Victorine #71 Fall or Thanksgiving

The Victorine Originals Challenge this week is to do a Fall or Thanksgiving card.  I chose Fall and this is my card.  Bob and I recently took a trip up to northern WI and the Fall color was at it's peak.  It was gorgeous, and one of my favorite things to look for along the country roads is the vines growing up the trees.  Never mind that they are probably in the process of killing off a tree.  They turn the most beautiful colors and I love seeing them.

My card is a very simple one.  I chose offwhite cardstock and stamped the vine on after coloring my stamp with inkpads.  (three different colors)  Then I ran the entire piece through the Cuttlebug in the brick wall embossing folder.  The bricks didn't show up too well, so I sponged some ink on until I was happy.

You can find the challenge HERE.  Check it out.  There is always a drawing for a gift certificate for stamps.

The Cider - The System

 Yesterday I said we had a system with our cider making.  Now I'm here to show you the pictures.  You  are not getting real action pictures as I need both hands working on apples and who will hold the camera?  But I think you can tell by the juice on the table and in the bowl that we were in the middle of making it right here.

The first picture is of the grinding contraption that Bob put together.  This is a New in the Box Garbage Disposal that he mounted to this little stand that he built just like you would mount it under your kitchen sink.  The top view is on the right and the hole is what you would put your potato peels etc. down.  Bob is an electrician and built a nice, safe grinder with an "on/off" switch to grind up the apples.

 The bowl under the stand is to set the mesh bag in that will catch the ground up apples when they come out the spout on the disposal.  I guess you could attach the bag, but we just hold it in place as this step goes pretty fast.

Next we transfer the bag in the bowl over to the cider press.  The bowl goes under the spout and the mesh bag goes inside the press and lets the cider drain out.  We have learned to not turn the press too fast as we have broken more bags than I need to mention in our learning process.  The cider drains out the spout and gets poured into a cleaned up milk jug and put in our freezer with  a good bit of head space for freezing and no cap on until it's frozen. This is our 3rd gallon & it sure looks good for Christmas this year.

Apple Time

 It's Apple Time.  We have three trees that outdid themselves this year.  This week is Apple Pie and Cider making week.  Tonight we did some of both.  I think we do it all the hard way, but I will never be sure.

Today while Bob was at work, I washed these three bowls of apples.  We figure this many makes a gallon of cider.  And we have a system.  But I think I have to talk about cider tomorrow as I forgot to take pictures.

After dinner tonight we first made two pies.  This part of our system works well as we can make cider while the pies are in the oven.  This next picture is Bob peeling apples.  He peels and I trim and cut them up.  We have a wonderful apple peeler that makes this part go fast.




Peeling Apples

After Bob gets the apples peeled and cut, I get to put the pies together.

These are 8" pies and I bake them for 50 minutes. 

 

All Peeled and Cut for Pie or Cider

Most of the pies are for the freezer for this winter.  But I keep one out to eat every now and then.

Puffball Mushroom

I guess it's that time of year again.  A friend emailed a picture to Bob last night and said, "Is this a puffball mushroom"?  The picture was small but I assured him that "as near as I could see, it was a puffball".  That alerted me to the fact that it was time to go looking.  I call our woods, our "Fairy Chasm" as it's steep on both sides and has a little water at the bottom that's the overflow from our lake.  I should not have walked into it with sandals on today either, but I did.

This is what I found. It's not a big one - maybe 5" across - but enough to have some fun with.  I had a handful of dried weeds too that I intended to spray and use for decorating, but by the time I got most of the way through the woods, which is small, I decided I might not make it back up the hill if I insisted on carrying the dried weeds, so I ditched them and came out with only the puffball and a bunch of tiny green pickers that stuck all over the front of my shirt.

Our friend made a Mushroom Omelet with some of his this morning and I may try that next.  I usually make Mushroom Soup - which tastes just like Campbell's.  Check out YOUR woods this week.

Victorine #70 Halloween

Halloween and/or Spooky is the challenge at Victorine Originals this week.  Check it out HERE. There is always a drawing for stamps. I don't have any spooky stamps so had to use Tim Holtz die cut houses for help.  I die cut a hole with my Spellbinders Classic Circle in the black cardstock and then cut a yellow circle and glued it in.  I think it's a fabulous moon.  The fairy is stamped in black on the moon.  The houses are cut out of black and then gold.  I left some of the windows black for effect and didn't match the houses perfectly as I wanted the gold reflection of the moon on the roofs.

Go make a Spooky card.  You could win some stamps.

Repurposed or Recycled

Good Morning, Saturday.  We have warm weather and it's not raining and who can think about Christmas?  Card Makers always have to be ahead of the game, don't we?

One of my very favorite things to do is recycle - anything and everything - and especially on greeting cards.  I found a pattern by Connie Babbert HERE and thought it was a grand idea.  She even has links to samples.   It needed two sided paper.  I actually don't have any that works for Christmas, and I found for this project, my double sided cardstock was too thick, so dug out one of my "bought especially for cards" old dictionaries to use as it has print on both sides.  The red cardstock is a leftover that I had punched a deckled rectangle out of.  It's crooked because it was the leftover. (Don't buy that).  The gift image is Hampton Art and could be colored or paper pieced for more interest.  The tree can also be glued down or DECORATED.  I wanted to start with a simple masculine card, so this is it.  Works for me.

HSCRC13 #17 Tell Me the Stories of Jesus

This is my card for the current Hymn and Scripture Challenge which you can find HERE.  The hymn is Tell Me the Stories of Jesus.  I am not familiar with this hymn and kept getting it mixed up with "Tell Me the STORY of Jesus".  The entire Bible is the STORY of Jesus, but the stories are in the gospels, which is where I am reading just now.

One of my favorites is the story of the Prodigal Son - the reason being that I can identify so well.  I found the story in Luke 15 and the verse I chose was Luke 15:17 which starts "When he finally came to his senses..."  Look it up.

Class Reunion?

If you think you will see pictures of my 50th Class Reunion, you can think again.  Bob and I headed "up north" where everyone in WI goes in summer for a two day planning meeting for him (they entertained the spouses too) and then on to my class reunion and a visit with family.  Now about the reunion.  We walked into a room of "elderly people" and I thought I was in the wrong place, but then I saw a familiar face.  Mine in the mirror?  Good thing it wasn't.  We WERE in the right place and lucky for us all, the organizers had made buttons with pictures out of the yearbook.  So I could relax a bit and at least remember the first names.

I thought this reunion was lots better than the last when people seemed to me to be trying to prove something.  This time we concentrated on accomplishments of different people and happy memories of the School Days.  One person walked about 130 miles to the reunion to raise money for the hungry in Haiti.  He was limping a bit, but was able to get up front and say a few words.   There are lots of NICE people in my High School Class.

The Fall color was at its peak in northern WI and we thoroughly enjoyed our ride back home today.  We stopped lots of times to take pictures and I want to share a few of them.

Old Barn

Rolled Snow Fence

Elcho Water Tower