red and glean

I went apple picking with my mom this afternoon, gleaning to be exact (picking the leftover apples after they have been harvested). It was soggy and muddy out there, but I think that made it all the better.

This year's apples are very sweet and very red. These are Galas.

I love finding a beautiful view that is uninterrupted by anything like phone lines or houses.

I found so many apples that I don't even know what to do with them all!

We found more than just apples out in the orchard. How perfect is the mud packed center of this nest? So amazing!

I love how it looks down the rows of apples.

  

I just can't get enough of these beauties. Nothing like a delicious Michigan apple!



suck it up



It is a sad and pathetic rainy sort of day out perfect for sitting in bed all day. I amazingly am out of bed, however, and am about to conquer the mess that is my apartment, ugh. I almost gave up on it, because the cable was out for a minute. I came to the reasonable conclusion that the chainsaw I heard buzzing away outside was surely the cause of it and I rushed to look out all my windows to see if a cable was cut somewhere. How could I do anything without my TV background noise pushing me along!? Then, it came back on...day saved! I like that my cat's follow me around when I clean as if they are "helping" me....even though most of the messes I clean up are directly or indirectly caused by them. They follow me until I get out the vacuum, then they run in absolute terror as if it was the end of the world and they were going to be sucked up into some black hole. Loud chainsaw, no prob, but a little vacuuming and it's hiding in the darkest corner of the closet tail tucked in. Even a hairdryer, blender, or a electric drill has no effect on them, but seeing me do as little as plug in the vacuum strikes fear. So now I must go on with my sad rainy day cleaning and traumatizing cats.



Irvin, on a much better day than this.



free time

This weekend was gorgeous outside. I know, I know it's fall, and I complain about fall. Why is it every ones favorite season? eh, well maybe in my old age I am beginning to see it's perks. Anyway, I enjoyed a very lovely weekend with tons of family. It concluded with some apple picking and a lovely walk with my brother and his family. Oh and it was all in my parent's yard. Seriously, people pay to go to these places to pick apples and walk around. I,on the other hand, go "home" and hang out for free and eat all the apples I want and chuck the cores into the woods as I walk. Simple things that make me happy, and make me want to live back in the country more and more.

awkward awesome thursday, the ups and downs in life

It's Thursday!!! Almost weekend time. Here is a beautiful list of the things that were both awkward and awesome that happened to me this week.

Awkward
- Almost falling down down the stairs because I sneezed at the top of them.
- Actually falling down the stairs like two days later because I wore slippery shoes, and it hurt real bad, and I cried, and I called my husband at work to calm me down. Did I mention these are solid oak stairs...yep they are, ouch! I have the most delightfully colored bruises now.
- Waking up from sleep to do a google search for the difference between your and you're because i was convinced there was a third one...my husband waking up minutes later to ask what i was doing and explaining to me that there is a third one, it's yore...not what i meant. Turns out I was thinking of there their and they're. Maybe it's time for an English brush up.
- Bringing my cat on car rides with me and having the neighbors stare at me like i am a crazy cat lady. So maybe I am, but not the scary old lady kind, i don't wear puff painted ironed on sweatshirts with kittens and my house does not have a cat smell, okay?
- Trying on a dress that my grandma wore when she was about my age and it fitting perfectly, then realizing that she had four children by that time. I have none, and it's not that I want the kids, but what size am I going to be if I have four children?
- Finding some sort of egg sack on shirt hanging in my closet that I had worn no more than twelve hours before. I quickly removed these spider? eggs and went into the bathroom to flush them when I turned and saw a spider hanging from the ceiling starting me down as if I was killing her babies in front of her. So I flushed her too. Sorry.


Awesome
- Getting clothes I ordered online delivered two days earlier than it said the estimated arrival would be.
- Sorting through old boxes at my parent's house and feeling like I am shopping because i am finding so many awesome things to take home with me that I forgot I had.
- Having the city send me a check in the mail for $155 because apparently I did my taxes wrong and they owed me. Sweet!
- Eating rice crispy treats for breakfast EVERY morning...it's cereal, it's breakfast food....right?
- Space heaters. It's cold, and I don't like to be cold.
- Ice cream with berries... fresh picked from my parents yard and smooshed up over vanilla ice cream. It's just about the best thing ever.

squirreling it away

Like a squirrel preparing for the long winter ahead, I too have been feeling the urge to stock up, so last night was pasty night in my house. Nope, not those little sticker things with tassels, although, I don't know which my husband would have preferred....hmmm. No, these are the super delicious, stuffed pastry, northern Michigan kind that you eat, and i made a ton!

The recipe that I roughly used told me that it would make about 20-30, so i cut it in half. Somehow, though, I still ended up with 20-30 filling mixture, and enough dough for only half that. The crust is just a basic kind of pie-like recipe.

The filling is made of a mix of ground beef and pork, salt and pepper to taste, melted butter, cubed potatoes, rutabaga, carrot, and chopped onion. So simple.

 

It was so much filling that I barely had a bowl big enough to mix it in.

We ate a bunch for dinner (although one is really the appropriate serving size) and then I froze the rest, including the excess filling to use later, for winter.

That is if I can resist their deliciousness until then ( had one again for lunch today!).

And like a good troll (a Michigander that lives under or rather south of the Mackinac Bridge), I give my pasties a generous helping of gravy. YUM! Oh and check out the creeper in the background of this last picture...it's my cat Irvin soooo wanting in on this.

falling in

Labor Day is the unofficial start to fall and it seems that the weather knows it, but I sure don't want to believe it, not yet anyway. A few days ago i broke into a sweat just sweeping the kitchen floor, it was 87 degrees in my apartment and over 90 outside. Now I am shivering under my covers in my bed; it's in the 40's this morning. Last night I drank hot chocolate while cuddling under a blanket. I just got the hang of summer and now it is rapidly slipping away. Fall has never been my favorite season. Why would it be? It's always been the start to school- yuck!(even though i haven't been in school for years now) and always begins the increasingly faster onset of winter, winter in Michigan. Everyone else around me, however, seems to think fall is the greatest. It's all about "hoodie weather" and apple cider and brightly colored leaves. All of those things are great, but give me spring any day with it's green grass and warm days, that really aren't that warm but just seem that way because we all forgot that outside temperatures could feel like that. The thing is, I do like this cold feeling right now. I like the heaviness of my comforter on me while I sleep. I like the idea of being able to turn on the oven in my kitchen again. I like being able to wear clothes in my house, something that 90 degree days don't always allow me. I had completely forgotten that i had sweaters, but in an effort to locate warmth, there they were in a part of the closet i don't usually venture to. I guess, like it or not, those sweaters are coming out, because fall is here and winter will soon be on it's way. So with the start of this new season, a season where I will have more inside time and dark days to fill up, i am starting this blog. I have no idea what the hell I am doing yet, so be patient please.