Puppy in a Sunbeam

We've had some lovely sunny days the past two weeks.  It's pretty chilly in the morning but by afternoon it warms up to the mid 40's.  Baxter manages to find sunbeams in the house, especially on chilly mornings.  This made me laugh this morning......resting his head on the chair rung, basking in the sunbeam with an interesting shadow.

Sausage grind 2020

This past weekend the usual sausage crew gathered to cut, grind and stuff some pork and a little bit of beef, some herbs and spices.  A good time is always had by all when we gather for this event.

Chemyn cutting strips of pork to go to the grinder. 

Leslie doing the same thing.....

and David too.

Matthew and Alicia spending Valentine's Day making sausage!

Reynald, the grinder!

Louise and Eva, part of the amazing kitchen crew. 

Del and Louise working on our lunch.  These folks spent the entire day cooking two incredible meals for the sausage crew.  

Lunch was broccoli cheese soup, three different kinds of frittata, celery and parmesan cheese salad and a kale salad.  I forgot to take a photo of dinner but it was superb.  

And Chemyn made an Opera Cake.  

Oh my goodness!!!

After lunch we were ready to process.  Here's Stephen manning the stuffer!

Matthew tying up the links 

Cosmic Crisp

Have you tried this apple?  It is new from Washington State University, over 20 years in development.  It's SOOOOO good.  I'm told our east coast family has not seen it in stores yet, and it's even a little hard to find around here, but do your best to track them down.  It will be worth the search.

A new rug

Almost a year ago, Brenda sent me a You Tube link to "Making a Jelly Roll Rug".  It seemed like a fun thing to make, and not that difficult.  I started it during the spring quilt retreat nearly a year past now.  I was tired of the mess hanging around so decided to make the up the rug.  It was a fun project and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

This is the "rope" that I made during spring '19 quilt retreat.  It's made from 2 1/2" strips of fabric, sewn end to end.  Next cotton batting is sandwiched and secured withing the 2 1/2" strips.  This took a long time!

Starting the rug by butting the strip together and then securing with a wide zig zag stitch.

You continue on in this manner, taking care to keep the rug flat.

I am lucky that I have a large flat surface to work.

The pile of rope is getting smaller!

And the finished product.  I really like how this turned out for the tub room.

deep cleaning

It's time to deep clean the house!  I try to do this once a year.  It means I touch everything in the house, (except the attic, which I do every two or three years) and decide if it needs to stay or go.  Also wiping all the woodwork, removing cobwebs, scrubbing floors, moving furniture etc.

The process has begun, though I'm so easily distracted, that my progress is slow.  Here are a few photos of what it looks like at the height of the chaos!

I needed some help moving the refrigerator out from the wall so called in reinforcements!

Contents from the fridge!

This refrigerator almost doesn't fit in the space, so we had to bring over crow bars from the shop to get it to budge.  

Reynald is going in to clean!

If only it would stay like this.  It won't take long before dust bunnies and who knows what else will build up again, but at least it was clean for a day or two!

Baxter could use a good cleaning and haircut too!