Halloween Yard In Utah

My daughter, Amber, my grandson, and I traveled to Utah this past week to visit with family.  Oh my, the weather was so crazy warm in Utah….I didn’t even have to put a jacket on, ever!  And they actually still have most of the leaves on their trees.  It was a little strange coming home to leafless trees after being in Utah for a week.
I love Fall/Autumn….it’s the mostest (my friends word).  I know, not a word, but it works for me. 
We (both daughters, grandson, sister & myself) drove to a home nearby to see some Halloween decorations.  This person really decorates…….you actually get out of your vehicle and walk around the yard to see all the things that are displayed.  Some things were kind of creepy, but most of it was fun to see.

When taking pictures at night, without a tripod, it’s sometimes difficult to hold the camera still enough to get a good picture.  But, it can sometimes add to the Halloween theme of things….making the pictures even better.

Especially this one……………OoOOoOooOoO.

And wowziers…….look at the size of this Godzilla, balloon.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a yard balloon this size.  That thing was so life-sized that you’d expect King Kong to come around the corner.

Deer With One Set Of Antlers

I took this photo looking out our dining room window on October 15th.  The strange thing about this picture and the deer only having one antler is that only a day or two before seeing this deer, I looked out my bedroom window and saw a huge moose with only one antler.  The moose, sad to say, was a bit faster at moving off the property than I was going to the other end of the house and retrieving my camera.  Hope he comes back because that would have been a great photo.

FYI – Since bucks as a norm shed their antlers between January and April, and moose normally shed their antlers between December and March, I’m thinking that this deer and the moose are rare.  Somewhere along the line, something must have happened to cause them to lose their antlers.

What Lack I Yet? – Handout

I had a friend ask me if I would make a handout for her church lesson on the 4th Sunday of this month.  Her lesson will be given from the talk given by Elder Larry R. Lawrence during the last LDS Conference – “What Lack I Yet?”.
I decided to make a handout using a picture I had taken at the Mackay Reservoir back in 2010.  I put the picture in PicMonkey and added some bokeh star shapes and radiance to the sky area. 

This is a fabulous talk.  If you would like to view or read this talk, you can go HERE.

Out My Back Door 10/19/15

I took these pictures at 9:15 this morning and it looks like it is going to be a dismal, cloudy day.  Although, the sun is trying to peek through in a few areas.  Actually, I sometimes like days when the sky is all cloudy…..it puts a different feeling into the air….Like Fall!

God Moments – Eerie Cloud Brightness

On Saturday, as I was driving to town, all of a sudden the inside of my vehicle darkened considerably.  It was almost eerie.  I looked up at the sky to see if everything had gone darker when I saw that the sun was behind a cloud and the sight was beautiful.  I pulled off the side of the road to get pictures, but the pictures do not even depict the brilliance of the sun tipping the edges of the cloud.  I took two pictures 16 seconds apart and within that time you can see how much the cloud formation had changed.  The outer edges became even brighter.

I love it when God gives me these moments!

Deformed Bread

I like to make bread in my bread machine on the dough cycle.  When the dough cycle is over, I remove it from the bread machine, put it in my regular bread pan, let it raise, then bake it in the oven.
I have no idea what I did wrong, but when the dough cycle sounded, I took the mixture out of the machine and it was a total blob of yeasty, frothy, semi-liquidy dough.  I decided to add more flour and run the dough cycle one more time.
This time it came out pretty stiff and it was a little difficult to even shape it into a loaf.  This is the result of how it looked after putting it in my loaf pan and letting it raise.  I know…. pretty scary looking, huh?!

I decided to bake it anyways and after baking it at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, it came out looking like this.

Maybe it’s not the best looking loaf of bread but even though it came out all deformed, I’m here to tell you it was some of the best tasting bread I have ever baked.  Wished I had the recipe!

Moose In Backyard And Jumping The Fence

On September 26th at 7:30am, my husband and I were outside watching moose.  We had 1 small bull, 1 large bull, 1 mamma and her twin babies.  As we were watching, the large bull moose plopped down and my husband was standing behind me and I heard him say, “Oh great, I was gonna go out and move wheel lines and he decides to park it”.

Shortly after taking the above video, my husband decided to go out and change the water anyways.  But, after cranking a few turns on the water valve, he decided it would be a good idea to go and get the 4-wheeler.
 

I didn't get a photo of all five moose together, but I did capture it on video, as the larger bull chased off the younger bull.



I know the moose are around our place quite a bit, but it is still fun to see them and take photos.

The next two videos were taken a few days later, on October 3rd.  As I was taking the first one and he turned towards me, he was getting a bit too close for comfort.

I knew he would be crossing the fence so I ran (walked fast) to the back door of our home, ran through the house and out the front door so I could film some footage.  I wasn't sure if I had the camera on record or not so I was pushing the button on and off but eventually I figured it out and was able to capture him jumping the fence. 
Before jumping the fence, he ran across the road, sandwiched himself between two cars who had stopped, one facing east and the other facing west.  One of the cars was from California and I can only imagine what they were thinking as this huge moose ran right in front of them.

 

Creamy Noodle Chicken Soup

Soup….there’s nothing better than soup when Fall/Autumn is in the air.  I found a good creamy chicken soup recipe on the Plain Chicken, blog.  Because of ingredients I did or did not have, I tweaked the recipe a bit and it turned out delicious. 

Soup is, for me, one of those foods that I can eat quite frequently.  I’m a soup eater, even in the summer months.  Here is my tweaked version……Creamy Noodle Chicken Soup:

Bottling Beets - 2015

Yes indeed, it’s that time of year, again.  Beets, beets, beets….my husband and I eat a lot of bottled beets.  They are basically a staple on our table for many meals.
My husband pulled and topped (leaving 1” greenery to help avoid bleeding during cooking) the beets the night before then put them on our garbage can cooker at 6:30am.
I went out to get a picture of our cooking set-up but my husband had already put it away.  It’s basically a Camp Chef, propane burner stove with a clean, metal garbage can placed on it with two bricks in the bottom of the garbage can and a few inches of water.  You place a wired potato basket filled with beets on top of the bricks then place the garbage can lid (holes punched in top for steam escape) on your can, set the heat to medium and your all set to go.  It took the beets approximately 1 1/2 hours to cook.
After the beets were cooked, I removed them from the garbage, placed them on the grass and hosed them down.  After cooking the beets, hosing them down with the cold water makes it very easy to take off the outer layer (skin) of the beets.
The beets were then brought into the house where I skinned them and washed them one more time, cutting out any bad spots.

I then slice them up and place them in my canning jars.  I started using my mandoline slicer but found it easier, actually, to just use a knife to cut the beets into uniform slices.

While sitting at the table cutting beets, 5 bucks passed by the window but by the time I washed my hands and grabbed my camera, there was only 1 left.  I know, the deer have nothing to do with canning beets, buy hey, couldn’t pass up a beets and bucks moment.

By the time I got my beets sliced, I ended up with 3 large bowls of sliced beets.

I was able to get 16 jars of beets from this batch of beets.  I got up the next morning and decided to do a few more beets, giving me a total of 22 jars.  I still have beets in the garden but I decided to let others enjoy them (wink, wink….I’m tired of doing beets) so I’m done with beets for this year.

This is the process I use for canning beets.  If you live in a different area, your processing time and instructions may vary.  I have also baked my beets in the oven instead of using the Camp Chef.  This process works very well but takes a lot more time.

Big Beet and Godzilla Potato

A cousin came last week to get some beets and up out of the ground came a huge beet.  Look at the size of that beet.  It’s a good thing when canning beets that size doesn’t matter.  No matter how big they get, the texture and taste doesn’t seem to change.

Also in that same week, I went out to the garden in the early evening to see what my hubby was up to…..he was digging potatoes.  It didn’t take me long to spot this one sitting on the ground next to other potatoes.  We’re talking a whopping 10” long by 4.5” wide.  A lot of the other potatoes were large but this one…..oh my, this one was the Godzilla of potatoes.  I think we could invite family and friends over for dinner and feed them all off this one potato.  I don’t think our potatoes have ever grown to this size.

Pretty Fall Tree

As I was leaving a friends home a few days ago, I noticed this tree off to the side of her yard.  I thought it was so pretty with the clear, blue sky as a backdrop.