MMMMMM....

Been a while but..


Got back home from GenCon to a bit of a garden explosion, and catchup is catching up! Got 10 pounds of tomatoes in the freezer for garlic salsa, another 20-ish pounds cooked down into 3 quarts of enchilada sauce vacuum sealed in the fridge for heating up and canning. And a couple more pounds still for fresh eating :) Picked up a couple glorious large heads of cauliflower at a farmer market stall for 3 bucks each, and happened to have picked up a 2 pound bag of lemons yesterday..
Got 14 pint and a half, and 13 half pint jars in the dishwasher right now on the sanitize cycle to prep up for some serious canning tomorrow...
Gonna try to bust out with the big burner and kettle outside for the water bath kettle.

The minis action over the last several weeks has been on and off. Michaels has had some serious 70% plus some good coupons for a change. Cashed out all the summer and woodland stuff. Lemax was kind of a yawn- I got good stuff and just picked up a couple smalls. And one building, a Creepy Critter Sitter.  They had one Creepy Critter Pet Sitters left in the Lemax stuff- the one on display. Originally 55 bucks, with sale and coupon, 28.50. A rather expensive piece for me, but it is sooooo irresistible. The gal got my box out of the back and I packed it.. and asked her for the cord too, because it comes with a cord and it wasn't in the box. We unwove it from the display, only to find it was set up on a 3 way splitter, not it's original single cord. Since the manager couldn't find it and it had to have a cord.. They gave me a 25 dollar 3 way splitter off the rack for free to make sure I had my power cord.
Blew a day's pay from GenCon on some awesome minis. A bit outside budget, but I got a LOT of bang for my bucks. On the way home, hit a place we always meant to but haven't hit yet. Not only did the place have a friendly shop kitty named Toes.. The also had a small pile of Dept 56 Autumn/Halloween stuff.. a true rarity for me to find in person. I splurged my bonus pay on two awesome sets- one a farm signs, and a delicate light up Halloween luminary set.  These might be my only two pieces of Dept 56, it's really hard to find ones I like of good themes that aren't stupidly overpriced all the time. The are really nice, and some pieces worth it.. but ugh.

The weekend before GenCon I got to be privileged enough to be asked by Sonjia to work at the Enchanted Bead for her first annual bead sale. Sooooo many beautiful beads, and good company, and inspiration and learning. It was awesome. And because we are good with bartering and trade, I picked up some astonishing beads for making jewelry, and a bunch of random stuff like a heap of lucite and seed beads to use in mini-food crafting.

Hit Menards today and did save big money.. getting a saw setup, lol. Picked up a 6" saw with blades and miter box for 7 bucks, a second 6.5" saw with finer teeth blade options for 6 bucks, and a 6.5" saw blade set with even finer teeth for another 3 bucks. 11% rebate brings that 16 bucks down to about 15 once stamps and taxes are counted in, lol. Now I can start in with some of the wood build projects I've been stacking up materials for slowly but surely for a while now. And can do stuff in a more volume scale than patiently cutting planks with a Xacto blade, lol. I stained up a bunch of stuff for cutting while my arm was ganked, and now have enough blade finesse back to use saws.

Yeah.. Health has been an issue for a couple months now. I caught a case of maybe food poisoning
 at the end of June. As I was recovering from that, I took a seriously hard fall in the driveway pushstarting a truck.. and laid myself up for a while on the left side. My legs are almost back to normal, but my shoulder and elbow that took the most shock impact are still pretty fucked up.

Anywho.. off to do some tear down on garden benches to free up a half dozen bricks to set up an outdoor burner tomorrow.. yay!