Oct. 21 - Cute autumn items

Last weekend hubby and I had some running around to do.  Most of our day was spent in town, hitting various stores, looking for a variety of things.  One thing I'd been keeping an eye open for was something to sit on a cute but empty deco shelf in my kitchen.

Around Thanksgiving I have a set of large, holiday salt/pepper shakers that usually sit here.  During Christmas I have a couple holiday things that sit here.  During the rest of the year however, it's empty.  When I got my Halloween decorations out recently I decided that this year I wanted something to put on the shelf.  So this was one of the things we were looking for in our shopping.

We came across the thing we ended up with by chance.  We were not in that store with this part of the mission in mind.  Isn't that usually how it works?  And later in the day we came across something else random that we ended up bringing home.

Now I have something for that empty shelf ...

And I have two crates for ... a number of things.  My first thought was 'Soap!' and hubby agreed.  I can use them as props in my soap pics for the site/shop.  I can use them as displays if we do decide to start doing craft sales.  Or I can ... and have ... put them on top of my kitchen cupboards as a bit more old fashioned decoration.

Pretty cool, and pretty cheap.  Yay!

Oct. 21 - Goodies in my mail ... WOOT!

I recently posted about a new supplier for my tart addiction.  There was a mention in that post about a shipping mix up, that I had not received the bar of soap I ordered.  The lovely Mary at Moeggenborg Sugar Bush had offered me a second bar as apologies but I told her that wasn't necessary.  So imagine my surprise when I opened my package and found not only my delayed bar of soap but a massively monster chunky tart!

YESSSS!!!

The soap is Maple Syrup Festival scented and the tart is Pumpkin Crunch Cake.  And it smells fabulous.  It's so big that I'll need to cut into four pieces and melt a piece at a time.  I'm totally fine with that.  I need to pop my warmer in the freezer for a bit to get the old maple tart out (it's been drained of its scent, don't worry) so I can get this pumpkin one going.  Mmmm!

I haven't actually tried the soap yet because I wanted to take a picture of it first, and because we have several others to work through first.

I also recently ordered from a new shop on Etsy called The Christmas Corner.  This is a Canadian shop run by Audrey, who also runs Audrey's Give Aways blog and has featured my soap.  She has some adorable handpainted wooden ornaments, and has a Buy 3 Get 1 Free option so I jumped on that, plus ordered one more single.  Once again I was pleasantly surprised when I opened my package last night and found TWO extra ornaments!  Fearing there had been a mistake, I quickly checked my Etsy orders to see for sure what I had ordered, then emailed Audrey.  No mistake, she sent me a full set.  How freakin' awesome is that?

These are made from a very thin, light wood.  She paints them herself.  They are roughly 5x3" with the more colorful ones being slightly smaller.  Although they are listed as ornaments I don't think mine will go on my tree.  The three smaller ones (Peace, Faith, Joy) will replace some ceramic country hearts that hang on my living room wall.  Not sure where the others will go yet.  Maybe those four will go on the tree ... ?  Don't know yet.

Audrey is very friendly and helpful.  She shipped these right away and even coming from Canada I had them just one week after ordering.  I will be ordering more from this shop, especially since she's added some cuties like these ...

Oh!  Even the thank you card she sent was amazing ...

Made my Annabelle's Art, on Etsy.

Audrey also has another shop, called Audrey's Country Crafts.  Not alot there right now but still some very cute things.  There are some fall/Halloween wind chimes that I'm interested in.  I wish she had some fall/Halloween designs on something like the Christmas ornaments above.  I'd be all over those!!

So anyway, I highly recommend both of these ladies if you're looking for gifts or just something to treat yourself.  Go check them out!

Oct. 17 - Fattycat vs. Halloween

The other day I hauled my Halloween decorations out.  Some things are in boxes but the bulk of the stuff is in a large plastic tote.  I popped the lid off this tote and turned to set it aside.  When I looked back I saw that the fattycat had come from nowhere and was now obsessing over something in the tote.  He was shoving his face into one of the corners, then looking and pawing from the outside at whatever was so interesting in there.  So I stepped over to have a look and found a small felt pumpkin toy thing ...

It took me several moments to remember I had bought this catnip toy last year so the fattycat could be festive too.  LOL!  And he was immediately loving his old toy on this day!

Oct. 16 - Tarts

It's been a while since I've shared my wax tart addiction with you.  (Ok, yeah, it's been a while since I've shared ANYTHING with you ... )  You may remember that my tart pimp is the ever wonderful Kristine (and her mom!) over at Country Home Scents on Etsy,  They will scent with you home with adorable little babies like these ...

And I did order a bunch of Fall scented tarts not too long ago ...

But ...

I have strayed from my tart pimp ...

Somewhere along the way (one of the soap blogs?) I stumbled across Sugar Bush Primitives.  I love this place!  They have soaps, candles, food items, various other items, and it's all in a wonderful sort of country charm theme.  Well, 'primitive' is the term, I guess.  Anyway, I ordered tarts from here.  They're cute in a whole different kind of way!

They smell divine out of the pack but I can't yet say how strong they are when melted.  I've just now put the first one into the tart warmer.  Another reason I couldn't resist is because this place has maple scents and I don't think my regular tart pimp does.  Not saying I'm abandoning my tart pimp.  No no no.

I also ordered a beer bread mix, as you can see in the pic.  And I ordered a maple scented bar of soap but there was a mix up in the order and that wasn't shipped.  I emailed them and Mary apologized and assured me she'd get the soap sent out.  Can't wait to try it!

***UPDATE***
The scent from these new tarts is amazing.  It is strong and carries well throughout the house.  I could even smell hints of it upstairs when I went to bed.  I could still smell it, very subtly, when I got up this morning.  Awesome!!  I think I need to revisit that site and explore other scents.

Oct. 16 - Ice cream again

My hubby (not Viggo) was out and about recently and happened to be in the area of Kelley Country Creamery (which I blogged about HERE ) so he stopped and bought me a pint of Cinnamon ice cream.  I've never had cinnamon flavored ice cream and most people I've mentioned it to have given me the 'eeeuuw!' look, but it's really good!  You can definitely taste the cinnamon but it's not overwhelming.  And the ice cream itself is very smooth and creamy.  You might remember my earlier post had me saying how ice cream is ice cream to me.  Heh, I guess there IS a difference if you pay attention. 

Also around this time, a food blog that I like to drool over ... Not So Humble Pie ... had a post about homemade Brown Sugar Vanilla ice cream.  It looks and sounds sooooo good!  I was practically licking the screen.

All this ice cream has me wanting to try something new.  I want an ice cream maker.  I'm thinking it's going on my birthday/Christmas list.  I've never made ice cream, never even had homemade ice cream.  Perhaps this will end up being like the bread maker that I just HAD to have and has now sat untouched for 98% of the time I've had it.  Doh!

Tell me your ice cream stories!

Oct. 8 - Last night....

... I had a dream that I was marrying Viggo.

It was very weird.

Oct. 3 - Pumpkins galore

This year was our first year growing pumpkins.  We really didn't know what to expect.  We started the seeds in the greenhouse...

Then planted our babies out in our refurbished...and long abandoned...garden patch...

 

And watched them grow through the summer.....

 And today we picked them!

 There are 24 pumpkins here, and at least 3 more that were still quite green that we left to grow a bit more.  We also got 10 squash from our two plants.  (Nine in this picture, and one already in the house.)  The squash are small, will take several to make a meal....if they're worth eating at all.  Maybe we could have let them grow longer.  We have so much to learn about this!  The pumpkins aren't huge either.  We did learn earlier that you can limit how many pumpkins grown and make the remaining ones bigger but this first year, we just let them all grow.  Small or not, we're extremely happy that we got ANYTHING.

Now to haul out all the fall/Halloween decorations and scatter these homegrown babies around the yard.  Woot!