...3.30...Dinner and a Movie...and blog comments...

...first of all...posting my comments to blog friends here...

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...Hey K...that orange sunrise was crazy pretty...I love the underwater shots...except for the sharkie ones...and I also don't love the sound of the word gunboat...Love, T

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...Hi Karen...those purple centered daisies are so pretty...I've not seen those before...we've been to the botanical gardens here a couple of times...and they're just now ramping up for spring so it will be interesting to see how things progress...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...Hi Éphée...your pizza pasta looks delicious...nice and hearty and comforting food...and your creamy tofu dish does as well...and that sweet pup in the snow...so cute and playful...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...Hi Penny...Happy Spring to you...I do love to see your ever changing skies...so beautiful...

...to Beth from BLD in MT : Living a Simple Life in This Interconnected World...Hi Beth...Oh my goodness...those curtains...so amazing...and what a lot of work that was...glad it was fun...and they do look like stained glass...you did such a great job!

...and on the reading front...a couple more of the novellas...that must have been a thing for a while with Dickens...as there's a chunk of writing from 1843 to 1848 where he only wrote Christmas novellas...I've read The Cricket on the Hearth...which is not really very Christmas-y...but it does have a toymaker...it's a sweet story of home life and the value of marriage and faithfulness...and then I read The Battle of Life...that one's a sweet little love story...it's pretty predictable and has a lot of fun relationships in the side characters...

...and I found a YouTube Channel that did a Dickens readalong...Books and Things...over the last couple of years...so I missed it...but it's still fun to watch her reflections on the books...and she did the Christmas novellas during her Vlogmas videos...

...for dinner we had beans and greens and cornbread...it's a meal that checks all of the boxes for me...I love it so much...

...and for the 'movie'...we started a new PBS series...Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries ...it was OK...not a stellar murder mystery series...but I'd watch it anyway...just for the 1960s clothes...they're 'groovy'...

...what have you been watching lately?...

~Have a lovely weekend!

...3.29...Friday New House Update...now...and then...

...we needed to add an astragal (An astragal is a moulding profile composed of a half-round surface surrounded by two flat planes (fillets). An astragal is sometimes referred to as a miniature torus. It can be an architectural element used at the top or base of a column, but is also employed as a framing device on furniture and woodwork. The word "astragal" comes from the Greek for "ankle-joint"...An astragal is commonly used to seal between a pair of doors. The astragal closes the clearance gap created by bevels on one or both mating doors, and helps deaden sound.)...wiki...

...so the Man shaved a sliver of wood off of one side of our double bathroom doors...

...and then we brought it into our painting room...aka...the living room...

...and added the astragal...

...we hung the big bathroom artwork...and the little white spots are where I spackled over the screws attaching it to the wall...

...and then I painted those to match the painting...and they disappeared...

....and now back to the past...I'm just uploading these photos in date order...so they probably appear pretty random...but it's also fun for me to look back at all we accomplished before we even moved in...

...we made a pattern for the mantle for the fireplace...

...and the Man cut those angles...

...and then we cleared away the grass along the side of the driveway...and planted a row of lavender plants...

...and topped the landscape cloth with pea gravel...

...hopefully the lavender will thrive and the weeds won't...

...we had a few little plants leftover so we put them into a big pot...

...I remember this was an exciting day...our microwave/convection oven arrived...I know you've already seen it...

...so we cleared off the corner of the counter where it will sit...

...and it's still there and I still love it...

...we relocated and refurbished this light that was in the dining room (which is now a den)...

...I gave it a scrub...

...and painted it with a hammered bronze spray paint...

...and we hung it in the foyer...

...it goes better here than in the new 'den'...

...we added some pretty glass baubles to the rather long pull chains for the ceiling fan in the big room...

...they're so pretty...

...we put together the new dining room/nook/kitchen chairs...

...we also removed the kitchen/dining room light...

...and painted it silver...and we also painted one of the boob lights with the hammered bronze for the little curved area of the foyer...

...and hung those back up...

...where they came from...

...and put the new blue and white (theme here...haha) tablecloth on the now round table...

~Have a lovely day!

...3.28...Delicious Vegan Food we ate...

...we met some dear old friends downtown for a fancy dinner out...it's not a vegan restaurant...but they made me a special dish...this beautiful little tureen of sweet potato, yukon potato, butternut squash, mushrooms and red onions...it was so delicious...

...and then I had my choice of vegan chocolate cake or vegan red velvet...so difficult to choose...I should have gotten both and brought one home...haha...

...what delicious food have you been eating?...

~Have a lovely day!

...3.27...W.I.P...Wednesday....

...I'm almost finished resizing the tops of these 'boughten' socks (that's a ND word...haha)...I did a band of the reverse stockinette stitch in the same colour as the toe...black on this sock...it'll be different on the fraternal twin...and then a two colour rib for the top...and that's the same colour as the sock originally had...I'll do a few more rows and then bind off in the darker purple...

...the blue and black section is a little bit messy...so I'll be more careful on the next one...the unraveling is horrific as they were knit from the bottom up...

...what's in your workbasket this week?...

~Have a lovely day!

...3.26...Tuesdays with Julia...

...we made a pretty delicious version of Vegan Sole à la Nantua...

...it made a nice light lunch...

...and all of the particulars are over at The Vegan Version...

~Have a lovely day!

...3.25...Over the Weekend...

...after a rainy day yesterday...we woke up to fog...I do love a good fog...so eerie...

...made a new oat waffle recipe...it was pretty good...the Man said it tasted like Cheerios...funny...

...my Valentine's Day roses finally came...I only got a catalog photo of them on Valentine's Day...haha...

...I did the weekly grocery shop...

...nothing really interesting...fresh beets though...

...then we spent a couple of hours putting the back seat back into my car...

...we had removed it last year when we were moving just to be able to fit a lot more stuff into the car...and bigger boxes...

...but it was just time to get it reinstallled...

...then the day warmed up and the sun came out...so we headed to the Botanical Gardens for a stroll...

...the fountain was working for the first time this year...

...and things are just starting to bloom...

...and on the food prep front...I made good use of the oven...I baked the Man a batch of peanut butter cookies...I eat them too...but they're his favorite...

...a tray of baked tofu...

...and a banana bread...

...and then Sunday we went to our new favorite Mexican restaurant...and I departed from my usual bean burrito and got their fajita veg quesadilla...just without the cheese and crema...and they sweetly subbed guacamole for the crema...it was delicious...and since I don't like the smoking fajita dish...this is a perfect way to enjoy fajita veg...they cook it in the kitchen...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

...3.23...Dinner and a Movie...+Comments...

...first of all...posting my comments to blog friends here...

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...Hey K...your sunrises and bread and bagels all look beautiful...looks like a fun trip into town too...Love, T

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...Hi Karen...we've seen the Titanic exhibit a couple of time with our Airman when he was younger...it really is an interesting exhibit...when we saw it in Minnesota...they gave you a 'ticket' of a real person and then at the very end you got to find out if you lived or not...I did and our Airman did not...it was a kindof sad ending to the tour...I don't think they do that anymore...I hope your hands heal quickly...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...Hi Éphée...the cauliflower sub for the eggplant is genius...I'll have to try that out...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...Hi Penny...Happy Spring to you...your waterside looks lovely...

...to Beth from BLD in MT : Living a Simple Life in This Interconnected World...Hi Beth...I think adding yuba to your seitan is brilliant...another thing I've got to try...I've made Yuba before ...years ago...but I think I'll get some at the Asian store next time...

...and on the reading front...I've finished Barnaby Rudge...and The Christmas Carol and The Chimes...those two are both Christmas Novellas...so they're short...I don't remember reading The Chimes...if it was in the antholoy I read as a tweenager...I really don't remember it at all...and you already know how much I love "Scrooge"...

...before the movie we had a lovely game of Scrabble...aren't the letters that I picked for this round perfect...

...takeout vegan pizza for dinner...so good...

...and we watched The Chimes...it's a claymation short...it was ok...the Chimes is just not that good...it's a little bit of a convoluted story...not nearly as good as the Christmas Carol...

...and so then we watched the first episode of Moone Boy...also not that great...although we both like the actor Chris O'Dowd quite a bit (from the IT Crowd - that's hilarious)...

...so...we pretty much flunked Movie night...haha...

...what have you been watching lately?...

~Have a lovely day!