Your Personality Color

I came across this article about colors and personalities recently.  It discusses how people who are drawn to certain colors exhibit certain personality traits.  I’m not sure how much I believe it, but it’s definitely interesting reading. 

It also ties in with Day Eight of the 30-Day Photo Challenge, which is “Favorite Color”.  Blue and green tie for first place with me, with purple coming in a close second.

Blue

Green

Purple

So what about you, what is your favorite color?

Insanity Runs In My Family

Today is Day Seven of the 30-Day Photo Challenge, which is "Something Funny".  After perusing my photos, this is the funniest one I could find.  It's my dad and my cousin at my wedding rehearsal.  We found the candy boogers at Target, and just couldn't resist sticking them in with my dad's gift.  As you can see, he really enjoyed them.  And, no, they did not make an appearance the next day at the wedding.

My family is a little insane (mostly in a fun, entertaining way I think), and my dad has an odd sense of humor.  So it's only natural that this is my favorite movie line of all time.  It's from Arsenic And Old Lace, which is one of the best movies ever made.  It's also a perfect Halloween movie, so if you haven't seen it, this is great time of year to watch it.    

What Are You Reading?

Today is Day Six of the 30-Day Photo Challenge I’m participating in, and the topic is “Books”.  This is an easy one!  Here’s a picture of my currently reading/about to be read books. 

The cookbook, Bought, Borrowed & Stolen, is the one we’re currently using in the Cookbook Book Club.  I’m undecided on whether or not I like it yet.  There’s a lot in it about various places the author has traveled, and the food there, so I’m looking forward to reading that.  I did learn that many of the recipes call for ingredients that aren’t very easy to find locally, so I’ve promised myself to choose a recipe long before we meet next month so I have time to 

find everything we need for it.

Moon Women was a book recommended on goodreads that wasn’t available at the local library, but I found it at the thrift store last week.  I’m very excited about reading it, but the other two are library books (that there’s a waiting list for), so I feel like I need to read them first.  I just can’t decide which one to start first.  They have similar (very high) ratings on goodreads, so that’s not helping me make a decision.  Have any of you read either of them?

I really hope I love at least one of them.  It seems like the last few books I’ve read have only been okay, so I’d like to read a great one.  That seems to be the nature of reading, though; spells of finding great books, and spells of only finding okay books.

So what are you reading right now?  Is it great, or just okay?

Friday Mornings

Do you find that certain weekday mornings are just easier for you?  I
do.  For me, Friday morning is the easiest morning for me to get ready
for work and get out the door.  I’m not sure why, but it always seem
to be the best weekday morning for me.  Maybe it’s the promise of the
weekend to come; Friday morning means only eight hours left of the
workweek.  Or maybe it’s the fact that we can dress casually on
Friday; hello jeans and comfy shoes.

I just find that Friday mornings are easier.  I don’t hit the snooze
button so many times.  I’m more likely to get up early and get things
done around the house before I go in to work, and it just feels like
things go smoothly on Friday morning.

This morning I got up in time to finish loading the dishwasher from
last night, fold two loads of laundry, start another load of laundry,
take the trash out (which included tossing some things from the fridge
that were looking a little sketchy), get dinner started, and of course
walk Emma.

Now part of it was done out of necessity: Friday is our trash pick up
day, so any food that needs to be thrown away that doesn’t make it out
on Friday morning will be sitting in the can all week, and with the
slightly warmer weather expected next week I didn’t want that to
happen.  I needed to get dinner ready to go in the crock pot because
my husband is working tonight, and I don’t usually have enough time to
get dinner made between the time I get home and the time he leaves.
And it will be nice for me to come home and not have to cook tonight.

We also have a lot of bell peppers that need to be used up (they were
on sale and I got a little carried away), so it seemed like a great
time for making stuffed bell peppers.  I just had to stuff them and
put them in crock pot during my lunch break, and now they’ll be all
ready this evening.

Today is also Day Five of the 30-Day Photo Challenge, which is
“Morning Sky”.  I can’t tell you how happy I was when I realized this
would fall on a Friday; it made it easier to get the pictures, and
definitely found me in more of a mood to appreciate the beauty.  I
waited until it was starting to get light, partly for better pictures,
and partly because I took the pictures during Emma’s walk, and she
prefers to sleep as late as possible every morning.

So what about you?  Is there a particular morning that’s easier for
you?  Or a particular morning in which you find yourself able to
accomplish more?

The moon says goodnight.

Morning Clouds

Stuffed Pepper Filling

Stuffed Peppers

Drying Herbs

Lime Basil ready to dry

As I posted earlier this year, I planted my first herb garden this spring.  We planted basil, parsley, oregano, lavender, sage, cilantro, garlic chives, and lime basil (which I hadn’t heard of before this year).  The lavender didn’t make it, and the cilantro didn’t thrive.  Most things did fairly well.  The basil and lime basil flourished and thrived.

Lime Basil just out of the oven

I came to love the lime basil during the summer.  I love how it smells, and it adds such a nice flavor to stir fry, salad, fruit dishes, and lots of other things.   However, the temperature here has been dropping steadily over the past couple of weeks, so it seems that my supply of lime basil will soon come to an end.  We actually had our first frost warning last night.  Fortunately it didn’t freeze though!  I decided it was time to look into drying the lime basil for fear we won’t escape the next frost warning so easily.

I found a few articles on drying herbs on Google.  The general consensus seems to be that hanging herbs tied in bundles up to dry is the best way to dry them; it’s natural, not too much work, and doesn’t require any sort of power source, so is very economical and earth friendly.  For us, with a cat who eats string, and a cat who gets into everything, this seemed more like a recipe for disaster than an intelligent, economical plan to enjoy home grown herbs through the winter. 

The finished product! 

We decided to go with the oven drying method.  This involves placing the washed and dry herbs on a baking sheet at 180 degrees.  The times mentioned in the articles varied from two to four hours.  Ours were dry in about an hour, though this may be because the lime basil leaves are fairly small.  I suspect the traditional basil will take a little longer. 

It was fairly time consuming to pat all of the leaves dry and lay them out on the baking sheets, but I think the results are definitely worth the time.  And the house smelled amazing while they were baking!  I’m pretty excited about drying the rest of our herbs.  We’re having something of a warm smell over the weekend, so now I have a little more time to pick and dry the rest of the herbs. 

 Today is also Day Four of the 30-Day Photo Challenge I’m participating in, which is “Leaves”.  It’s a little early for the great fall colors here, so I’m sharing pictures of my lime basil instead.  I think the little leaves are very cute.

Thirty-Day Photo Challenge: Day 3

Today is Day Three of the Photo Challenge, which is “Happiness”.  This one is a little hard for me.  Happiness is somewhat intangible.  How do you take a photograph of something that is intangible?  It’s not like taking a photograph of something solid like a book or food. 

I turned to Wikipedia, which defines happiness as “a mental or emotional state of wellbeing characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.”  It goes on to state that some define happiness in terms of living a good life.

That makes the challenge a little easier, here are some of the things that make me happy and make me feel like I have a good life.  I hope you’ll share yours in the comments.

Blue Skies

Birthdays

Cooking

Rescue Transports

Butterflies & Flowers

Thirty-Day Photo Challenge: Day 2

Today is Day Two of the Photo Challenge, which is “Smile”.  It doesn’t specify that it must be a human smile, so here are some smiling fur kids.  I hope they put a smile on your face.

Going on a hike always makes Emma smile

Frankie must be having good dreams

Julep smiling on her way t rescue with her babies

I can't get enough of Emma's smile!

Sheila smiling because she's on the way to her forever home

Thirty-Day Photo Challenge: Day 1

Today is Day One of the Thirty-Day Photo Challenge, which is “Favorite Food”.  I’m definitely a food person, so this one is actually kind of hard for me.  There are a lot of foods I enjoy cooking and eating, so how do I pick just one?

I’m not going to.  As the weather gets cooler, which it did in a hurry over the weekend, I find myself craving warm and comforting foods, so here are some of my favorites:

Potato & Leek Soup from Mastering The Art of French Cooking

Onion Soup from Mastering The Art of French Cooking

Calzone - made by my hubby 

A big pot of chili - made by me

Thirty Day Photo Challenge Coming Soon & I Love Thrift Stores

I’m very happy to announce that tomorrow will be the beginning of this 30-Day Photo Challenge.  My friend Crystal found it and told me about it.  We both thought it looked like something we’d enjoy, so we picked tomorrow as the beginning of our challenge.  I know challenges typically begin at the first of the month, but this is what works for us.  If I've counted right, the last day of our challenge should be November 6th.  Due to technical difficulties (that’s the nice way of saying because I messed up) I don’t have a link for Crystal yet, but I hope to soon.

I just think the kettle is so cute!

I haven’t been taking as many pictures lately as I used to, so I’m very excited about it.  It seems like I’m settling in to write more as the weather gets cooler, too.  Do you find that you want to write and blog more as it cools off and gets dark earlier?

Now, on to thrift stores.  We didn’t shop much in thrift stores when I was younger; there didn’t seem to be very many around, and I don’t think my mom was very into thrift store shopping.  However, as an adult I’ve come to love thrift stores. 

There seems to be an abundance of thrift stores locally, and there seems to be a thrift store supporting practically any worthy cause you can name.  It’s sort of a scavenger hunt going to thrift stores and seeing what treasures you can unearth.  Some of our finds have included furniture, artwork, clothing, and lots of books. 

Today we made the drive to the thrift store run by our semi-local no-kill animal shelter.  We had quite a few things to take, as it had been quite a while since we’d gone.  Today’s trip filled up the trunk and backseat of my car (I’m still not sure how we acquire so much stuff we don’t need or use), which forced me to clean out the trunk of my car.  That needed to happen a long time ago, and I’m really glad it’s finally done. 

We usually don’t have time to shop in the thrift store when we take things there.  It seems like it’s always right before they close, or we’re on our way to something else, but today we had plenty of time to browse the store. 

Fortunately for our get the house organized plan, we donated much more than we bought, but we still found some great stuff.  We found a movie (actually it’s two because it has Dave on one side and American President on the other) a large round crock pot, a cute little tea kettle, some candles, a book I’d been looking for, and a Christmas gift for my husband’s grandmother (she loves lighthouses and we found a figurine she doesn’t have, and she’ll love that it supported the shelter) all for about $20.00.  We were very happy with our finds!  It was also nice to know that what we spent was going right back into the shelter, since animal rescue is something we feel very strongly about. 

So what about you?  Do you like thrift stores?  Does your favorite charity have a thrift store you like to shop at or donate to?