Pound Cake and Some Thrift Store Finds – Hello Monday!!!

Hello and happy Monday how was your weekend? It rained all weekend and most of today. But at the end of the day the clouds suddenly parted and the sun came out. It was a nice surprise.

Over the weekend I decided to bake a pound cake in my bundt pan. I have had this pan for years. It weighs a ton. I got it from my husband’s grandmother. I haven’t used it for a long time. I got the pan out, it is cast iron, greased it really well and made my cake. I decided for extra moistness I would add an additional egg, some extra butter, and a little extra water to the mix.

***Oh I forgot to mention it also stuck to the pan.***

At first all looked well. The cake rose beautifully, even though my oven is somewhat on its last legs, and that may be what I am getting for Valentine’s Day. I know, so romantic. But when I took the cake out it seemed to deflate. It sunk down to about half the height that it was. But it tasted great anyway. I think adding all the extras was probably a little too much. In the past I have added a couple of things but it was probably a little too much at one time.

On Saturday I visited a couple of thrift stores in search of some bottles for my bottle tree. I didn’t have any luck. I had ordered a few extra from Amazon and I put those on the tree. Even though I didn’t find any bottles I did find a few other things that I just couldn’t seem to pass up.

I still have several stems for bottles. I will continue my search. I think that will be half the fun.

First, this purse. I just love it. The tag had spring purse on the label. I found it at a local antique mall. The booth was a new one with a lot of great stuff. The purse is brand new. I don’t think it would hold a lot of things but it will be perfect for spring and summer. It’s also quite large. It may make a good knitting bag.

Next, A few weeks ago I bought these green glass bottles and this week I found the little glass flowers. I think they go great together.

I bought this book by Beverly Cleary. I had so many of her books growing up. I still have a lot of them. This is one I didn’t have so I was so happy to get it.

Next, I love this little yellow McCoy bowl. I will probably save it to give as a Birthday gift to someone. I actually bought it with them in mind.

And finally look at these stickers. I don’t know about where you are from but stickers are big now. We sell a lot of them in our gift shop at work. I work with a lot of young people. They will love these. All of these stickers came in a small pack for $1.00. There are ten different stickers in each pack!!! I bought three packs because I didn’t really know if they were stickers. They are, and I plan to give them out to our team members. I will go back and get more of these.

Look at the lake at our house. Because of all the rain over the weekend the lake rose quickly and it is really muddy.

I leave you with a picture of my little Izzy. She is so adventurous and a scaredy cat at the same time. She is mama cat’s favorite of the outside kitties. But you didn’t hear that from me.

Have a wonderful week!!!!!

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

Goodbye January

Well here we are with the first month of January into its last hours. It’s hard to believe that one month of the year has gone already. January has been a bit of a crazy month. Both long and short at the same time. We said goodbye to 2023 and got ready to start a fresh new year. Lots of snow and ice for us. I read 4 books and listened to 2 audio books. I will have a rundown on those for you in an upcoming post. I finished several knitting pieces and the heart cross stitch. I had a lot of winter snuggly time at home and that is fine with me.

Last week we again had the taste of rural living. Remember I told you the week before, that we had the downed tree and we had to cut it off of the driveway before we could get out. Last week we lost power for over two hours. It went out around 6:00 AM Thursday morning. When we lose power we also lose our water, because we have a pump, and our phones because we have to have power for the internet. So there we were.

We always like to report our outages to the power company and not just hope that someone in our area will do it. To do this we have to go to the top of our driveway and get a cell signal to call the utility board. We then get a recording and we report the outage. The driveway was very dark because the outside light on the driveway was out as well. And I forgot to mention it was sooooo foggy. Oh and we have to back up the driveway because we always pull down the driveway when coming in.

My husband and I both went to the top of the driveway so that one of us could get out and open the gate. It was not easy backing up the driveway with no lights except the back up lights. The fog made it even worse. I had left the house without my glasses. That added to the difficulty, because I wound up behind the wheel doing the driving. We finally made it to the top, we have a very long driveway, and got the outage reported. It had already been reported by a neighbor. But you never know.

***This is what it looked like at 6:00 AM***

The power was out for over two hours and I was a little late getting into work. We never found out what the issue was. It was a widespread issue on our road. Several houses were affected. We do have a small generator that we can use if the power is out for hours or days.

Over the weekend I felt like I was running a bakery. Secretly this has always been a dream so it was actually a lot of fun. It started with my nephew requesting sourdough bread. I make this from a starter that I have had for probably fifteen years or more. It stays in the refrigerator until I feed it. He also requested some peanut butter pies to take to his coworkers. He just moved and started a new job a couple of weeks ago. It was also my brother in law’s birthday and I wanted to bake something for him as well. If you want to read more about the sour dough bread and how I make it, visit this post I did a few years ago. It is definitely a process.Making Sour Dough Bread

I made six loaves of the bread, 20 small peanut butter pies, and about 2 dozen cake pops. The cake pops were just something I decided to do at the last minute. I had never made them before. They were okay but I definitely need to work on those. So I did a lot of baking on Saturday morning and delivered bread, and pies and cake balls all over town in the afternoon. I finished the evening with a visit to my little mother in law at the assisted living village.

The peanut butter pies were a big hit.

I also spent some time over the weekend cleaning my silver bracelets. I am ashamed to say that I haven’t worn them in forever because they looked so bad. I bought some cleaner and got to work on them. I feel like they are new again.

This is not my cat. Well she sort of is I guess. She lives at work. She is feral and we haven’t been able to catch her. We are trying to get one of our team members to agree to take her home. We named her Anthe. Isn’t she beautiful? We feed her and take care of her the best we can. She has been with us for several months. I hate to trap her but that may be the only way we can get her to someone’s home where they might be able to tame her.

How is your week going?

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!

Countdown to Christmas

Happy Tuesday !!!! Less than two weeks from today Christmas will be over!!! How can that even be true? November flew by and now December is doing the same thing. I have been doing a little shopping here and there. I will be honest I am not one of those people who can plan two months in advance and get all of their Christmas shopping done a month before Christmas. It seems like at this time of year I like to enjoy the festivities as they come along. If that means shopping for gifts at the last minute that is just the way it will have to be.

The weather here has been cold but I am loving it. That’s the way it should be here this time of the year. We have also had some much needed rain.

I baked bread last week and even though the temps were cold it rose very nicely. This is sour dough bread and I probably have mentioned it a few hundred times, but I have had this same bread starter for about fifteen plus years. It has to be fed every 3-5 days. I have gone more than a week between feedings and it is always fine. Several years ago I did a post about baking sourdough bread including the recipe, but as I said you must have the starter. You can actually make the starter as well if you are not lucky enough to have someone pass it along to you. Making Sourdough Bread

***I can always tell when it is going to rise well.***

***And I had to have a piece as soon as it came out of the oven. That is when it tastes the best.***

I don’t think I have ever had a “traditional” tree skirt around my Christmas tree. I always like to use things I have around the house. Maybe a blanket or piece of fabric. This year I dug out this fluffy throw and put it around the bottom of the tree. The kitties immediately thought it was just for them. And who am I kidding. If they love to snuggle on it how can I stop them.

***First Gus dominated the new tree skirt AKA something new and fluffy to snuggle on.***

***Then Kitty Kitty, but only when Gus was not around.***

***And then both of them gave in and snuggled at the same time***.

Friday night we celebrated my nephew Tyler. It was his 22nd birthday. We had so much fun. He grilled hamburgers for us and we brought all the side dishes and I made him a butterfinger cake, his favorite. Where does the time go. The first picture was his first birthday and now he is all grown up.

I made my husband a pecan pie. I told you in a previous post that I burned the last one I made. It was really bad. I had the setting on the oven way too high, by mistake, and it burned. I tried it again over the weekend and tried my pie crust shield. I bought this at an estate sale earlier in the year. I had never even heard of one. You place it over the top of your pie while it is baking and it keeps the edges from burning. It worked great!!! I think I paid $1.00 for it.

***And look at those edges. No burnt edges.***

After I spent time knitting the Christmas ornaments. If you missed that post you can check it out here. I saw a picture with these adorable little toboggans. I decided to make some of those for a winter garland. I love the way they turned out. Another great way to use left over yarn. For these I used the size 5 double pointed needles.

I hung them from my mantelpiece. This is not the best picture. I also moved them to a table on the other side of the room. I eventually went back to the mantel I like having them between our Christmas stockings.

***You can get a little better look at them here.***

Last night we had our work Christmas party. We usually have it at a restaurant and I don’t have to do a lot to prepare. This year we decided to have it on the property at our new Visitors’ Center. It was a lot of fun but so much work. I didn’t get home until really late. I meant to post this last night but I didn’t make it home in time.

I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season enjoying all the fun with family and friends.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

Catching Up While I’m in California

I am waking up in California this morning. It is very early here about 5:30 AM. It is 8:30 AM at home. I still feel just a bit jet lagged. Yesterday was a very busy travel day for me. I started at 7:00 AM with a flight out of Knoxville and then to Chicago and then to San Francisco and then a short flight into Redding California. I am here for a Caves Association meeting. I will tell you more about that as the week progresses.

My weekend was great!!! I got home from our sister trip on Friday. If you didn’t catch that post you can read more about it here. On Saturday I had the usual groceries, checking on mother in law and laundry. My nephew, Tyler, had messaged me earlier in the week and wanted to go to the local Mennonite Farm Market near my house. He had never been but had heard a lot about it. So we did that early Saturday morning before all of my other errands started.

The fields around the market are just beautiful. I love the simplicity of the Mennonites. They use every field to raise vegetables. They have sheep and cattle and rabbits. They also bake some amazing breads and cookies. They make beautiful furniture. I have my eye on two Adirondack chairs that I would like to have. I may ask for those as an early Christmas gift. They usually close the market in late December and don’t open back up until early spring. Of course the seasons depend on what they are currently selling. Right now they have an abundance of squash and peppers. I bought okra, green peppers, chow chow, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, and a cantaloupe all of this was about $17.00. Tyler bought several jars of honey, I think he was giving it to some of his friends. He loved the market and wants to go back. He was looking for corn but they told him it was a little late in the season for corn. Spring and early summer is the best time to buy corn there. I plan to go back and get some more okra to freeze so that we can have it all winter.

***Isn’t this a beautiful scene. You can tell that winter is coming and colors are starting to change.***

Many different types of squash.

I love this view looking out over the fields. This is molasses. I am not a big fan of molasses but they do sell a lot of it.

***I bought some of these peppers. I planned to make my husband a nice meal on Sunday. Since I was going to be gone all week to California I knew he wouldn’t cook a lot for himself.***

Muscadines, I do not like muscadines but my husband loves them. We have a couple of trees on our driveway that have quite an abundance of them.

The peppers were listed as to the severity of heat. Tyler bought some of the hottest peppers. He loves really spicy foods.

***Isn’t this Indian Corn pretty? I think it makes a great decoration for fall. There were also some pumpkins but I didn’t get any.***

On Sunday I didn’t do a lot except get my clothes ready to pack. I hate packing for an entire week. The temps in California are actually very similar to what East Tennessee is right now. Cool in the mornings and mid 70’s to low 80’s F later in the afternoon. Although I just looked at the weather here and now it is saying mid 90’s for most of the week!!!!

I did cook dinner on Sunday. We had quite a feast from all the vegetables I had gotten at the Farm Market on Saturday.

I love okra and I’m not sure how you cook your okra but I always do mine the way my mama made it. I like crunchy okra. I don’t want it do be soft and mushy. I start out by cutting it and then dredging it in cornmeal or flour. I didn’t have any cornmeal so I used flour. I salt and pepper it and fry it in a large skillet until it is starting to get brown on the edges. I then drain any oil, which is not a lot because I don’t use a lot of oil, and then I transfer it to a small baking pan and finish cooking it in the oven.

So you can see we had quite a feast. Stuffed Bell peppers, a baked sweet potato, okra and cucumbers. All from the Farmer’s Market.

I moved my suitcase into the little den I have upstairs. It’s easier to pack it here and bring clothes and put in it and it’s not in the way while I do this. Kitty Kitty kept watching me from her perch on the loveseat. I think she knew what this suitcase and clothes business meant. Her mom was leaving again. I caught her a couple of times trying to get into the suitcase.

And now I am in California for the week. It looks like a beautiful day here. I know we will be doing a lot of fun things this week and I will be sure to take lots of pictures.

Have a wonderful week.

Always remember

Love your day your way.