is something we call firestarters.

These are what they look like, I know they look gross but they are pretty handy things to have around! We use them when we camp, for bonfires or for just in our own backyard. You can use an old egg carton, they work really well because the cardboard really soaks up the wax, and creates a nice pocket for the lint.

You know how your dryer lint trap should be cleaned every load? You know how annoying it is to do? How it gets lint everywhere and taking it to the trash almost inevitably ends up with lint on your floors that now have to be cleaned? Well instead of throwing it out reuse it! We take the old egg cartons and stuff the lint in the holders. Like so,

Please ignore the fuzziness of the shot, my phone doesn't work as well as my camera.

Make sure you have it really well packed in there!! The more the better so stuff away! Then you take all those old candles that you thought you were going to throw away! Silly you!

Those old almost gone candles that are hard to light, or ones that the wick has disappeared into the wax, those are the ones you hate. They are the ones that you just get so frustrated trying to light and then as soon as you light it the wick disappears! We never throw ours out, but I see so many people who do!

This is part of our box of candles, we have dozens more squirreled away in a box in the closet. (we like our candles) Then you melt them down, when we had old pillar candles for the longest time we would just boil them in a bucket but that got really messy and very hot. Now we have an old hot plate that my father used to have at his desk we use. You could also put them in the microwave, but with the metal in the bottom of the jar I wouldn't personally risk it.

You let it sit there until the candle melts. Make sure it is away from anything that would be considered a fire hazard!!  There would be nothing worse then getting all ready to go with these and then starting something on fire. PLEASE BE CAREFUL!

This time we did both the candles and the bucket of random wax, the bucket was very hot so unless you are used to this I would recommend against it. We have burned ourselves plenty of times making these.

Or if you are just using the jar candles when the candle melts you take the jar and pour it over the lint, go slowly and make sure that you let the was soak into the lint and cardboard. The wax will run everywhere if you go too fast. Once it dries and hardens you can cut the egg carton into individual pieces by cutting off the back half of the carton and ripping the pieces into individual fire starters.

And there you have it! Your very own firestarters!! If you use a wood burning stove this would be a good use for them, or if you camp a lot they can be a life-saver when the wood is damp. You just light the corner that is still cardboard and stick them into the bottom of your fire.

I did have people question me about the possible environmental impact of these, and honestly for the amount of pollution that people put out on a daily basis these aren't going to do that much damage in the long run.

Now if only I could think up a use for all those glass jars! Any ideas? I would love some!

Why can't my pile of projects ever get any smaller?

I am an avid crafter. I love crocheting, embroidery, and cross-stitch, with the occasional knitting project thrown in. Yet I NEVER seem to finish a project!!! I always have half finished ones laying everywhere!!

Currently I am working on a baby blanket for my Goddaughter, and then I also have a blanket almost done for a dear friend, but that one was put on the back burner when the baby arrived. I have a good chunk of the baby one done, but there is so much left to do! Not including the time it takes for me to stuff and sew it.

My grandmother was kind enough to make me a wedding bed quilt to put in my hope chest, I asked her for it because none of my grandmothers are getting any younger and I would love to have things around my house that I can look at and go, hey that's from her. It brings back so many good memories I have of them and the love they gave me. :)

Yet I still have to piece that one together and get it sewed, I have many many projects started with my crocheting that I need to get off my bum and do, and I STILL have tomatoes in my freezer to finish processing!!!

Not to mention the list of daily cleaning and putting away that never seems to get any better, my bathroom needs to be hosed down with bleach (I know sounds bad but I get the worst of it cleaned on a regular basis)

Sigh where oh where does all the time go? Not to mention that I must somehow fit all of these things around my 9-5 job AND college classes. Can I just kidnap a fairy to come and help?!

Gardens never get smaller, and the work never decreases.

So me and my DF are working hard this weekend expanding the gardens. He wants to put another flower bed, and I want some more room for my garden. It's not really a struggle as it usually just means we do both, and it just takes a little longer to get them done.

We are adding to my garden so that next year we can have more tomatoes, I canned some spaghetti sauce this year along with pickled beets and chopped tomatoes, but next year I want to expand on that, cut down on what we will have to buy from the store. Food prices never seem to go down they always go up, and if I can help with that cost with my efforts then all the better.

This year we went gangbusters with peppers, we have never had so many! They were huge and delicious! Never have we had any luck with peppers, they always seem so scraggly and small, usually only giving us a handful of peppers. Not so this year! This year every plant gave us at least 10 peppers or more! Even when they had to be pulled they still had dozens of small ones trying to grow, it was a very sad day when we pulled them. Next year I want more plants and hopefully they will do just as well! Yet all those peppers meant a lot of work for us, eating them wasn't so bad it was trying to eat the million and a half ones that were going bad faster then we could eat them. We did freeze them chopped and ready to be put in any number of dishes, but that was a time consuming task, they were laid out on cookie sheets and frozen then bagged and labeled before back into the freezer they went. We still have two baskets to chop and freeze, not to mention the tomatoes that STILL haven't been done! Wow if this is how I feel with a small garden I can't imagine how I will feel when we add to it.

                         
                       Yummy delicious peppers growing in my garden, they were so good to eat!

My DF thinks I am insane for wanting to expand our garden and can more, but he doesn't like the canning, thinks it takes too much work, and would much rather just freeze the food. But when I pointed out the amount of tomatoes in the freezer from the years previous that we have never used it makes my point a little better.

And I don't mind the work honestly, if I was going to make the pizza sauce or soup or whatever anyway why not make more and take 20 minutes and can it? But if I am the only one who wants to do it then that's fine with me.

I would really love to make my own stocks and can those, but that takes a few days of simmering from what I have read and with me working full time I don't see how that will work unless I have a long weekend over a holiday or something.

Does anyone have any good recipes to use green tomatoes with? I have a recipe for green tomato pie that my Grandmother gave me I want to try, but that can only use up so much. I was thinking of canning green tomatoes for frying or making a green tomato relish or something. We are going to have more green tomatoes then I will be able to keep up with this winter when I pull the plants finally.

The point of this is though that no matter how much work my garden is, I love getting out there in the sun and getting my hands dirty, or working up a sweat, because it all becomes meaningless when I go outside and pick that first ripe tomato, or pull that carrot for dinner. It makes me happy to be providing for my family something that I know is good for them and will taste so much better then anything you could buy in a store.

Pizza Dough

So I found a recipe for freezing pizza dough over here on Money Saving Mom.

http://moneysavingmom.com/2012/05/4-weeks-to-fill-your-freezer-freezer-friendly-pizza-dough-day-13.html

I have never made pizza dough from scratch before. EVER. I have always been one of those lazy college students who just gets up and orders from whoever was open that late at night in the middle of a study session. In fact I think that in my 3 years of dorm living I probably paid them enough to pay for a full-time employee. (Maybe that's why my pizzas always arrived at the dorm so quickly.)

So when I decided to do this, I wasn't really thinking ahead and not having the years of experience I wasn't making sure we had everything on hand BEFORE I tried my hand at making this. Silly silly me, you would think that would be a common sense thing, but no.

The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of yeast. Do we have yeast? I don't know, so I make a mad dash for the refrigerator to make sure we have some. There it is sitting in plain sight. Whew!

It also calls for 5 cups of flour, well that I knew we had, but we only had whole-wheat flour. Why don't ask me I don't usually do the grocery shopping around here. (Maybe I should start doing that so that when I cook I know that we have what I need on hand)

The recipe I used for freezing pizza dough didn't call for any rising time, because (I assume) when you let it thaw it is supposed to rise. Since this is my test batch and if we like it I will make more tomorrow (we are now out of a few key ingredients, poor planning on my part) I let it rise for the hour that other recipes called for.

                                          It's rising! SHHH!! Don't disturb it!! It needs to rise!

When it came time to roll it out, OOF that was an adventure! Every time I tried to get it to roll out it shrank back on me. Finally DM had to help me with that. Boy does that take arm muscles! We made a pesto pizza with tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms and an alfredo pizza with chicken, mushrooms, and peppers.

My alfredo recipe is super simple and I make it constantly! So delicious! I always am trying new spices to put into it and tonight I put smoked paprika mmmmm that was good.

So the dough was very easy to make and pretty good, next time I make it I think I would like it better with white flour this was very tough and dense not how I like my pizza crust but it still tasted really good!

         My puppy dog was happy because while I was making the pizza she was able to have a bone.                                          Bonus it kept her out from under my feet in the kitchen.

Pizza and Tomatoes

So last night we had a true frost. Down to 29 degrees brrrr! Our last remaining vegetable is our tomatoes and they have been covered for a few days now in the hopes that the temps would encourage them to ripen a little bit more. We are losing a lot to the ground each day but a few more get closer and closer to that beautiful red color!! I just can't give up hope yet!! We are supposed to reach the 70s here for the next week or so, maybe that will do them some good!!! Everything else has been pulled and put in the compost to be made ready for the winter days to come.

I still have to mulch and compost the beds but this is a good start. With temperatures in the 70s maybe I will be more motivated to go out and play in the beds! Well one can only hope haha.

You may be wondering why pizza and tomatoes? Well my family has a real love of frozen pizza, when we all come home from work and are tired it is so easy to just put one in and not think about cooking so I thought I would remedy that. I will be trying and scouring to find a good pizza dough recipe that I can make multiple batches from and freeze in single batches so that all we have to do is pull it out in the morning before work and then make it when we get home!

I will have to document my attempts and hopefully the recipe I found. There will also be taste testing tonight so maybe pictures of that as well!!