Field Trip!

LOL, I don't get out much.

No, really, I don't. On Saturday we drove over to Alabama to look at a camper and were so near to a family friend's house we had to stop by and visit. J had called to see if he was home, but hadn't mentioned that I was with him. When T saw me in the car he started yelling! He couldn't believe I was there! He got a couple of phone calls while we were there, and told the people, most of who don't even know me, that I had actually come to see him. Haaaaa.

I like being at home. It's my sanctuary, where I'm comfortable. Everything I need is here, my books (Kindle), crafts, internet, gardening, my back porch, my yard, my bed, big screen tv with Netflix...
Everything I don't need is not here: The %$*^# Public.

Well, but, sometimes I need (ie want) things that I don't have so I have to just deal with The %$*^# Public and go get it.

In this case, I had a list of things I wanted from Ikea, namely countertops, and also drawer pulls/knobs.
We were able to re-use the cabinets, but because of the different lay-out the old countertops won't fit. Such a shame. (Not really, I don't really like the old countertops.)
I didn't like any of the home improvement store's in-stock countertops, so I checked out Ikea's countertops online and found one I thought I liked. I thought it was a lot thinner than it is, because I have no real concept of measurement, 1 1/2 inches sounds thinner than it looks. It looks 3 or 4 inches thick to me.

I also thought it was more shiny/glossy than it is. I don't know if I'm going to like these, either.
But I got them anyway because I still liked it better than the ones at the home improvement store, and they were cheap. I got the longer ones, about 8 feet, for $69.00 each. Total, not per square foot, like the quartz or granite or other ones that had also.
Total $138.00 for new kitchen countertops.

 I got these drawer pulls and knobs. I hope they match well. I didn't see any Fagleboda knobs.

I also got a couple of these black under-the-cabinet railing, hooks, and one of the white metal oblong containers, and 2 of the white metal bucket containers. They seemed like a good idea at the time, and mostly, they look good, but I don't really know what I'm going to use them for. The idea is to keep stuff up off your counters, but all the stuff that's on my counters now, I don't plan to have on my counters in the new kitchen. Oh well, I'm sure there'll be stuff ended up in them.

We looked at lighting for over the sink, but I couldn't decide what I wanted, so didn't get anything.

When I get to go to Ikea, that means J gets to go to The Varsity.  If you're not familiar, the Varsity is an Atlanta landmark, open since 1928, on the campus of Georgia Tech University. (The place was Vintage when my Uncle went to Georgia Tech in the 1960's!)
They're famous for hollering "What'll ya have, what'll ya have, what'll ya have!" when you walk up - and you better know what you want, they aren't patient - Varsity chili dogs, onion rings, and Frosted Oranges (milkshakes that taste like the Push-up ice creams).

I wasn't feeling the chili today, so I got a "naked" dog.

Pin Craft - Bunny in a Jar

I saw this chocolate-bunny-in-a-jar idea at Pinterest some time back and loved the look of it, the use of the Mason jar, and best of all that it's sooooo simple and easy, using items you can get from the Dollar store, but looks so cute.

My cousin and Aunts (whose last/maiden name is Mason, ftw) will love one of these as a little gifty for Easter.

I used some Mason jars that I can no longer use for canning, one has a chip in the rim, the other has a defect in the side of the jar that looks almost like a crack, but isn't, but I wouldn't want to risk it so I use it for candy or a flower vase, or now a crafty-gift.  Otherwise I'll make some more of these using little mayonnaise jars that aren't suitable for canning either.

The original plan just uses paper Easter basket grass, or you could use the plastic stuff. I had decided, for some reason, that I wanted to use Edible Easter Grass.

I had seen it before, but couldn't remember where. I finally found it again at CVS pharmacy (on sale this week 2/$3.00, regular price $1.99 each).

It has the consistency of styrofoam and doesn't taste that great. It also contains Aspartame, which I'm not a fan of. Next time I think I would just stick with the paper grass.

I set the bunny in, and added Sixlets candies. Both can be found at the Dollar Tree store. You can use M&M's or any other pastel colored candies also.

I looked for some free Easter printables and found these at TheGirlCreative.com. There are a lot more Easter label/tag printables at my favorite place in the world Pinterest.

I was going to go upstairs to look through my ribbon to see if I had anything Easter-y but then I saw a roll of Jute twine sitting in front of me, so I just wrapped it around a few times and knotted it off.

We Interrupt This Kitchen Remodel

Whew, what a weekend! One little ceiling repair that turned into a design project, that turned into a wiring project.

(Eventually I realized it wasn't a weekend, but the middle of the week, but J hasn't been off 2 days in a row since March 4th. It seemed like a weekend, and I kept thinking, we have to get this done before he has to go back to work Monday. Or, what seemed like Monday to me, although it was really Thursday.)

So as you probably know by now, we live in an older house, built back in the 1930's or 40's, as near as we can determine.
When we bought it, it was two apartments, one up and one down. We thought it had been remodeled into the apartments at some point, but the more we try to turn it "back" into a single-family residence, the more I think it was built as two apartments from the start.

At any rate, the staircase between the floors is just one, long, tall, ugly, narrow space. The whole width all the way up is only about three feet wide, and the ceiling doesn't slope, but is 16 feet straight up overhead.

I tried, over the years, to do something to try to fix it. Tried some decorating, but none of it looked right. Too low, too high, too wonky, I don't know.
I tore the sheetrock off the lower half, thinking we could open up the walls and make it not so enclosed, but that didn't work out either.

So, basically, I did what I usually do, decided to ignore it, and move on to other projects that would go better.

In the meantime, before we got the roof replaced there had been a leak over the staircase, that made an ugly place on the ceiling.
Then, another time, I had a guy out to look at the furnace and that idiot stepped through the ceiling. Never even offered to repair it. Didn't repair the furnace, either. I should have sued him.
Anyway, J went up in the attic and covered the hole from that side, and we went on about ignoring it as usual.

Well, the ceilings in this house are some old material, something like plaster, I guess. Really brittle. Once damaged, it's just a matter of time. As we learned after having the heat/air system installed originally when we moved in. Cutting the vents into the ceilings upstairs was the ceilings' death knell. We've had them breaking apart and falling out every since.

So we knew the staircase ceiling's time was coming. And then a chunk fell out and the situation became more critical because then it really was pretty imminent that the entire thing would be coming down at any time.

Before anything we had to figure out a way to be able to get up there to work, safely. Sorry, no, there wasn't going to be any balancing on ladders, or rickety-scabbed-together scaffolding. I have horrors of broken necks and permanent paralysis. I neither want to be permanently paralyzed, nor to have to take care of someone permanently paralyzed on account of stupidity, when it could have been avoided by being smart to start with.
Some extra work and effort, but much better than spending the rest of your life having to wipe someone's ass. (Or not being able to wipe your own.)

Luckily J agrees with that, and we decided to go buy what we needed to build a good, solid flooring system for us to be able to stand/work on.

We got the new sheetrock put on the ceiling without much problem. Kev and me on ladders holding it up, J screwing it in.

While we were at it, I knew I wanted a new light fixture. Always had, but never could decide what I wanted, and anyway, replacing the existing was too much of an ordeal to mess with it as long as it worked.

As we were headed to the home improvement store to buy sheetrock and the stuff to build the floor, I had a general, fuzzy idea of wanting a metal - industrial look hanging light. It wasn't a clear image, probably something I saw on Pinterest previously.

I also said to J, I wasn't exactly sure what I was wanting on the ceiling. Either the plank look like we did on the wall in the kitchen, or...well, I had thought about tin on the ceiling. But I wasn't sure I would like the look of the tin on the ceiling.
My Mom had suggested tin on ceilings before, but she was talking about a larger room like a kitchen and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't love that.

At the h.i.s., we bought the stuff we needed, and I looked for ceiling products, but they had little to none, or that I could find anyway. Only drop-ceiling stuff. I guess people only do plain, flat painted sheetrock ceilings anymore and made the other stuff obsolete.
Oh well, we still had sheets of that old pecan paneling at home we could slice up and use.

Later that evening, after we'd built the floor system and put the new sheetrock up, it was pretty late, we were tired, and J had to work at the Firehouse the next day, so we put hanging the new light fixture off until the day after that.

In the meantime, I was still waffling back and forth about what to put on the ceiling. I already knew it wasn't going to be taped, mudded, and sanded, so it was planking, textured wallpaper, or tin.
After I got the exact light I had in mind and saw it in person, I leaned a lot more towards the tin.
I googled, and looked on Pinterest, using the corrugated tin as indoor ceiling, and some of them looked pretty nice. I didn't prefer the shiny, new tin, which was a good thing, because the tin we had out in the shed is weathered and rusted.

I girded my loins and told J the next day that I believe I had decided to go with the tin on the ceiling.
Surprisingly, he didn't have a single negative thing to say, and went right along with it.

The tin went up as easily as the sheetrock (it's a really small space), and then, then it was time to install the light fixture.

Ughhhhhh, talk about a PITA.

The old wires were so brittle, they just kept breaking off whenever he tried to twist them together. He said he was going to have to run a new wire.
Which turned into running 4 or 5 new wires, and punching holes in some walls to find the wire coming up from the downstairs switch to be able to replace it.

I'll spare you the details of how an already over-long, complicated job was made twice as worse because someone wanted to do it his way, instead of the right way.

Eventually, finally, we got it up, and the 3-way-switches wired right.

There's still a lot of work to do on the whole staircase. I need to decide what to do with the walls. I'm thinking the plank wall look, but I also considered the faux brick paneling, painted white.

My main consideration, well, actually I have a couple of main considerations...the design, and also expense.

As far as expense, I can do the plank wall look for pretty much free, as long the old paneling holds out, or I can find some more from someone else doing some remodeling. The faux brick paneling we'd have to buy.

Otherwise, I'm not exactly sure what design look I'm going for here. It's a farmhouse, so I was thinking along the lines of "chicken coop" (plank wall look). On the other hand....
The stairs exit into a large open room that used to be the upstairs livingroom. We had it walled off and created a bedroom at one time, but later removed the wall and opened it back up into sort of a den/playroom (currently a junk room).
I have a tentative idea for when/if we ever get that far of making the room into a...not a "man cave" exactly, I'd like it more family friendly, so Mom or girls don't feel excluded from the room, but....meh, I don't know.
I had some vague idea of a vintage firehouse room, decorated with all the firefighter collectibles I have.
I was thinking maybe the room could tie-in nicely with the stair area.

But I still need to keep it farmhouse-y. I already learned the hard way what happens when I try to deviate from the style of this place. It rebels.

At any rate, that's sometime on down the road. Hopefully soon we can get back to the kitchen work.
We need to take a day to go look for countertops, and then the next big project is moving the plumbing, which is at least a good two-day job. (For us, probably a good two-week job.)

In The Kitchen Today

I've had some kitchen projects going on - food stuffs type projects, not the remodel projects - that I've been working on here and there, now and then. I had a big 50 pound bag of flour I was funneling into 2 liter bottles for storing (to keep out bugs)(I don't recommend anyone ever trying this. Get 3 liter bottles with wider openings instead), a 25 pound bag of sugar I divided into gallon size ziplock freezer bags for storing, and bags of potatoes I was peeling/cubing/flash freezing.

The sugar I get done in one go, but the other jobs were so tedious and unrelenting and mind-numbing. I could only do so much at one time and would have to quit for awhile. A long while. Like days and weeks, maybe months.
I finally got all the flour transferred into (7) 2 ltr bottles, and needed to finish peeling/cubing one last bag of potatoes, and make another batch of homemade Shake-n-Bake.

I haven't been much paying attention to the weather forecasts, just taking it as it comes, but yesterday morning it rained, then last night the temps dropped down into the 30's, so I'm reckoning a cold front came through.
It was a nice, bright sunny morning this morning, but still on the chilly side. I decided it'd be a good day to knock out some of my kitchen projects.

Before I could make up a batch of homemade Shake-n-Bake, first I needed to make up a batch of homemade bread crumbs.

I've been saving scrap bread, mostly the "butt" pieces from loafa bread we don't eat, in the freezer.

I put them in a single layer on a sheet pan and toasted them at 300*, flipping them over and over until they dried evenly on both sides. (The more thawed ones dried/toasted a bit better than the frozen ones, so next time I'll (try to) remember to let them thaw some before starting.)

Then I broke them up and pulverized them in my mini kitchen chopper.

The amount of bread I had filled this breadcrumbs container I had that was empty, plus a bowlful.

Between grinding the toast, and waiting for another pan of bread to toast, I was peeling and cubing potatoes. Boiled them slightly, then spread them on pan-sprayed cookie sheets for flash freezing. After they were frozen I broke them up and put them in freezer bags and back into the freezer. Now I can just get out however much I need to make mashed potatoes or potato salad.

After I (finally) got all my breadcrumbs made, I gathered up the other ingredients needed for my homemade Shake-n-Bake.

This is the recipe I used to mix it all up.

Done. Bag of homemade Shake-n-Bake that will last me...the last batch I made lasted 1 year and 8 months.
I keep it in the freezer, and just dip out about 1/2 cup to "Shake" my chicken or chops in each time, so I don't contaminate the entire batch.

Spring Flowers

We're still in a transitional period where we have warm and cold, cold and warm temps. But the warm is winning out over the cold more often than not these days. (I say as we're under a Freeze Watch early next week.)

My earliest Spring flowers don't seem too concerned with the chillier temps, though. They are growing thick and hearty this year. More than usual. I'm hoping that's a good sign for a good, fertile gardening year.

Daffodils

Jonquils, aka "Jonny-Jump-Ups". They "jump up" at the first hint of Spring.

But they sti-i-i-nk, lawd have merc-eee.  We were outside the other day and J kept saying, "what is that smell?" Finally we figured out it was these flowers. He said they smell like horse manure. Which I guess is better than smelling like someone died, like Kev said.

Violets? 

These little purple flowers grow wild and random all over the yard. I think they are Violets, but not sure.

I checked my seed-baggies again, and found I had a good lot of germinated Datil Pepper seeds. (Datil, as in, 'Datil do it (that will do it.)

All those seeds came out of one single pepper that we grew last year.
Last Fall I picked a bucket of these peppers, and for some reason or another, never did anything did with them, as far as freezing or pickling or anything. I actually just ended up leaving them in the bucket, where they shriveled and became no good for eating or using.

I eventually had intentions of drying them and harvesting the seeds, but harvesting pepper seeds is a really not fun and painful experience, so it's not a chore I'm right on top of.

When I wanted to try to raise some more pepper plants this year, I just grabbed one of the old peppers from last year from the bucket and scraped the seeds out of it onto this coffee filter. Didn't know there was going to be so many.

Of these, 19 germinated. (I put the others back to see if they will germinate later, they might still.)

I started out planting these in peat pods, 2 per pod, except the one last odd numbered one.

Cute sushi tray J saved for me to use as a greenhouse.

Grow little peppers! 

Speaking of grow... Tomatoes! (Or as we say 'round here...Maters!)

Since I took this picture yesterday, the last one in the middle finally popped up - just that lickety-quick - and I officially have 8 out of 8 tomato plants sprouted/growing.

These are the Black Russian variety. Still no luck with the others yet. Maybe they'll just take a little longer, because they are older seeds. Both these, and the Datil peppers, were new seeds from veggies grown in our garden last year.

If in a few more weeks they don't ever do anything, I guess I'll just buy some tomato plants.

We already have a couple of Cherokee Purple tomato plants (that I hope to be able to keep alive until I get them planted in the garden in a few weeks).  I was curious about the Cherokee Purple, and saw that our Walmart had some of them, so a couple of days later J comes in carrying 2 plants.

Why I Can't Ever Get Anything Done

Does this kind of thing ever happen to you? Probably the reason I have like eleventy-million incomplete projects.

I got a reminder from my Web Domain Registrar that one of my Domain names was coming up for renewal. It's actually my Dad's domain name for his Hunting Club website that I had made for him.

One of the several websites I have made for him over the years. Another one was for his MC (motorcycle club), but his Bros weren't terribly excited about there being a website, so we took it down. And, eventually, I let the Domain name expire. I figured, eh, it was available the first time I got it, probably no one else will get it.
Recently, for whatever reason I can't exactly recall at the moment, I decided I didn't want to risk losing it, so while I was re-upping his Hunting Club domain, I decided to go ahead and get the MC domain name back.

Nope, someone else already got it. Dag-nab it all!

Well, they only registered the .com, so I went ahead and register the .net, and the .us version was on sale for 98¢ so I got it, too.

I typed in the address of the new domain name(s), and it's advertising my domain name registrar, and saying something to effect of, the domain was recently registered and the owner is probably working on creating a great new website so check back soon, yadda yadda.

Which, of course, I was not creating a great new website. So then I felt like I needed to create...something.

So I pulled up my old files and found the old website, and thought maybe I could just do a one-pager, with the MC name, patch photo, and motto, and no other info.

But the front page I had created, didn't look right. It's been awhile since I created it, since I used to know (kinda) how to write html and css and design my own webpages, before they got too complicated, and I got lazy and went with templates and blogger.

Anyway, I eventually figured out the page looks fine in Internet Explorer, but not Chrome or Firefox, and I have no clue how to fix it.

While I was sitting here attempting to figure all that out, I was listening to a couple of the music files playing on the website.
"Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin, and "Knock, knock, knockin' on Heaven's door" by Bob Dylan, from sometime back in the 1970's, playing on the "Fallen Brothers" page, which also had on it a few pictures of some of the guys back in the 1970's.

Having been born in '67, I was a kid growing up in the '70's.
Whenever I think back to the 70's, my kidhood, a lot of my memories have music attached. Or, hearing an old song will bring back a lot of memories from my kidhood.
We didn't watch television too much, but it seems like there was almost always music playing. On the stereo, or the car radio.
I have a hard time remembering a lot of the songs just right off the top of my head, but once I hear them, I remember, and it amazes me sometimes, at the sheer amount of songs I really do know, and can even recall some of the lines to. Usually the chorus, the catchy parts.
And the variety of it all - country, rock, pop, blues, beach, even 50's.

Anyhow. Coincidentally, while I was sitting here mulling over the possibility of fixing the webpage, listening to Bob Dylan, I took a break and clicked back over to FB to see what new had been posted, and a page I follow, Retro Wifey, had posted a picture of a Debby Boone barbie doll.

"You li-i-i-i-i-ight up my-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y li-i-i-i-i-i-i-fe."

Oh yes, I had the record. (Might still do.)

Well, naturally, I needed to download a digital copy of it to have, because. I needed to. So off I went to youtube to find it.
Found a good copy and (You Tube Downloader'd/Converted) it.

Then there was all these suggestions for similar music, from the same genre, era (or remakes), and I kept seeing songs that I had forgotten I remembered. I had to download them all. 
Haha, not even nearly all.

I used to put this record on the stereo and me and my sister would dance wildly and sing at the top of our lungs - "Judy in disguise - WITH GLASSES!!!!!!!"


Hahahaha, good times.

Oh, I did get the original domain name renewed. Only took me like ten hours.

Randoms

When I left you last, I was soaking some seed to see if I could germinate them using the coffee filter/baggie method. (Some use paper towel, but I read the shoots don't get tangled into the coffee filters as easy.)

Last Sunday (3/9) I put my soaked seeds onto a coffee filter, into a baggie, and laid them on top of the fridge to...do whatever they do.

Today, 6 days later, I checked on them, and found that the Black Russian tomatoes had germinated/sprouted.

(J's partner at the station first gave us Black Russian tomatoes/seeds a few years back. I don't know where he got them, or who, what, when, how.  Recently, when I was looking up Native American gardening, I saw an heirloom tomato called the Purple Cherokee, and they look the same to me. So I wonder if they are actually the same plant, maybe different name in different areas, or...how to tell which one we actually have.)

I planted the little sprouts into gardening soil and covered the tray with saran wrap and set them on my window sill to get the morning sun.

Please, grow.

Earlier in the week, the weather was so warm and nice, up to 78* one day. But then again, we had a freeze warning and dropped down into the 20's at night for a couple of nights.

I picked some Jonquils  and brought in and put in a mason jar to enjoy fresh flowers.

1. The ones left outside didn't freeze and/or disappear like I thought they would,
2. The "fragrance" of these was too stout - Kev said it smelled like someone died. I hope he meant it smelled like funeral home, not a dead body - I ended up sitting them back outside. We couldn't stand the smell anymore.

This morning I walked out on the back porch to (do something, I forget what) and this rather large bird was sitting there with it's back to me, doing...something.

I need glasses, but won't get any, so anyway I thought the bird was a turkey, laying an egg in the yard.

Turkeys are plentiful around here, you can see them while just driving up the 4-lane highway, and really a lot on back roads.  I was excited to think there was a turkey taking up residence in our yard.

I called Ryan out to come look, and he was like, Mom, that's a Hawk, eating a blackbird.

Oh.

It stayed out there for a long time, and Ryan was able to take lots of pictures and video. (Much better pics with his fancy/expensive camera than the ones my cheap-o camera takes, but he had to leave and didn't share his with me yet.)

Pretty awesome nature show event right in our backyard. Hawks are awesomely awesome.

Spring is in the Air, Ready to Start Gardening

That's not to say Winter is officially over or that it won't frost again, because it could, and probably will.

But today it's a lovely 68*, and sunny, and I took a walk outside and saw three of our trees are covered in lovely pink blooms.

Looking closely in the "lawn" that we (by we, I mean J) mowed earlier in the week, we're already seeing some tiny fleurs.

Tinier than my index finger nail, which is really small, even though it looks ginormous in this picture, ha.

According to SproutRobot this is a good week to start my tomatoes growing indoors. I read to start them about 6 weeks before the last frost. Six weeks from now is April 19th, and I read our latest frost is generally April 10th, so I should be good.
(According to Farmer's Almanac I should have already started them a couple of weeks ago. Oh well. It's been kindly a crazy winter. We may have frost later than they expect.)

The seeds I'm using are pretty old now. Four to five years old. Tomato seeds (I read) generally age better than other seeds, but I don't want to waste a bunch of Peat Pellets if they don't germinate, so I'm going to try the soak/baggy method to see which ones, if any, will sprout before I 'plant' them in peat or potting soil.

First I'm soaking them a bowl of warm water for...awhile. Some people recommended a couple of hours, others said 24 hours. So, sometime tomorrow I guess.

Then I'll wet a coffee filter and wring it out 'til damp and put the seeds on one side it, folding the other side over them. I'll stick them in a baggie and put it somewhere warm.
As the seeds that are going to germinate sprout I can gently pull it off with tweezers and plant it in peat or soil.

The reason my seeds are pretty old is because, for one, I had many envelopes of seeds. I was getting them cheap, buying them as "fillers" when doing my coupon/deal shopping at Walgreens.
Also there were more seeds in the envelopes than I thought I needed to grow at one time, so I only used some at a time, leaving the rest.

This time I'm just using every seed. I don't expect them all the germinate/sprout, but if they do I'll just grow them on up and then give them away to others who might want them.
(I could sell them, but meh. I prefer giving.)

I'm going to attempt to grow a "salsa garden" again this year. It didn't work out well last year because our tomatoes didn't do any good. We got a few, but only a few. Not even enough to can. Hopefully I can figure out how to do better with them this year. I'm thinking about not even putting them in the garden area, but just right up in the middle of the back yard.  That's kind of where we grew them a couple of years ago and they did well. If I remember rightly, we were even in a drought that year (I should keep a Gardening Journal so I can remember/figure out what works and what doesn't in the future).

One Nice Spring-like Day

Yesterday was a warm, sunny, nice, warm, gorgeous, warm day.

J came in yesterday morning from working a 48 (24 FD/24 amb) and went to bed, and I took a nice, window-down ride to the grocery store.

When I got back J was up and asked what I wanted to do, as far as the kitchen remodel work. But we ended up deciding since it was so nice out, but would be ugly again later in the week, we'd go find something to do outside instead.

The yard has been covered with leaves since last Fall.
My Grannie used to (and my older neighbors still do) rake up the leaves into piles and burn them. I should ask my neighbors if there's a particular reason they do it, or what. Maybe too many leaves piles on the grass kills the lawn?
Anyway, after reading a "story" that appealed to me although I can't swear as to it's accuracy, we've started just leaving the leaves on the ground through most of the Winter. Then yesterday J got out on his mower and chopped them up all over the yard, to 'mulch'.

This is probably the last time we'll mow again until late Spring, maybe early Summer, depending on the weather.
When the weather finally starts turning off warmer, this will grow into a nice buffet for the bees.

While J mowed, me and Kevin messed with the Tater Condos.
Last year, after I found out we were never going to have enough dirt to keep these things going, I just sort of gave up and let them go. Grow what they would, or wouldn't.

We had gone down sometime in the Fall after the plants had to died to see if we'd managed to grow any potatoes, but something happened, can't remember what, but we never did get to it.
I wasn't too worried because, for one, I doubted we'd actually grew any potatoes, but for another I figured if we did they would be safe enough stored in the dirt, like a root cellar of sorts.

So yesterday me and Kev started shoveling out one of the bins to relocate the dirt to another spot, and sure enough there were some potatoes.
He didn't think too much of them, because they didn't look like the ones we buy at the store.

If I try growing potatoes again this year, I'll definitely stick with the 4x4 condo, or maybe I'll just buy a clothes basket!

*Although I get weather updates on my FB wall, it's a lot of "maybe" this, "chance of" that, and I pretty much skim it and forget it.  So, I didn't have any idea it was supposed to be as nice as it was yesterday.

At one point I saw my weather app on my Desktop said it was 72*, but the word "Alert" was lit up in red at the top. I thought, "Hm, warm as it is, we may be in for some storms", and clicked to see what was going on.
To my surprise, it was a Freeze Watch for tonight.  Well. That escalated quickly. lol.

Woke up to rain today, but I like it. Some rainy days I just enjoy.
It's hard to explain, but it's grey, dreary, foggy, rainy/drizzly, and chilly out there. But in here it's warm and I've got lamps turned on. I looove lamp light on rainy days. Making it warm and dry and just comfy-cozy.
I think I'll have some tomato soup and grilled cheese for supper, and watch a movie or two on tv.

Yeah, it'd be a good day to work on inside projects, de-hoarding and such. But, meh. It's not a disaster if I take a rainy day off.