Gypsy Breakfast

This morning I was craving biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Perfectly paired with overdone hashbrowns and a bloody mary.

Sundays are the best days.

Finishing touches for the goat house.

Weekend and onward

We're working on the place again this weekend. Yesterday Tim and his partner Dennie came out and pitched in. Tim and I put up two storm doors.

OK, you're saying, "yeah, yeah, big freakin deal. A storm door takes twenty minutes",

and you'd be right. Unless you're talking about the rebuilt dream home from the bones of the '74 double wide.
See.... when we put in the new doors 11 years ago I bought pre-hung standard entry doors. Two 32" doors and one 30" door. So before I bought the storm doors I measured them just to make sure. Yep. 2 32's and a 30. And this is true, as long as you're on the INSIDE. From the outside they're 31 and 29. Yep.

S H I T

My soultion? Yep you guessed it. Circular saw and chop out an inch divot from the brick moulding on the catch side of the doors. We were only doing the 32's because you have to special order a 30 inch door which I have not yet done. So... cool.... now the door fits. That's great, you also have to trip the top lip moulding of the new door trim and mortise out for the strike plate. :D OH and trim the holder bracket for the closer because you have 4" walls instead of 6 so that the inside door will close. Now we're done!

Not so fast.... the knob of the original door now hits the face of the new storm door. (We installed the handles so they wouldn't hit, I anticipated that one. HAH!)


S H I T

What the hell do we do now? Find new handles and locks that are lower profile?

Not in the custom built double wide we don't!

We take a 2" hole saw, mark where the knob hits and with the wood chisel we countersink a hole that the door knob closes right into.

Perfect! Then we just do it all over again for door #2.

Meanwhile..... back at the ranch.........

Crystal and our friend Debra from San Francisco Creek (14 miles south and up the San Francisco Creek drainage rather than the Old Woman Creek drainage which we live on) were banderating our little goat Stanley. We've decided that the breeding process is too wasteful to get to Pygora goats which is Crystal's main goal. Goats that both milk and give fiber. SO, Stanley needed to be neutered. Debra is good at this, having her own herd, so she offered to help. We don't find this easy to decide and do but are sure that the herd (and us) will be much happier in the end and much easier to manage.

The day ended with Tim and Dennie making us dinner (at our house) some Mario Cart Wii, and The Kings Speech. Oh, and one episode of Always Sunny in Philly, which we love.

Today will be cutting and nailing veneer for cabinets. Cleaning stuff up, taking care of the critters, perhaps some drinking, firewood fetching and who knows what else.

Life is good.

Wedding Set

Wedding Set, a set on Flickr.

Here are the promised wedding pictures...

FWD:

They saY thanks for breakfast. Num Nummy!!!

This weekend...

This weekend was full and fun. We had little Mason with us. What a fun experience. We're so not used to having a little one around. He kept us on our toes and was very good.

We spent time in our hammocks, playing mariokart, feeding the goats, and just generally playing our hearts out.

It was fun getting used to having the little goats out there. Stanley (the little white kid) is very loving and assertive. He lets us hold him and likes to be fed treats by hand. Chaco is a navajo angora. He's soooo amazingly soft and cuddly. He's starting to let us hold him more as well. Hazel is a little standoffish still. She's not so sure she wants people to touch her right now. However, I plan to keep working on her until she knows that we're her friends.

The house is clean, Mason went home to his momma, lots of the chores around the house are done. So, I'm thinking it'll be a mellow evening tonight. I hope to do a little target practice when I first get home. There's a couple of guns that we borrowed that I want to try out before we give them back. Then it's relaxing, watching tv, and eating on my "to do" list.

The gang's all here!

Chaco/Stanley/Hazel

Choco is a weathered, polled angora billy and just got here today courtesy of our friend Debra. He's butting heads and making friends with Stanley while Hazel worries about both of them. This will pretty much do it for the animals for the winter at the very least, we'll see how we like the feeding and care and shearing before we bulk up any more on critters.

Except maybe for some chickens.......

Crystal and Hazel the Llama and Stanley the Angora Billy.

We got Hazel and Stanley home from Brad's house just about at dark thanks to the loan of a horsetrailer from my friend Larry. I think they were happy to be out of the trailer. Crystal is feeding them a little alfalfa as a treat while they settle in.

FWD:

Stanley!!!

Key Lime Pie Recipe - Saveur.com

Key Lime Pie Recipe - Saveur.com I think I need to make this soon...

We will soon have pies...

oven roasted pumpkin for pumpkin pies

Crystal the roofer

This capped a weekend of building the shelter for the goats. Crys* spent Sunday nailing all the shingles on the roof while I was building the walls. True to form, we finished up around sunset then retired for the evening to enjoy the supper Crys had been cooking all day. Yet another day in paradise.

My day indoors was happy and satisfying. Hot chilies from the farmers market, pickled tea eggs, and beets and eggs.

When I went to the last Farmer's Market in Alamosa of the season, I saw the most gorgeous red chilies. When I asked about them, he said that they were the "hot" ones. So I bought all he had (which was just one basket). I roasted them on my grill. I put them on the hot grill for a few minutes and turned them only once (twice would have been better). Then I turned off the grill and poured a cup of hot water on everything to let it steam a few minutes. Once I pulled them off the grill and put them under a moist towel they were almost ready to peel already. I peeled them (not using my head) with my bare hands. They were delicious but definitely hot. My hands burned for a day or two afterward, but now they're all bagged up with 3-4 chilies per bag for all my winter recipes.

I've been wanting to pickle eggs and beets since I found the recipe in one of my old cookbooks. They have to be refrigerated so I only did 4 quart sized jars. I tweaked the recipe just a bit. Sacrificing appearances for flavor, I added balsamic vinegar instead of cider vinegar. Balsamic has a way of bringing out the rich earth flavor in beets as well as making the sweet shine through. The recipe is now written inside my pickling book so that I'll remember the next time I make it.

The front batch of jars were supposed to be pickled Chinese tea eggs. However, my eggs were too fresh. So when I pealed them, I pulled off much of the lovely tea color I'd been working to achieve. I used 3 of the hot red chilies from the farmers market, various pickling spices, white wine, and vinegar to pickle them. Everything I've read says that they taste best if you wait at least two weeks before eating them.

I hate waiting.....

Our only meal of the day... hearty and delicious...

I've been craving Nino's lately. In order to satisfy the craving without paying the cost, I decided to make homemade enchiladas, Spanish rice, and refried beans. What I want to learn sometime soon is how to make my own enchilada sauce. I've heard that it's easy... Does anybody have a favorite recipe?

Mmmmm... tomato preserves

Mmmmm... tomato preserves

I found a great recipe online to make homemade garden fresh tomato preserves. When I was little my mom brought home canned tomato preserves from one of my grandma's. I think it was her mom, but I'm not sure. She didn't do a sealed can, she did a wax seal. At any rate, I tried this recipe for the first time about 4 years ago. I was afraid that it wouldn't taste like I remembered. However, it was PERFECT. So this year, I did 10 half pints with the last red tomatoes I could find at the farmers market.

This recipe is from pickyourown.org

Denny's and Tim's work for the day

This was a fun day :D. It's always good when you get to do the finishing up part that goes really fast.

We started this project a while ago, and the wedding happened in the middle and we just got back to it yesterday. We started with Crys* and I putting in all those steel posts, and then digging in the wood posts and setting the two gates in. Yesterday Tim came out and helped me run all the wire fencing. It went FAST! We had the fence up in about an hour. Then we started on the temp shelter for the critters.

About the time we were digging the first post hole for that Crys* got back from the farmers market in Alamosa and some wood gathering and helpfully told us that if we put the shelter where we'd decided to that Choco, Stanley and Hazel could just jump on it and walk out.

CRAP

So we decided to put it in the middle, and while laying it out I decided to make it permanent rather than temporary so we set GIANT MONSTER poles. I'll finish the shelter this week since I have to buy some lumber to do that and no one is open on Sundays around here.

It was fun. I ended up really beat after this, and so glad to have had all the help putting it up.

Surprise, it's like winter!

My worksite today. About noon and 1/2 mile from Greyback Peak/ radio tower

Strawberry Cobbler made the whole house smell good...

Strawberry cobbler...

I found the recipe online at SouthernPlate.com

and it sounded so good that I decided to give it a try. It was wonderful. I only wish I had used a round baking pan because I think it would have held the ingredients better. Next time I'll know.

Poor flowers... though I am so happy to see the winter storm

Snowing at home!!!

It had rained all day... a few snowflakes fell...and then

The sun is shining through...

However, this was just for a moment before the snow started falling.

The first fire I've built this season...

It was down to 61 in the bedroom... eek... time for fire!

I spent the day at home waiting for the satellite Internet people. Wonderful Thursday. They didn't show AGAIN...but nevertheless, I enjoyed the day at home, the first snow, the fire, and working on my fiber business.

First bit of snow

That's snow! right out our bedroom window...

Well, it's hard to see in this post. I was just so excited to see it. For some reason, I've just been so looking forward to winter this year. All except for the wearing more clothes bit. The snow, the fires inside, the hot food, snowboarding, knitting, relaxing... sounds so good.

Our new patio furniture, courtsey of Donna and wedding cash :)

So we get this kind gift from our friend Donna in the mail.... and have to go online to Target. We're looking at all the stuff we need.... all the sensible things...... all the logical things..... all the stuff that would be reasonable to get.....

and then we see...

THIS!!!!!

And we just had to have the set. Thanks yall

I love sundays... esp after Taos Wool Fest and during autumn...

This was right before it started snowing and getting C O L D . The sun was warm, the breeze was light and playful, and the trees were turning a lovely shade of gold. It was that beautiful autumn day when everything is perfect and caps a lovely weekend.