Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Monday, October 30, 2017

Happy National Cat Day!

What are the chances that National Cat Day and Gratuitous Kitteh Monday BOTH fall on the same day?

Chaz doesn't seem to care...


And Miss Thang only cares if there is food involved...


IOW, cats will be cats and don't give a hot fart WHAT day it is. Pretty precise, if I must say so myself. :-)

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

The Garden in October

Most everything is tidied up for the year in the yard and garden, although we still have one more "after mow" to do on the lawn.

Beautiful colors
The grass seed w/fertilizer and warm weather made the lawn completely take off. We are forced to give it one, last mow or else it will turn into an unmanageable jungle. Usually in the past, we actually get COLD weather in October, which keeps the grass from growing too much, but noooooo. This year and last year have been unseasonably warm.

We haven't even had a freeze yet, and it doesn't look like we'll even get one in the next 15-day weather forecast (BTW, our average first frost is Oct 16th...even last year brought us a freeze by the end of October). I still have all of my bulbs to plant and hope to get to those next week, so I guess if there's a silver lining...

Green, red, orange, yellow...
In some exciting news, my pink, potted Angel's Trumpet bloomed this month! I bought this thing from a lady at the farmer's market this past summer and she swore it would do great up here in a pot. She said you just bring the pot in the garage and it goes dormant over the winter. Can you believe that?

When I bought it, it was only 8" tall. Next year, this thing will get bigger. I think it needs a name...

Pink Angel's Trumpet in a pot
We had a couple of Angle's Trumpets w/yellow flowers ("Charles Grimaldi") growing in our yard in Florida and the flowers smelled A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! They would make the whole yard smell like lemony magnolia flowers. Heady.

Anyway, the fall colors are "peaking" here in our area right now and one cannot help but be amazed at its beauty. Soon, they will be gone and the cycle will begin again.

Tranquil beauty

Monday, October 23, 2017

Gratuitous Kitteh Monday

I know; I know....where have I been?

I've been around mostly doing my fall yard clean-up and cooking good things, which for some reason I never am motivated enough to take pictures of and post. Or I do take pictures and I don't like how they look or I just don't post, or it tasted good, but just didn't LOOK good.

Anyway, kittehs are great. Miss Thang still continues to benefit from just a smidge of Prozac every morning. The weather is cooling off, so both felines are enjoying the annual arrival of the morning fire-place fire, which they both enjoy settling next to after their breakfasts.

Halloween is just around the corner, so this cartoon is perfect for the occasion. It's about right...yes? :-)

Friday, October 06, 2017

Soapy Friday - Anti-Itch Jewelweed Soap

Whew! Today is the day where we do our “last cut” of the lawn for the season and I could not be happier.

The past couple of weeks have been busy aerating, shoveling truckloads of fill dirt, topsoil, moving gravel, and purchasing grass seed, fertilizer, and lime. In the fall, we prep the lawn for overseeding in September, then we wait for that one window of opportunity for a good, steady rain (usually in the first 10 days of October) to put down seed.  

Rain is forecasted for after Saturday (thank god, we need it!) and tomorrow we seed! This all sounds very productive, but when you have a 2 acre LAWN, it’s a major undertaking every fall. We do it all ourselves, too. After we put seed down, we don't cut it until next spring.

Okay, on to soap, shall we?

First, necessity is the mother of invention. I ran out of my favorite body butter from Trader Joe’s and that means I need more. I’ve been wanting to make a real, body butter and have all the ingredients, so I guess this is now a priority.

Need to make body butter!
I made some amazing-smelling “Cinnamon Bun” soap a few weeks ago. It was originally something else, but I didn’t like how it turned out and cut the tops off. So, I just piped some white soap on top and renamed it!

"Cinnamon Bun" cold processed soap
Been making Halloween skull bath bombs w/blood-red embeds. These are so fun to make and are even more fun in the bathtub!

Every day I'm hustlin'
My pride-and-joy lately is my “Anti-Itch Jewelweed Soap” and salve. I finally got around to making a batch of jewelweed soap using jewelweed-infused olive oil and jewelweed tea. I scented one batch with tea tree and peppermint essential oil, and the other with lavender and lemon. This is not meant to be an "all over/body" soap. It's meant to be used on breakouts of poison ivy, psoriasis, eczema, etc.

Jewelweed Soap and Salve
That salve is worth its weight in gold because it works! I’ve been a life-long sufferer of the occasional flare-up of psoriasis or eczema and I put this salve on an itchy spot that I’ve had for a very long time. It’s been 2 weeks, and it’s almost completely healed and no itch! And this is after 2-3 years of dealing with this same spot with hydro-cortisone cream that didn't work. It’s made with jewelweed-infused olive oil, beeswax, tea tree essential oil and peppermint essential oil.

I can't wait for that soap to finish curing so I can share these amazing goodies with friends who also suffer from psoriasis and eczema.  I have a feeling I will be making A LOT more of this next summer!



 

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