Comfortable...

Imagine yourself... comfortable. Close your eyes and imagine you are somewhere peaceful (your version of peaceful.. no one else's). Like for me, an overstuffed, soft leathered armchair. The kind that are not big enough for two people but big enough to sit with your legs stuffed up beside you, or hanging over a big arm. A blanket, a cup of coffee or maybe tea and a book. A window... sunlight but cool out. A scent... either a candle or a bowl of pinecones.. who cares...

Ok, do you feel that. Comfort... ease.... relaxed.... familiar...

Now, make that feeling into a person. Do you have someone who makes you feel that way. I do.

Its "My Sandra". She is that person that I have known for the longest.... next to my sister. We have shared a million good times, and a half million tough times.

We are so much alike... inside and outside. Our husbands use to think it was creepy how much we were alike when they first got to know the both of us... and we laughed a lot about how we are alike. But as we have gotten older and have different lives and different experiences and different families... we sometimes seem very different. Sandra and I see the differences... silly things.... she hates gardening and the flavor of pumpkin. She is afraid of cats and mice. She loves MacIntosh apples, I love Cortland. She is soooo unselfish, and ALWAYS puts others before herself.. ALWAYS, not just 50% of the time... not 75% of the time... but 100% of the time. She just knows the right things to say to someone who needs to be spoken to, good or bad. She thinks she doesn't but she does. She's a softie, & pushover when it comes to little kids!!! I saw that first hand this weekend!!! She bought a LARGE bag of skittles for a 4 year old's movie treat.. and even put them on her pancakes in the morning!

We are so used to thinking and being the same way, that when the differences pop up, we have to chuckle and point them out. I think the differences were always there, but we chose not to recognise them years ago. It was like we thought if we were different from each other, we might not match so well... I think we still match perfectly, we have learned to embrace the differences!

I spent the weekend with Sandra, her two boys, her very special hubby, her adorable poodles and the ugly lizards (but cute in their own way). We chatted, we coffeed, we pruned bushes, we Costco'd, and we babysat two little cousins... an eight year old boy and a 4 year old DIVA girl. We made homemade pizzas with hamburger and hotdogs on them for supper. We watched kid movies (hence the large bags of candy) and I watched Wii games, PS3 (or whatever its called) shooting and driving games.... and I marveled at the amazing talent you need in these hand eye coordinating games... geesh.... We had homemade pancakes for breakfast, a round of Dora coloring, and a cool lounge on the deck while the little cousins entertained us on the trampoline. It was like we lived next door to each other, you know. Just a non occasion visit.... a drop in for coffee sort of feel. It was like we do this every weekend.... and it felt wonderfully....

Comfortable

I miss My Sandra already.

Tonks and the Great Outdoors

As you remember, I now am the keeper of Stephanie and Sean's two little cats, Paralax and Tonks.

Tonks is the scardiest cat I have ever met. She stayed in the closet in the bedroom for 3

days...NEVER coming out when she first came to our house. Then she moved to staying under the couch for over a week, and only came out at night... I mean when everyone was gone to bed. Then she game out early in the morning, and evening...

Now she is out often, and its not a shocker to see her, like it was the first few weeks. That being said.. Terry and I walk softly around her, careful not to move too suddenly, or make sudden noises because she darts under cover for an hour when she is spooked.

She loves all the windows of our house and its not uncommon to come home from work and see her sitting in the basement window, looking out at the world at ground level. She watches "Bird TV" quite a bit too. Terry trimmed our bird feeder tree yesterday and filled it up with sunflower seeds. The little chickadees spent an hour diving and foraging... giving both cats a fabulous "Action" show. Pika.. slept quietly on the couch... bored with such mundane viewing.

The blue jays arrived with their big voices and large presence and that turned the cats into "Flat" cats, because they couldn't have lowered themselves any lower into the bench...

We were as much entertained by the cats as they were by the birds.
This afternoon, a nice cool fall afternoon, I spent time outside, transplanting some Christmas Bulbs and potting some outdoor plants into indoor plants. Now, Paralax uses every opportunity to get outside, and she plays around the cedar (under the bird feeder) or in my side garden but she doesn't wander far. We keep a close eye on her. She keeps a good eye on every moving object, from leaves, acorns to poor helpless bugs.Well, today... Miss Scaredy Pants, Tonks... watched me out the window of the door.... and when I offered her the wide open view of the front yard... curiosity overrode her fear.She stayed in the foyer with the door open to her for a few minutes, just looking. Then she moved to the doorway... and stuck her head way out... just to look. Then... onto the door step.... At this point... she had been in and out of the door no less then 10 times. We stayed very still, so as not to spook her... and she moved to the bench. The little birds were fluttering around, and she was on the hunt.... She overcame the initial fear of the outdoors, and just became skiddish with every new texture... pavement, rocks, dirt.. and the little pond!! She explored every little movement, under the bench, under the tree....following Paralax, and joining Pika. It was a fun little afternoon for all the cats. Paralax enjoyed having Tonks outside. Mainly so she could take off and explore our next door neighbours yard without us knowing.

You can see her little grey body sneaking behind Mac's house...... Geesh.

.. I just about had a heart attack when I couldn't find her. She then skirted all around Mac's house with both Terry and I following her, trying to corner her. She darted all around and finally made her way back into our yard, where she laid down to rest... probably relieved that her brush with unknown territories was over.

We have opened a real can of worms now though, as both cats seem to love the idea of going outside now. Ugh... try getting out the door with a purse, a school bag, three lunch bags and my keys.. and a jacket.. while kicking a cat out of the door... geesh...

OK, now they are cute again... geesh

I got home from doing some last minute school groceries and was putting away the groceries when 5 minutes later Terry arrived home from bowling and told me to go to the window. This is what Terry saw.. thinking that the raccoon had cleaned out the feeder while we were out. On closer inspection, the little guy was still there, sitting with all 4 feet in the feeder, and his head totally immersed, and through the glass of the feeder, you could see his little feet working hard to get all the seeds. He was very comfy with us taking his picture, and stopped a few times to pose, while he turned his big fat body around to get the other side of the feeder. We figure he showed up sometime after 9:30.. and well... its 11:00pm... and he is still there.....

Pika and Paralax love this prime time channel on the the bird TV.. must be a season premiere. Its the Raccoon station after 9pm...

My blog can be found at www.peterssm.blogspot.com

I don't know which came first....

Julie/Julia or Stephanie O'Dea. Who, you say? Well, Stephanie O'Dea is a fellow blogger. She had this fun News Year's Resolution .... starting on Jan 1 2008, she would use her slow cooker every day of the entire year.... and blog about it EVERY DAY!

I jumped onto her blog as a follower about March, hearing about her from Paula and Jerry who were following her from their camper while in Mexico.

I recently went to see the movie "Julie/Julia" where there is a girl who adores Julia Childs and decided to cook every recipe in one of Julia's French cookbooks over the course of a year (400 recipes) and blog each day about it. When I understood the basis for the movie, and I had read it was based on a true story, it reminded me of Stephanie's quest.

Stephanie's blog not only has recipes, but pictures of the ingredients, of the finished product, comments, verdicts (good or bad) and they are all gluten free as a bonus for my friends who need this.

The one thing in my house that is under utilized is my slow cooker (oh, and my exercise bike). I am not a big fan of stew, and honestly, anything I have made in my cooker that wasn't a stew, still looked like stew and tasted like stew. Stephanie's blog gave me hope that

maybe I could actually make something that wasn't stew, in looks, taste or other wise. Now this blog is not about how I have turned into a slow cooker advocate.... I will leave that to Stephanie.

But... this weekend I decided to make a chicken in the darn thing. I searched the blog for a chicken recipe and although there are 59 chicken recipes (and tons of yummy ones) I wanted a whole chicken recipe. I decided to use Rotisserie Chicken Recipe.

She starts with a 5lb "skinned" whole chicken. OK, I thawed a 3 lb chicken and then this morning I looked at my little chicken and though... how the heck do I skin it. I was going to forget that one step, but then her comment "I skin whole chickens because I hate the idea of the chicken fat simmering all day in the crock---it also looks disgusting when the chicken is cooked because it's all slimy and icky." stuck in my mind, and I thought, I better try it.

Well, skinning a chicken isn't all that bad and it took 10 minutes at the most.

I had two wonderful and supportive cheerleaders watching me, which also added pressure. If I dropped the sucker, it would be not a pretty picture.

I got about half of the skinning done, and I thought I would show you my cheerleading team in action. That added to the prep time... washing hands.. drying... finding the camera.... and hoping they didn't jump onto the counter while I was out of the room for 10 seconds.

Chicken was on by 9 and cooked by 4. I let it sit on warm while the rest of supper was cooked.

There was tons of juice at the bottom, and the spices added a nice spice to the chicken and the juices. I made a nice little gravy out of the juices and with potatoes and brocolli... it was a very yummy supper.

Stephanie turned her year of blogging recipes into a book that will be released in October. You can get it from Amazon and I have mine already ordered.... yipee

Have I told you lately.....

hee hee..... well, everyone who knows me, knows I hate peas. So, I just wanted you to know, that I ate a fantastic Chicken Pot Pie today... from Noreen... with tons of peas in it. I took my time... and picked out every blessed one of them... and the pot pie...was delicious... without them!

Raccoon troubles

Well, one has to love those little raccoons and there ingenious ways of getting things done. We have had a love/hate relationship with the raccoons of our neighbourhood for over 20 years.

This summer we fell in love with three young raccoons who invaded our front yard bird feeder and our hearts, but now I back to be mad at them. When I got my pottery bird feeder a few years ago, I blogged several times about its frequent visitors.

You can have a look here and here to see how fun this feeder has been in the past... I had to add this screen hanger on the bottom of the feeder because the birds spill so much seed, which was quite dangerous for the little guys since

I have a very opportunistic cat! Well my little raccoon friend was on the deck and somehow tore the screen off the bird feeder and mangled it so badly that I can't quite fix it! Geesh.

He didn't stop with the bird feeder either. He also smashed my brand new shiny purple compost bowl that was on the deck and filled with veggie peelings (of no interest most other days). He slid it under the rails of the deck and onto the sidewalk, 5 feet below.

Imagine, just in August I wrote about how sweet they were....

http://peterssm.blogspot.com/2009/07/our-midnight-visitors.html

Creative surrounding

When you are use to a way of life, you figure that everyone has the same experiences... right? Like if you always pick apples in the fall... and then you meet someone from another location who is experiencing the Valley for the first time, you are amazed that they didn't spend their fall picking apples or buying tomatoes, potatoes or pumpkins on the side of the road... you know, like we do here.

Well, something I realized over the past year, is that I am surrounded by creative people... in my family, and my friends. Absolutely everyone I know is a knitter, a sewer, a painter.... my mom was the queen of "crafts" that my kids will always remember her by. Before my mom got into "quirky" crafts, she was an amazing sewer, an amazing crocheter, making beautiful lace doilies. She dabbled in painting, and she just started to do tatting before she her life came to a quick end from cancer, more than 16 years ago. My sister and I follow in her foot steps, trying many different craft experiences before settling on things we enjoy. My mother in law, two sister in laws.... they are a collection of knitters, painters, sewers, rug hookers.... my daughters are amazing knitters and both sew. Sean's family all make livings as artisans of their creative abilities.. in pottery, glass and silver. My friends all sew, paint, draw....

The second thing I realized is that this way of life is not as common as one would imagine. Recent experiences made me realize that although I may be surrounded by creative family and friends who think nothing of "making" something... there are large scores of people out there who don't feel they can "craft" and this therefore breeds whole families of people who don't sew, knit, paint, draw, scrapbook, or hook rugs.

I am so lucky to have been raised with the attitude that the sky is the limit as far as what you can do and make...

My mother in law, Joan, loves to sew and she has a particular love for fleece. She sews all the time. All her granddaughters have grown up now, and she has no one to sew for. If Joan had 25 granddaughters, she still wouldn't have enough people to sew for. Therefore, she makes little jacket, hat & mitt sets for fun and tries to sell them. I have sold a good number in my day, but I am done with that. Last weekend, Michelle and I labeled and boxed about 25 sets of kids jackets, hats, mitts, scarves and pants... with labels and prices and we took the m to a new consignment job for artisans. Its called Beautiful Creations, located in New Minas. They contacted my MIL last July to say they were opening a store and would love to have her sewing.

When Michelle and I brought all her sewing to the store, we were pleasantly surprised at the quality of crafts. There was stain glass, quilts, wood carvings, beautiful handmade jewelry, hand made cards, trinket boxes, knitting, rug hooking and paintings. The owners are very enthusiastic about their store and she talked about all her plans to market Nova Scotia handwork in other parts of the country. Its all very exciting and I hope that the store sees lots of visitors and I hope that Joans' crafts do well. She so needs an avenue to market her talent.
I didn't think to take pictures of Joan's little jacket sets, nor did I feel I could take pictures of the great wares inside the store. Please drop by and have a look.. there are at least 4 things I am going back to buy!!!