pictures and pictures (again).

so i guess i've kind of accomplished stuff today, but not really.  i accomplished a lot of time wasting as i sat on the intratubes downloading songs.  but i also scrubbed down the bathroom, canned some more tomatoes, did some laundry, picked up the basement and made some pumpkin stencils.  yeah!  did you realize that halloween is like a week away?  seriously.

well anyway, i also edited some pictures to post.  so here they are.

 

the apple calender i've been working on.  it was a funky stained wood before.

dexter and oliver, how cute right?!

some canned green beans.

keith and oliver.  he loves the dogs more than me, and they love him more than me.  it's great.

ketchup.  super delicious smelling.

my saucemaker.  seriously, it's totally worth 60$.

tomato puree from today's batch of spaghetti sauce.  looks toxic, right?

i like sauce made with heirloom tomatoes, but they're kind of watery so i add romas to thicken it up.

okay, well.  hopefully i'll get these pumpkins carved tonight (or at least one).  they look rad.  now to just get keith to take a picture with me so i can carve one of us too!

xoxo - sierra.

Along came a spider--

so i really wanted to update this every day, but i haven't had time.  i've been a canning queen again--ketchup, more spaghetti sauce and green beans, with salsa verde and more spaghetti sauce waiting to be done (i refuse to seed and cut the jalapenos and habaneros, and keith still hasn't done it).  so my week, or the beginning of it anyway, will be busy.

another thing i haven't done (in at least a week) is really clean the house.  so i did today--at least this morning, before the brown weenie roast.  i scrubbed the floor and dusted, cleaned the kitchen (finally got those dishes out of the sink), lysol-ed everything, and got the laundry done.  keith played video games, isn't that sweet of him?  i guess it's really winter, because when it gets time for the farm to officially shut down, he just starts playing video games all the time.  the most annoying, grating video games.  currently it's some ridiculous motocross crap and a racing game, and they're both one player so i can't even join in, i just get stuck watching,.  yay.

but anyway, so i was really grossed out by the state of the house and took to cleaning it.  i really hate cleaning.  i really hate cleaning.  i mean, what a waste of time.  it's just going to be instantly dirty again; if not for the dogs, then for the fact that we live in the country and everything is instantly dirty all the time.  now, don't think our house is filthy.  it's tidy.  there are just always tumbleweeds of dexter hair in the living room and mud clods in the kitchen because we're always in and out and we have hairy dogs.  it's frustrating to spend all day scrubbing down the house and then bam! it's filthy again by the time that you hang up the broom.  well, and i've never really been super thorough at it, which pisses keith off, to which i tell him to do it himself or get over it.  so there's that.

but anyway, i found a website called totally together journal and she has this magical thing called the daily 7, which is really just common sense but to see it so clearly typed out it's like, "oh!" and it all makes sense.  so i printed it out and it's posted in the kitchen where i can see it, and it's a reminder of what to do so i (hopefully) don't have to spend every freaking waking moment of my life cleaning and can do other stuff, like sitting on the couch watching disney movies.  because that's way more fun than cleaning.

and so this afternoon was the annual brown weenie roast, in which keith's family gets together at his dad's house and roasts some hotdogs and shoots the shit, and it was a pretty good time.  it started out really great out but as soon as the sun dropped, the temperature was just wham cold and thank god there was a fire or i seriously might've died.

and i'm just tired now, and that's why there aren't any pictures or anything really exciting in this post, so sorry, dear intratubes, if i've bored you.

xoxo - sierra.

a day in the life--sorta.

so yesterday i went and exchanged my saucemaker at rural king because the spring that leveraged the spiral to feed food through kept popping through the little metal contraption that is supposed to keep tension on the spring.  WELL.  i go to use it today and there isn't even a shaft and spiral in the new one!  wtf.

so i guess i'm not doing that until i get another one, because i am not using my chinois on tomatoes.  it was hell making applesauce in!

i really just want to sew, but i'll post pictures of what i've been doing instead.

please ignore the messy stovetop in the first shot, i've been busy okay?!

the doubledecker pressure canner i'm currently borrowing, the seal on mine is shot.

the "pantry cabinet" above the 'fridge.  lookin' good, right?

all the other cans stashed in the basement, along with winter squash.

oh yeah.  i've become a canning master.  i started last year but didn't do much because frankly, i just wasn't that into it.  i made a few jars of salsa verde, burnt the hell out of a large batch of spaghetti sauce (and used it anyway), and i think that was about it.  keith and his aunt canned some pickles, but they were soft and i didn't like them much.  oh, i made pickled beets last year, they went over hugely with keith.  he ravaged them before i even got to try them. 

this year, i've made some hundred-fifty-odd cans (i think?  at last count anyway) of a ton of different stuff.  lots of jams.  amanda and i went to some orchards and got some fruits, and i made a lot of jams and syrups from them.  and then a ton of applesauce.  and a bunch of greenbeans.  just a lot of food, you know?  sweet stuffs, savory stuffs, stuff for soups, stuff for everything.  and i bet keith wipes it out the first snowfall.

this gaillardia makes me so happy.  it's so bright and perky.

this is actually still blooming, but it's an old picture.  isn't it just gorgeous?

heirlooms ftw!

these are some gorgeous heirloom tomatoes that i made a few batches of tomato sauce out of.  aren't they beautiful?  i swear i didn't mess with the colours in photoshop or anything.  the window caught a bunch of flash though--and please ignore my messy storage containers.  and my note to remember to take the bay leaves out of the tomato sauce, even though i forgot to anyway.

but anyway, today i canned four quarts of green beans that really needed to be canned a few days ago, but i popped them in cold water and they snapped right back into shape.   the miracle of cold water on tired vegetables, y'know?

i feel like ther--

oh yeah.

i have some neat crafts for the next few days, if i ever get done canning to get around to them.  keep your eyes peeled, internets.  whomever you are.  i hope you aren't some crazy stalker, seriously, because i just can't handle that sort of attention.  especially if you're from decatur.  you creep.

but okay, i really think that's all for now.  so.  bye?

xoxo - sierra.