John & I make Egg Rolls

 John and I decided to make egg rolls for our lunch. Usually it is Sarah and I who make them. Sarah is the best at rolling them for frying.

 I took a try at filling the egg rolls and rolling them.

 John did a great job at deep frying them.

The egg rolls were very yummy and they never seem to last very long even though there are 18 wraps in one package and a lot of times we use and make up 2 packages. Sooooo Good!

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Finally A Cat Bed For Tiki

MISS TIKI FINALLY GETS HER OWN CAT BED.

Keebee has a queen size basket lined with lambs wool.

 Henry B Cat has his "boy bunk"

  Henry B''s bed is made out of a couch cushion that has had the foam inside it hollowed out by Sarah and is just perfect for him.

It's the same bed we used in the RV when we were travelling.

Henry B's cat bed was positioned between the 2 front seats in the coach.

He'd be in there  or  up on the front dash sprawled out.

This window seat is Tiki's only place that is truly "her's", other than downstairs in Sarah's room.  But it's not a real comfy place for her to snuggle up to sleep, though she does sleep up there sometimes.

So it was definitely time to get Tiki her very own bed.

 I got out the sewing machine and though I am not a person who likes to sew, I can make things on occassion if I want to badly enough.

I really don't understand the new sewing machine I got as a birthday gift from my kids a few years ago, but with a bit of tenacity and a little cussing, I can usually make the darn thing do somewhat what I want it to.

It's the first time it performed not too badly for me and I felt like I was happy that they had bought it for me after all.

Thank You Jesse and Sarah!!!

Tiki thanks you too! >^..^<

 The ties on the corners of the new Tiki cat bed say, " Pampered Pet". Now how fitting is that!

As soon as I put the cat bed down it was a big hit!

Tiker's crawled into it and started doing her claws in the one corner, kneading into the soft faux fur.

 It's a reversible design. So I tried it the other way up to see what she thought of that side.

 She thought it was Devine!

Just Purrrfect!

This Years BEET Harvest

 We got a few jars of beets this year from our garden.

Thanks to Jesse for harvesting them for us and cleaning up the garden a bit too.

John working intently to get the beets cleaned and ready for the boiling pot.

 This is the blanching stage, as they hit the COLD water so the skins can come of easily.

 I sliced up all the cooked beets ready to put into the jars.

 This ONE beet I photographed last year is certainly worth a repeat spotlight this year. What a BIG BEET!!!

It filled the entire large cooking pot.

 And it took the large platter to be big enough to have room to be able to cut it up into pieces for the jars.

 For a size comparison, I photographed it next to a regular teaspoon.

Without any MAMMOTH Beets this year, like that one above, we didn't get as many jars made up this year. Only six small preserving jars and 2 coffee jars. We had to use coffee jars as we didn't plan on enough lids for the jars. It still worked out well with the coffee jars as those went directly into the fridge and we're using them right away.

Here is our secret recipe.... *that isn't so secret any longer. lol ;-)

12 Cups prepared beets
2 Cups vinegar ( I doubled all the ingredients for the syrup, so 4 cups of vinegar etc)
2 Cups sugar
2 Cups water
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 TBLSP whole cloves in cheesecloth ( I used 1tsp ground cloves directly into the syrup mix)

Prepare beets. Select small young 1 1/2 - 2" beets. Scrub and leave root and 1-2" of stem on. Cook until tender. Dip in cold water and remove skins. Leave whole; slice or quarter larger beets.

Combine remaining ingredients in saucepan. Bring to a boil and boil 5 minutes. Remove spice bag. Pack hot, sterlized jars with beets. Pour hot syrup over beets to completely cover them. Seal. Yields 6 pints (3L)

Cat Coats

With colder weather starting and the cats getting older, I decided to get them each a cat coat.

On the colder days when they should go outside briefly but really don't want to, now with a coat, they can.

 It began with this coat we bought.

Tiki is a black cat with a white spot on her front.

The dirty window glass makes her not look so black.

She sort of likes her coat, but not really.

She did eventually slip out of it and left it in the garden at the side of the house. It probably took her 10 minutes to slide out of it.

 This coat that Sarah made for Tiki last year looks small for her this year.

It was a sweet one. Looked good on her, but she didn't seem to feel comfortable in it either.  I suppose cats do eventually get used to wearing a coat as long as they aren't constricted too much in their movements.

I made this crochet cat coat trying to use the pattern of the one we bought, but I left the cats a lot more room around the legs so they have a wider range of movement.

It's definitely warm. It'd be for a crisp cold day.

Our Garden this year.

 Lots of watering.

 Produced beautiful Gladiolas.

 See how tall the corn got this year!

 And the sunflowers.

 Only seeds from the birdfeeder, but they did well and the birds still enjoyed them.

 The tops of the corn tassels are over Farmer John's head they are so tall!

 Our corn cobs came on very early this year.

 We had oodles of tomatoes.

Lots of Beets too.

Zucchinis were plentiful as well. We gave lots of them away.

The cats were happy that the catnip grew well too.

As did all the plants this year.

I hope everyone enjoyed an awesome summer!

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