Knock knock, who's there?

The sheriff, that's who. There's nothing like the sheriff knocking on your door at 8:00 a.m. to get your heart pumping! I don't know why police/sheriff frighten me so. Even when I know I did nothing wrong they still make me shaky when I have to interact with them. He wanted to know who owns the property behind us. I told him and later saw him, our landlord, and another sheriff's car driving down the dirt road behind our house. I was so curious as to what was going on, worried that maybe there would be a fugitive hiding out in one of our sheds or something. Come to find out some kids or someone had stolen a truck and ditched it down by the river then lit it on fire. Ha! I had to laugh, even though I shouldn't. So that was a relief.

Anyway, down to business now with this blogging. I have a bunch of pictures and things that I'm just going to throw in one post. I don't have time to sit and do a bunch of different posts as I have a million other things I could be doing. So here it goes, short and sweet. It's freezing. We had our first snow. Canning season is officially over for me. You should have seen what my apples/applesauce did to my stovetop. Well, you can see because I'll show you:

Life has been crazy with work and I didn't have time to immediately clean it so I sprayed it with oven cleaner and thought I'd let it sit a while. Christian, who just digs this kind of thing, got out his pumpkin scraper and started working away at it one day after school:

Well, that evening I was still working and totally engrossed when I heard Ryan doing the dishes and scrubbing the stove. I was so happy because I knew he'd get it clean. He has special powers I tell you. He can do anything, in my book. Sure enough he delivered. You're my hero Ryan. We now have a sparkling clean stove and 28 quarts of applesauce. Life is good.

I did a quick project that is kind of cute. I've become addicted to the DI and went to three in the area one day last week and totally scored. My favorite finds were a grain/wheat grinder-$3 (nice and sturdy plug-in) and a black Bell skateboard helmet for Christian for $1.50--both of these items were like new! A helmet in the store costs at least $19.99 and I don't know how much a wheat grinder like that costs new but I am so happy to have my own. I have a little hand grinder but that's just for emergencies and isn't super practical for my needs otherwise. I also found this cute little table for $2.50. I slapped on some "Sparrow" paint by Behr and now this is what we have:

Our walnut tree was very fruitful this year. I had the kids go out and collect the walnuts. They got a 5 gallon bucket full plus another small bucket full. We're going to have a walnut-cracking party (like we did growing up) one of these evenings so I can freeze some for baking, but I was thinking that we should just keep most of them in the shell for food storage. Does anyone know how long they last in the shell if kept in a cool place?

We have a friend who grows pumpkins and he let us go pick some last night. It was freezing (I don't know why Gwen is wearing flip-flops!). We quickly got some for carving and decorating then zoomed on home eager to get out of the cold. Ryan helped the 3 younger kids with theirs while I made dinner then I took Gwen to the junior high to go see a play about zombies. Good times:


Happy Halloween! I have a feeling we're going to freeze our tooshies off Halloween night but oh well. It will be fun and good memories for the kids. Now that I've got my blogging taken care of it's off to the kitchen to make a sweet autumn treat for our "pumpkin" friend to thank him for the pumpkins and then I'm going to paint something else I found at the DI--an old rocking chair. I'm really excited for this project as it involves that yummy Osnaburg cotton I was telling you about.