Wednesday

  

My new back porch is almost finished!  And, it is beautiful!  They maybe finished today and I’ll start moving things around tomorrow. 

 

The Demon Duo have been watching out the window and are very interested in what-ever-the-hell-that-is.  I plan to let them out there - as close to outside as they'll get.

Also, the front walk if done!  I got three more bags of pebbles and put them out.  I suspect it will be an ongoing process of adding more pebbles as needs arrive but, right now . . . . ta da!

And just so it’s not completely boring –

There are shells and beach glass sprinkled around.

Interesting rocks and critters.

Fossils, plants, and sculptures (in case you can’t tell, the big statue is a pelican – he’s very old but stands strong).

Plus, a lion guards the front of the walkway.

I owe a big thank you to two friends – one who said – would you be interested in these landscaping rocks?  I don’t want them anymore.  And one that said – would you be interested in these bags of gravel?  I don’t need them.  My answer to both was obviously YES!  So, THANK YOU!

Inside the house I’ve done “catch-up” stuff. 

Found and hung drapes in the living room. 

Decided on and put up a door cover for the bathroom.  The door into the master bathroom was positioned so it opened on top of the toilet.  Which means, you’d have to close the door to get to said toilet.  Fine if the need arises BUT, I am a little old lady and if I have to get up in the middle of the night, in the dark, all I could see was running into the door, one way or the other.  I took the door off.  Instead I’ve hung a linen drape that is the same color as the wall and will slide back completely out of the way.  Or, slide across the door if required.

I put a bulletin board over my desk.  I think I must be a dying breed of human that wants a place to pin various little things I might need quickly.  Of course the drawback is after a year I have to clean it off as things get pinned over things, over other things.  But, it works for me.

I also finished the ornaments I made earlier (well, I have one more to do).  Several are pretty much okay-not-spectacular and I don’t know what I’ll do with them.  However these three (and the fourth one to be finished) I really like.

They are a combination of needlework and beading. 

The pattern didn’t call them out as ornaments (coasters, actually) but I liked the design.  So I changed the colors, added the beadwork and completely filled in the entire design (no empty fabric showing).  Also, I don’t like ornaments that have to face one direction because the back is - - - well, obviously the back so, I reworked the finishing so the backs look like this

I think they turned out nice.  Don’t know what I’ll do with them either but they were fun and challenging to make.

What else???

Today is Homemade Bread Day.

The origins of this particular Day are shrouded in mystery, but the history of bread obviously follows along with the history of humanity itself. Bread has been an important part of diet and culture and has appeared in pretty much every corner of the world in some form or another. It is estimated that grains and cereals became an important part of the human diet long before bread came along. Bread, itself, is believed to have entered the scene perhaps as long as 10,000 years ago, during the Neolithic period in Europe. Some loaves of bread even from that long ago used the concept of retaining a piece of the previous day’s bread as a ‘starter’ in the fashion of sourdough bread. In 79 AD, the tragic volcano eruption of Pompeii preserved the city’s ovens so that archeologists would later find them. It was discovered that the people from that time had access to bread that was baked in at least 33 different bakeries.

Now, here’s a couple of Did You Know?

1  Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented a machine to slice bread in 1928.
2 Red Skelton first coined the phrase “It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread” during a newspaper interview in 1952.
3  Bread is the staff of life and in the breadbasket of the nation the breadwinner of the family cashes his paycheck and hopefully has enough bread to purchase bread for the family.
4 Pan de Campo (aka. Cowboy Bread) is the Official Bread of Texas.
5  In 1890 women baking at home produced more than 80% of the bread eaten in the United States.
6 On January 18, 1943 the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture banned the sale of sliced bread .  The Reason: Sliced bread went stale faster; therefore, Americans used more wheat, needed to feed soldiers.
7  Most of the bread marketed in the U.S. as “wheat” is actually white bread dyed brown with caramel food coloring.
8 The distinction of “upper crust” comes from the 1600s. When the bread was made in stone ovens the bottoms would become dirty from ash and soot. If you were wealthy you cut the bottom crust off and just ate the “upper crust” part of the bread.

Hmmm – think I’ll make some English Toasting Bread.  It’s a wonderful bread, easy and tasty.

Today is also my second granddaughter’s birthday, so . . . .

Happy Birthday beautiful girl!

And, I think that’s all I know today.

17 Nov 2021