Picture Year in Review (2025) Part 6: Winter

 December, unfortunately, is going to get a post of its own, but I here is some photos from the rest of winter so far.  It is snowing like crazy today, but we haven't really had a lot of snow so far this year.  My husband managed to get a cool picture of the Northern lights one morning when he was heading out to work, though, so enjoy that!

A shot of our first real snowfall of the year.

I got a bunch of different baking projects done this winter, when I could squeeze in a moment or two and gave away some as gifts this holiday season.  Our neighbor across the road and we exchange gifts every year, pretty much, so I gave him a loaf of cheese bread this Christmas :).

Thanksgiving rolls turned out so pretty, I had to take a picture.

Rustic sourdough loaves that I used for French bread pizzas a few times.  They came out sort of flat, so it worked well for that.

Cheese bread.  I just took my normal bread recipe and when I was shaping the loaves for their second rise I incorporated a bunch of cheese into the dough.  Worked well.

Lastly is a little frugal thing I did.  I had bought some mandarin oranges that were on sale really cheap, figuring my daughter would eat them.  She did not, of course.  So, when the oranges started to look not great, I juiced them all, turned them into orange juice and used them in a few recipes.  I made orange chicken one night and then I used the rest to try Princess Diana's overnight oats recipe (I'll let you look that one up, if you feel the need).  The oats were good, I have to say.  I used dried cherries as I have a lot of them, and pecans in mine.  I also used my seven grain cereal mix instead of straight oatmeal.  It worked well and it made enough cereal to last most of the week.  I just heated the cereal up, added some greek yogurt to cool them off and added honey or maple syrup to sweeten and then added my garnishments.  Worked for me as I'm not a fan of the cold overnight oats.

And there you go folks.  Pictures of winter, 2025, sans December, which I'll get into in a later post as it is going to definitely bleed into this year.

Enjoy!

Picture Year in Review (2025), Part 5: Fall

Well, the biggest thing that happened this fall was our platinum plated cat *sigh*.  

Sepp managed to get out on Halloween (we had gone swimming that day and left the door open longer than normal because we were wrangling Alvah and he got out at some point in that kerfluffle).  I didn't realize he was outside until late when he hadn't touched his food and I called him in a few times.  He came in, but seemed to be moving a bit slower than normal, but it was kind of cold out, so I thought he was just cold and tired (felt terrible about the whole thing at the time...felt even worse about it later).  Fast forward to the next day (Saturday) and I lost track of him during the day due to being busy and then realized he hadn't touched his food all day long that night (he eats in the kitchen, so easier for me to keep track of it).  He had been sleeping on my bed downstairs when I left him in the morning and when I went down to check on him he was still sleeping in that location.  I immediately got worried as he's not a lazy cat by any stretch and is usually bouncing off the walls.  I picked him up and quickly saw he was disoriented when walking and he was favoring a back leg.  I brought him upstairs and made sure that he got food, and most importantly, water, down him and checked him over for wounds.  I found one on his back leg, but it didn't seem to be infected or really that bad, so I thought maybe he'd gotten. a bruise in his muscle from some fight or other.  By the time Sunday rolled around, he was WAY worse.  I had to basically feed him water and got him to lick some tuna and that was it.  He couldn't walk on his back leg at all and I was really getting scared he was on his way out with how bad he was getting.  

We got him into the vet first thing Monday morning and the vet had the same problem I did.  He was in bad shape for sure, but she couldn't find any wounds on him (not that he was cooperating either).  She gave him an anti-inflammatory and a long lasting antibiotic shot and we headed home.  After that Sepp improved immediately.  A few days later I noticed his tail up by his butt was wet and couldn't figure out how he did that until I saw the injury.  He was tore up on his back leg, like bad and the wound had ruptured.  The vet was able to fit him in and we ended up in surgery with him to suture up a couple of gnarly wounds on his back leg.  Fast forward to the sutures dissolving, the wound reopening and a second surgery to fix that and dude that poor cat spent all of November in a cone and we ended up in debt to get him fixed up.  He's only 2 1/2 at this point and a really good cat (kills lots of rodents), so it was worth it, but yet again, not an expense I saw coming.  Enjoy the pics of coned cat as he was desperately trying to get back outside all of November, probably to go after the cat who had humiliated him previously.  Poor cat still has a basically bald spot around his neck where the cone was and his backside is going take forever to grow back in.

Here are some other pictures that happened this fall...

Stuck with a small pie pumpkin for our Jack O' Lantern this Halloween.  Saved all of the pumpkin pieces, roasted them and used them to make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.  Worked great and I plan to do that going forward.

Canning and other projects just aren't in the cards for me at this stage in my life, but a friend of ours was nice enough to gift us a pint of applesauce.  We ate it with pork chops one night and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I was able to return the jar to her with a thank you note since she does a lot of canning.  

And one last pic of the fall foliage.  It was wet this fall too, but the trees held onto their leaves pretty well for a while, so we got to enjoy the leaves changing color.

Enjoy!

Picture Year in Review (2025), Part 4: Summertime

Happy New Year, everyone.  This post took a bit to put together due to being busy with beginning year paperwork.  I got PFD's filed for the year, got psychological evals done for the son for his three year review period for the homeschool and other things, so it's been busy on top of the weather being insane the last bit.  I'll get into more of that later (ugh, December), but in the meantime, let's get to some random summertime pictures around here.

One big thing that happened this summer, which wasn't something I had planned on and wasn't thrilled about, was our well pump started to die in a big way and we finally realized it needed to be replaced when it wouldn't keep pressure up no matter how my husband adjusted it.  That was a hefty expense to replace, but it was due (it was over 20 years old by the date on the old pump when it was pulled up).  We called up Arctic Pump and Well to get the pump replaced as my husband knew them and knew they did great work and would have as good of quality parts as could be sourced now a days.  Jim was really nice to deal with and we've been really happy to have well pressure again since then.  Fun fact was that he knew the previous owners of our house (I used to talk to the guy who built this place at the kid's elementary school every day, so it was fun to find that Jim was friends with them, too) and remembered the last time he had replaced the pump and stuff.  I just find it kind of cool that we know so much about the original owners of the property.  I know Allen, the guy who built our house, is a really cool and nice guy and it was fun finding out more of the background of Carol, the woman we bought our house from (Allen and Carrol had divorced years ago).  Just as a side note, forgive the state of our lawn.  It was so ridiculously wet this summer that it was too wet to mow and quickly went crazy.

Anyway, yeah, it was an expensive year around here (and we are still dealing with 2025 to date...double ugh).  Onto other pictures.

Armina graduated this summer, which was a big accomplishment for both of us.  I was happy that she had excelled so much in homeschool as when I pulled her out of public school her reading abilities were abysmal and she was falling further and further behind in math.  Math is still a sore spot for her, but her reading abilities I'm very proud of as she reads for pleasure all the time now.

Alvah's favorite hobby this summer was playing in the grass and rolling all over the yard.  I apologize for the blurred face, but Alvah is old enough that I really don't feel comfortable showing his face so much as he, obviously, can't consent to his face being online.  The graduation photo I don't know any of hte people in it, so wanted to make sure to blur their faces for privacy as well :).

Schoolwork this year has been a lot of Leapfrog videos with how bad Alvah's mood has been.  Luckily, he likes Leapfrog, which makes it easier.

On the rare event we went through a day without rain (somehow I did manage to get a bunch of grilling done this summer, despite the wet, which was nice), our skies were beautiful but had some crazy cloud formations.  I included a coulple of them for fun.

Enjoy!

Picture Year in Review, Part 3: The Garden

I decided to do this section in it's own post, as these are some fun pictures that  I kept hoping to share.  Our little 2025 container garden.

A few things I learned by accident this year.  One, Swiss chard can grow a lot closer together than you have been told (I put three seedlings per small pot and they actually gave me a nice yield overall when it came to harvest time).  Two, it is amazing how far caterpillars will travel to do destruction.  I had one lettuce plant completely eaten through right above the dirt by one of those buggers.  In a planter.  Up on a second floor deck.  I was impressed.  Three, growing basil indoors is the way to go.  I was able to harvest Basil all summer off of my tiny little basil plant that I grew on my kitchen shelf.  It was awesome.  My herbs out on the deck didn't do well at all.  We had a cold, wet summer and they did not like it.  I was impressed that the tomato plants grew honestly.  I was able to harvest enough ripe tomatoes to eat with salads over the summer and got a small bag of green tomatoes at the end of the season that I'll use to make something with later in the winter.

Armina's hanging basket did well again this year, although we fought blight numerous times with how wet and crappy it was.  It hung on like a champ, though.

So, onto the picture highlights...

And there you go folks.  Our 2025 garden.

Enjoy!

Picture Year in Review, Part 2: Springtime

 I am going to hit you guys with a bunch of pictures here, so be prepared.  Today's post is what we did in the Spring of 2025.  At least the hightlights.

Alvah was so bad mood-wise, even before Spring showed up, that we bit the bullet and took him on a trip (he loves car rides and going places).  We decided on Homer, hoping that he'd be away from the "usual boring stuff" for a few days and maybe would have a really good time while we were there and just plain give all of us a break from his bad moods.

Spoilers:  It didn't work.  He hated the AirBNB we rented and would not eat or drink anything while we were there.  Thank goodness there was a McDonalds in Homer or I don't know what we would have done (other than go home and eat the cost of the AirBNB).  The only time he was in a decent mood was when we were driving around.  At the AirBNB he'd just pace and demand to leave until he'd collapse (after more medication than I really ever wanted to give him) for the night.  He'd wake up about 2am and start the whole process again.  After that trip I needed a vacation to recover from the vacation, I kid you not. 

But, Homer was really pretty and we did get to see the town a bunch since we drove around for two days straight.  I am including a few highlight photos of the spit for your enjoyment.

A shot of the spit from far above when we drove into the surrounding areas...

And a picture of some of the boats...

We didn't get out of the truck much because it also rained a very cold rain the entire time we were there.  There was also nothing open, even though we were there at the beginning of May because I guess nothing opens before Memorial Day (good to know for future reference, I suppose), so there wasn't a ton of stuff to visit on the spit while we were there.

At least my husband had fun.  He really enjoyed driving around and looking at stuff while we were there.

Next up is the "Adventure of the Tree" I guess is the most dramatic way to say it.  

We had to cut down the big birch tree in our front yard.  I'd been putting it off because I really loved that tree and got a kick out of seeing it every morning in the summer and fall, but it was old, starting to rot in places and losing limbs. Then, one day I was out in the yard and I heard a huge crack.  I looked over to see the tree starting to list toward our power line.  I quickly called a few tree outfits, including AAA Tree Service who had given me the advice last year that the tree would need to come down soon (highly recommend them to anyone local, by the way).  They showed up quickly, got the tree felled in record time (while I, paranoid I was going to see a lumberjack get hurt hanging from that sucker, sat by and watched form inside my house to stay out of the way), got paid and were out of here in record time.  I was really happy with how it was done so well and so fast.  They made sure the tree was out of the driveway and the road and cut it into manageable chunks that we could then move to the backyard to use it for firewood later.  That came in handy when we needed to burn wood this month, I'll tell you what.

I still miss looking at the tree, but am so, so glad it worked out the way it did and it got taken down when it did.  We had seasoned wood to burn this way, and most importantly, we've had horrific winds this month and if that tree had still been standing it would have fallen into our house and well for sure.  So, yeah for divine providence in this case.

Since moving the tree to the backyard, these guys have shown up more than once to much on the, easy to access, tree branches...

And there you go.  Some of the highlights from Spring 2025.  

Enjoy.

Picture Year in Review, Part 1: A Den Redo

First and foremost...

Merry Christmas, everybody, from my family to yours!

Second, let's get to that year in pictures by segwaying into where the tree is sitting this year.

We put up our tree in the den this year.  With how everything has gone down the last few years (and especially this year) I decided early this year to redo the den so that my husband would have a library space, work out area and a spot for his work table (for electronics and stuff).  Our den, since the pandemic, had become a huge mess and was just a catch all for EVERYTHING...food storage, tons of donations for the used store...you name it).  I became obsessed with the Youtube channel The Masculine Home to study masculine style (which my husband and I both enjoy) interior design and after months and months of stacking up boxes and furniture to stay in a budget (my husband was worried, I could tell, as the boxes stacked up in a corner of our catch all room on what in the Heck I was doing).  Finally, I got everything in to the point I could put it all together and I spent a good week on the floor putting furniture together and getting books and things put away.  I do plan to eventually get the cabinet in the corner out of the den and broken down into what wood we could reuse for other projects (it falls apart more and more each year), but that is for another year.  

I am really glad I got the den redone this year as we got the emergency wood stove area all set up and ready to go once the den was emptied out.  We ended up having to use said wood stove this month during some horrible arctic vortex storms we had and we were very grateful to have it as it kept the house warm during some pretty trying weeks.  It ain't pretty, but it is functional.  We are planning on putting in a proper hearth and stone surround sometime soon (to make it look better and get it up to standards), but I am very glad we have it if we need it.  And yes, we had plenty of wood to burn in it (more on that later).

So, here's a "before" shot of some of the clutter that was in the den (forgot to take a picture until I was well underway getting things emptied out and things).

And here are the "after" shots.  I know the wood doesn't match on some of the shelving (the disadvantage of shopping online), but sometimes you have to deal with what you can get online because shopping in stores with a cranky teenager who sits over a foot above you is just not feasible. (and in Alaska would have cost me about five times as much...no joke...the chairs were less than 200.00 a piece from Amazon and shipped up here, while trying get to get something similar from a furniture store would have been 400.00 per chair).

Enjoy!

My Year in Review (in pictures): 2025

Yeah, me too, kid.  Me too.

 Hello everybody. Merry Christmas (to those who celebrate in the Scandinavian tradition) and I hope you all have a Merry Christmas tomorrow for everyone else.

I know it has been months and months since you saw a post from me.  Life has been...life...this year and we've just been getting through on survival mode around here.  Severe autism and puberty is really rough.  On the individual (in this case, Alvah, or Casper the grumpy ghost up there) and on the rest of the household.  Between that and other stuff that has gone on...blogging has been the LAST thing on my mind just because it took time (big, big one) and mental energy to form sentences, which has been kind of in short supply this year.

Alvah has improved slightly, I think, the last bit.  I tried some new products that seem like they are working to help him a bit.  I'll try and write the reviews on those here pretty soon as I think it is important to get honest reviews out for others to read as it seems like so many products are just fake reviews by bots or the companies block or delete comments that don't talk about how wonderful they are (not saying these products do...I haven't tried to write reviews on their sites or on social media about it, though, in case of this as I don't have time to waste on stuff that is going to just get blocked).

I didn't do a bunch of blog posts this year, but I did remember to do one thing.  I took a bunch of pictures (in the hopes I would get blogging done).  So, I figured I might as well do my year in review in a different way this year and just deluge you with blog posts complete with pictures.  The posts will probably not be very wordy (time and energy again), but will get you guys up to date on everything that has gone on this year...good and bad.  

To save time I'm just not bothering to do much editing of photos at all, so the photos are going to be bigger than normal and basically as is.  So, if you don't see "pretty" photos, just take into consideration that this is life and I'm living it hard right now and don't have 20 minutes or more to edit a photo to post to the blog right now.

Right, back to getting some of those posts done.  Merry Christmas, everyone!  May this holiday be good (I've been praying all month for just that).  Hope you are all doing well!

Erika