And now, time for pumpkins~

10/12/17

Okay, so not really, not yet. There’s a couple weeks before the pumpkins come out. BUT! It is officially almost three weeks into October. Aaaaand that fact also means that I have been really, badly horrid at blogging this year ^{(wait where have I heard this before…oh at least once a year since I started blogging OOPS)}*cough*. ANYWAYS, back to the blog at hand!

I know I’ve been pretty dang bad at blogging, again, but most of the excuses this time are the fact I’ve been actually trying to catch up on other errands and stuff that I’ve just let back up into the ol’ task overflow (rather than too much YouTube, movie, or TV show binging…this time). Seriously, I’ve been writing other things out, drawing some ideas for said writing things, gathering up old clothes to sell, cleaning certain parts of my bedroom like some kind of crazy person who loves cleaning, reading upwards of 40 books as of this post, among many, many other things, some which I MADE THIS POST TO TALK ABOUT! Amazing excuses, right?

 

Like usual, the year feels like a lot of it passed at double speed, but I can say there were some really good experiences through the summer. There was a lot, and I mean a TON of time spent getting some whole chickens and leg quarters, smoking them and enjoying it completely. When I say a ton of time, I’m thinking we smoked chicken 4-6 times this year, which may be off by a couple, but it’s definitely more than usual. There was also an awesome partial solar eclipse for us this year, and I may just write up a Nature News article to show off some of the photos I took, now that I think about it. We set up a pinhole projection box, I actually got a photo of the sun and its reflected eclipse shape, and it was overall a very enjoyable and wonderful time. Before that wonderful nature event and all the barbequing, there was 4th of July (oh wait there was BBQ there too!) and I smothered my hair in purple then. A month later and well, my blog’s image shows off what I did next. Blue, pink and blonde for the perfect cotton candy-ness. Since then it’s just been dealing with the on and off rains, A HURRICANE…oh I didn’t even mention that. Yep there were a ton of storms brewing this year around the coast, and two were pretty massive. The one who was just rude and thought it was tough enough to mess with Texas was Harvey, and yep, it brought a lot of rain. Lot’s of wind too, and for us, enough to snap a pretty good sized limb off one of our ash trees. Overall it wasn’t too bad except the night that the storm really blew in, our power was off for HOURS and the best part was that bluebonnet trucks were driving by the whole time. After somewhere around 6 hours, maybe even 8, it finally got turned back on and the night of avoiding crazy rain while having wind flow through the house became a very early morning eating breakfast at 3 am. So that was insane fun!

Besides that, there hasn’t been too much to talk about except that there’s been holidays, birthdays and the big thing I wanted to write about; crafts! Okay, not just crafts. If you’ll look to categories, you should see that there’s a new section called Crafts n’ Eats, and inside of that section are two subcategories. These are separating out the crafts from the eats, so they’re not going to be all smooshed together in one unorganized heap of blogginess, and honestly nobody wants a laundry bag or shirt on their cake or any other food. See, in all my procrastination and other miscellaneous time usage as well as dealing with other things throughout the past year,  I started noticing some things I really needed to get done that were kind of small tasks in comparison to other stuff, but they were important nonetheless. It started with cleaning out a portion of my bedroom which took about 8 square feet of space from being filled with totes and other junk, to moving most of that into the top shelf portion of my closet, which is a REALLY big space in comparison to the things I cleared off my floor. In doing this I got bedsheets stowed away in the closet; which turned into even deeper closet cleaning and organizing later on, got access to a clothes hamper as well, and I was inspired by all this cleaning to start sorting stuff out further and fix some things up. So taking a look at my hamper I realized it had been severely neglected, was missing its bag, it’s lid handle and was just in overall sad shape. Last September I started on a task to fix up my poor little hamper and make a bag for it by recycling old clothes. This task took me a TON of measurements and planning and honestly it took me almost an entire year, working the project on and off. If I was better at keeping on one single task instead of one day going ‘I feel like sewing deco patches onto these old shorts’ and the next dropping the deco patches, which was something I finished recently, for a day to work on drawing Pokémon, to then draw other things for two days straight, then drop that to put repair and deco patches on other items I just can’t let go of or wanted to make look better, to FINALLY getting back to the initial project I’d been so crazy about doing originally…I wouldn’t be taking so long to finish all these dang tasks I keep setting for myself!

Now, thinking about everything I just wrote, I’m not sure if the real problem is the fact I have such a fickle mind that can’t stand working too long on one project, wants to work on several things at once, and goes crazy if I don’t work on 17 billion things a week, or if I just keep on setting up way too many tasks when I’m still behind on a good handful that have been sitting around a while – Like those bloggaries? Yeeeaaah…like those.. And that Youtube- OKAY I GET IT! *ahem* Where was I? Oh that’s right..the uh..Stuff I’ve finished working on so far.

 

HAH. Okay, I know I got a bit silly, but here’s the straight up and no silly willy nilly doo-dah about the craziness of my mind. As soon as this blog is posted, there will be Part 1 of the Laundry Bag project and instructions written all in it, just in case anyone else wants to make one themselves. Then next week will be part two, and after that the- You get it, right? And with that, that’s me actually having blog posts set up for future postings..what’s the deal with me? I don’t know but I’m happy with it. Aaand back to the new categories. I’m not exactly sure how often posts after the laundry bag, and another post, will find their way into the Crafts ‘n Eats category, but whenever I find something particularly awesome that I’ve crafted up whether food-wise, sewing wise, or any other type of craft, I plan to take pics and stick em all up on this bloggity marked with the category of Crafts n Eats. Now as for the new posts, if ya’ll can’t find em right away, click on – Laundry Bag or CAKE – either of those words there will take you to the other posts in a swish!

 

That was a lot of words to get out without blogging in a while, but it was quite enjoyable. I hope ya’ll enjoyed reading my craziness as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I’ll see ya in the next posts!

 

TTFN~ 

*taps mic* Uh..hello.

Sunday 6/05/16,

Well hello..!

That seems to be my standard greeting now; ‘Well…hello.’ I might as well say ‘come here often?’ But then that’d be a bit awkward..since I already know when I check my analytics :]

Anyways, how has everyone been? I hope all have been fantastic, and for, like, the hundredth time..I am very sorry for all the Bloggaries just taking a millennia! Their multiple photos being added through my googledrive and preparing for typing up what I can remember of every day a year and a half ago had been set back on the back burner which was completely turned off for a while. A while being, yaknow, three months.

The first month (or two)  I was just being my typical procrastinating self, telling myself that later I’d get photos completely attached to their corresponding days and finally just get moving on with typing everything out. Of course…that didn’t really happen, nor did my mass of the month of March blog post. Because on random days we’d end up watching a bunch of movies, or I’d just watch different videos from people I subscribe to on YouTube, or I’d actually read, like, a ton, besides survey things getting done.

And then came last month and a half.  There was rain. So. Much. Rain. Unbelievable amounts of rain. So much rain, that Lake Travis is full, there have been tons of floods, and uh…yeah the ground is a sponge, besides the fact that the power had been off over two days worth of time, not to mention the internet being off and worked on multiple times this past month. Just in the last couple weeks, there’s been probably 15+ inches worth of rain, and it’s starting to get extremely ridiculous. The yard? What yard? It’s now a jungle, because usually as soon as it starts to dry maybe a little bit, some crazy storm clouds from the gulf decide they’re going to blow on over and just open the dump valve of water on us. It’s sunny today though, and it was…a smidge sunny yesterday. So I guess that helps a little.

Now to other reasons, that are actually not excuses, but viable and completely understandable reasons why I hadn’t been working at all on Blog posts. Finny boy had overeaten on the 20th of May, in his excitement for his food coming in and it upset his tummy…pretty badly. It gave him a nasty batch of IBS that was excruciating for him and nearly just as excruciating to watch and try to help him get over. It got really bad until the 25th, which is when my mom had rediscovered a recipe for a healing and stomach calming tea. It took just two days of the tea and cottage cheese in doses for him to stop having any cramping up, spasming or pain in his stomach and intestines. It did take until this past Wednesday for his system to start really getting back to normal, as in..completely normal looking poo, ability to actually eat more and not just have it all soupy and soft. It’s amazing what this tea actually has done. Things got pretty scary for a bit, and it was a few days I didn’t get any real sleep, none of us did. Because it was just..horrible. And now, right now, as I’m typing this; he is sleeping so soundly, snoring and curled up near his bed, waiting for his next serving of food, which is going to be bland scrambled eggs, bland (not salty or too sugary) pancakes, and baked potato cut into chunks, all topped with a dose of tea to be sure everything is calm in the tumtum. 

That’s what’s been going on with us. A bunch of things kind of piling up on each other, and then finally the sun’s coming out and everything’s looking better and brighter. My sleeping schedule righted itself through all of this, (after binging Dexter in mid may it went WAY CRAZY) and now I’m waking up pretty dang early. Still feeling the effects of the lack of sleep a week ago, but with things starting to right themselves, I know all will be back on track in a short time. Just today, I actually did get 5 Bloggary posts (which are each 7 days) loaded up with photos, and I estimate within the week, if I work a few hours each day at it, all the pics will be loaded up on the posts and be ready for my writing skills to take effect. You all can expect some random subject blog posts coming in these next couple weeks, too, including a pretty big one from march! 

So, all in all…things were acting a bit crappy and now it’s been shoveled away and finally getting better. I’m looking forward to actually, finally getting these blogs all posted and caught up to me just putting out random blog posts that I feel like doing.  Now before I conclude this with a fitting picture of the sunshine, here is the amazing and miraculous healing tea recipe:

One cup pedialyte or an electrolyte source like lemon lime Gatorade.

Two tablets of 180mg echinacea or something smaller can work too, just has to be echinacea. Dissolve them in a small amount of water beforehand, just enough water to slightly cover the tablets or powder.

Two chamomile tea bags, and one small garlic clove sliced very thinly.

Let the liquid and all ingredients heat up so the tea gets into it, stirring every so often, then let it cool after, adding two drops each of mint and peppermint extracts, stirring them in. It can be refrigerated and the teabags/garlic left in the liquid. It can be doubled if you need more..and then on serving. For Finn we started with three teaspoons from a dropper, and then he moved to drinking 5 teaspoons out of his bowl excitedly. We do it every hour, or if he slept past an hour, when he woke up. And after the tea, some very light food. Then for continued use, the tea can be mixed in with food after the stomach is well on its way through the healing process.

I hope this recipe does some good for others as it has for us. 🙂

Take care and TTFN!~

Christmas Goodies, Nomnoms!

Hey everyone! Heh, finally managed to remind myself to take pictures that I needed to of certain things and with that, I shall introduce you all to the Christmas goodies!

First off comes Christmas dinner! We ate at home this year, and let me tell you, it felt very nice to not rush, to not force ourselves to pack everything up and be ready by 10am or Noon. This was probably one of the most relaxed Christmases I’ve had in a long while!

The Christmas dinner consisted of chicken; which we covered in bacon and smoked for about 4-5 hours the few days before Christmas, pinto beans; not canned, but home cooked, homemade rolls, German potato salad; done up in a Texan way using cilantro and Texas beef sausage in the mix, cranberry sauce, and of course a holiday meal would never be complete without a grand serving of gravy, which was homemade with chicken stock, fats, as well as oils from the sausage when it was cooked! The meal was very filling (seriously, that’s without eating anything but candy the beginning of the day) and it was extremely delicious!

The next goodies? Desserts! Homemade candies in the flavors of:

Cherry, lemon, mint, peppermint, maple, and caramel! I had a blast making the candies, and although I may have lost some feeling in my fingertips from when I made the lemon drop candies, it’s something I’d happily do for years to come. The mints, both flavors, are made with a sugar paste which is basic fondant, and it hardens to a melt in your mouth quickly kind of strongly flavored candy.

The next big thing I spent an entire night+ working on, were my pumpkin spice flavored,Christmas tree cupcakes!

I immensely enjoyed the process that went into this. The gift boxes and the ornaments are made of the same fondant as the mints, and were formed and dried before being painted with food coloring, decorated with a fondant bow for the boxes, and stuck on the trees and painted for the ornaments. The more I look at the above pic, I see a cute little tree in its stand, waiting for some giant to come by and pluck up one of the gift boxes!

I hope everyone of you had a very wonderful holidays and Christmas, and I hope you all have an amazing new year. I’m blessed to have been able to make all these items, share them with not only family, but share the images and my thoughts of the experiences with all of you. I’m extremely thankful for all of you. I know I haven’t published any of my Bloggaries, but don’t you worry. Come the new year’s celebrations passing, I’ll be pumping out the Bloggaries (finally!)!

Thanks for reading everyone. Much love to all of you! ❤

Bloggary with Briana: Page 46

(09-03-14)
Hello!!! 🙂

Today, we’re going to a meeting with a customer to check out everything they have, and the area we’ll be working on, because they want us to install a pet door! ^-^ Because it’s all the way in Pflugerville, I had to wake up at 8:30! Amazingly enough, I set an alarm on my Iheartradio app, and it actually woke me up! So, we got there, we got everything signed, and then I looked for the screws and electronic key but they weren’t there. When we were on our way home, the customer called and was like ‘surprise, they were in the battery compartment!’ which is the one place I did not look. We were already more than halfway home, so we’re just going to do it tomorrow.

We picked up sodas on the way home, and then when we got home, my mom suggested I fix something I had been thinking of for a while! Stuffed bell peppers!

They’re stuffed with some sautéed onions, mixed in with ground up wild game meat, and some rice, all topped with cheese! I steamed the peppers first while the meat was cooking, and then when they were just getting about 50% less rigid, I took them out to cool so I could handle them. I then used a spoon and put in about three spoonfuls of meat before topping that with cheese, and then adding ¼ cup of rice and water into the pan with the meat. After that was done, I filled them to the top, added cheese, and then put the tops on!

My mom sliced several carrots and cooked them in the water the bell peppers were in. They were so sweet, it was amazing! We also served it with two sliced tomatoes each. Upon cutting open the peppers, this is what you see:

Oh, soooo good.

After relaxing a bit, I decided to vlog outside (no I have not uploaded #300 yet, I’m that much of a procrastinator, DON’T WORRY, SOON.)

Here’s my ‘little bit shorter’ hair;

Spikaaay.. But I figured out what I really wish to do with it and showed the idea to my mom.  We should be attacking it sometime soon. 💇

It’s a very pretty sunset, aaannnnd…..

My vlog-bloggerception!

Hehehe. I had to do it. Yes, I was recording! Now this will forever be the inception of Bloggary! Ehehe.

So I was out there for a couple hours, then both my mom and dad came outside. We listened to some music on my radio app, and then the breeze died….so inside we went!  After that, we had a little popcorn and watched TV! I also washed some clothes *gasp*. I had my mom wax my legs, because I had let the hair grow out specifically so the lower legs could be waxed. It was…gross, and painful! We used to wax it quite a bit a couple years ago, though…so I think we deadened some of the nerves attached to the follicles. Hah..woop for ripping out hair! (On the legs) 😂

(09-04-14)
So, we’re set to install the pet door today, and I’ve woken up at about 8:20, and I’m going to actually take a shower this morning. Yay for being clean! 😝

So we arrived around 10:40, and it was very dark around us and back south to home, plus there were a few drops of rain as we were driving up.

  We then got started on opening the packets and getting the wall template placed. I got the template in place and cut through it into the sheetrock and then my dad used his jigsaw to cut through the sheetrock completely. After that, we had to go around the corner to a Home Depot and I went in to get one 2×4 for framing around the hole in the wall!

After all that framing in, we cut out the other side, which was only covered by hardy siding and cardboard sheathing, besides the insulation that was in the wall. We trimmed the space a bit and then finally squeezed the pet door into the hole in the wall. Ta-dah!

I cleaned up and started taking tools back out at around 4:45 while my dad wrote up everything.

Well, we finally left, and then once hitting 183, we found the traffic to absolutely SUCK.

Look at all those cars!

Why? Because the lousy COTA (Circuit of the Americas) race track is hosting an event of Brad Paisley. Okay. That’s fine. We’re getting subway for dindin tonight, so no biggie, riiiight? Wrong. I went into the subway and all they had left was flatbread, one piece of whole wheat, and one of white. Niiiice subway.. Okay flatbred then! Always good to try something new I guess? Then we got sodas and headed home!

Believe it or not, the flatbread(despite not being the best at holding in all the veggies) was quite tasty! We watched some TV and then I just passed out asleep because I had a mega, horrible, wretched headache. I woke up a few hours later, though and put my leftover sandwich away, even though I was just going to end up grabbing them an hour or so later :P. So, I stayed up a little lager <–WHAT? later and then finally just gave in to sleep.

(09-05-14)
Hiiii!!!

It’s Fridaaay yeaah…
And after getting up, I went outside to help get the tools out of the truck and we went to the back for a little bit before I had to go change, because we’re going to the baaaaank. We stopped to refuel the truck first, and there were just some absolute crazies driving around the pumps.

So, we made it to the bank, then made it back home all safe and with sodas! As soon as we got home, it was time for an early dinner of egg sandwich(es)!

Doesn’t that look delicious? Ohhh it was so good. While eating, we watched ridiculousness, which was extremely funny this week. I mean, seriously… So FUNNY. After chillin for a bit, we went outside at the expectation of rain..look! Look at those CLOUDS!

And the look at this one! It’s a cute little pachyderm!

I had this thread on my shirt when I went to sit down…so…I turned it into……………………

A creepy Waluigi mustache! Hey..hey..I mustache you a question…hehehehehe!!!! 😂
 
Okay..-snort- I know, that was sooo lame, but anywaaaays…a little after the hope for the LYING clouds to drop rain died, we went back out

(Look at them…LYING.)
We tried to see if any bats would fly over.. But 0…none…nada. So much sadness…lying clouds, and then THE BATS? How dare they!!!

Haha..anyways, my mom got dough started for donuts, and we watched some TV while it was whipping up. I went outside for a bit with Finn, and we were trying to find any rats who have been hanging around(like they tend to do) when I spotted this big female orb spider. Isn’t she beautiful? I saw her on the wind chime the other day,and actually thought she was dead because she wasn’t moving and was hanging upside down. Needless to say I nearly peed. She moved quick when I touched her leg (don’t try that at home kids!), and she twitched her legs like she was waiting to bite something. So…I left her alone!

We found no rats…maybe we scared them away for good? But anyways…onto donuts!

I worked the dough flat and was allowed to cut it all out! My mom and I worked together to make some awesome donuts…and…here they are!

I ❤ U 🙂

Cute donuts, hmmmn?

We stayed up reeeaaaally late, and that just ends up reinstating my vampiric state o____o

(09-06-14)

Happy SATURDAY!

So, I woke up kind of late, and tonight Drake and Lil Wayne are supposed to be having a rap-off at the COTA…joy. So we’re going to go to the store after having a refreshing snack of sliced cukies and a few tomatoes. It was really good, but we can’t leave right away, because my dad has to ice down his knee.

Okay. We’re going into JD’s. There are an alarmingly high amount of screaming children running around. !*@!#*!@!*@#!!!!! Yes, symbols, exactly. There was this 8 yr old with a tablet, playing games on it, running around, while his sister(?) who was about 5 was chasing him and trying to pull it out of his hands. I don’t know..but I have to ask, how many of you just want to stick your leg out and trip one of them irritating children? Because..I..so badly just WANT TO. I know, that’s bad..but goodness. It wasn’t just the children I wanted to beat, though. There was this group of four guys walking closely together, irritatingly slow, and I wanted to beat them each in the face with my box of ice cream. Yes, ice cream isn’t 6billion dollars for 5 quarts, so we got some! ^_^

Finally we got to the check out, we just barely made it unscathed, and we got to a newly opened register that nobody was yet standing at. Then we made it home, despite people not understand that you have to actually turn when cars aren’t coming -_-. So, we got banquet meals, because they’re only 88¢, aaaand upon opening them, they’ve gotten smaller. Hah.

So, upon returning home, we started making salad, and then after it was nearly done, we started some chicken nugget and little crinkle fries banquet meals. It was quite yum! It was also very hard to finish, because it was such a GIANT SALAD. We spent much time watching college football….longhorns sucked..like, bad. Fighting Irish won though *yay*

THEN WE fell asleep…yeah. 😛

(09-07-14)

Happy Sunday! 🙂

So, I actually woke up near 12:30! Shocking, right?

So, my parents started on breakfast, and then after potatoes were done, I began toasting bread and moved the potatoes to another pan before starting bacon! I’m cooking two packs because they had a deal(but those were sold out, so they gave us a different item in its place at the same price) andddddddd because we’re planning on having BLT’s tomorrow!!! Yeeaaahhhh!!

So, by 2 it was ready! Tadaaaaahhhh!

With yolky little balls of sunshiiiine! So loverly, indeed!

After food, we watched Foosball Football! Okay..COWBOYS sucked today.. But at least the Broncos won, right? Yeah! (Quiet no’s in the distance) WHAT?! °-°

Anyways…at middle evening-ish time… We went and got drinks! Then we had some veggies as a snack!

After that point…it was time for the finale of Leftovers. It was…a little too focused I think on Kevin in the beginning, but the latter part had a lot of emotion in it, it was beautiful in a way. I think the ending was quite good, but I believe they’re having a season two, so….we’ll see next year? 😗 We were hungry afterwards, so we had poocooooorrrnnn!

I just noticed I kept on saying “so,” before ALMOST EVERYTHING! I’m so crazy.

But..after taking so much time to actually write this FIVE DAY BLOGGARY, IT IS TO BE PUBLISHED!!!

P.S. my apologies for taking so long, but when one watches Anchorman 2, it is hard to finish a Bloggary!

Bloggary with Briana