YAK YAK YAK

Have you decided what you are having for Thanksgiving?  It's less than two weeks away!! We haven't really talked about it. Rumor has it we are having it here at Ravenwood with 6 to8 people, but I'm not sure our plans are solid. This week I made some crescent rolls - I had never made them before and I was testing the recipe to see if these would be the rolls I would make for turkey day. I don't have a picture - mine turned out ugly because I had to roll them out and then bunch it back and roll it out again. The dough didn't like that. I think I will make them though because they tasted fabulous. Today I bought a pastry mat (I feel like a real cook now!!) You have to roll the dough into a 12 inch circle - with the mat I will have the right measurement.. Next time I make them I am going to make sure I only roll them out once - roll them to 14 or 16 inches (instead of 12) and make 16 rolls instead of 12. The dough is real thick and rich so I think more rolls would be better and it is easier to cut 16. I have found the most wonderful squash recipe - of course it's Skinnytaste - it's roasted seasoned winter squash medley I only used butternut and it was fantastic!!! I already plan on making it again. I made the Skinnytaste lasagna soup. There was a sausage incident.... so it says to use sweet Italian chicken sausage. I looked at the store and they only  had two that were Italian flavors but one was an odd size package and I would have to buy two which I though cost too much. The other one had massive amounts of fat - I could have just used regular sausage if I was going to put all that fat in there. So I picked out smoked chicken sausage by a local company Miller. It was on sale, one package was enough, and had low fat. The sausage is really good - I will buy it again but not for the this soup. In all the time it took me to decide what to use it never occurred to me that smoked sausage might not be the best thing. I was too focused on price and ounces and fat.... so my soup tasted like hot dogs and spaghetti. Not great - edible but not what I expected. So, if you make it -  buy the right sausage flavor haha. The Boozy Apricots I told you about are done today 

of course I tasted one. A lot of times when you soak fruit in alcohol, the fruit ends up tasting like lighter fluid. These don't - they turned out delicious. Tonight I will have some apricot liqueur with dinner. It's a great recipe and it would make a fun homemade gift. The recipe says you can dry the apricots and dip them in melted chocolate - I will have to see what Scott thinks about that because I think they are good without it.
Last weekend Scott and I went to a moving sale - the people live down the street from us and they are moving to....COLORADO!! We found three things to buy - and got a great price!!!

8 dollars for this scoop

$8 for this one too - it has metal on the back

$125 pie safe

They had used the pie safe as a TV cabinet so they had taken off the top doors. They also took off the bottom doors and *gasp* put Plexiglas in them. Luckily they saved the doors and all the pieces so Scott is going to take out the Plexiglas and reattach the bottom doors.  This is the liquor cabinet. We put it in the dining room which means the hutch had to go in the kitchen

before

put the deacons bench in the dining room too

before

after

 the door looks hidden but it's just the shadow - there is enough room there to go in and out no problem! They also had a day bed that I really want - but I'm not sure if I really need one. It would be cute as a couch in the craft room but I already have a lot of fabulous furniture in there. I told Scott - I have to just walk away from it haha

 Kroger had bags of little pumpkins on sale for $1 - normally $4.99 so I bought three to fill my bowl!! Perfect for Thanksgiving!!   I am going to make some Santa pillows for one of my baskets - I think they would look great in the dining room! 
The rest of that day we raked - good grief.

before

look at the size of those leaves

see that ridge of leaves - Scott is 6 foot - see how high and long that ridge is!!!

At one point I was laying on the ground looking up at the trees and I took this picture Ü We raked all afternoon and then moved furniture - ughhhhhhhh

I found this picture on Scott's phone - it's from when my family was here - in the background is the West Baden Springs Hotel in French Lick Indiana. Scott, Carol, Brian, my mom Diana,  Joel and me.
Orientation was exciting. I need to buy so many things for school - it's crazy. I have to pay for a background check, drug screen, uniform, books, immunizations, stethoscope, CPR etc.  Too much money. I went this week and did my drug test, ordered the background check, had a physical which meant I had the first hepatitis B shot (there are three) a tetanus booster, had two vials of blood drawn to see if I have immunity to MMR and chicken pox plus my first (of two) tuberculosis tests. My left arm was just going to fall off. I got my flu shot a few weeks ago - thank goodness. I go back in 3 weeks to start the next tuberculosis test (they put some stuff just under your skin and two days later you have to go back so they can make sure you didn't react to it - I had to go in this morning for the check on my first test) then I go back in 4 weeks to get my second hepatitis B shot. I have felt a little under the weather because of the shots - I didn't think as an adult that I would have a reaction to it but I did. Might just be because I had so many done at once. I have my CPR class in January - I've done that class several times in the past.  I still have some stuff to do but those things have to be done early so I needed to get them started.
Last but not least - stitching. I am working on Mosey N Me - Father Christmas. I have wanted to stitch this forever - I bought it from ebay quite awhile ago and stuck in in my "to do" basket. Well, I pulled it out and got all the stuff together. I pulled the pattern out and growled - it is a hand drawn chart. U G H

I can do it  - so I started it. I love his face so I did the white first and then did his face. The directions say to do the  eye over one - well it doesn't really SAY it... this is all it says, .

but the stitches around it should be larger to indicate which stitches exactly are over one - so it was a little confusing. So I tried it over two and the eye was too big. I did it over one and it was beautiful. I tried to do the backstitching and it was not fitting on his face the way the picture shows. I tried several times - finally counting my rows and the patterns rows - perfect. I counted the rows on the picture on the front - there is an extra row on the face on the cover which is why my backstitch was crowded together.

see how it's crowded together - looks attached

cover photo

Not happy about this - at all. I am not tearing it out to add a line to the face so I scrunched up the nose a little.

my scrunched up nose

Also, I think now that I see it I should have put it on a darker fabric. Damn it.
I asked on Facebook if anybody would be willing to sell me their Merry One by Plum Street Samplers because I can't pay $30 for just a pattern - it comes with the thread but I hear it's not enough to use two threads which I prefer so I planned on using my own thread. I was hoping someone would sell me theirs. Well a woman named Shannon offered to let me borrow her pattern - of course I jumped on that offer!! She felt she took too long to send it to me (which is crazy!! She could have taken forever - it was nice of her to let me borrow it!!!) so she sent me the kit - I am one lucky girl!! Thanks so much to Shannon - you are so nice!!!  I had emailed Brenda of With Thy Needle and asked her to convert her One Starry Night needlepunch into a cross stitch pattern - so when she released it I felt obligated to buy it (plus I LOVE it) so  I ordered it and the RED fabric!! So exciting!! 123Stitch has it on sale and if you get 30 ct Aztec red (which I did - save money where I can , since I need it for school!!) it is also on sale, just don't forget to recalculate the picture size!!
On a weird and funny note I have to tell you that I bought new underwear - know how they always add white ones? Who likes white ones? I wait until I have a few pairs and then I dye them HAHA One time I did them green - this time I did them brown. Really I would have liked to do purple or something but I just used what I already had here, I have brown for dying cross stitch fabric HA!! Anyway -  I use a tablespoon of dye and a tablespoon of salt in enough hot water to cover them. I just leave them a few minutes and they always turn out swirly tye dyed looking. It makes me smile every time I get a pair out of the drawer - because who dyes their underwear? Yeah - ME that's who HAHA Ü
Well, this super long post makes up for the last short one I did. I guess I better go do some homework!! Have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for stopping by!