Money Saving Money: Recent Frugal Accomplishments

 On the frugal front, it's been kind of basic around here, as saving money with the cost of everything has been...well it just hasn't happened.  A bunch of medical bills and some expensive prescriptions have gone onto credit card, which isn't ideal, and have to be addressed.  I also have to start calling around and seeing if I can get a quote on our garage roof.  Turns out that no one has three tab shingles anymore up here because they fell out of popularity (and yes, we went beyond Lowes and Home Depot and looked into local businesses as well).  Everyone has switched to architectural shingles instead (whatever those are), which will NOT look good with our old roof shingles from what we have found, so we are trying to see if a roofing company will have means to get ahold of our old style shingles when we can't.  While we are at it, I'm just going to get a quote on a new metal roof for the garage just to see.  At this point, it's going to be an option (woohoo for more loans *ugh*) if we can't get shingles to repair the roof right or if there is more damage than we are seeing at face value here.  At least we got a roll of tar paper while we were out over the weekend, so we can flame it onto the roof (hopefully the weather dries out here) and help to seal it from the rain instead of having exposed wood.  After a bunch of research into our home owner's insurance and such, I decided doing a claim wasn't going to happen.  We could not get a roofing contractor, anywhere, to come out and give us a quote on repairs or replacement before Spring (which was step one to doing an insurance claim) and looking at our policy and the age of the roof...we weren't going to get much in the way of a payout from insurance for the repairs and then we'd lose any discount we have on our monthly insurance for putting in a claim.  So, yeah, we are on our own for this one.

The joys of current year, huh?

Anyway, onto the frugal stuff that has been going on around here.

1.  We've gotten a few freebies from the grocery store (seen above there).  The breakfast bowl seems to be a part of Carrs efforts to get people to do pick up or delivery instead of shopping in store so every once in a while they'll have a freebie for pick up and delivery only.  Nice thing about these freebies is we've actually been getting them, which is nice as trying to get in-store freebies is near impossible anymore....they disappear FAST!  I got the flavor my husband picked out of the available options and we just picked it up with our regular grocery order.  

The coffee freebie was actually just coincidently being in the right place at the right time.  We ended up going to the pharmacy to pick up various prescriptions and there was a digital coupon for one of these free coffee drinks that was only good for a few days.  Since I was at the store anyway to hit the pharmacy, I went and found one of the few flavors of the coffee they had left and got it.  I'm hoping the cold brew coffee won't be too acidic as my stomach is VERY picky when it comes to coffee and my husband hates flavored coffee, so I'm going to be the one drinking it.  My plan is to save it and then drink it as maybe iced coffee a bit later in the season, but we shall see how it all goes.

2.  I got minimal materials to finish up the carpeting in my son's room to cut down on costs.  I had to get new carpet glue, as when I went and opened the old bucket of glue we had, it was a big science experiment of various molds (I had no idea that an adhesive could mold, but learn something new every day).  It was really old, so not sure if that had anything to do with it.  

Originally I was going to do an online order with Lowes and then just go and pick it up, but decided to run into the store after swimming one day instead when my husband could sit and keep the son company in the car.  I used the site to figure out where the glue was supposed to be shelved and then went into the store, went directly back to that spot, grabbed the glue and was able to check out within a few minutes, instead of wandering around and potentially spending more money.  I also found out that doing pick ups at Lowes has a RIDICULOUS mark up!  By picking up in store, I saved myself a nearly 100% mark up on the carpet glue (online price for pick up, 39.99 per bucket; in store it was like 24.00 per bucket).

3.  I made sure to use up leftovers as we had them, or I made sure to freeze them, so nothing went to waste.  We had chicken Chow Mein last night and for the cabbage I actually used up several coleslaw kits I had bought in the past few months that I had not had an opportunity to use before I was worried they were going to go bad, so I just threw them (bag and all) into the freezer.  These kits took the place of the cabbage and carrots in the recipe I was making last night and I picked the meat off of a rotisserie chicken carcass I had in the freezer (that I defrosted, of course) to use for the meat (there was actually a nice bit of meat on there).  The recipe turned out fine, nothing went to waste and I was able to clear out some room in my freezer where the kits and the carcass used to be, so wins all the way around.

4.  My husband has been wearing Lee jeans for years now, but the last like three years, the quality of the jeans has just gone downhill significantly.  He's actually had more than a few, near brand new, pairs of jeans rip out by the back pocket straight down the back of the jeans.  He was worried he was gaining weight and that is what was causing it, but looking at the reviews online a TON of people, small to large sized, complained about the same problem and were blaming the quality of the fabric.  I looked around for better work jeans for him as he does have to do things like crawl over bag lines and stuff at work from time to time, and found Rustler jeans were about 1/2 the price, fit him decent and have been holding up much better.  I'm slowly replacing his Lee's as they rip out with the Rustler jeans.  I've got a pile of mending to work on (including more than a few pairs of Lees), but haven't had a chance to really work on it with Alvah, so this will have to do for now.

5.  I redeemed credit card rewards for a statement credit as I found that getting gift cards (even E-gift cards) had changed and would actually (essentially) cost you money to "buy" them with your points.  So, statement credit it is.  A few bucks is a few bucks.  

6.  I gave my husband and my son haircuts.  I've still got a bunch of clean up work to do on Alvah the next week as he fought tooth and nail getting the haircut done, but we'll get there.

7.  I redid my menu plan a bit and did a quick meal of tacos instead of doing a more elaborate meal one night because Alvah hasn't been sleeping and I just plain wasn't up to doing much (transitioning of the seasons is always so rough on his already crappy sleep schedule).  We thought about going out to eat, but I put my foot down and said simply, "We can't afford to" and went home and just cooked some taco meat and defrosted some tortillas we had in the freezer.  Dinner was done quickly and with no added expense of spending way too much money eating out (I mean, dude, even a take out pizza is insanely priced anymore!  How bigger families afford to eat out is beyond me!).

8.  I put some new elastic into the waistband of a pair of yoga pants I've had for years  and years (I bought them at Target back before I moved to Alaska and that was over 20 years ago...so, yeah they've held up ridiculously well).  While doing so the tie string snapped in two and I saw it was not going to be fixed as it was fraying all over the place.  I actually ended up taking some shoe lace material I had in my sewing stores that I had bought for another project I never got to years ago and used it to make new ties for the pants.  Just tied some knots into the shoe lace material so the ties wouldn't get sucked out of the waistband, used a lighter to seal up the ends (you melt the ends of the laces to stop them from just fraying apart) and voila!  Fixed.  Nice part about that project was that I was able to do it all by hand instead of trying to figure out how to pull out my sewing machine to do it (which I need to do desperately to get some stuff done in the next bit around here).

9.  I was able to get quarts of Pacific Organic Beef Broth on sale on Amazon one day.  They had a coupon for 20% off when you bought three and they were cheap on top of that, so I did two orders of three and was able to get six cartons for $10.66.  For beef broth period that was cheap, but for organic on top of it that was insanely cheap!  I would have shared it when I got it, but the sale went away super duper quick, so I wasn't able to share it in time before the prices went back up.  

10.  I have continued to work on Spring cleaning and organizing and am slowly getting my home streamlined to work as efficiently as possible.  This week I was able to get my den freezer organized, which is where I store my meat.  By doing that I was able to find a bunch of sausage that had fallen into cracks and/or gotten buried in with other meat (probably because I was in a hurry at the time when I put it away, which is typical).  So, I now I know to start working more sausage into the meal plan in the coming months to get that inventory back under control.

And there you go folks.  Some of the frugal things I've done around here lately.  Hope money saving endeavors, big or small, are working out for you all.

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

Well, it is Thursday, but I don't have anything to post for Thrifty Thursday, so I decided to wait a day to post up our menu for this week.  I started implementing shopping every two weeks a few years back and it has served us really well in trying to keep within our budget (and saving shoppers from my son's unpredictable moods), so if you are looking at the picture above and thinking the fridge looks kind of bare, that's because we are one week into our two week shopping cycle :).

One nice thing about shopping online and doing pick up orders is that I can plan my menus a bit more carefully (and creatively) than before, which honestly has helped to stretch the dollar because I am a lot less likely to impulse buy when there are no clearance sales to shop.

So, let's get to it, shall we?

What's for Dinner this Week:

Thursday (today):  Eggs Benedict, tropical fruit 

Friday:  Pork Wellington, spinach salad, bread.    

This is a treat for my husband as beef Wellington is probably his favorite meal of all time and he's been under a lot of pressure at work and home of late.  I'm trying out pork instead of beef, because well...beef is out of budget pretty much unless it is hamburger unless there is a super sale.   I'm going to be messing with the recipe a bit...I'm using dehydrated and rehydrated mushrooms instead of fresh, using onions instead of shallots, etc. 

Saturday:  Chicken Chow Mein , using leftover rotisserie chicken and spaghetti noodles instead of the called for noodles in recipe.  Comes out really good!  This is one of my "saved and look up as soon as we want that dish" type of recipes.

Sunday:  Japanese Curry with chicken (just using Japanese curry roux blocks to make the recipe super easy to make), carrots and potatoes, rice 

Monday:  Chicken Lyonnaise (to use up some fresh onions I got as a surprise in a grocery order last week), fruit, salad, bread 

Tuesday:  Chicken Alfredo Tortellini (making recipe up as I go along with some frozen stuffed tortellini I have), garlic bread, salad or steamed broccoli 

Wednesday:  Cheeseburgers and fries

Leftovers will be eaten for lunch (including getting sent with my husband for lunch at work), or, if need be, I'll shuffle things around and not make something one night and we'll have a leftover night instead.  Vegetables like carrots are frozen, potatoes are stored in the fridge for longer shelf life.  I'll pull meat the day before to defrost in time for dinner the next day, so that lends me a bit of freedom in figuring things out on the fly.

And there you go folks.  Our dinner menu for this week.  

Enjoy!

Goals for the Week (4/12 -- 4/18)

It's Spring Cleaning time around here...okay well Spring Cleaning and the start of Spring and Summer projects.  The weather is finally into the 40's during the day, so you can open up the house to air in the afternoon, so kicking up stuff in the house isn't as much of an issue as if you'd do it in the winter.  So, I've been working on getting cleaning and other projects done that desperately need to be tackled and this week is no different.  So, let's get into what is going on around here for projects.

Goals for the Week of 4/12

1.  Get chandelier glass in the kitchen cleaned well and hung back up.  Dust the light fixture pieces as well.    DONE!

This thing was FILTHY from all the dust and residual grease that had accumulated over the winter from cooking and stuff.  It looks so much better now!

Note:  Please ignore the state of the walls in the picture above.  Alvah's been rough the last few years to himself and other things.  Step two in his room redo is we are going to put up paneling to hopefully help alleviate this situation and protect him and his room a bit better.

2.  Biggest project of this week is to get my son's floor done.

We started carpeting his floor a few years ago, but my husband never finished it because life got in the way (and Alvah burned out on people being in his room and didn't want anything else messed with).  I am tired of tripping over carpet square boxes and looking at an unfinished room, so it is finally getting done one way or the other this week.  Nice part about having a wife with near clinical OCD is when I finally start a project, it gets done.  So far I got the part of the floor where the carpet will be going down scrubbed well with a mixture of Borax and soapy water (Borax will kill anything weird that might be on the floor and help get grease off the wood that might stop the carpet glue from adhering right).  I then filled in a spot on the floor that my son chopped up pretty good by rocking a chair back and forth over the wood that wasn't meant to move that way a few years ago.  I bought floor leveler that was made specifically for this task and was approved for the materials I'm using, so no one comment worried I did the wrong thing here *laugh*.  

Then I scraped up a few carpet tiles that the son had just fouled up too badly and would just look nasty even after cleaning them (by the way scraping up carpet REALLY sucks...just wanted to share) and then poured boiling water over the carpet tiles I felt could be saved.  I sucked up the water as soon as it started cooling off a bit with the carpet cleaner.  After doing that a few times I poured vinegar on the spots with the worst stains, sucked that up, and then went over it one more time with water.  It actually worked really well and stopped me from having to go over the carpet squares with a bunch of different chemicals (that Alvah is really sensitive too right now...his eczema is just awful this Break Up, even for him).  The shot above is in the middle of the process.  Now that the carpet has dried it lightened up a bunch and looks pretty good!

After a ridiculous amount of prep work I'm finally going to start laying the carpet squares today.  Here's hoping it goes well *fingers crossed*.  I've never laid carpet before, but I've watched a bunch of people put down flooring on YouTube and things, so I'm hoping I'll do a decent job.

Wish me luck on this one.

3.  The last task on my list for this week (trying to make things doable), is to get out this weekend and start to clean up some of the MANY shingles and roof materials that are currently over the whole of my back yard, so we'll be better able to mow when green grass starts to make an appearance.  Between the shingles and just general wind debris, this is not going to be a small job.  I'm hoping we can start to source shingles for the garage roof this weekend as well (I got and bagged up a sample to match color).  We very well might have to order the shingles as regular 3 tab shingles are sold out everywhere around here (go figure), but I want to get this rolling before too much time has passed.

And there you go folks.  My goals for this week.  Hope your goals for the week are going well.

Enjoy!

Thrifty Thursday: Thrift Store Finds

Thrifty Thursday!  Here's a topic we haven't had in quite a while around here.

Before I get down to what I have bought at the used stores lately, can I just go on a rant about the price of used items at thrift stores anymore?  I mean, holy cow, are they expensive!   A used pair of pants should not cost 10 to 12 dollars!?!  Seriously, and this is sad, I was able to get my daughter a new skirt (on sale) for less than a used one costs at the used stores right now.  I know that resellers (do not get me started on that topic as they are wrecking the entire POINT of used stores) are driving prices up, but dang man!

Anyway, it has been a LONG time since I have found anything at the used stores that I was willing to spend my money on.  Part of it is the prices, but there is also the fact that people are holding onto their items more, so there is less inventory.  And the last reason I haven't bought much is that I'm really working on streamlining my home to function at the highest efficiency possible to just keep my sanity trucking along in tact.  At this stage in my life, I need that.  So, my rule of thumb is I will buy something if I need it (which I always have a short list going) and/or I have a space to put it in my home.  Period.  I'm just not into buying something because it is cool and then I'll find some place to put it later when I get home.  Nope, that ain't how my home is functioning for me anymore.  I just find that clutter gives me anxiety and I don't need more of that in my life, so I'm avoiding adding to it.

So, what have I actually run into at the used stores lately that was worth buying?  Some baking dishes!

I've been searching for a particular size of Pyrex dishes for a long time.  I have a few small like 4.5 x 7 dishes that I use all the time for, of all things, defrosting meat.  They are the perfect size to put meat into to defrost in my small fridge spaces and, if needed, fit in the microwave beautifully.  And the ones I have have either a nice lip on them to use for handles or they have handles.  But they were a bit small for longer pieces of meat like pork steaks and I'd end up with water (or worse, meat juice) that I'd have to clean up after defrosting the meat in them.  

And lo, and behold, I was able to find, not one, but TWO longer baking dishes that would fit my needs within a few weeks of each other.  One is an Anchor Hocking Brand and the other, with the nice handles on it, is an old PYREX (all caps, baby!) baking dish.  They are, if I'd have to guess, like 5 x 8 in size...an odd size now a days to get, but they fit right in the space where the other dishes sat in my cupboard and I can stack the other dishes right on top of them.  I've already used them several times now and am loving having more variety in my sizes of meat defrosting containers :).

They were three and four dollars respectfully, which I had me kind of undecided on getting them, but I am glad I finally decided to get them both as they come in handy (and if I ever make jello dishes they'd be the perfect size for that, I think).

Next up is a pyrex (lower case, so newer and not as good) lasagna pan.  I actually bought this to roast chickens in so I can fit vegetables in with the chicken when I roast it.  A regular 9x13 pan is just a bit too shallow to fit any vegetables in with the chicken and expect it to bake well.  I bought a small metal roasting pan, but it is way too deep on the sides so anything you want to bake in it takes twice as long to bake as it should as it reflects the heat too much.  So that one is going away and this one is sitting in it's place in my cabinet.

I put a quart jar of marinara sauce in the pan so you can see how deep the pan is.  I'd measure it, but honestly with my life at the moment, finding a ruler to measure is just going to take a bit too long.  So, enjoy the jar for scale.  I like how deep the pan is.  It is also just a teeny bit smaller width and length-wise then my older 9x13 pans, so it stacks in them alright.  I have my pans stacked in a kind of weird upper shelf in my lower cabinets in my kitchen, so I have to be careful getting it in and out of the cupboard, but it DOES fit, which is all that matters to me.

The pan cost me seven dollars, which made me consider leaving it at first, but my husband convinced me to buy it as I'd been looking for something like it for a long time.  Hopefully it comes in handy.

And there you go folks.  My finds at our local used stores the last bit.  I hope your thrift shopping has gone better than mine the last few years.

Enjoy!

December Wind Storms of 2025 and Life Update

Ugh.  What a year it has been so far.  And it's only April.  Seriously...ugh.

Delays in blogging were actually really easy to explain (not fun, but easy).  I had a ton of paperwork and stuff to do this year as I am trying to get everything in the works to get adult guardianship of Alvah sorted before he turns 18.  Seriously when did my kids grow up?  Anyway, that paperwork got submitted and now we wait from word from the court to start investigation proceedings to make sure Alvah is disabled enough to warrant needing an adult guardian and then we have the court date to get through.  They kind of want a neuro-psych eval for adult guardianship cases, from what my pediatrician was telling me, but we are on about four different waiting lists now and haven't gotten anything from any of them, so we are doing what we can with what we have.  I at least got a letter from his psychiatrist submitted with his paperwork to the court to hopefully make them happier about the situation.  Then there was IEP paperwork for the year, his 5 year review meetings and paperwork for that to get done and stuff.   Finally got that all done...it was a lot, honestly.  

And then March rolled around and we all got horribly sick.  It was like a flu that would not end.  My husband got it first and was over it within two weeks or so, which was definitely a good thing.  Meanwhile the kids and I went down like the Titanic.  Armina kept taking steps backward, so I finally took her to the doctor and we found out the reason for the duration of the thing, why it had different symptoms that effected us and such.  We caught a Covid variant.  We were down, no joke, all of March with it.  We are still trying to get over the residual fatigue and congestion, but I was so happy to get my sense of taste back completely (well, nearly...some things still taste weird to me) last week that I kind of don't mind fighting the cough on and off.  Somehow I managed to keep on top of housework (to a point...clean clothes stacked up and I had a huge folding day when it was all said and done and the downstairs needed to be deep cleaned when I was feeling somewhat human) and got the paperwork submitted to the court for Alvah, but boy howdy it hasn't been fun.  

Combine that with a record breaking cold spell in March (my electric and gas bill definitely reflect that...ouch), high winds (though not as bad as December) in the first three months of the year, and our tax return being a little over 100.00 this year (losing the daughter as a dependent and Alvah getting old enough to nearly lose the child tax credit...that creamed us...at least we didn't owe anything)...it's been a depressing year on a lot of fronts.  

So, anyway, now that you are up to speed on the last three months (more or less), let's get onto the last of our year in review from last year.  The winds of December.

I remember some of the quotes people were using during those wind storms...

"Whoever is holding onto December's beer, please pour it out.  They are already drunk."

"Who hurt you, December?"

"Man, not again!!!"

The last one was the most commonly repeated.  

We had winds, high high winds, for 19 days out of 31 in December.  Over 80 MPH winds on a lot of days.  My husband spent his Christmas vacation watching as things flew apart around here.  It was not fun.  At least Christmas Day was relatively calm, which was nice as we were all eating Cortisol like crazy and we desperately needed a break.

Damage on our end part one is that we are going to have to repair our garage roof as it lost about 1/3 of it's shingles.  No joke, you drive around the Valley and look at roofs 9 out of 10 roofs have damage to them.  It's nuts.  We have homes built to withstand wind out here as wind is a regular occurrence around these parts, but the wind was horrible because it blew in EVERY direction for way too long.  No joke.  You'd look out the window and you could watch it change direction three times as you watched it.  It was crazy.  We, along with everyone else, lost trees (luckily none of ours fell on anything important).  People were without power for days, some for weeks, on end.  Thank goodness Alaskans tend to be prepared, as pretty much everyone had to use their wood stoves/alternative heat source and generators this winter.  We were lucky in that we are right off the main power line, so we never lost power for too long compared to everyone else.  My sister-in-law down the road from us wasn't so lucky and was without power a lot.

Other than the roof, our biggest loss was our barn.  It is done for.  The roof finally gave up the ghost, split in half and is now sitting inside the building (RIP old friend).  

We lost part of the side of the building too, but at least that got lodged in some trees and didn't go too far.  Honestly, I'm just amazed it's still standing at this point.

The roof on the shed lifted up in a few places and really wanted to come off, but by some miracle it held.  But, yeah, my husband's plan at this point is to buy material to put in a new floor for a new shed, use the wood from the barn as much as he can to help reduce costs, and just make us one building to replace the shed and the barn as they need to be replaced with something we can actually use reliably (the shed is not in great shape by any means, but at least still has a roof).  We desperately. need to reduce costs and save money as much as we can.  The lack of a tax return (I used the 160.00 we got to buy the daughter a much needed new mattress), medical bills for my husband (MRI on his shoulder to test for a need for a shoulder surgery, heart tests to make sure he was okay as his blood pressure was really high, etc), licensing fees for my husband and other bills just have been put on credit card because with the cost of everything else going up...well I am wracking my brain on ways to save money little bit by little bit to get things paid down as quick as possible.

Back to damage on a lesser scale.  We lost the bottoms to two of our downspouts.  I found one jammed under our camper, but the other one flew to OZ, I think.  We'll have to figure that one out later.  No picture as the picture got corrupted.

Our well cover/wishing well, flew off during the wind storms and is currently sitting at the front of our yard until we can figure out how best to rebuild it.  It is in a lot better shape in the photo I'm showing than it actually is after all the wind storms.  It's pretty flattened at this point and in pieces for sure.  At least the wood for it stayed in the yard (I hope...we'll see when we rebuild it if we are missing some).

Honestly, I am depressed about the damage, but try to count my blessings.  Everyone, it seems, has some type of damage they suffered in the Valley.  We got creamed pretty good, no doubt.  So many others got it worse, though.  I found out that at least 1/2 of the Valley with the wind and just record cold we were having all winter (wind would blow away snow when we'd get it, so not enough insulation on the ground for the consistent below zero temps), had sewer lines that were completely frozen up.  This was as of last week when we found out a friend of ours was having that problem.  Thank goodness we didn't have to deal with that.  I had to climb up on the roof to secure a chimney cap that was going to bend and fly off because it lost some bolts in the wind and my husband had to climb up on the roof to break some ice on our sewer vent pipe as the wind had blown too much ice and crap down it and it was plugged (weird having your toilets not flush, but the sinks still work when that happens...it was a first).  But, at least our sewer still worked.  We didn't have a fence to blow down (a LOT of people did) and we didn't have sheds that blew completely apart and hit things on our neighbor's property (also a thing that happened)...at least our barn roof stayed with the building for the most part, so at least we can use the wood to rebuild something in it's place.  We didn't completely lose the roof to our house and have to go and live in a hotel until insurance could help to replace it (also a thing that happened to poor people).  It's a bright side to our personal dilemma and I'll take any bright side I can get.

So, yeah, house repairs and projects are in our future, so I'll try to take you all along for that.  Hopefully it all works out.

Enjoy.

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!