Simple Things and Good News

48°f/8.9°C, clear. Continued gorgeous days, perhaps Nature's apology for the past horrible summer?

No, the garage isn't on fire! It's just the sun hitting the heavy dew on the roof, causing condensation that then evaporates under the hot roof. It made me jump the first time i noticed it!

Q

It's been a slow couple of days here. I had a 7:20am video appointment with my doctor yesterday, which meant being up earlier to do the pre-visit questionnaire,  then answer questions from the nurse, then finally talk to the doctor! Same questions, basically, three times. This was my Medicare Wellness checkup, where they ask silly things like what year is it, who is the President (had to say his name, gag), count backwards from 20 to 1, am I depressed, etc, etc. But I did get to talk with her about my shoulder pain, so that was good.

I was so tired the rest of the day (bad night) that I did little to nothing. I did pull weeds for half an hour, and practiced the broom dance at least a dozen times so I have it carved into my brain. But that was about it.

This morning we were both moving slow. I did my daily puzzles,had my tea, and we had cinnamon muffins for breakfast. I finally got dressed at 11am! Bad granny. Then we took our coffee outside, made a fire in the firepit, and hung out with the dogs until noon. Perfect way to start the day.

This guy was hanging out on the porch, enjoying the pretty leaves, I think.

His buddy looked like he might want to go inside, with his back turned to the outside world.

Morning fires are such a treat. I have to remind myself that we're retired and can do this if we want!

The trees are slow to turn this year, but so beautiful. 

Flowers are still blooming in this bed, where I have been weeding. I did another 20 minutes out there today, after cleaning up and organizing the van. 

And now I am on the porch, eating lunch and getting ready to bathe the dogs one more time. I hope this might be the last time, but if this doesnt stop their itchiness, then next week we will have to talk to the vet. 

• News from Suzy, Sarah, and my sister Theresa: Suzy is doing very well with her recovery from her bypass surgery. She and I discussed the Christmas open mic, already making plans. 
• Sarah had a little setback, an infection in the surgery site on her spine so she was back in the hospital after another surgery ro clean that out. She is doing well otherwise, working hard on her physical therapy. 
• Theresa learned Monday that she is in remission from her multiple myeloma cancer, so praises be! She took is still in recovery from the aggressive treatment, but is doing well. Please keep them all in your good thoughts and prayers.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

About Those Treats

38°f/3 3°C, clear. No rain in sight for the next few days.

Some details about the Halloween-themed treats I made for the open mic.

These were supposed to be "quick and easy", but don't believe everything you read online. Some turned out to be a lot trickier than you might think.

First, these monster fingers, which were supposed to be witch fingers. A lady at the event saw them and said, "Oh, monster fingers!" And so that is what they were.

I decided to make these Monday so I would have plenty of time if things went awry. Which they did!

The directions used a sugar cookie recipe, but I opted, for simplicity's sake, to use store-bought cookie dough--my first mistake. I mixed in the green food color, made a tray of cookies by rolling the dough into finger shapes, pressing in a sliced almond, and using a knife to cut shallow grooves for knuckles.  They looked so cute, until I baked them. Then they spread w-a-a-y out, into big green blobs with an oddly placed almond. Uh-oh.  

I began adding flour to the dough, baking one or two cookies at a time, until I got the right shape. Thank goodness for free gas! It probably took me a good two hours of fiddling around, but in the end I was pleased with the result. Here's the odd thing: I must have added well over a cup of plain flour to the store-bought dough, but they were still crisp and tasted just fine. Which made me wonder about the fat and sugar content of the original dough. I think if I made them again I would make the dough from scratch, since the pre-made dough ended up not really saving me any time.

Next were these supposedly super-easy ghosts.  Yeah, well, maybe for some people they're easy, but it wasn't that way for me. There are only 2 ingredients: white chocolate chips and chow mein noodles. How hard could it be, right?  I happily melted the chips and stirred in the crispy noodles, then spooned them out--and that's where I ran into trouble. The noodles were so big that they stuck out everywhere in odd shapes. I flattened them as best as I could, then tried, per the instructions, to dab on the black decorator icing to make the eyes and mouth. Oh, how odd they looked, like some demented person had made them! (Probably true by this point) This was Monday evening and I quit for the day.

I started over Tuesday morning, pulverizing the noodles this time, and adding not only the chips but also a lot of white dipping chocolate. They were much easier to shape, and I used a tiny paint brush to do the black eyes and mouth. Not perfect, but presentable.

I used the ghosts I had messed up to make haystacks, adding melted butterscotch to give them the right color. These actually were easy!

The witches' brooms were the easiest, though. It took longer to unwrap all those Reese's Cups than it did to do the rest! I used an icepick and heated the tip to make a start for the pretzel stick. Not doing that would have possibly cracked the candy, which would have made it hard for the "handle" to stand up. These were quite a hit.

And finally,  the blood shots, also easy. I bought syringes from an online supplier called Jolly Chef, a box of 60 for about $20. Way more than we needed, but they won't spoil and we can use them in future events. So these, a bottle of cranberry juice, and a sparkling beverage are all that's needed. Fill the hypodermic with the juice, pour the drink (in our case it was either champagne or Sprite), and let the customer "shoot" the "blood" into the drink. Funny and fun!

So there you have all the gritty details, in case you want to try any of these yourself. It took way more time than it should have  to make the first 2 treats, but the last 3 really were easy. I enjoyed doing this, as it's been a long time since I made any party treats. The best thing I did for myself was allowing plenty of time, so that when things didn't go right, I had time to make corrections.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Halloween Open Mic

35°f/1.3°C, clear. If there was frost, it melted off  early.

I rested up this morning after last night's open mic. Whew. Trying to be emcee, cameraman, host, and also do the broom dance kept me hopping! But what a fun evening it was. Here's a look at our shenanigans:

The broom dance! Not perfect, but fun. We will do it again Saturday in town,and hopefully it will ve better. Jewels Whitley, yoga and belly dance instructor, led our group. 

Doc and Fudd's Oldtime Vaudeville Show showed up, and they were a hoot! Crowd favorites were their renditions of Ghost Chickens in the Sky, Purple People Eater. A couple clips of their performance below the photo. 

Our featured presenter was author Sherri Brake, who leads ghost and paranormal tours all over the US and internationally as well. She did a slide show of her latest book about Point Pleasant, home of the legendary Mothman. 

She sold quite a few books. I have known Sherri for at least 20 years, but it has probably been at least 12 years since I last saw her. We both wrote columns for the now-defunct Two-Lane Livin' periodically for about 10 years.

When she left us she was headed to a high school in central West Virginia, then on to Canton and Cleveland, Ohio. One busy lady!

Some of the wiches who rode in:

No one recognized Becky, not even her best friends!

This costume won the funniest award---the Identity Thief! She had name tags all over her black sweatsuit. So clever.

Witches again, with their "familiar", a black cat.

Our local opera singer came in this gorgeous outfit. Her singing is just incredible, and self-taught.

Judy came as the Thrift Shopping Queen, in the craziest thrifted outfit. Her husband, not in his costume yet in this photo, was the High Lonesome Rambler and they tied for Most Original.

Here's a short clip of Randy's performance, in his costume:

Brenda and Sheree looked great too. Brenda, in pajamas, a patched-up bathrobe, slippers and curlers in her hair, was the Real Housewife of Fairplain. She won Best costume. Sheree came as a very genteel and classy lady.

Larry came as himself!

I didn't get photos of all the costumes, but I hope someone who did will share them. 

My hat this year had a decidedly forest-y look about it.

And last, the treats I made for the evening, which were displayed like this on each table: ghosts, haystacks, monster finger sugar cookies, and brooms.

And there were blood shots to drink for those daring enough to try them!

We had a blast. It was a bit of work, but so worth it in the end. 

Today I mostly rested! Went to lunch with granddaughter Hannah and her precious little baby Sutton, browsed Goodwill, came home and did laundry...normal life resumes!