I really enjoy cooking or baking, so on Thursdays I will frequently bring in a treat for the girls I work with because we usually have a little down time where we can discuss the week, how it's going and what needs to get done for the day/weekend.

I came across a scrumptious looking recipe for Pumpkin Chipotle Maple Hummus last week and I thought why not?  Even though I don't love Hummus, this sounded good to even me.

I took the time to get all of the skins off of the chick peas, put all of the ingredients into my vitamin and threw caution to the wind by leaving the cover off and scrapping things down with my spatula.  It was going fabulously, smelled great and was almost done until my spatula hit the blade.

You know when you skiing in the Spring soft snow and your tip hits a soft spot?  Yes, this.
All of a sudden I was blinded!  That hummus went EVERYWHERE!!  I mean every.where!
Needless to say, I spent the rest of the evening cleaning the kitchen cabinets, floor and ceiling, then hopped in the shower to get what was caked on me off….SO gross!

Thankfully there was still enough left in the blender to bring with me to work……

After a long hiatus, I pulled on my sneakers, put on some workout clothes (girl you need to work out!) and climbed up on our treadmill.  Ken bought this last year with a big screen loaded with Ifit, and nothing makes a workout go faster than doing it with a companion who has an interesting story to tell along the way.

Ifit has both Ifit Guides and Ifit Trainers and because it's been a since early summer that I have been on this machine, I figured I would start in slow and easy with a guide and there is no one more entertaining than Dalen Spratt!
 This is a new to me series called "Haunted Savannah Walking Series"

I did two of his series this morning and I loved that in the second one, some tools that are very familiar to myself and my fiber friends were included.
He is very entertaining and always makes me laugh!  I usually tick up the speed and the incline a bit and was happy I was still able to do this.  I am not quite ready to be climbing mountains just yet….but soon!!

While I was updating the treadmill's software, I caught this little bit of loveliness keeping busy in the big tree outside my bedroom window.  Just below him across the street on the pond the robins were having a virtual party flitting all about the grasses and the trees.  I'll have to take a stroll over there in a bit to snap off a few pictures of the pretty foliage, even if most of it has fallen and it's kind of a gloomy day.
~
I hope you have a nice day in your corner of the world!

Well, I pretty much managed to skip a week now didn't I..LOL.
It's been a busy week and like everyplace else it seems, we are working sort staffed, so it adds a little layer of stress in, even though I love my job and what I do!

This is a typical Saturday night for us.  Some sort of appetizery type dinner (usually Nachos) and some sort of game to hopefully slow down the aging process of our brains.  It's all good.
We also had a visit from 2 special little munchkins but I will leave that for another post….I'll just say it was such a treat!

Ken spent the day working around the property and like me, his work has been a bit stressful, so he is always game for a trip over to the coast of Maine.  There was an Artisan Festival that I wanted to go to in Ogunquit, so we decided to make a day of it.  We stayed in Ogunquit long enough to see what I wanted to see and get out.
(Ogunquit is just too busy for me most days…too peopley)
Then we made our way over to Wells, Me to have lunch at Billy's Chowder House to watch a little bit of the football game and enjoy the sunny shining in the windows on this brisk Sunday.

We decided to end the day with a walk along the Eastern Trail in Scarborough to walk off the above lunch, but not before we saw this beautiful Blue Heron so close to our car.  I don't know why I am seeing so many Blue Herons this fall, but I love them!

Now these birds were a conundrum?  I have seen many, many cormorant's in my life, but I have never seen any with so much white on them.  I know that our lake loons here in the Northern Lakes winter in some of the beaches and marshes near Scarborough, and those long beaks remind me of a non breeding loon…but someone else swore that they were cormorants.
Does anyone know from this distance?  Carole do you or Dale know?  Double Crested Cormorants maybe?

I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing weekend!!

~

What a weekend!!
 Every year for the last 4 years, Ken and I give each other a weekend on Harpswell Maine in October as a birthday gift to each other.
With the uncertainties of the last year, we booked a little later and were not able to stay at our favorite little spot on Quahog Bay but instead stayed at the charming Harpswell Inn Bed and Breakfast and we loved it!

Because we wanted to make a full day of Saturday because we could only stay for one night, we drove around the different coves of Brunswick, Me that we have never seen.
 The first place that we stopped to get out and discover was at the end of Merepoint, which is directly across from Harpswell.  As we rounded the corner to the boat ramp we were greeted by this very large Blue Heron…sigh.
I just love this bird!!

…and again as we headed over to Wolfe's Neck Reserve we spotted this beautiful Blue Heron and another on the other side of the bridge on Burnett Rd.  All in all we were treated to 5 Blue Heron sightings, which is telling me that I am going to need to be still and patient for what is coming ahead.
 I have found that when I see this beautiful big bird in multiples there is usually a message or a lesson to be learned.  Hopefully I will be prepared. ❤️

We had a delightful time traveling through new roads and places unknown to us along the shorelines where I love to be.
We are hoping to squeeze in a 2 night stay in May for our Anniversary next year.

 

 

Wow, I forgot how much of a commitment it is to blog on a regular basis, but I am committed to doing it, so I'm sure I will find my comfortable pace again.

Monday we took a foliage tour around our local Country Roads and made our way up to Littleton, NH. This is something we haven't done in a while because there are so.many.blessed.people up here right now.  Waaaay too peopley for my comfort zone.

Of course I had a little motivation to travel to Littleton….a rock tumbler may have found a way into our car.  Lord knows I need to do something with the buckets of rocks I have!

This video was taken on Bear Notch Road which connects the beautiful Kancamagus Highway in Conway/Albany NH to Bartlett, NH.  It is always a beautiful ride, but as you can see in this video it was an exceptionally beautiful ride on Columbus Day.

I always look for some color inspiration when out in nature.  How pretty is this red?!

This picture is so beautiful,but it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what it looked like in person.  It had me wishing I had brought my big camera with my wide angle lens with me.  So many levels and depths of color, very pretty!

Another picture along Bear Notch road giving Mother Nature a chance to show off her fancy feathers all the way to the top of the mountain!

I rarely take pictures of myself or let anyone else for that matter, but I am trying to get a little bit better about it so I can give my grandchildren a way to remember me.  Now if I could get a picture of Ken not shutting his eyes….it's not easy…it's not easy…it's not easy…sigh!

I hope you enjoyed a little tour of my Country Roads. ❤️

Have an awesome weekend!!!

Ok, so this is not a great picture of my Airy yarn and that is my fault…the lighting wasn't the best and I hate using a flash, but what I am going to show you in a little bit will show you just how much fun these colors really are!

I sometimes struggle to think of myself as a maker because it sounds a little presumptuous, even though most of what I have done over my life has been done with my hands.
 Years ago when I was a waitress, a palm reader came in and gave all of the girls some fun readings, but when she read my palm she became very quiet.  It was unsettling, but the one thing she did say to me was that the creativity in my hands would make me find my way in the world.  "A Maker"

(as a side note….the reasons for her quietness were made evident in the few difficult years that followed, but those years are probably what gave me the empathy for others that I have grown to embrace.)

Now for the fun part!!  How wonderful is @wonderplanned's usage of these colors that I sent to her last week??
When I am packaging up yarns for people, I try to put them in the bag in a way that I feel compliments each other…it gives me joy to see my yarns leave in a happy bag.

Go visit @wonderplanned aka Kristin Houston on Instagram and see her fun creations, beautiful patterns and her sweet little puppy!!
…and those nails?  How perfect are they for her soon to be new @westknits #bubblecardigan 
I LOVE it!!

I was so sad to see summer come to an end…really sad!!
Somehow though my internal Autumn clock kicked and the desire to be a bit more domestic started to kick in as well.  Of course baking went right to the top of my list because I love to bake on the cool and rainy days we started having.

It's been a while since I have made sourdough bread, but I was craving the fresh bread smells and the yumminess of that fresh bread, so I broke out the dried starter that I had put away and within a few days, using @elaineboddy's instructions, my starter was happy, bubbly and ready to use.

The loaf above is so scrumptious!  It's a combination of strong bread flour, lemon, thyme and parmasan cheese.  I think it is my most favorite so far!  It was extremely moist and I was so happy with the crumb.

I was also craving some broccoli soup. I know, a bit strange because I'm not a huge broccoli fan, but I do love it in soup.  It's not something that I would make very often because the reason it tastes so good is because it is filled with yummy things like a fair amount of butter, cream and cheese.  SO good (but soooo bad)!

This loaf I made for a co-worker who love Cinnamon Raisin Toast.  I have made Spelt Sourdough, Whole Wheat and Pretzels a few times.
I quickly remembered why though I don't make or eat bread products very often…it kicks up my inflammation, especially in my back and hips to a very painful level.  So I will back off baking for a while…or….I will bake for others…or freeze because, as you can see….

I went a little crazy trying to find flour during the quarantine last year.  I'm trying to use up this flour.  If you know anyone who likes whole wheat flour, I am happy to send it to them for the shipping cost only, because I don't use it as much as the others. 
It's King Arthur whole wheat.

~

Have a great weekend!!  It's a beautiful day up here in the North Country!!

Ken and I spent the bulk of our weekend on the coast where the weather was much better than up here in the mountains.  Isn't this an amazing picture?  The picture doesn't even do justice to how beautiful and how much depth of colors were in the clouds and water against the black rocks.

Saturday we took a drive over to York Maine thinking that there were some craftsmen festivals as part of Maine's Craftsmen Weekend, but there really wasn't much going on, so we headed over to Dover, NH on our way home where there was a much larger festival happening.  A lot of it was just advertising for the various businesses, such as banks etc, but there was some good food and some talented craftsmen.

Now I have long been a lover of rocks….I know, kind of strange.  When we go to the ocean it's not shells that I look for but rather rocks.  Ken just shakes his head when I come home with pocket filled with rocks.

However, I spent a lot of time talking with a woman who shares my love of rocks and different things I could do with them instead of having them sitting in bowls all over my house.

So Sunday we took another ride over to the coast and I came home with some beautiful rocks to treasure.  

Right??  SO pretty!!  As a side note, any rocks that I don't love after they have dried out go right back to the beach that they came from.  I haven't started making yet, but I have a lot of fun ideas brewing around in my head.

All in all, given that it was a pretty gloomy weekend weather wise we had a very enjoyable weekend and even last night's football game was pretty darn good.  No, we didn't win, but we didn't get spanked either, so it felt like a win!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend in your corner of the world!

It's been a while hasn't it?  I'm not going to lie, I have gone back and forth over giving up this space and letting it go or just keep paying for it every month and not doing anything with it, which is what I have been doing.  Truth be told however, this little blog holds 17 years worth of memories…did you read this…17 YEARS!

 Sitting out here in my summer yard one night I thought about these years. These years that I have met some of my now dearest friends, which is priceless to me.  These years that I have shared so many laughs and memories with you.  These years that I have shared my children's growing up years.  These years that I shared my dear dogs, my show days, my breeding days and my love..and sometimes frustrations with them. (Aging dogs with dementia…challenging!)

My life has changed in so many ways, as I know so much has changed for so many of you who I met along my blogging journey.  I have been incredibly blessed to meet so many amazing people when blogging was a real thing and we were excited about this new medium that we discovered! 

You know what I mean?… right?  The days before Facebook and Instagram reduced us to snippets of ourselves instead of belonging to a community of like minded people.  I miss the community that we once were, and even though we can never go back to what once was, I'm going go pick it up and go forward with it again, especially because Facebook makes my brain hurt these days…LOL.

I'm not going to be posting every day, but I'm looking forward to finding my community of people again in a much quieter way. as I visit Facebook less and less.

Here is a link to my very first post back in 2004…hello. ❤️

 

Within each of us there is an intense need to feel that we belong. This feeling of unity and togetherness comes through the warmth of a smile, a handshake, or a hug, through laughter and unspoken demonstrations of love. It comes in the quiet, reverent moments of soft conversation and in listening.
William R Bradford

 

I took this video to emphasize the noise that we can make in the quiet.  
Even in the quietest moments the noise can be either distracting or comforting.  
For me in this video, it was comforting knowing that Ken was leading the way while I quietly followed.  
He would point out things that I should watch out for all the while guiding me, which was comforting.

Other times when I am at work, the noise can be so distracting.  As an ADD adult, I have learned over the years that I work best when I stay in my lane and stay focused. When I do this, I rock it…however when I let the noise that surrounds me enter into my lane, it usually sets me off my path.  

Different noises, different results.  Listening to sounds that bring comfort and listening to noises that bring distraction and knowing the difference…

I have always been a person who could sense another person's discomfort in a new situation and would try to fill that space with words, so that they wouldn't feel alone or unaccepted.  Over the years however, I have learned that these empty spaces of silence are ok sometimes, especially when we are with those we love and care about most.  Giving each other time to embrace the silence and just listen to the quiet sounds around us….sometimes is not only just enough, but perfect.

Love you my friends!! ❤️