Have you ever heard of.......?

Have you ever heard of five bladed scissors!  Well for sure I hadn't until earlier this week when I was watching a recipe video where someone was using them.  They were cutting up herbs and green onions and I thought wow! I bet those cost a lot.

I looked them up on, yep, Amazon and found they were quite reasonably priced.  A pair, (should they be called a pair if they have five blades?) cost $6.95.  So I ordered some to check them out and they arrived the next day.  They must now have a distribution center reasonably close as we have had a couple of next day deliveries lately, which is a bonus for sure.

Anyway, I was really surprised with how good quality they are and they cut up green onions perfectly.  I can never get them so thin with a knife.  I tried them on the lettuce and they did a great job of that too.  They come with a cover which doubles as a thing to clean out  between the blades which was essential for the green onions and lettuce because of the moisture.  I imagine that cutting up dry herb leaves etc. would be even better.

So I am very happy with my impulse purchase and my husband loves the lettuce cut up like that.

I also made a card for our son whose birthday is coming up.  I am not so good with cards for men as I like 'pretty and sparkly' but I think I did OK and I used one of my new stencils and dobbers on it too and also my little sticky foam blocks to give it a 3D effect.  I made the envelope to match the card too.

I printed up the main greeting and personalised it and my husband did a greeting too from him and I printed it up to match the other.  It was made from the heart and I hope he likes it.

We have been working in the sunroom doing the trim around the windows and the top and bottom of the boards, it is finally coming together.  Still lots to do but we can see and end to it now.  It has been a long drawn out job because of our health limitations but it is very rewarding to see how it went from this:-

To this:-

To this:-

and this:-

That is just part of it, we had to basically rebuild two walls from the outside to the inside.

The American football season starts today and our team, the KC Chiefs play tonight so looking forward to watching that. Go Chiefs!

Summer heat doldrums

Doing this on my phone so apologies in advance for any errors or differences in appearance.  Just watching my Football team from England on the TV playing against their bogey team. Haven't beaten them since 2005. So far so good, they are in the lead and the other team are down to 10 men.

We are having very hot weather which has not given up yet. They forecast rain and storms but we have not had any and it is still hot, albeit a few degrees cooler than yesterday.  Basically we just gut it out indoors with the Air conditioning on.  

I did knit a skirt for one of the dolls and now they are both respectable. I swapped the dress from this one to the other as the skirt looked better with this cardigan.

I have started on a new project for ourselves. A knitted Santa Clause from the Jean Greenhowe's Christmas Special pattern book.  This is the one that has the pattern for the Nativity characters I made a few years ago and also the Snowman. So far I have one leg complete with boot. It is going to be quite big judging from the size of the leg.

Darn, my team let down at the end and we got beat!

Time to get back to knitting. Hope all is going well in your worlds.

Progess reports

Firstly and most importantly my granddaughters husband is home.  He is having home health come in 4-5 times a week but he was well enough to go home with the additional help.  Praying for continuing improvement and some return to normalcy for them all.  

Secondly, I have had time to try my new stamping gismo and I think it will help a lot with the stamping.  You can only use the silicone flat type of stamps with it but you can keep re-stamping until you get a good print so that is a bonus.  I think you can take the rubber stamps off the blocks and use them the same way but I haven't tried that yet as I didn't want to render the wooden block stamps unusable.

It also came with a stencil so I tried that and decided I wanted to do more stenciling.  It is fun.  Of course, I was way too heavy handed with the ink at first but after watching many YouTube videos I realised I needed dobbers and sponges etc.  My daughter sent some money for my birthday so I got a lot of supplies from Amazon including more stencils and blending brushes, foil paper, sticky squares for 3D effect, finger dobber sponges and blending tools which come with disposable sponges.  I was in card making heaven and I didn't feel guilty because the money was a gift.

The gismo also has a type setting board and letters and numbers etc.  I have yet to give that a go.

I finished the second replacement cardigan for the dolls. (the one on the left).  Now I just have to get a skirt made. The one on the right is sitting around with just her underwear and cardigan on!

The weather has cooled slightly so we have been able to get out and do some mowing and outside stuff.  My husband is now able to do more post surgery and he had 4 infusions over the course of 4 weeks and that seems to have helped him regain some strength. We had more large limbs down with the storms which we will cut up for firewood at some point too.

We have been working on editing one of his stories ready for publication also so things are simmering along nicely.

Hope all is good in your worlds!

And the conversation went like this.......

Waiting at traffic lights yesterday I looked into my rear view mirror:-

Me: "You gotta see this, there is a dog riding in the pillion seat on the back of a motorbike behind us."

Husband: "No flipping way!"  (actually it was another 'f' word he used!)

Me: "No honestly, there's a guy on a motorbike and he has a dog sitting on the back and the dog is wearing shades!"

Husband: "You must be seeing things!"

Me: "No look for yourself, and the best part is the dog has on sunglasses, oh wait, lights changed I will go slow and get into the right lane and you can see when he passes."

I pulled into the right lane and drove slowly as it was an access lane to get into Walmart.  But, the motor bike guy was also going into Walmart and pulled into the lane still behind us.

Me: " I will park and you can see him go past."

Husband: "Ok."

Me: "See, the dog is riding pillion and wearing shades!"

Husband:  "Well flipping heck (actually the other 'f' word again) that's gotta be illegal."

We watched him ride the motorbike and park it by the front door and go into the store.  The dog remained sitting on the back seat still wearing his shades and waited patiently until his owner came back. The guy had made a platform for the dog to sit on. It was a big old male pitbull, a very nice looking dog and extremely well behaved. My husband talked briefly to the guy who said his other pitbull, a female, didn't like to ride but this one loved it.

We had never seen anything like it before and here's the proof.

I went and ordered one!

After my last post and a comment from a reader with a recommendation, I did some research and went and ordered something which will hopefully help with my stamping.

It is a Memory Keepers Precision Press Plus bundle.

As well as the stamping plate it also comes with a typeset board and letters, numbers and some characters. Plus it has a clip for stenciling and a stencil and a few stamps too.  Amazon US didn't have it but it is coming via Amazon Global from the Netherlands and will hopefully be here in time for my birthday.

I really hope it helps! It has mostly excellent reviews but also has a few negative ones so I guess I will find out this coming week.

I have read a lot of reviews and got some good tips so I am eagerly awaiting it's arrival.  It seems I am not the only one having problems with stamping.

Funny thing is the typeset and letters reminded me of a toy that was popular in my childhood.  A John Bull Printing set which had rubber letters and a typeset block.  Some things never change lol. I found an image on the internet, just as I remembered it. 

I just hope my arthritic fingers can deal with the smaller letters in the new set. Thankfully it comes with larger letters too as pictured below!

I got some bad news since my last post, my dear Grand daughter's husband has been very poorly in the hospital.  He had an infection in his brain which swelled and he was really ill.  He is on the road to recovery now but is still in hospital having rehab but this weekend he has been allowed to go home for a few hours each day and they are hoping next weekend he will be allowed to go home full time with home support coming in. He is only in his 30's and their son is only two and a bit.  It has been a frightening time for them all. He has lost a lot of his memory but some of it is coming back little by little and my grand daughter has well documented their life together so he has a lot of things to help him remember.

Will update both on the stamping and my grandson in law's progress soon.  Meanwhile any and all prayers will be appreciated for my grand daughter and her family.

'I hate meeces to pieces" to quote Jinks the Cat and 'what is it with me and stamping'?

Does any one remember Jinks the cat, a cartoon character?  Well, to quote him "I hate meecies to pieces!"

We had to do major construction repairs in our sunroom which dragged out due to our health issues.  Anyway, when the family announced they were coming a major tidy up ensued in there just incase son and grandson could manage some work in there (which they did.)

I had my wanna-be American dolls in there and when we started the work I covered them with a little doll's quilt my MIL had made so they didn't get sawdust etc. on them.  Well, those darned mice eventually must have sussed out that it would be a nice hidey hole to make a nest in!  And they ruined the two little cardigan's I had knitted for the dolls and a skirt I had made for one of them.  

I had to totally strip them, bathe and sanitise them and throw away the cardigans and skirt and wash the rest of the clothes and little quilt in a strong disinfectant and washing soap mixture.

So I have knitted one cardigan so far to replace the mouse eaten ones.

I just love the plastic studs, so easy to attach and so efficient too.

I also had to get a card finished and mailed and decided to try my hand at stamping once again.  I had previously successfully stamped the verse inside and the homemade stamp on the back of the card and added the bow, it was ready to go.

But! (that word again), I got a bit ambitious and wanted to do some stamping on the envelope then do another stamp inside the card to match the envelope.  Bad idea!  I ruined one envelope and binned it then on the second one I got some of the edge of the stamp on it too.  I wasn't going to throw away another though so it stayed as is! 

Then I tried to stamp the same flowers in the card and didn't press hard enough so some of the imprint was missing!  I knew I couldn't get the stamp back in the exact same place but I did come up with a plan to save the day.  I got one of my pens which was almost the same colour as the ink I used and I drew in the missing parts. Phew! So today the card is winging it's way across country.

But, what is it with me and stamping? Why can't I get it right?????

On the plus side, my husband has now sold a total of 10 books that we have been self publishing.  Never going to make a fortune but it is exciting that he is selling some.

Fallen limb from storm

We had a storm, it must have been Saturday or Sunday night.  There was quite a large limb fallen up by the mailbox on the gravel road  which we didn't see until I went to fetch the mail last night, Monday.

I tried to move some of the broken branches off the road.  Cars were able to get by and it was very hot last night so we left it until this morning to deal with it.

Poor husband isn't supposed to be doing anything heavy for another three weeks but he was able to use the pole saw too and between us we cut it up.  We rested whenever we had to, which was often, but we did it.  I was able to load the logs into the little trailer and tomorrow I will unload them in the woodshed in the cooler hours. This is me wielding the pole saw, in hot weather I cover up to keep both the sun and bugs off of me!

 

And here is a photo of my dear husband and I taken by DIL. It was taken in the evening to get good light but we were both pretty tired by then so not looking our best but a well composed photograph.

Happy 4th of July to any USA readers and hope the day is a great one for everyone!

Been and gone!

My goodness the family visit went by so quickly.  Unfortunately, as I expected it was extremely hot while they were here which limited outside time.  But they did get outside to shoot the pellet gun and rifle at the targets and they were all great shots!  DIL also took the children to a couple of outdoor swimming pools 2 afternoons for some outside time where they could keep cool. One of them had a Lazy River and diving boards so that was fun for them.

DIL is a professional photographer and all the following photos are hers, so much better than anything I would take.

I showed the oldest grand daughter how to knit when she was about 8 or so and she now makes some lovely things and does crochet too.  I showed her the basics and she has learned much more from watching Youtube tutorials and from a friend of her Mums who knits.  The youngest wanted to learn too this visit so I also showed her the basics of knitting and crocheting and she picked it up very quickly.  She will learn more from her sister too and no doubt Youtube. 

We went out for a couple of meals which was very nice, one was the locally owned burger shack where they cook everything to order and there is only outside seating and the other was also a family owned restaurant about 40 miles away and the food is always good.

The guys (son and grandson) did so many jobs while they were here with husband looking on really wishing he was still able to do it. They even got all the hard work in the sunroom done which leaves us with trimming it up which we will be able to do once my husband has fully recovered from his surgery.  They worked so hard and I felt so bad that they did while on their vacation but we are so grateful for their help.

The wasps were very active around the front door and I offered grandson the use of my wasp hat as he was in and out all the time fetching tools from the workshop, but he declined incase anyone took a photo of him wearing it lol.  After all he is a teenager now and couldn't risk his street cred.

I on the other hand have absolutely no street cred so here I am in my full glory wearing it!

Finally DIL was captured on camera by youngest grand daughter in the corn field. It is very rare to see photos of her, always the photographer, rarely the subject!

It was a wonderful 6 day visit  but in the blink of an eye it was over and they were on their way to visit son's Mum and her family and our other two grandson's and their mother for 6 days and then onto DIL's Mum and their family. What a trip, thousands of miles will be covered by the time they get home.

And I will leave you with a sweet photo of youngest grand daughter with our dog.  They have such a bond.

Ready and waiting

Our family will get here tomorrow and I am about ready.  It has been a hard painful job to get ready for them with my back injury which is getting worse not better.

But it is a nice to have the house more or less in order.  I will never be able to keep it up to my old standards of years gone by and there are no house cleaners to be found out here so I just have to soldier on the best I can.  My husband is out of commission right now so his help is limited until he recovers from his recent surgery.

We will get them to do some of the jobs we can't do easily like fetch water softener salt from the store and put it in the softener and cut down some tree limbs we can't do anymore as it involves being on a ladder to reach them even with a pole saw.  We need to re-attach some cedar boards in the bathroom as we had to take them down to repair a leak. We could put them up but we can't carry the heavy air compressor up the stairs to use the nail gun to do it.  We were hoping son could help with the inside of the sunroom but the weather will probably be too hot to work in there.  We also need to put new springs on two of our rocking chairs so he can do that.  These things we would always do quickly with ease in good old days.  I hate to have them do things but they offered and we are very grateful. They always visit at the end of June when the children get out of school but it is always very hot then which limits how much time they can spend outside which is such a shame as it is beautiful at this time of year.

The girls and I have a few projects planned in the craft room, that will be nice.  They stay in a hotel in town about 35 miles away as we just do not have the beds to put them all up.  The two eldest are teenagers and the youngest is 8 going on 35 so it is like having an extra 5 adults here.  The hotel has a pool and breakfast included so that helps, they can swim every day at some point, either before they come or after they get back there. There is a cinema nearby too and a summer festival starts later in the week in town.  They are children who are used to having something to do all the time so sitting around with two old folks is not really their thing lol!

It is times like this that we realise how old we are getting and how limited we are in what we can do.  

Really looking forward to seeing them all though, last time was in 2021 when Covid was still causing problems.

My goodness, it has been a month since I posted!

 Life has a way of taking over doesn't it?  In the past month we have had to take both riding mowers in for repair, one of them twice!  That involves hooking up the trailer which is quite the task these days for us oldies.  It is a heavy trailer to lift onto the tow ball. We have one journey to take one in and one journey to pick it up and we can only get one mower on at a time, so several trips to town and back this past month.  We finally got them both back the Friday before we had to leave for the hospital on the Monday for my husband to have surgery on Tuesday.  We stayed overnight in a hotel as we have to drive three and a half hours to get to the hospital and he had to be there for 7.30am.  He had to stay in overnight and I stayed in the room with him.  The pull out bed was not very comfy but I was grateful to be able to stay with him. We have also had several other hospital appointments for him in the past month.

He had the surgery on Tuesday past so he is now under orders not to ride the mower or lift anything larger than a gallon of milk for 4-6 weeks.  We did do a fair bit of mowing the weekend before he went in but now it is all down to me.

We also did some work in the sunroom and bought some 8' x 4' boards so that involved the trailer again.  My husband has stained some of them ready but he is now grounded.

Added to all that we have family arriving a week on Monday for a week so major cleaning and tidying going on.

There has not been any time for making things!

We have several upcoming appointments too as they are starting him on infusions again for his auto immune disease.

Summer is always a busy time around here.

Had a birthday card I made returned as undeliverable.  I confirmed that the address was correct then I sent a photo of the envelope with the Post Office stickers on it to the recipient and she took it to her local  Post Office.  They said that the comma after the house number must have confused the robot! Artificial Intelligence at it's best!

Well that's about it for the past month, having a bit of a chill day today then back to the grindstone tomorrow!

Freebie Treasures

I had to go and pick up our grocery order yesterday and go to the bank.  On the way home I popped into the Thrift Store.  Outside there were 2 shopping carts of freebie things so I had a mooch through them and this is what I got for nada, zilch, zero!

A very pretty china plate, two really delicate gold plated bone china teacups, a small gold plated finger bowl and a cute Christmas coffee cup.  I could have came away with a lot more but I didn't need them.  I will use all the above items.

I did purchase a couple of other items as I felt guilty just taking the freebie things.  The best thing was a very large Pyrex storage jar with lid.  I had read that the best way to keep strawberries fresh was to keep them in a glass jar so this was the perfect size for a 2lb punnet of strawberries.

I also got a piece of fabric to recover my husband's wheelchair cushion, 4 cup size Pyrex bowls and a little butter dish for a one quarter portion of butter.  I spent $5 on these items and came away feeling so much better.  Nothing like a bit of Thrift Store therapy!

Yes, I did watch the coronation but not at 5am!

 I knew I wouldn't get up at 5am to watch the coronation so thank goodness for the DVR.  I played it back at my leisure.  I was around 5 years old when the late Queen Elizabeth ll was crowned and we lived in London way back then.  My Dad bought a TV just to watch it.  It was tiny! So this was my second coronation.

I have never been in awe of Charles and have no love for his wife but I do enjoy the pomp and ceremony of the occasion so I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.

As I watched them on the balcony all I could think was with all that money 'Why didn't she get her front teeth fixed???'  Now we do have quite a large screen TV so it was very noticeable to me, the thousands of folks in the crowd could not tell I am sure.

On the home front, the iris have started blooming. We have not had much rain though.  We re-seeded a patch in front of the house with grass seed and ended up buying an oscillating sprinkler for the hosepipe so we didn't have to stand around and spray with the hand held sprinkler.  Nothing showing yet and we fertilised it too.

Today it is very hot, but it is going to cool into nice temperatures in the week.  Not ready for 90F+ weather yet. That is 32.2C for my English and Canadian folks.

On the card making front, I have nearly finished my cards for June and July, only had to make three.  I am going to make matching envelopes for two of them and stamp the third.  Will post photos when done.

I bought a couple of stamps from Ebay as I managed to flush my silicone 'hand made by....' stamp down the sink when washing it. It was tiny and I couldn't see it in the water and when I pulled the plug it disappeared! I am preferring the rubber stamps on wooden blocks to the silicone ones. These were pre used but are exactly what I wanted.  They were a good deal.

Also I just ordered some more Christmas ones as they were an even better deal and unused.  Three of them have four stamps, one on each side so that is 12 stamps and the other is a nice big one. 13 stamps, brand new for $4.  I am eagerly awaiting their arrival. They were priced at $4.95 ono buy it now so I offered $4 and they accepted.

It's been awhile since I posted, I have been helping my husband edit his manuscripts on the computer ready to publish some more.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the festivities.  I will make some scones on Monday just to have a little bit of English tradition.  Scones with jam but no cream as I don't have any and I am not going to drive 75 miles just to get some. Might have salmon sandwiches too.

Morel Mushrooms

Here in the Midwest Morel mushrooms can be found in the hedgerows this time of year.  They are only around for a few weeks at most. They are a much sought after commodity and if you wanted to buy some they would cost a fortune.

A neighbour bought some up to us quite a few years ago and I did not have a clue what to do with them.

You have to remember that I was born a city girl, grew up a city girl and only discovered country living 18 years ago and I am in my mid 70's now.  So my first introduction to these mushrooms were 'OMG they look like they came out of the sea.' They are hollow and rubbery to the touch.

I had no idea what to do with them so I just fried them up.  The verdict was 'I don't know what all the fuss is about.'

I thanked my neighbour but told him I was not that impressed.  He asked how I had cooked them and I told him.  He just about fell off his chair with laughing. He told me how they should be cooked but I had to wait another year before I could put his theory into practice. I think he couldn't quite fathom out this quirky lady from England living in the middle of Redneck land lol.

Sadly our neighbour died a few years ago but his son goes out and picks them.  He has a real knack for finding them and if he gets more than he and his family need then he brings some down to us. This year we have been very lucky, he has bought us two bags.

So here is the correct way to cook Morel mushrooms:-

Wash and make sure all the water is out of them.

Cut off the bottoms of the stalks. and throw away. (I said they looked like they came out of the ocean!)

Cut them in half lengthwise unless they are very small in which case leave them whole.

Dip them in beaten egg, then smother them in seasoned flour.

Heat up some cooking oil in a frying pan then fry them until they are brown and crispy on one side then turn and fry the other side.

Today I served these with some fried ham off the bone and eggs but you can serve them with anything really or just eat them as a starter.

It took awhile to get the process right but now I know why they are so sought after and deemed to be a delicacy.