Good morning, villagers ~
Thank you for opening the thread today, Twins'Mom.
Last Thursday of the Season:
The radio DJs this morning are making a big deal about this being the "last day of summer" because we are supposed to have high temp of 90F today and drop down to a high in the low 60s tomorrow. This weekend will be the official change of season days.
In that spirit, I've started the annual pantry clean-out and restocking for winter weather. I wish I had a real pantry with shelves for food storage. We don't have a lot of storage space in our kitchen. I tuck things away in whatever space I can get to. By the time winter arrives, I make sure I have minimum 2 weeks of full menu plan with all ingredients on site, plus regular pantry staples like oatmeal, canned fruit, flour, oil, etc. That gets us through the days when the roads are too icy to drive to the store.
For winter prep I'm also keeping my eyes open for Christmas gift ideas for coworkers. I want to continue my tradition of sewing something useful. The first year I did pieced and quilted mug rugs; I greatly underestimated the amount of time and work needed. Two years ago I made Japanese knot bags and last year a simple tote bag shape. I have seen a pattern for another Japanese origami inspired bag that I want to make a sample to see how it works.
In house news, we are still waiting for the roofers. We finally bought and installed a tarp over the kitchen/dining room section. That was quite an ordeal and took several tries, because our ladder isn't quite long enough. The first try we got the tarp onto the roof but it wouldn't unroll and the sun went down before we could fix it. The next try DH took my suggestion of how to pull the tarp back down far enough to unroll and spread it out, but it took a lot of moving the ladder and climbing up and down, plus the mosquitos were savages that night. Unfortunately, DH didn't believe me that we needed to tie down 2 of the corners of the tarp and the very next day I saw 1 of them had already flipped up. By the time we got out to fix it on Sunday, 1/3 of the tarp had pulled up and needed to be spread back out. Once again, DH wouldn't believe me that it needed to be tied down
(because he's an engineer, you know, and I'm just a librarian ) so instead he left a tool up there to weigh down that corner. I hope it holds until the roofers finally come. In good news, we have had 2 heavy rains since then and I have seen no leaks inside.
Of course, we can't start repairing the ceilings until the roof is replaced. I'm going to have to Call The Man again tomorrow and leave another polite message about "just checking in on the schedule to make sure we're ready for you on our end" -- though we've BEEN ready all summer. Originally he promised mid-August. The last message I got from him on Sept. 1st said they would be here last week.
Otherwise, I'm still fighting hard to sort through and get rid of things, and celebrating every time something leaves the house forever.
Having said that, last night I placed an online order for a new sewing tool. I had to use up a gift card that was burning a hole in my wallet!