No New Homes YET....!

And no one is looking for these puppies, still.  GOOD.  It wouldn't matter, I won't give them back.  But I've been watchful anyway, because if anyone does come down here to look for them, I will hide them in a back room! 
She found another comfy spot.....

I love this picture.....

My sweet Puppy has taken the roll of Big Sister (our two other dogs want nothing to do with them! LOL).....

The sweetest face.....

Wherever we sit, they rush right over to us and climb up to be next to us!!  SO SWEET! :-D

The other thing I am so grateful for is that they got here yesterday, because it poured most of the day today, and we could get up to 3 inches of rain before it all moves out tomorrow night.  BUT, after the rain moves out the temperatures are supposed to drop, possibly into the upper 40s (nighttime).....imagine if they were still over there -- they would get soaked and then cold.  I'm so relieved that they are here now!

So, I posted them on Craigslist, I have my sisters in Massachusetts asking around, Brian is mentioning them at work, I posted a notice on a few homeschool group websites, too.....I even emailed a couple that I gave another of the neglected dogs to a few years ago (I still had their email saved!)....they said they would look around too!  There has GOT to be one or two people who want a dog somewhere out there, doesn't there??? LOL 

Tomorrow, I'm going to run out and pick up some puppy food for them.  We've been feeding them our regular dog food, but it would be better for them to have some made for puppies.  I want them to gain a little more weight, AND I don't want them to eat all the regular dog food! :-D

It's wonderful reading all the supportive comments!  I know we are doing the right thing, and it's a nice feeling to have a community behind you saying, "Of course that's what you do!" ^-^

And Now for Something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT......

Well, we have a situation here......

Does anyone want a puppy???  LOL

It's such a long story.....for several years, we have struggled with our neighbors about how they treat animals.  My own sweet Puppy we rescued from near-death after she was left to die by them (she had a severe worm infestation - SO easy to cure).  They severely neglect their dogs, horses, chickens, goats -- they ALL end up dead.....WHY do they keep getting animals???  They lose interest in less than a year, they never buy enough food (I've watched them feed their dogs leftover plain noodles, instead of food), they don't allow any animals in to their houses (no matter what the weather), they never have fresh water available - if they even HAVE water out - they NEVER pet their dogs or puppies, when a dog dies over there (and they have) they leave the carcass out to rot or be eaten by other animals or the other dogs.....I have MORE I could say..... It is a heavy burden on my heart to see any animals over there.

So now these two little puppy girls have made their way over here, and when we pet them, they look at us and push against us like we are feeding them, as if being stroked and touched is like food to them, they look at us like they are grateful.....I'm sure they are.  So what do I do??  Sending them back over there is sentencing them to certain death or abandonment, after a long period of severe neglect and even mistreatment.  These little girls are so sweet - they have wonderful little personalities!  The one on the right above, you can see, is very submissive and quiet.  She couldn't decide if she wanted to stay with me to be petted or go eat the dog food I gave her -- I solved it by petting her while she ate the food.  After eating, she sat next to me on the grass where I was sitting and pressed herself into my leg, trembling while I stroked her back.  Heartbreaking.
The other one is more playful and a little smaller, and constantly comes back from chewing the rope toy I gave her to be petted again, I'm sure she's making sure the attention is still there for her.  She happily follows us wherever we go, and loved being part of the afternoon walk our other dogs had.  She also has a little underbite!  It's too cute!  Her nose is shorter than her sister's too.  They are about 4-5 months old.  These puppies have been over here ALL DAY (since lunch, and it's 10:30pm now), and not once have I heard anyone over there calling them, looking for them, checking to see where they are and if they are ok, NOT ONCE.....and that's because no one cares where they are, no one cares if they are lost or cold (or hot this summer), or wet or lonely.  These puppies are expected to fend for themselves, and Oh Well if they can't.....that's how another puppy from the same litter died last month - no one checked on her when she didn't come out with the other puppies and they found her dead a few days later, in a box (probably trying to get out of the brutal heat that we had then).

What to do......
They are sleeping on our back porch right now, one on the chair and one on the couch....probably the most comfortable place they have ever slept on in their lives - cushions instead of dirt and stones.

Here is a picture of my sweetest Puppy on the first night when she stumbled her way down here, near death, two years ago this month.....

I tried to feed her for 3 days until she couldn't lift her head off the floor, and I called my husband, sobbing and telling him if she didn't get to a vet soon, I was going to have to watch her die (we only had one car, and he was using it to get to his new job, after 2 years of unemployment) -- he told his boss there was a family emergency, and he came home for us to bring her to the most wonderful vet ever!  She had a severe hook worm infestation, and had 25% of her blood volume -- he told me he probably couldn't save her, but he would try.  After 4 days at the vet hospital and numerous blood transfusions and medicine, she was doing much better and came home with us!  Here she is taking a nap a few days after coming home, still pitifully thin, but eating plenty and getting better.....

And here is my sweetest girl now, looking at me with loving eyes.....

She's waiting for me to pet her! :-)  She never leaves my side, if she can help it - outside, inside, room to room, while we sleep.....if I call her or talk to her, she comes right up to me and sits, waiting, just like in this picture. :-)   They KNEW she was sick, they knew she would die without help....they left her outside to struggle with it alone and DIDN'T care.  I had seen her only once before, about a month earlier, and petted her, and told one of the boys over there that she needed to go to a vet because she wouldn't eat and I could see she was weak and thin.  She must have remembered me, because she showed up in my front yard, stumbling and panting, and collapsed on my front porch (that's when I took the first picture).  It took months for her to get to a healthy weight.  Heartbreaking.

What to do, what to do......

......what to do..... :-(

The Apple Festival!!

Today was the Apple Festival!!!! 
It was a beautiful day!  We got there at 10:30, and it was in the 70s with a little breeze -- just perfect for walking around!!  It was HUGE......

Look down at the end of this road.....that's the historic court house, and all the apple orchards were set up down the street behind it!  Oh what FUN, though!! :-D
I loved all the vendors, I could have photographed the whole time I was there!  There were all kinds of artisans and other businesses with tents and tables set up - the police had a table, the National Guard, a few banks and churches - and SOOOOO many things to buy......

 Those are crocheted pumpkins!!  They look so cute all piled up on the table!

I love all this handmade pottery!!!!

This woman is selling her handmade soap.....for $6 and inch!!  She had a cheese board and cheese knife to cut it with!  I don't know if you can enlarge the picture to see it better, but the soaps are all different colors, and they smelled wonderful!  ....hmmm....maybe I should try making my own soap sometime..... (haha!)

Look at these....they are GOURDS!  They are all polished and painted, some have twine or jute wrapped around them!  It looks like the sunlight made the picture a little foggy, but maybe you can see better if you click on it...?  I got some great ideas looking at these! :-D

Here are more pumpkins!  These I like so much better because they are made with fabric and burlap....I don't think they would be very hard to make, either!  I love the twine used to make the pumpkin veins - it looks perfect!!

Besides the pottery, these were my favorite things I saw today.....they are little faces carved in wood branch-pieces!  Look at them!.....

I love how each piece has it's own little personality!  The man who carved them looks like he's in his 70s, and was sitting there carving a walking stick while people came in and out of his tent!  He must be so creative to be able to carve all these little tree people, with all different faces!!  I grabbed his card (and the one from the pottery lady!) so I can look online at more of his stuff!
And finally, the star of the show, the reason that I was there (besides the fried dough and fried apple pies - YUM!!)......

I bought the Asian pears here (they are on the right), and I bought Winesap apples at another stand, they are the BEST cooking apples!  I would have taken another picture, but by this time, my kids were saying, "another one, Mom??".....so I figured maybe I had enough!! LOL
Here's my STASH.......

Oh the plans I have for these!!! :-D  (don't mind the dirty floor....)

So, it was a wonderful day!  I wish I had more money for some things I really liked, but that's ok.....I got what I wanted most!! :-D  Maybe I should start tabbing all my recipes! LOL
Tomorrow will be a nice relaxing day -- food shopping and then home with Brian!  We got the wood and paint yesterday, but I'm not sure if he will feel like putting the rest of my cabinet together yet....although, I haven't sanded or stained the new boards either, so there might not be time for him to put it together!  We'll see!!

Time for bed, I guess (it's 1am here).....I'll be dreaming of apples and pears! ^-^

Anyone for MORE COOKIES...??? :-D

Oh I am loving these Fall temperatures!!!  It's been in the upper 70s all week, and I feel SO happy with the windows open! :-D   Growing up in Massachusetts, I never had air conditioning, except one summer when I was pregnant with my daughter my mom gave us an old window unit for our bedroom so I could sleep (the only times I've ever been HOT all the time was when I was pregnant!).  But other than that, I just had fans to run, and then we just waited.....it never stayed hot for long, and I have always had more tolerance for the heat than the cold!
Flash forward to moving down here, and almost everyone has central air conditioning! (It's all electric, and it still has never cost as much as my oil-heat bills would cost in New England winters!!)   So now, I have to seal my house up tight every summer, and I start to feel choked up on the "fake" air -- when I am finally able to keep my windows open and get real air in the house, I LOVE it!  It rejuvenates me!! :-D

I guess that's a super-long story to explain why I'm so happy about sitting next to my open window every night! LOL 

First, I want to show you how I finished sanding the stencils, because I figured out what I didn't like about them....they were too uniformly sanded -- it didn't look like "wear", you know what I mean?  So when I sanded the rest of them I tried to keep it uneven looking, like this......

See how I sanded more on the edges of some motifs?  I think that looks better than all-over sanding, don't you?  I'm done sanding all of them now, so I have no more excuses about waiting to do the antiquing glaze....!!!  Oh, I'm so unsure of how to do it!  I'm going to have to do it on Monday, so I'll be home and can focus fully on how to get started on it!

That reminds me.....it's THURSDAY today!  My favorite day of the week!! :-D  You know what that means -- tomorrow I'm getting my wood (yay!), and I'm also getting black paint for my island (yay again!), AND, the Apple Festival is the day after tomorrow (double-YAY!!!)!  I intend to have several exciting things happening this weekend, it's going to be GREAT!! :-D

So here is a current picture of my kitchen island, with a little more Lincoln Cottage Black painted on.....

That is the perfect black for it, I think!  Grace asked me a few days ago if I was going to paint the knobs black, and I am, and I want to distress them as well, just like in the picture - I think their knobs are tarnished metal (maybe bronze or brass), they don't spare any expense with their cabinets (*sigh!*), but mine are wood so they will be easy to paint and sand to perfection!  (LOL - well, it's never quite perfection!)
I stopped painting it because I'm going to buy a quart of this color instead of using the sample -- first, this island is pretty big (you'll see when I post a picture of it all painted) so it would take many samples to get two coats of paint on it!  And second, the sample paints are all Satin finish, and the shiniest finish I can stand is eggshell!  I won't get flat paint for this, though, because it needs to be somewhat wipeable....it's had a few spills on it!! :-D 
I feel so good when I get these decisions made! LOL  It's a struggle for me!!

Something else I got to in the past two days was my craft room.....

That's a little better!!! :-D  I know there are still piles of stuff all around, but at least I can walk in here now and I got my fabric and yarn stored in their areas.  I definitely need to work on that table on the left (yes, there's a table under there!) -- that's where I piled alot of my primitive supplies and I want to see what I have under there!  You'll remember how easy it is for me to forget what I own, well, this is why....my stuff stays in piles way too long!! LOL  Now at least I have the floor space to take that stuff off the table and put it away....one of these days...!  Haha!!

Today, I repainted the living room cabinet that I painted blue the other day.....

Better??  I'm not sure, but I changed my mind about the blue because I already painted a cabinet that same color here, and I didn't want to have two......

We made this cabinet a few years ago, for my stereo (that we still barely play!) -- this is an older picture (see the ugly wall on the left?...that's where I wallpapered!).....it was my first attempt to "distress" something, and I think I should have used a little bit more paint!  Oh well, I'm just leaving it!  But you see it's already that same blue, so I changed the other one.  I still have to sand off the edges and dry-brush some brown or black paint over it.  Then we'll see if it looks right!

I've been having some fun these past two days, right?! :-D  I didn't post last night because I was so tired and I fell asleep on the couch! LOL
But I DO have one more thing to share with you that I did today......MORE COOKIES!!!

These are VERY good, and I have a hard time not slivering off bite after bite out of the pan!!  These are called Chocolate Scotcheroos, or I call them peanut butter crispy treats!
They are so easy to make and take only a few ingredients....

Combine 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of light corn syrup, bring it to a boil over medium heat.
Boil it for only a bit (1 minute), then remove it from the heat and add 1 cup of peanut butter.....

 (....and give puppy the empty peanut butter container....)(she's SO cute!!)....

Stir it until the peanut butter is all mixed in and creamy.....

Then add 6 cups of rice crispies.....

And stir those around until they are all coated with the peanut butter sauce.
Then spoon them into a greased (sprayed) 9x13 pan.....

 (Oh my goodness, I wanted to start eating this right here!)
Press them flat into the pan, and then start making the topping......

Melt 1 cup of butterscotch chips and 1 cup of semi-sweet (or milk chocolate) chips together - I always add a little extra of the chocolate chips, like maybe 1/8 cup extra.  And you can use a microwave if you like melting them that way.
Stir them over medium-low heat until they are creamy and combined.....

Oh YUM!!!!
Just so you know, the butterscotch chips don't melt as easily and smoothly as the chocolate, so I use whatever I am stirring with to mush them into the melted chocolate.....DON'T keep the heat up high thinking that will work - that will only make the chocolate crumbly and dry (I speak from, ahem, experience!).....

Perfect!!  Spread it over the rice crispies.....

And now all that's left is to try NOT to eat 1/3 of the pan!!! :-D
These are SO delicious.....let me show you that picture of them cut again.....

WOW!!  I am resisting the urge to get up and eat more right now!!! LOL  You know these will be gone tomorrow too! :-D

That's what I've been doing around here the past two days!  I am going to have some fun things to post about tomorrow I bet, and then the next day is the Apple Festival!!  Then next week my posts will be about making apple sauce, and apple juice, and pear honey, and cranberry-pear relish, and Swedish apple pie, and......!! ^-^

COOKIES!!! :-D

I made something YUMMY today.....they are my Aunt Rose's Oatmeal Bars!!  They are special because they have chocolate chips and chocolate frosting!  I just HAD to share them with you.....

I don't know why they taste so good.....they are, after all, only chocolate chip oatmeal cookies (which taste great already!).....but there is something about the frosting on them that changes the taste into something even better!
I decided to make cookies because look what I got this past weekend.....

These were on sale at my super Walmart -- I don't know if they had extra or what, but they were all $1.70 each!!  I grabbed what was left!! LOL  I bet these will last me through my Christmas cookie baking, too!

So, the recipe.....
This recipe is from the 1960's -- my father's sister Rose gave it to my mom when she was first married to my dad!  There's a reason it's lasted this long!! :-D  (although their marriage only lasted 2 years! LOL)

Start with softened butter, sugar, vanilla, and 1 tablespoon of hot water (I don't know why, but I just do it!).....

Mix it all up, then add eggs and mix it again.....
Then combine flour, baking soda, salt, and oatmeal.....

Add it in and mix it up.....
Then, my favorite part......

I always have to throw 4 or 5 in my mouth!! :-D  The recipe says to add 1/2 cup, but I always add a full cup - you have to!  You can add nuts too, if you like them.
Mix in the chocolate chips and then spread the batter in a greased (I use spray) 9x13 pan.....

And bake it at 350 for 25-30 minutes (I bake it for 25 minutes in my oven).
When it's done, cool it for an hour or so, then MAKE the FROSTING!!!!  Yay!

Melt butter.....

Stir in vanilla....

....and cocoa.....

Then add powdered sugar and a little milk.....

.....and stir and stir and stir until it's all smooth and chocolatey!!.....

Spread it on, and it's ready to EAT!!  Yum Yum!.....

When I was a girl, my mom would cut them into small 2inch x 2inch squares, but I can't do that with these gluttons -- this will be GONE tomorrow!  I mean, just look at the size of the squares in the beginning of this post!! LOL  That's ok, I love baking goodies for my family! :-D

I'll type out the recipe below, since I didn't give the specifics with the pictures.....

1 c. butter
2/3 c. white sugar
2/3 c. brown sugar (I just use white again and add 2 T. of molasses)
1 T. hot water
1t. vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/2 c. flour
1t. baking soda
1/2t. salt
2 c. oatmeal
1/2 c. chocolate chips (I always use 1 c.)
1/2 c. nuts (if you want them)

Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes

Frosting:
3 T. butter
1t. vanilla
2 T. cocoa
1 1/2 c. confectioners sugar
2 T. milk

Follow the directions with my pictures, and ENJOY!!!!^-^