Bringing the outdoors in and indoors out!

Yesterday was crab apple picking.  With our apple trees dying left and right lately, we’re determined to savor what is left!  For those of you who didn’t know, crab apples don’t just make tasty snacks, but they make the BEST apple cider when pressed.  We just need to borrow a press from a neighbor, and cider will be ours (frozen) for winter. 

However, my freezer is officially full from our enormous garden harvest this year, so Knut and I are debating about either buying another freezer, or storing some things elsewhere for the winter.  Is a bumper crop of everything considered an emergency, so we could take money from the emergency savings?  The beans still aren’t done for the year, I have no room for any freezer meals right now, and don’t even get me started on the pumpkins again. 

You know, the pie pumpkin plant in our garden with its sights set on taking over the world. 

I had plans to freeze pumpkin bread (my favorite!), roasted pureed pumpkin for pies this winter, for soups, pumpkin cheesecake.  Did I mention that everyone I know is entitled to 1 or 10 free pie pumpkins this fall?  I’ll keep you updated.

O the helpers were plentiful!  Pictures of David, though, were few.

Today I finally conquered a project I’ve been wanting to do for awhile.  The chandelier in our dining room was gold, and I really wanted a bronzy one to match the fixtures in the rest of the house.  I saw on an HGTV episode years ago when we still had the channel, that if you spray paint it in just bronze, it looks flat, but if you give a little shimmer over the bronze with copper spray paint, it adds depth and looks more like real bronze.  So if you come to my house, pretend it looks real.  😉

Not your average Saturday laundry drying on the line!  (The tape is just painter’s tape, you know.  We don’t actually have bright blue candlesticks on it.)

Our vegetable garden isn’t the only harvest being brought inside.  Right now, we have a gorgeous bouquet in nearly every room on the main floor, and there’s still enough color left in the garden to be pretty.  O, I just love this time of year!