Instant Relatives

I like these kind of instant relatives you find at auction. They are silent and agree with all you say. But they also seem to watch you. That's why ours live in a box until they take a ride to where ever there new home is.

These are popular on eBay for the vintage frames.
They are also a b to package! Thanks to my wonderful Bug for all you do. He is a master box maker.

eBay at Christmas; I May Lose My Mind

Thankfully, eBay is crazy around the holidays. I may be nuts by January or blind from staring at a computer all day long. I sit at work and worry about eBay, I have a back and neck ache, I know what the real meaning of death by 1000 paper cuts means now. In my case it's death by tape gun. They do bite!
I have been a very bad blogger as of late. Too busy all the time. The Pyrex collection is huge. All of it won't fit in the cabinet. But I still want it all. In this area at auction it's going really high, most of the time more than its really worth.

Fly home, sweet Roxy

On 11/23/12, we lost the best, most loving Rottweiler in the world, Roxy. She was an amazing dog, and my best girlfriend.
We had to let her go. Time is a cruel master, but she's at God's feet now and suffers no more. She can play with Buster once again.
We'll see you again one day!

Vineandbranchstudio on Etsy

You neeeed to visit Vineandbranchstudio on Etsy! She makes the coolest accessories for your I-phone, I-pad, or a reader. I got mine today, and I'm so happy with it!

Does your kitchen look like this?

This is after a weekend of auction, and flea market hunting, of what my kitchen looks like! Pyrex and all!

EBay is sooooo slllooooowww!

As an eBay seller, this past month has been bad for sales, like fell off a cliff, and why am I doing this!
I'm hoping it's just school starting back or elections. I've read on eBay discussion boards a lot of sellers are experiencing this as well. Patience is a virtue!

My Bug, the Woodcarver

My Bug has ventured into the world of chainsaw carving, and has started on an Easter Island Moai Head carving.  He made is own version of a handheld, air-powered chainsaw that looks pretty mean.

My part will be decoration.  We hope to have a collection of these we can line up below our garden.  Pretty weird, but I like it!

English Pyrex Birthday!

Bug is the wild Pyrex hunter! He found a set of Pyrex made in England for my b-day! I'm going to have to find another cabinet!

Mr. Writing Spider and Other Garden Musings

A sure sign fall is around the corner is the appearance of the rather large Writing Spider. They are large, black and yellow, and I find them impressive.
I'm not a big spider fan, but I can appreciate this dude living outside our window.
He's about 3 inches across counting the legs.
I bet the girls would like to make a snack out of him. Our chicken named Red made a snack out of a small frog she found. It was kind of disturbing.

Check out the butterfly on the zinnia. It was having a nice day until I started taking pictures.
His highness the cat is jealous of all this picture taking.
We are hoping the Archway to our asparagus bed will make it another winter. My Bug made this for me a few years ago. It's all tied together with wire, and was one of his first creative wood projects. He's a very talented guy-even though he doesn't listen to any compliments.

Teardrop Pyrex Mixing Bowls

I couldn't believe Bug found these at the GW for $4. I am ashamed to say I'd never seen them before!

Bug Hot Pepper Mix

We love our peppers, and grow everything from Cow Horns to Thai peppers.
I like to take the excess peppers I have and run them through our vintage food processor.
Actually I came up with this because we love spicy food and I was tired of scrubbing the hot pepper oils out from under my fingernails. Try chopping hot peppers without cleaning your hands very well! It will be burning under your nails, gets in your eyes and just isn't pleasant in general. Why not use gloves? That would imply common sense-which I don't use very often.

We put this mix on everything from eggs.....I put it on about everything!
The stuff:
I used about 4 lbs of a variety of peppers; Thai, Cayenne, Jalepeno, Bells, Banana-fire at will!
Sea salt-to your liking
White vinegar
Minced garlic-if you like garlic

Chop the peppers to a size your processor can handle, add salt, garlic and vinegar. Add about 1/4 cup of vinegar and garlic each time you add to the processor.
Process to the size you want. I like a small minced size. Keep adding to the container sizes you wish.
For example I would add rough chopped peppers, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 cup vinegar and 1/4 cup garlic to fill the processor container. Keep repeating these steps until you out of peppers- or patience, but it's well worth it when you want a reminder of summer in the winter.
I had about three quart jars that will last a long time. Freezing also works well.

Grandma's Pyrex cabinet is full! And other vintage finds ....

I never thought the Pyrex cabinet would be full but the day has come.
Also, I love all of it, so I don't want to sell!
Bug and I played hooky from work 2 days this week. We are at the point where life seems too short to not be doing things you like.
You don't realize that cool desk job at 19 years old isn't so cool anymore at 36! Especially when there's so much thrifting to be done.
Below is a cool vintage Hoover electric pan, Japan salt & peppers, and my Bug's grandmothers 1950's cabinet full of Pyrex. I wonder if she had Pyrex in hers?

I can't find the Pyrex mojo without my Bug!

We are looking into starting a worm farm business and met with the second largest milk producer in NC today to try to take some of his manure.
We had a tour of the facility and that was great. There are 1200 milked everyday.
Bug is so awesome! He found a set of Friendship bowls at the Restore!

Vintage Finds of the Week plus Pyrex!

First sunflowers!

First sunflower not eaten by squirrels!

Boys and their toys at auction!

We are at an auction in the big town of Locust, NC. It's all boy toys with no Pyrex in sight. And it's already 95 at 10:30 am.
We're trying to figure out how to turn an old ambulance into a box truck for auctions. That would be cool.
You can tell who wants the golf carts. The people with the plaid and black socks.
And this is Bugs new toy....a trailer he plans to try to haul a 30,000 lb backhoe with. I've advised against this.

Squash bugs and borers.....

I hate squash bugs and the only way we have found to kind of get rid of them is to pick off the eggs. Chicken caviar! We are still going organic, and are seeing lots of good bugs or natural predators for the bad.
We're trying out as many flowers as they attract the good guys.
Bug is now ordering his supplies to make a more user friendly worm dirt farm. Now the chicken poop is being composted for worm food.
Our garden is going great so far. We have lots of squash and peas, challenging me to find creative ways to use them!
I also learned how to find squash borers in squash plants. My acorn squash would just turn yellow and die. You have to cut the worm out where there is a grainy looking substance close to the base of the vine and pull out the worm. Then cover up the vine and hopefully it will heal!

Anniversaries

Yesterday Bug and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary. He sent the most beautiful flowers to me at work, and I made some of this favorite cookies, the lemon cooler kind you can't seem to find in the store anymore.   Thanks to Reggie's Flowers!

See below for a great recipe a fellow Blogger at allthatsplatters:
Lemon Coolers
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup sugar (I used brown sugar, was out of white)
1/3 cup shortening (I used butter)
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon of lemon zest

Lemon Powdered Sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
rounded 1/2 teaspoon unsweetened Kool-Aid lemonade drink mix
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.Cream together sugars, butter, egg, vanilla, and salt in a large bowl. Add the flour, baking powder and 1 teaspoon of lemon zest. Add 1 tablespoon of  lemon juice and continue mixing until dough forms a ball. Roll dough into 3/4-inch balls and flatten slightly onto a lightly greased cookie sheet (I used parchment-lined baking sheets). Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until cookies are light brown.
As cookies bake, combine 1 cup powdered sugar with the lemonade drink mix and lemon zest in a large plastic bag and shake thoroughly to mix. When the cookies are removed from the oven and while they are hot, add 4 or 5 at a time to the bag and shake it until the cookies are well coated. Repeat with the remaining cookies.  I got about 30 cookies out of this recipe.  I'm really digging her recipes...

It's amazing what we have done in our gardens around the house in the time we've been together, and it makes me happy to see how we've grown together as a result of all that digging, planting, replanting, sweating,freezing. It's so rewarding to see things grow and be able to say, remember when we planted this or that....

Frost! ...& of course....Pyrex!

We had some light frost in our area this week which has had me running around the yard like one of the 10 million squirrels in our yard. Thankfully we've got a lot of hay so I got creative with it for protection. I think it worked good.
Hubs found a cool chicken dish at the GWill & we found some Pyrex in Butterfly Gold at a flea market.
eBay is rolling along with no real excitement-knock on wood!
I have to post this pic of my friend's little girl-she's already mopping!

Primary Colors set & Fiestaware!

I finally finished the Pyrex Primary Colors set. Some of it I had, but I cheated with eBay a little to get. I'm OK with that!
My Bug made an excellent GWill find! Fiestaware! He's so awesome he's making deals in the GWill parking lot! He's got a lunchtime GWill addiction & he's made some great finds! I'm so jealous. The GWill is 5 minutes from his work.
Thanks to the nice lady who saw him at the GWill and gave him the lid to the Fiestaware sugar bowl he bought from her a while back in the parking lot!

I've found some Pyrex in the wild, A Homestead casserole and mixing bowl. They may not be the most popular, but I like it!

Springtime Crazies

Well, it's that time of year again. Time for the yard to be mown, time to plant a garden, time to find time to do all of it. Time for a prescription for nerve pills. I still haven't figured out how we get it all done.
The mini-greenhouses all have different types of basil, cress, dill, sage, and some bright purple zinnias(super excited about these). They work great, but I have renters. The frogs have arrived for the year, and have decided that these little trays of dirt make great hiding places. They wait on me to come out and take the lids off the trays. It's cute and all, but they're taking over my baby plants! Guess I've got to move them.
We have started to move dirt down to our main garden and planting corn, cabbage, broccoli, kale, beets, flowers, strawberries, my fingers hurt! This is an intensive process, and my Hubs has his doctorate in various types of excrement.
We raise worms for their poop, we have horse poop, chicken poop, and compost, or veggie poop. All of this poop makes for great dirt, as the dirt in the middle of NC is all red.clay.mud.
We get our exercise!
We also plant in the Native American tradition of the three sisters, planting in mounds. This didn't work so great last year, but we've made our dirt piles bigger, and didn't use fresh horse poop. My Dad said it was too "hot" (hot: redneck term for the poop is too fresh and will kill your plants because literally gets the ground hot where it's decomposing), and we didn't listen, so we had small jalepeno plants last year trying to make halepenos as big as the plant. But I did learn that gourds we grew last year seem to keep away garden pest animals, because the vines smell horrible! I'm the queen of the run-on sentence.
Our asparagus is in it's second year, and we finally got to cut some to eat. It was delicious, and I can't wait for next year when I can cut lots!
The next endeavour on our list of projects is to learn the canning process. Hopefully I won't blow up the house or singe anyone's eyebrows. It can't be that hard, can it?
As for the Pyrex collection, I'm running out of room in the Grandma Rizzo cabinet. I arrange this stuff. I must be weird.