I love fall. While I was at the Family Bakery in Gate City, Virginia LAST YEAR, I saw these fall dishtowels. I bought an extra one thinking I’d give it to someone who reads my blog. I never got around to it.

Here’s the Family Bakery…

And here’s the dishtowel I purchased…

If you would like for this dishtowel to be mailed to you, please comment on this blog post (not on Facebook but this post), and on Sunday, September 7, I’ll place the names of all who commented in a basket and draw the winner. Completely random. Please don’t be shy! It’s just a dishtowel but wouldn’t it be fun to find it in your mailbox?

Oh…and please share and ask your friends to comment! Pretend it’s something really big! Not just a dishtowel.

I love getting mail.

Good luck!

Update on 9/8/2014 – Patsy Carrier won the dishtowel.  This is convenient as I won’t have to pay postage!   I’ll be having another dishtowel give away in just  a few days!   Thank you to everyone who commented.

You need to add something to this picture. Like imagination. Imagine that the candle stick is painted. Imagine that the candle is a creamy white. Imagine that the flower and the leaf are something that someone thought about for more than a second…if you do all these things, you’ll love this candlestick!

Our neighbor, Cookie Faust, asked Mike to help her make some candlesticks out of stairway ballisters. I call these spindles but they are called ballisters by people who know about such things. The candlesticks are going to be used in Cookie’s friend’s wedding. She had 12, and this is what one looks like:

Mike took these and cut them down into three sizes…8, 10 and 12 inches (I think). Cookie had been to Ben Franklin and bought square bases for the spindles to sit on as well as round tops for the candles to sit on.

Mike’s job was to cut the spindles down and make sure the square bottoms and round tops adhered, and with something as important as a wedding, hot glue was out of the question.    Instead, he used things in his shop to make sure the candles are sturdy.   Like this drill press…

The things below look like little monsters to me, but Mike said they are forstner bits, and they attach to the drill press and carve out perfect round holes.  Mike used the 1/2 inch monster.

And it made a great hole.

Fits like a puzzle plus he’s added a screw into the bottom which will make sure it’s good and sturdy.  Did the same with the round thing at the top.   While we didn’t paint these (I wonder what color they will end up being painted?), I did decorate them a bit so you and I could envision what they’ll look like for the wedding.    Cookie provided this little candle so that we could all get an idea of the final candle.

A little tulle ribbon…a maple leaf from outside the shop and a zinnia from the road.  I had to use what I had.  I think it looks good. I can’t wait to see how the bride paints and decorates these.  They are awesome!

After it sat on my porch draped over a rocker…

After it showed off on the fence…

After you bought more than 2000 tickets on a quilt that will contribute to keeping our Mendota Cemetery groomed and maintained for another year…one ticket was drawn from the bucket.

Diane Salyer of Mendota won the quilt. Diane had just left at the time of the drawing. We took this picture of her parents in front of the quilt before they folded it up and took it to its new home. I spoke with Diane later in the day. She said “I am still smiling!”

Congratulations to Diane! Patsy sold her the winning ticket!

And how about something like this for the 2015 Cemetery Quilt? Like this? Me too!

Okay…it’s midnight. I’m wondering who all is up doing what I’ve been doing. I know many people who read this blog also home can a great deal of food. Do you do it at night? I do! I wait until I’m dog tired and drag out a mess…here’s the pressure canner, the stew pot, and there’s sugar water for the bees and a dreaded summer squash all lying there on the counter.     That squash has me terrified because I know that it has so…so…so many friends.

Doris Shuman gave me her soup stock recipe. It’s really good…however, I did not fill up the jars far enough. It won’t hurt anything, but they would have been much prettier. I’m going to do this again in the next day or two and make it all perfect.   These are terrible pictures. When I get ready to eat these, I can add some potatoes and a quart of my home-canned tomatoes and have a great veggie soup. Feeling smart.

Each time there is discord in the world, I want to organize my pantry and look at the food that’s in it. What is this? I need help. My recent Pinterest fascination is “Sixty Days of Non-Perishable Food For Two People.” I really want to know if there are many others out there like me?  I comb FEMA sites, LDS sites, or homesteading sites and mentally plan.   I don’t really do that much..it’s all in the planning stage.  Like I plan to clean my house.    The planning and the happening are pretty opposite!  

However, I believe there is a cannery in Castlewood, Virginia. I want to go.

And this obsession…it makes a heck of a mess. As I wait for my cooktop to cool down, I took this picture. I’ll be scrubbing and shining it in just a few minutes. Another bad picture.

What a stinkin’ mess I’ve made.  The floor is sticky.  Well..not now…because even though it’s the wee hours, I had to mop the kitchen.  Mike is snoring away while all this is going on.     I’m actually on the computer waiting for the floor to dry.    It’s akin to watching paint dry without the new paint smell.  I smell vinegar.  Yuck.

Mike has no patience for my mess, and in fact, he’s assigned me the garage to clean.   That is my reward for trying to ensure we have 60 days of food if there is a disaster????   I do not understand!!   I’m just so glad he’s in a home cleaning and organizing mood!  We need to get some things done!

Here’s what the garage looked like the last time it was clean.    It doesn’t look quite that good tonight.

Good night.  Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage.

Like paparazzi, I stalk them. This one is named Coco.

They live in a high rise with their brood box in the very first (lowest) chamber.  It is where their queen most likely is.  Today, we had some preventative maintenance for the bees, so Gerald and I removed each chamber of the hives to get all the way to the brood box.

It’s really hard as the chambers (or supers) adhere tightly with the sticky honey.  They are also heavy.  Honey is a very heavy substance.   Gerald does the heavy lifting and twisting and I’m standing by with smoker and sugar water.  We are both sweating profusely in our white space suits. Here’s one of the chambers with a few bees on top.  I used the smoker so many of them went down where you cannot see them.

I tried for a close up but not so good.

The scariest part, besides getting stung, is inadvertently harming the queen.    She’s down below in the brood box.  Gerald got stung on his arm right around this time.  Ouch.

We worked with all six hives, and we’ll remove a small amount of honey on or about Wednesday of this week.  We won’t have much.  When you have swarming, you don’t have as much honey.     Fortunately, we also do not have a lot of additional money invested in the hives this year so we’re not going under from expenses.  Our hives survived the winter, and our largest expense has been the replacement of two queens.

I’m back to feeding them daily as of two days ago.   That will supplement the honey that they already have.

The center plant below was bought specifically for them.  I saw it in Lowe’s and bees were all over it.  I had to bring it home to my girls.    Thus far, they’ve ignored it. They are like spoiled children.

It’s just a little favor back to these special friends…don’t you think they deserve it?   Imagine a world without them…

We took the hot white spacesuits off and started to cool off. I rmembered I’d left my camera in the apiary. I walked back to get it in my shorts and a t-shirt. I thought if I moved slowly, they’d probably not mind….here’s how they looked. Those dots are not freckles. Those are mad bees. Still…I thought…I know these bees. I’ll be fine. They’ll be fine…they rarely sting.

Note to self. These are insects. They were unsettled…mad…

Right on the ankle. Ouch!!

It’s crunch time.  Yeah…I wish I could say it was my abs.  I’d done all those crunches and had abs.  I don’t even have any abs!  I keep thinking I’ll get some, but it’s always one more day away, one more Dove dark chocolate day away.

It’s Mendota Cemetery Quilt.   It’s almost time for it to find a new home, and my sister, Nancy, said Chris is thinking about another quilt for next year.    I’m wondering if I donated the fabric if they’d let me pick out the fabric?    I love color.

And there’s more…I’m on Pinterest pinning quilts to make, and oh did I tell you, I don’t even quilt?    I am going to try another baby quilt or two, but a real quilt?  Nope.  The Mendota Cemetery Quilt group hide the quilt from me.   At worst, I’d spill a tea on it.  At best..oh well.

We are down to the wire.  The quilt drawing is next Sunday, August 24.   Someone will own this quilt which has been at my house, with Patsy, with Chris…since it evolved from the design phase, to the fabric purchase, to the cutting, pinning, ironing, sewing and finally quilting and binding.    It is the work of countless hours of several ladies led by Chris Schanzenbach.   I hope it goes home  with one of the folks that bought a ticket from me.  That is almost as good as winning the quilt myself.

Here it is on the fence post behind the house.    Imagine this at Christmas….or on a white bed….BEAUTIFUL!!

And what a good cause.   It means that this place remains beautiful for the next generation.

If you wish to participate in this quilt drawing, please contact me as soon as possible.

My sister made spaghetti for her granddaughters recently and realized she had no dried basil.  She called me since I normally have two of everything.   I was mortified.  Me..the prepper!   I had no dried basil.   I did have fresh and sent her away with that and, later, I found one old bottle of basil.  Probably too old to use.

I made a mental note to pick up some dried basil at the grocery store, and then I thought…what not dry my own?     I have  growing out my rear…more than anyone could ever want…a ton of basil.. basil is a weed….it’s flowering too fast…plenty of basil so it made sense to preserve what I had.

In addition to growing it in the raised beds and in the flower beds, I have a little kitchen pot that’s really convenient.   My basil is all grown from seed.

I grabbed a few bunches of basil and pulled the leaves off.   I’ve read that it is best to do this with basil that has not yet flowered as the leaves have more oil in them before flowering.

I placed the basil in my dehydrator on three shelves.  You don’t have to have a dehydrator to dry basil, but it makes things much faster.  It was so convenient that I did this when I did it.  Mike had put an egg sandwich in the microwave which needed to be heated for 30 seconds.  He pressed 30 minutes and went away…only to return when he smelled a horrible stench and the papertowel in the microwave was charred.    And my cousins were on their way and would surely die from the smell.   The drying basil smell was much better than the crispy egg sandwich he made.

I’m feeling so domestic right now when I look at the picture above.  What is it about preserving food that gives me such a good feeling?   It has to be something built inside of me.       Here’s my dehydrator.  They are not expensive and super easy to use.  I put the basil in for 24 hours at about 125 degrees.

Here’s how the basil looked after it dried and I’d rubbed it a bit to break it into smaller particles.   It had a nice smell.

I made a lid for one of my small quilted jelly jars.  Feeling like a genius.

Look how sweet it is!   At this time, I started to sing.   I’m just so happy this turned out!!

Feeling glorious as I slip this jar of basil in with its peers.     Yes, I could have alphabetized them but that would make things too easy.

It’s not too late to plant basil.   It doesn’t take long for it to grow, but it does not like the cold so it needs to go in the ground soon.   I’m going to try to capture some seeds from the flowering basil and see if I can get it to grow without buying seeds.  I’ve never done that.

Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage.   Hope you have a wonderful day!