Kona's Memorial Tree

Today would have been Kona's 14th birthday. Sadly she passed away in April of this year. We planted a Venus Dogwood tree today in her memory.

She was a wonderful dog and she is dearly missed. 

Tree's Up

Ben got his tree up yesterday.

I wish mine was as simple to arrange. Maybe I'll get to that one later today.

From Dog Warp to Dogwood

I finally got to the end of that "dog warp" that was languishing on the loom. 

And now, inspired by the pretty pink dogwood blossons on a tree in our backyard, 

I've wound a lovely new warp.

Thanks in part to a friend's donation as she destashed, I had a wonderful variety of pinks to work with! Thanks Patricia!

We Have a Pie Tree

Not exactly "in the twinkling of an eye", and I think that little ditty was about cherry pie anyway, but yes, give me 3 long hours in the kitchen and I can "whip up" 4 delicious apple pies.

I began with a large bucket filled with apples from our apple tree. The tree has produced so well this year that apples are being forced off the branches because there is no room for them as their limb-mates also grow. The overburden branches are even breaking under their weight. 

We don't spray so many/most of the apples have little marks on them. People are so accustomed to perfect, blemish free commercially grown apples now that they would likely pass these by. They make excellent pie though. Right now, with them being a little under ripe, they taste a lot like Granny Smith Apples. Tart, just the way I like a pie. A person could add more sugar if that was not to their taste though. 

                         

I worked on these assembly line fashion. I made the first batch of pastry and created four "bottoms", stirred together 4 individual batches of sugar and spices, then got the pastry for the tops ready. Once that was waiting I started on the apples.

                 

Making 4 pies required a lot of apples! I counted 36 apple cores when I was done. I was very glad to have this little gizmo. It's an "Apple Parer Slicer Corer" and it was a gift from my mother when we moved into this house 26 years ago. You push an apple onto it's prongs and then crank the handle. The apple is peeled, cored, and sliced all in one quick motion.

Even with the apple peeling gadget, making four pies still took about 3 hours. By the time the mess was cleaned up and the pies were out of the oven I was too tired to cook dinner and we went out. We did come home to a delicious dessert of warm, tart, apple pie with ice-cream though. It was delicious! So much more flavour than those bland store bought pies, or even ones made with canned pie filling.

'Twas the Night Before

After setting out a plate of cookies for Santa, and a bundle of carrots for his reindeer, the kids checked to be sure the stockings were hung where he would find them.

Of course Elfonda and Zenawii had them sit for their annual Christmas Eve picture in front of the tree, but when bedtime was announced all three begged to be allowed to wait up for Santa. They had full intentions of staying up all night if need be, even though little Neelie was already looking mighty tired.

It wasn't long at all before Neelie was carried off to bed, sound asleep. 

Peanut and Flame didn't quite make it either.

Two Weeks and Counting

Flame kindly moved the advent calendar to the next position

 and I was in for a bit of a shock 

when I realized that there are only two more weeks until Christmas!