June 28

Set up chevre last night, but it never set up. Not sure what I did wrong. Maybe it was the pot I used. Haven't used that one before. Set it up in my small crock pot insides today. It doesn't hold a full gallon, but it is ceramic and shouldn't react with anything if that was the problem, even if I have never used IT before either.

Finished my first Halloween puzzle yesterday afternoon. It's called Midnight and it's by Alan Giana. It's only 300 large pieces, so it was a quick put together. The next one will not go nearly so fast, 500 small pieces. I have the edges sorted out and that's it.

We had about an inch and a half of rain last night and a lovely cool day today. I don't feel like I made efficient use of the day, but I did get cracking on cleaning up the garden some. I did not get bread or cheeseballs made, both of which were on my list, but such is life. I have this whole problem with cleaning up the garden. I keep going "I don't need it, so why push it?" but then I will hit fall and need it and it will be a complete and utter MESS and I will NEED it. *sigh* I will try to do better this year. Should be some easier, right? I'm not doing much with most of it. If I get it all ready and mulched, it will be ready to rock and roll with this fall when I need to plant the fall garden.

Ordered a cheese press today, and rennet. Getting rennet locally has been a real pain this year. Not sure what is up with that. I'm not actually sure I NEED the press yet, but I will eventually. I'm giving roughly 7 quarts a week to the wildlife rehabilitation center for a fawn. That has put a dent in my milk supply for cheese making - not that I'm complaining since I have been having trouble getting rennet. But there's only so much you can do with chevre, ricotta, and labana. Of course, now I have kefir to play with for cheese too. Gonna try to do a "cottage" cheese made with kefir cultured milk tomorrow, assuming I have enough milk leftover to do it after I haul stuff off the the wildlife center. I think I will. Uni has gotten to where she gives me 4lbs 5 ozs pretty regularly, with occasional forays off into more. OTOH, she also occasionally manages to let her kids out of their locked stall, and when she does that they drink about half. She had been only giving me 3.5 lbs, it's amazing how much more that extra 13ozs a day adds in terms of milk to use. If only I can keep the kids locked up. ;-)

updates

A neighbor gave me a kefir culture, so I have been doing a little reading on that. I am nearly caught up on goat feet, which probably means it's time to start over on them again. *sigh* Never ending task, about like laundry.

Still not in the stitching kind of mood. I have felt like I'd like to put puzzles together again, and I have a whole bundle of Halloween puzzles I have collected, but only done one of. With all the cats, we had to work out how to be able to work on puzzles in a convenient room and still keep the cats off the pieces. Rather than risk a Halloween puzzle (which can be hard to find/replace) we "tested" the Plexiglas cover with a cheap tiger puzzle. We finished it last night. It actually has a glow in the dark picture on it, but the camera wouldn't pick it up.

Tdap is not fun

Since I have animals and I garden, and I scratch and cut myself pretty regularly outside, I get a tetanus shot every 5 years(in years divisible by five so I know when the heck I had it last). This last time the doctor insisted I needed a Tdap (tetanus, pertussis and diphtheria or somesuch). I just got over a virus with a nast fever not two weeks ago. Now I have a nasty welt and a fever again. *bah* I'd say "not doing that again", but I don't have to do it again unless they decide to change the recommendations. If they change them I doubt I'll take it again anyway unless I have a lot of close contact with babies.

I finished another Christmas cameo ornament today. I am totally not in the mood for Christmas, so I started a Halloween one instead of another Christmas one. I definitely have Halloween on the brain lately. I think I will make butter mints and maybe chevre mints this weekend (cream cheese mints, only I'll substitute chevre in). Since I usually mold my mints, I will probably just make them in Halloween shapes and freeze some. That'll give me a chance to play with some of the new molds I got last year but didn't have a chance to use. The ideal mint mold does not have too many fiddly bits for the fondant to get caught in. Then you pop it out and let it dry and either eat or freeze.

Halloween is coming

I can't seem to get worked up about much of anything this year, but I am in the mood for Halloween, so I'm going to go with it. I found some really nifty puzzles from a company called Heye and I have ordered them to add to my Halloween puzzle collection. We've figured out how to rearrange the furniture so we can put a puzzle together while we watch tv. (It was fitting a table into the space that was the issue, we have a huge sectional sofa that we only use parts of any more.) I'm going to get that room clean and get the table in and get cracking on Halloween cross stitch and puzzle putting together. We've even figured out a barrier to put on the table to keep the cats from stealing puzzle pieces while we're not working on it. I will order the less pricey and more traditional puzzles I want in another month or two along with some Halloween count down calenders I found for sale this year. The Heye ones had to come from Canada, I could only find one of the three I wanted sold in the US.

Happy Haunting!

Nothing beats having a plan.

Unless of course, it's having a really successful plan. ;-)

Finally got a rough idea of where I wanted to put stuff for Halloween. Another thing we did get done yesterday was ordering hay for the winter. Cleaning up the hay barn so new hay could be delivered tomorrow got most of the rest of Halloween that isn't in the storage room exposed.

Rough plan: Graveyard between the two trees on side of front yard, gargoyles in graveyard, maybe grim reaper statue in graveyard, flying reaper overhead . In half circle front yard gazebo on one side and carriage on other. severed heads hung from gazebo and spider, web and shivering wrapped mummy inside (assuming they have any shiverers left by the time I get back to town to buy one, put Irving and his coffin in there if not.) Small skeleton in carriage - make or find pillow for him to sit on. Dead Eye Drake on front porch by stairs. Dropping pirate head screamer somewhere not too far from Dead Eye. The peanut gallery may be in front of the house by the tree with ivy. Lawn spinners out front in half circle wherever they look good. Chair ghoul will probably be under porch, too. Candelabra in guest room window along with candle figures and what have you, something in windows in my sitting room so that no one can see in if the cats pull the curtains down. Assemble arch and see if it will span driveway or if I will have to figure out another place to use it. Various Halloween spinners in whatever trees I have room for them in and whatever I've forgotten wherever it fits.

Now, if only it all works out the way I want it to.

Here's hoping the skunks don't make it into the garage this evening. I'm about tired of them.

grind grind grind

Not nearly as much going on as I would like. I am behind on Halloween, behind on the garden, behind on reading, behind on everything. I did start my Halloween Advent tree again. Way late, but if I post 2-3 pictures a day it'll gt caught up fastish. http://community.webshots.com/user/pumpkinaddict is where it lives.

It has been a bad year for losing animals. I lost all those goats just before Easter (and one cat before then) then I lost a cat just after Easter, then another in September, and within a week of losing the one in Sept. another one had a stroke. She is still with us, but will never be completely well again. No idea if she will get worse enough that we need to put her to sleep next week or if we'll still have her 2 years from now. The vet doesn't think we'll have her more than 2 years and seems to think it likely it'll be a lot less, but we will try whatever is reasonable. This is the price you pay for pets, eventually they get old and die. I have about 8 that are over 14 and after 14 they are kind of touch and go. Sometimes they live to 25, but mostly they don't make it quite that far.

The garden is usually gone by now, but it was so hot in July Aug and Sept that nothing except cucumbers and zucchini were coming in. The tomatoes, which normally start in late July waited until Sept and have only just kicked into high, so I am frantically drying and freezing.

On the good side, while I haven't gotten much of anywhere with the Halloween decorations, I am starting to get a feel for what needs to go where. I haven't decorated since we moved here. That first year I worked a haunted house and was just too tired to haunt my own yard, and last year I was sick in October.

I'm still not sure what tree my severed head collection is going in, or even if they will ultimately end up in a tree, but that's where I'm going to start with them. I know where the graveyard is going, but I don't want it to be the main focus this year. I was fortunate in finding a cheap Christmas lighted cart and horse which can be used for many different holidays with a little creativity. I am planning on trying to make that the focus. Also, I am going to pull out all my pinwheel/spinner/fluttery type Halloween decorations and put them out. They can migrate around the yard when they get in the way of other decorations until I get a feel for everything. Once I get started, I'm sure everything will come to heel pretty quickly.

Halloween reading list

Since I can't keep track of anything that's not on a computer... My current tentative Halloween reading list for 2009 (no, I don't think I'll get them all read, but you never know):

Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
A Night in the Lonesome October - Roger Zelazny
The Halloween Tree - Ray Bradbury
October Country- Ray Bradbury
Dial-A-Ghost - Eva Ibbotson
Prodigal Son - Dean Koontz
Talion: Revenant - Micheal Stackpole
Helter Skelter -Vincent Bugliosi With Curt Gentry
Lair of the White Worm - Bram Stoker
Dark Satanic - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Thunderhead - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
Carrion Comfort - Dan Simmons
Renfield Slave of Dracula - Barbara Hambly
Vampires, Burial, and Death - Paul Barber
The Book of Werewolves - Sabine Baring-Gould
The Werewolf - Montague Summers
Vampires Two Centuries of Great Vampire Stories - Ed. Alan Ryan
The Vampire - Montague Summers
Charles Keepings Book of Classic Ghost Stories
The Old Gods Waken - Manly Wade Wellman
Wildwood Road - Christopher Golden
Ghosts I Have Been - Richard Peck
The Last of the Red-Hot Vampires - Katie MacAlister
The Golem - Chayim Bloch
Vampire Hunter D - Hideyuki Kikuchi
Madwand - Roger Zelazny
Dilvish, the Damned - Roger Zelazny
The changing Land - Roger Zelazny
Vampire The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead - Manuela Dunn Mascetti
Witches and Warlocks - ed. Marvin Kaye
Covenant With The Vampire - Jeanna Kalogridis
Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown -Ed. Marvin Kaye
Weird Tales - Ed. Marvin Kaye
Great Irish Tales of Horror - Ed Peter Haining
The Witchcraft Reader - Ed. Peter Haining
Virtuous Vampires -Ed. Dziemianowicz, Weinberg & Greenberg
A Taste for Blood - Ed. Martin H Greenberg
Book of Vampires - Ed. Stephen Jones
An Old Friend of the Family - Fred Saberhagen
Sunshine - Robin McKinley