I love using what I have, and my sweet friend Gayle mentioned that she had a spare tire. I know she appreciates carrying that with her…never know when you’re going to have a flat! Varroom! Nothing keeps her down.
Isn’t life great that we become automotive pieces as we get older and we can “use what we have?”
For example, we have handlebars (arms). Instead of dice hanging, well, I’ll let you imagine that one. Got some good looking mirrors going on…or are those reading glasses?
It’s all better than the alternative! Whatever…
Did you see this? It’s the very cute apron that I’m giving away to someone Tuesday, December 11…pictured just below all this stuff I”m writing.
Just give me “like”:on the RiverCliff Cottage Facebook page or leave a comment on this blog and I’ll enter your name. Be sure and enter each day!
Maybe you can tell me if you are turning into an automotive piece, too? I really wanted to be a Porsche, but I think I might weigh to much and there is no cupholder, and I like driving with a Pal’s Big Tea.
I’ve sort of middle of the road, American made..I’m sure I’m a Chevrolet. I’m just glad I’m not a truck. Ya know?A truck drives around with it’s rear exposed. I’m hiding the junk in my trunk!
Here’s the apron. I really enjoy doing this blog. Hope you enjoy reading it.
And I just looked at my nails. I bite my nails…chipped polish. Yuck.
And I could use bra for my butt 🙂 You get the picture!
So when I come up with a good idea…I’m just so proud of myself! The head swells. The nail biting stops. I diet. I become more focused…briefly. I think my butt even perks up a little.
Because of that, we must return to painting my fall items with lovely gold metallic spray paint. I do love that stuff. I’ve now included pumpkins in the mix.
As an example…here is a pumpkin which I call “Turk’s Turban” because it looks like…well a Turk’s Turban. I’ll be saving and sharing seeds from this guy. He’s been a beauty all season.
He’s now entering his “golden age.”
Here it is recycled (turned upside down in the bowl) and reused as part of the 2012 Christmas decorations at the real RiverCliff Cottage. (That RiverCliff Cottage is dirtier than I show in the pictures.)
So many things to spray…so little time.
I’m off today cleaning house and getting rested for our big December 7 sales event at About Face on Friday. Friday evening it’s the community dinner. Saturday it’s wreath making.
I am loving it! Except for Laura Canter’s “Days of Christmas” ModgePodge blocks (which I sort of hijacked and copied in my last post), it’s just stuff I had. There are a few old Hobby Lobby red berry branches in the vase along with other branches I brought in from outside. There’s Uncle Johnny’s old Bible VDOT gave me, Laura’s Christmas blocks which I already mentioned, a plant from Lowe’s (my True Love), and my window pane frame that I sprayed with chalk paint spray and blatantly copied Pottery Barn. There’s some leftover garland from the outside…and oh…just by chance….did you notice those gold things?
Guess what they are?? They are the same gourds that you saw in the late summer and fall. Those gourds just keep showing up on this blog here and here and here and numerous other posts!! Yikes..if you click on those links you’ll see I was learning how to insert a picture…they were sort of L..O..N..G as in elgonated in those posts!!
Thursday I started throwing my gourds away. It was hard. They are volunteers. They come every year. Hundreds of them. So willing to be picked and shared.
Anyway, I was carrying them outside and tossing them into the field thinking about how glad I didn’t have to pitch for a living. Just before I went to gather the final ten or so gourds and do a lame softball roundup pitch, I had a brilliant idea! I would NOT throw the rest of my gourds away. I’d spray paint them! Gold! For Christmas!
Cute little green gourd. It doesn’t know it has such a “bright” (as in golden) future in this picture!
I took my little pal outside and sprayed painted him! He’s the one just to the right of the larger orange gourd. Lookin’ good!
Let me tell you, I was so happy as I spray painted these gourds. I started humming and jumping around spraying everything! It was so easy! I was almost hyperventilating at this point. It’s so seldom that something works out this well for me. Well, it didn’t work out all that well as had I had this thought a bit earlier, I’d not have thrown away the other 30 or 40 gourds. I would have had an amazing pile of gold gourds! For a moment, I thought about going and hunting them in the meadow. I just had that thought for a moment.
Instead, I focused on my little group.
They remind me of a little choir group if there was such a thing for gourds. The big tall one is the senior choir leader. The little round one, but larger than the others, is second in command.
“Tra la la…we are gourds..
Behold…we are painted gold!!”
?
“Ring…Ring!” Is that Nashville calling about my songwriting skills? I thought not!
Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage. I hope you like it. Please tell others about it. I’d like to get my number of readers up a bit. Also, if you want to receive it in your email, just “subscribe” which is at the top of this post.
Today is the first Advent Sunday in this season. I saw a banner on my neighbor’s house…it read “Immanuel..God With Us.” I love living in rural America.
If you know me or have read this blog for a while, you know that Mike and I live about 17 miles from a grocery store. It’s fine with me, as it means that I’ve become a good planner. I like the security of always having “extras” whether it’s people food, dog food, lightbulbs, gifts, etc. I’m not a hoarder. I don’t like clutter, but I like an organized approach to having things on hand when I need them.
By thinking ahead and picking up items as they are on sale, I had enough on hand to put together this baby shower gift without making a special trip to town. It’s not glamourous…it has only useful things. There is a little boy’s outfit, diapers, lotion, wipes and then a smaller portable package of wipes. The new mom will use them all.
I have to keep these gifts at about $25 because we receive at least 10-15 wedding and baby shower invitations each year when I factor in my neighbors, family and work relationships.
I had the basket on hand and I had some basket wrap. I noticed that the Dollar Tree now had this basket wreap, and I want to try it but I’d purchased this wrap at Walmart a couple of years ago so I used what I had.
Here’s all the items I included in the basket. A cute little boy’s outfit. Quack!
Here’s some odds and ends. All have been purchased in the past month or so.
So…I had some gift wrap and ribbon. I store most of my gift wrap in the attic, but this tissue and ribbon box is in the bedroom where I can get to it easily for jobs like this.
I put everything in my basket…see how the plastic sticks out on the lower left hand side? I can fix that.
When I blow dry the plastic, it shrinks around the basket and looks more professional.
Here it is all done.
I am out of little boys’ outfits. I have plenty of girl stuff, but I’ll be watching the sales and using my coupons etc. to build back my baby shower supply for little boys. I have the box labeled for shower gifts — similar to the labeled box pictured above I use for wrapping tissue. If something is labeled, I always remember where it is and what should go in it.
This is just one way to save gas, time and save a bit of money–and have a gift that you know will be used and appreciated.
I’m cleaning house today and making a few meals ahead of time for the freezer. This is a great day to do this, as I can listen to the radio and follow the John Battle High School Trojans vs. the Essex Trojans in the Virginia State High School League semifinals. Keeping my fingers crossed for the boys in green as our JSB Trojan Train heads to the other side of the state!
I have a craft! I’m so proud! If there is a craft that is easy enough for me to do, anyone can do it! I’m not very crafty, but I’m very optimistic so I just keep trying! Eventually I track down something I can do!
I wanted to make a Christmas message using wood blocks. Since my husband has a hobby woodshop, there is usually wood I can get my hands on.
So Mike cut a board up for me in four squares.
Needed a little paint, so I went to my stash of paint test pots that I picked up for FREE this summer at Lowe’s and Home Depot. These are the samples that people buy…apparently lots of folks immediately know that they do not want the paint. They pay for the paint but leave it behind. This is where I enter the picture. I ask for it. In my mind’s eye…I’d like to do a crafty project using ALL of my free paint. I have over 24 paint pots…different colors…lots of colors of white and cream. Yuck. Maybe I won’t start that project after all!
I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, so I bought some ModgePodge last month when I was at Michael’s in Kingsport. This bottle was about $9.
So I painted the blocks and then put a coat of ModgePodge on the blocks. I’d taken scrapbook paper and cut it the same size of each block.
It’s kind of like wallpapering blocks! I liked it. It even smelled like wallpaper.
This isn’t a great picture, but behind the ModgePodge bottle, you can see where I had the scrapbook paper lying on each block. I didn’t want to buy anything (other than the ModgePodge) for this project so I used scrapbook paper that I had on hand. I had some “Christmas” scrapbook paper and some with a snow theme. I decided to make the word “Noel” with my four blocks and then make the word “Snow” on the reverse side.
After I ModgePodged the scrapbook paper on each block, I put a second coat on top of the scrapbook paper. The ModgePodge goes on kind of white but dries nice and clear! I then used a Cricut and made letters for each block but you could easily cut letters with scissors and put them on.
Here’s my Noel again. Now that I know how easy this is, I’ll be making a few more and sanding them…making them a bit nicer. I’m just so excited that this is easy and cute, and it worked!! Yeah!!
Here’s my Snow…
Mike started messing with the blocks and had the nerve to pinch me on the rear! So…I swapped the blocks around and said this!
Did you go shopping on Black Friday? I didn’t have anyone who wanted to go with me, so I stayed home. Sigh. I missed going. I would have been at Lowe’s at 5 am buying the 20 ft. of Christmas garland for $5.
I did go by Lowe’s later in the day, but it was too late. No garland. I was so bummed out that I missed the bargain and then I decided to go to Home Depot which is near Lowe’s. Bingo. They had the garland. If this keeps up, Lowe’s will no longer be my true love.
Here it is…I bought five rolls.
Having this garland on hand while I had foddershocks up caused me angst!! It’s like I have a bi-polar thing going on. Look at these sad foddershocks…
After I took this picture, I took the foddershocks to the meadow behind the house and spread them around. Corn pulls a lot of nitrogen from the soil, so it only makes sense that foddershocks, which are basically old corn stalks, will return the nitrogen.
Then…I had to figure out what to do with my pumpkins.
I have one pumpkin that I’ll use for pumpkin pie, but it is one that grew all by itself without my help. It’s my Cinderella pumpkin…also called Rouge Vif d’Etampes. I can’t say that.
The other pumpkins I used this fall are just plain ol’ pumpkins from Hillsville, Virginia. I got these from the farmer who gets the small amount of hay we have. He pays me six pumpkins a year.
So I didn’t want to eat these pumpkins. I had something else in mind. I knew that they would be appreciated by someone else.
Piggies love pumpkins. I threw the pumpkin in and I was afraid they’d have trouble “breaking through” the pumpkin’s skin. No worries . They got right to it.
And getting rid of the pumpkins and the foddershocks allowed me to put my garland on the front porch. I smelled like pine after I was through. A good smell! I felt good about transitioning to fall. Nothing was wasted. The foddershocks and the pumpkins are exactly where they should be tonight. There was no garbage or waste.
Why did I even mention recipes on this blog? I am a very lame cook. Left to me, I’d eat at Wendy’s all the time. I love their chili.
However, I must soldier on. Last week I showed you a picture of this…
Here’s the recipe. If I can make it, anyone can!
Six potatoes, peeled and cubed
Two onions, chopped
One rib celery, sliced
Two carrots, sliced
One teaspoon dried parsley
Five cups chicken stock (I normally Swanson’s chicken broth)
One teaspoon salt
One fourth teaspoon black pepper (or to taste)
One third cup butter
One 13-oz can evaporated milk
Chopped chives
Two cups cheddar cheese (use for heavy garnish once the soup is made)
Combine all ingredients except milk and chives in crockpot. Cover and cook on low 10-12 hours or high 4 hours. Add milk and chives.
Add a couple of tablespoons of cheddar cheese to each bowl served.
I’ve made this several times and always like it. However, last Tuesday, I was in a hurry and I did not peel the potatoes, as the recipe instructs. This didn’t work as well as when I follow the directions. The other thing I did which I wish I had not done was replace the chicken stock with water and four chicken boullions. It wasn’t as good.
I’m not a good improviser.
Does anyone have any recipes for meals that can be frozen ahead of time? Especially soups?
How was your Thanksgiving? Ours was good. And busy. Let’s start out with the “featured bird” this weekend!
Here it is…
Ha! You thought I was going to show you our amazing turkey! Nope! This picture was taken a few miles down the river from us in Hiltons. Jessica Fischer’s brother in law spotted this pretty eagle and took the picture. Last Sunday, there was one sited just up the river from my house. Selling feature for living in Mendota, Virginia…the eagles are healthy and we intend to keep them that way! I saw one not long ago but didn’t have my camera, and since it was busy grabbing roadkill, it wasn’t exactly majestic. There is just no good way to package our national bird chowing down on a dead raccoon and feel good about it.
Our actual turkey was a great local guy……totally organic…lived a great life until last Tuesday. If the Smythe family is reading this, he was good. They raised him. It was so nice to have a turkey that I didn’t have to thaw or search around for the neck and giblets hidden inside which I’ve forgotten more than once. Yuck.
We had 24 for Thanksgiving. I’m hoping that my tablescapes will inspire you….aren’t they lovely? I know…very difficult with a lot of thought and time going into these tables.
And what was most impressive is that I took the time to decorate not one, not two…but SIX tables. Here’s another one…very original. You are wondering where I got the napkins? The white ones…in a roll? I’ll give you a tip…you can find them at Walmart in the papertowel section. I know. You’re impressed.
My guests were very polite…they took their hats off..
And…in a picture that’s a bit smaller…they parked their rides out of the way…and fertilized our yard at the same time.
Here’s a few pictures of us getting all set for stuffing our faces dining in style.
And another…oh look…I forgot to tell you about the John Deere decor I used at Thanksgiving! Wow!
Thanksgiving was great. No one stressed over the meal as everyone pitched in and brought a dish. We ate, visited, played a little Corn Hole and rested.
So many things to be thankful. I had trouble started this blog, because where do you start when life has been so good?
I promised the recipe for my crockpot potato soup! That will be tomorrow’s post!
Here’s something funny…I barely proof my posts, and I had titled this “The Clam Before the Storm.” Ha! You might have thought it was about having seafood for Thanksgiving. Not me…it was just a typo which I fixed.
Speaking of Thanksgiving…are you ready? Are you still going back and getting the last bit of this or that from the grocery store? I went to Walmart last night, and I think I have everything. We have about 25 coming. It should be fun.
Did you know it’s hard to find ground cloves this time of year? Whole cloves…yes! Ground cloves…not so much.
In just a few hours, our house will be bursting with a teen, two tweens, and their parents. Normally, the parents stay at our guesthouse but we have a friend staying there this week, so everyone is in the “main” house. Our house is not huge, but it’s bigger than it needs to be for two people. However, during weekends like this, I’m glad we have a bit of extra space. The three bedrooms will all be used, the sofa bed will be used, and the loft will be used. Lots of places to sleep.
Right now..it’s the calm time. (Not the clam time!)
Everything is done. The house is clean. Ahhh…look at this clean room! I like this room. Every room in my house is clean for the next couple of hours. Do you realize this is a big deal? This almost never happens!
Our bedroom really doesn’t look clean…we have an old rug and a bunch of doggy beds on the floor. Gracie cannot walk on hardwood which means we have scatter-rug “runways” here and there. She’s worth it…isn’t she a sweet looking doggie!
So…the house is all clean, and I have some potato soup in the crockpot with just a few more hours to go.
This is the best potato soup…or I think it is. I’ll share the recipe in the next post. I changed it up a little bit and I want to make sure it’s still good!
Life is good! I am thinking of all I have to be thankful for.
I am supposed to be cleaning house a bit this afternoon as our granddaughters are coming in on Tuesday. Left up to me, they may have to arrive to a messy house, as instead of cleaning…I started going through pictures!
I found some that will be of interest to anyone from this area. Mendota is in Poor Valley and it’s a river valley. The North Fork of the Holston is our river. It’s a lazy sweet, slow moving river, but on occasion it shows a different side.
Here’s how our river looks normally…a great place to fish, canoe and take pictures!
In 2002, here’s what the North Fork looked like, and this was not when it was at its highest…
Do you know who these folks are that are in the picture? (I do…it’s a test for you!)
This is the Swinging Bridge located at the tressel in Mendota.
I’m still cleaning. If I find more pictures, I’ll put them on RiverCliff Cottage. It’s not the normal thing that bloggers talk about, but since this is my blog…well…I can do what I want to do with it…even look at scary pictures!
