We had a great Christmas and hope all my blogger friends did also!  Below is a video of our Christmas Eve! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76CSVFUymmo

Variety of This and That!

No harvest!!!  Meet my two piano students standing in front of my Christmas tree!  Merry Christmas to them!

We had lunch with our first grader, Gracie!  She thought that pizza was sure good!

Time to play!  Too cold to go outside.  If only I could do the splits like that it would help me with my gardening!!!!

A couple ladies came over to quilt.  Ann had made a set of these beautiful pillow cases!!

We had some couples over for coffee and dessert after our church Christmas cantata.  I found these cute napkins to set the table with.  If only this was true!!!!!

My "Wonderful Gardener" is shoveling a path for our furbaby to go out to "potty"!  Not spoiled one bit!  

What we don't do for our dogs!

I think this means I can start my "armchair gardening"!  I have received one seed catalog in the mail so far.  I'll be back after the holidays!  Enjoy yours!!!! 

Is It Warm Enough to Garden??

Would you go outside to garden???????

I have been picking greens from my cold frame all along.  Today I picked a few but they were small and looked so cold and hurt!  Maybe even a little frosted.  I about froze my fingers off so have decided that I will be buying lettuce and spinach from the store for awhile!  I am a wimpy gardener but think I did well to not buy until December from the store!!!

I took Coco for a walk one nice day and a lady was bagging up leaves!  Aha!!!  I asked her if I could have a couple bags and dragged them home and put them in the garage.  Now I have some leaves to add to my compost pile next spring!

Made "Wonderful Gardener" a raspberry pie from the raspberries he had picked last summer!

My two piano students are wonderful!  The youngest made me this card and brought to me last week.

On the inside it said, "Dear Mrs, nancy,  I hope you have a great cristmas. I enjoy you take en your time to help me.  I love you like if you were in my family but you are a part of my family.  Yours Truely, Jocelyn.   Wasn't that sweet!!!  I tried to copy it like she printed it.  I am not related so not sure how she thought I was a part of her family but thought the card was precious!

Sue, Melissa and I went to see the Nutcracker on Wednesday night.  Then I had my Christmas/Winter band concert last night so it has been a busy week.  I want to leave you with a video to watch if you haven't seen it that I thought was so neat!   I hope you like it!  Enjoy!!!!!

http://www.ijreview.com/2013/12/99867-u-s-air-force-band-goes-flash-mob-smithsonian-delight-visitors/

Is Anyone Ready for Spring Yet?????

Not much gardening going on here this time of year!  I went out to get some greens for my salad this morning, cleaned up the doggie do and put the left over coffee and coffee grounds on one of my blueberry bushes!  It was COLD!  About 30 degrees at noon.  I am ready for spring!

I received this nice labeler for one of my birthday gifts.  Now there should be no excuse not to have my garden notebooks organized!

Wishing you all a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving!  I thank God for my many blessings.  Stay warm!  Spring isn't that far off!

Harvest,Frost, Jelly & Ice Cream Cake

My harvest is kale and lettuces.  That will be all I will get from my garden now until next spring!

I am back from vacation and my lettuces in the cold frames live on!!  We got a frost the night before we left and I didn't expect it so didn't put the covers on!  And there was no one to put them on while I was gone.  I lucked out and still have my lettuces!

This is another little area I have planted.  I put a clear plastic box over this area with a brick to hold it down!

This is the Swiss Chard that I have not done anything with.  Most of it lives on so far and I haven't covered it.

I don't cover the Kale either and so far so good!

And a patch of Parsley that doesn't get covered!  We received a little snow late this afternoon and lake effect snow is forecast for tonight!

This is blackberry juice that I froze from our blackberries in our yard this summer to make blackberry jelly.

This is the blackberry jelly made up from the blackberry juice!

We got a lot of laughs out of this one!  I requested an ice cream cake for my birthday!  Love ice cream!  No one told us that we should get the cake out of the freezer a little ahead of time!  It was so hard to cut.  This is Sue holding it up with the knife and Bob with his hands under it in case it slipped off the knife!  The cake was delicious!

Fun and Harvest!!

 My huge harvest!  Picked Oct. 21st!

Picked Raspberries today!  Pretty sad, huh!  When you consider it is Oct. 27th in Northwest Indiana I guess it is not so bad.

Still picking lettuce, kale and a little small spinach for my salads.  Will be going on vacation though and no one will be here to put the cover to the cold frame down.  Hoping for nice weather!!!!!

Poor Coco!  What is a furbaby to do when there are no more veggies out there for her to snitch!  Coco doesn't care for lettuce, kale or spinach!!!  Raspberries, tomatoes, green beans, carrots and squash are more to her liking!  Grapes too but Mom does not want her to have them!

I am drinking my elderberry/mint tea and hoping to stay healthy!

We celebrated our little four year old granddaughter's birthday Oct. 22nd!!  She likes to pretend that she is playing my electronic piano but her Mom has also started teaching her to play the piano.

I went to Gracie's first grade Halloween party!  Can you tell those girls love that cool whip on their forks!  Four grades playing games in the gym at the same time made the noise level a little high! Well, not just a little but very high you might say!  Enjoy your week!

New Dehydrator, Preserving, End of Summer!

My old dehydrator bit the dust!  I have had it for years and it had no fan.  I bought this one with a fan and really like it!  It would have been nice to have an Excalibur brand but for the two of us and our age and what I dehydrate this one works great!!  This one is also more in my budget!!

We finished canning our lumpy applesauce!  We canned six pints and have a few left from last year so that should do us I hope.

Middle of October and slim picking!

Winter coat and ear muffs!!!  I tried to not let this happen!!  Didn't make it!

  

Pulled these few carrots out of the cold frame.

I am trying the "Garden of Eden" method on this section of the garden next year so have the wood chip mulch put on.

This Kale got eaten by some bugs but now it is thriving once again!

Huge Swiss Chard!  Can I use it in any way?

Greens growing in my cold frame!  Hoping for some winter salad making!

Some spearmint and some chives to dry.  The spearmint does not look very green and healthy.  Why do I wait till the last minute to do things!!  

Carrots harvested from another bed.  That is the end of the carrots for me.  My garden is almost ready for the winter.  I will be out with my ear muffs and winter coat again tomorrow trying to finish up!

Everything! My week's harvest, etc.

This is the last of the Asian pears!  We have some in the refrigerator to continue enjoying for a bit!

Remember my Elderberry trees my "wonderful gardener" scalped!  They must have liked it because look at all the leaves already!!

Some carrots I harvested this past week.  Have two more little patches yet to pull!

"Wonderful Gardener" getting the rain barrel ready to store in the garage for the winter months!

A couple friends came over to work on their quilts one day this week.  This is Darla's finish!  A pretty baby quilt!

I had picked anything that looked like a bean because Coco had been jumping the fence and getting into them.  Good thing I did as here she is caught in the act!

Oh, no!!!!  Mom caught me!!!

My friend Sue came from Michigan and stayed overnight.  We worked hard making lots of cards, went to the Farmers Market and looked in some little shops.

Here are some samples of some we made.  You can't see the pretend stitching but the middle represents a quilt four patch.

Here is a close up of one of them.  She has this little machine with templates that makes the beautiful dry embossed look design.

Here is another one with the dry embossing design.

Here are three more that we did up differently.

Some other ones we did.

Church this morning and the "Littles" came over this afternoon.  Here is Gracie and her Daddy canning their grape juice.

Six quarts done!  Sure look delicious, don't they!!

This cereal bowl picked full of raspberries today.  Oct. 13th and hard to believe!!  Well, this certainly has been a busy week but a nice one.  Wonderful weather we have been having.  Hope your week was wonderful also!!