Some various, random and assorted items:
Fall Fruit Crostatas (a Rachael Ray recipe)
Crockpot Turkey and Black Bean Chili (which was named Black Bean and Pumpkin Chili at Taste of Home, but I renamed it because of the pumpkin, Tim is not a fan, but you can’t taste it!)
Coffeehouse Cookies (using leftover Halloween candy)
Crockpot Spinach Artichoke Dip (football food, baby!)
Living in the Deep South, we don’t have much fall and winter. I’ve lived here all my life, so I’m accustomed to it. As odd as it sounds, I’m very cold-natured, but I love the colder times of the year! Tonight, the weathermen are predicting a low temperature of 39. I’m ready for it to be 32 or below, but I’ll take what I can get 🙂
If the prognosticators are correct (and that trusty farmer’s almanac), they are saying we are going to have a colder than normal winter. Fine by me! As long as I don’t have to be out in it, LOL! For one thing, I think we need more cold weather here to kill the fleas and ticks, and mostly the mosquitoes.
For another thing, there’s so many things I love about this time of year. Enough for a bulleted blog post! Here’s some of the things iLike 😀 about fall and winter:
* wearing sweatshirts, sweatpants, jeans, boots
* wrapping up in my soft, cozy blanket
* smelling and feeling hot towels and sheets right out of the dryer
* watching some of the leaves finally change color a bit here
* once the leaves are off the trees, I can see all of my pretty birds in the backyard
* baking!
* football season 🙂
* burning candles and having them make our home seem that much more cozy
* if it gets REALLY cold, we might actually turn on the gas logs and have a fire
* washing dishes in hot soapy water, just to warm my hands up
* hot apple cider with red hots
* or hot cocoa with marshmallows
* making soup, stew, chili and homemade bread
Ok, I’m sure there are plenty more, but those are the first ones that come to mind. How about you, do you have a favorite thing about this time of the year?
I bought a new set of sheets for our bed a couple of weeks ago. Exciting, huh?! Believe it or not, it’s not something I do often. I change our sheets weekly, but I take the set off, wash and dry them, and put them right back on! I don’t change them out to a different set very often (I’ve blogged about this in the past, here, three years ago), and really – I only have a couple of sets that fit our bed (ours is a queen and the guest room is a double).
Anyway, I was always under the assumption that the higher the thread count, the softer the sheets were. I never paid any attention to the type of cotton – 100% cotton, cotton blend, Egyptian cotton, sateen, etc. Apparently I should have!
I washed our new sheets and put them on the bed, excited to have nice new crisp clean soft sheets. WHAT? Soft, you ask? They’re 450 thread count (100% cotton sheets), so I assumed they’d be soft. But — they’re not! They’re rough, scratchy and not at all what I had hoped for. So, what have I been doing?
Washing them. Repeatedly. The first week I had them, I washed them 3 times! And they are getting softer. Of course, not fast enough for me 🙂 To be fair, I had some old jersey knit sheets on our bed, which are very very soft. And I’m sure my last set that I used regularly before that have been washed so many times, they can’t help but be soft. But I was really hoping for these to be soft, right out of the package.
So – help me out for the time in the future when I venture out to buy new sheets again. What do you use? The highest thread count you can afford? Are you sure to buy Egyptian cotton? Sateen cotton? Some kind of blend? Leave me a comment and let me know!
P.S. Please note that flannel sheets aren’t “allowed” here, because I live with the human heater (aka Tim). Mr. Hot Natured thinks flannel sheets and electric blankets are horrid creations and aren’t allowed in the house under any circumstance! 😀
Who would have ever thought that our Saints would ever be undefeated, with an 8-0 record? Not us! Tim is a lifelong fan and I’ve been a fan as long as I’ve known Tim (15 football seasons and counting). The Saints have never been to a Super Bowl, so we’re really hoping that this is their year. They went to the NFC Championship game once (Jan 2007), and we went to that game, but they lost to the Bears. Maybe this year they can do it 🙂
Gotta record this here for posterity’s sake – it’s never happened before!
Go Saints Go!
My favorite fan, at last year’s training camp (it was HOT!)
You know, they say that men make the best chefs!
I actually like to cook, and I cook the vast majority of our food. Tim is great about helping out if I ask, although I try not to do that too often. He works really hard to provide us a great life and part of my job is to take care of the house and cooking (easy, huh, I know — I’ve got it made!). He does like to grill and he will always fix food for us when I’m sick or not feeling well. He makes a mean breakfast too!
The other day, he told me that he wanted to make some homemade salsa. We have a neighbor who makes some and brings it down for Tim… it is really hot and spicy and I can’t eat it. But Tim loves it! He said he wanted to try to make some, so I got him some fresh tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers and onions at the store over the weekend. He left out the cilantro, as an ode to me who dislikes it intensely! The first batch was really good, we thought. And now, just a couple of days later, he’s made another batch. This time, he’s trying canned tomatoes versus fresh (which we know won’t be as good, but this time of year, a lot cheaper and a lot easier to come by). He’s still tinkering with his spices and proportions, and he hasn’t measured the first thing yet, so a hard and fast recipe is not going to happen. I’m just really enjoying tasting the results and watching him have fun in the kitchen 😀
So, tell me, who does the cooking in your house? Vote or leave me a comment and let me know!
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Tim and I said a few days after we brought Beau home from the rescue that we almost wished we had waited to name him. They were calling him “Sonny Boy” at the doggie foster home where he was living, uh, not a name we would ever call him in a million years! I had already picked out Beau (short for Beauregard), but after spending some time with him, we’ve come up with several different names that we could have named him, based on his personality.
One of those is Bob. As in Bob Barker. Because the dog barks. All.The.Time! Beau is a very vocal dog and we have decided that he likes to hear himself speak, bark, howl and sing! I’ve posted a video of him before, singing along to Happy Birthday to you. Here’s a short clip of a normal day at our house.
Tim was trying to warm up some leftovers for lunch, and Beau decided he wanted to play. Or more precisely, to bark:
