...9.5...Friday Update...

...work continues on the painting of the master bedroom...just working our way around the room...shuffling furniture around...the Man is doing the cutting in up high...and I'm doing it down low...the vertical walls and the first level of the ceiling will be Palest Pistachio...and the high ceiling in the tray will be white...

...we removed a couple of wall plates that aren't needed...where data and phone cables came in...so those large holes need to be patched...

...you can buy a special kit to cover them...but I just pack them with cardboard...

... and tape the edges and cover it with spackling...

...this first coat is pretty rough...and I scrape most of it away with the spackling knife...

...meanwhile the cutting in continues...

...so it repeats a couple of times...sand and spackle....

..sand and spackle...

...this is the final skim coat of spackling...one more light sanding and this wall will be ready for paint...

...and this is all the spackling that I have left from a 25 lb. bag...so I transferred it to a jar for long term storage...we won't need much in the future...maybe just patching some nail holes or dings in the wall...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your weekend!

...9.4...Delicious Vegan Food we ate...

...we spent a nice cool morning at the Botanical Gardens...and we seemed to have the place pretty much to ourselves...

...there's always something new to see...and there were several different varieties of these star lilies blooming...

...there was a pretty new fountain in the Japanese garden...

...and the maple leaves just starting to change colour...

...another lily...

...pretty statues...

...another lily...this one is deep red...

...the brick pathway...with lots of caladiums?...caladia?...

...another lily...

...lots more colour and blooms than I was expecting this late in the summer...

...some pretty purple...

...a pretty shady bench...

...the view from the top of the brick path...

...and now...finally...the delicious vegan food...

...after the gardens we went to our favorite Greek restaurant for lunch...and they had the lentil soup as the special...I've had it before and it's always so delicious...with fresh bread Kalamata olives and a greek salad with no cheese...it was a delicious lunch...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...9.3...W.I.P. Wednesday...The Porcelain Sweater F.O. ...

...now that it's all blocked and dried...I thought I'd give the Porcelain Sweater a little try on...it's still way too hot to start wearing it though...

...the front...

...I'm pretty happy with how the stripes line up...I think I could have added a few more rows of the natural colour at the top of each sleeve...it's more a little more noticeable from the side...not so much from the front...

...and I am happy with the split hem...

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

~Have a lovely day!kni

...9.2...Tuesdays with Julia...the FINAL COUNTDOWN...#9...er...uhm...#8...oops...

...remember how last week I said there were only 10 recipes...well...really there were only nine...

...you know how sometimes Julia's recipes have more than one name...and sometimes she included two things in one recipe...I had them on separate lines in my spreadsheet...but they are actually the same recipe...Endives à la Grecque/Fenouil à la Grecque

...I had thought that I'd look for endive at Mom's posh grocery store...but now I don't think I'll bother...

...and apparently there's only one Fennel recipe in the entire cookbook...

...it makes an attactive side dish...and it does smell a little bit like licorice...

...we served it with baked tofu, rice, green beans from the garden, and a carrot salad...we didn't either one like it very much...it does taste like licorice/anise and we don't care for that flavor...but it isn't sweet here...which helps some...and it's also cold...as I think a hot licorice/anise dish sould be stronger...so although we will definitely not be making this again...it wasn't horrible...we would have probably enjoyed the endive version more...haha...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...9.1...Over the Weekend...

...I found a lone vegan croissant in the freezer...so I had that for breakfast...and the Man had a bagel...

...it's the first of the month...so we did all of those things...meaning...we also went to our local health food store...

...but it was actually Stuff Mart that had the deal of the week...we got these two vegan packets for $3.50 each...

...the haul from the Health Food store...shelf stable tofu Miyokos...more on that in just a bit...TVP...Lettuce...organic oatmeal...and a tiny little cabbage...

...and then we also stopped at a 'fancy' grocery store...to try and find some of Julia's ingredients...they didn't have endive...but they did have fennel...for $4.99...yikes...that's a lot for something that will taste like licorice and that we probably won't even enjoy...

...and I got an Orange Cream Poppi...it was really good...

...and that fueled me up to start the BIG project for the weekend...even though we only got about 1/4 of it done...haha...aren't all projects like that...?

...we had bought 4 forty foot sections of 6 inch metal garden edging...to keep the grass from growing into the square foot garden...and just to make everything look all nice and tidy...

...so thinking we'd get all four sections done in a day...we rolled out the first 40 feet ...and man...is it an unmanageable monster...like wrestling with an octopus or trying to hang onto a dragon's tail...just really really unweildy...and we're trying to stand it up and pound it 3 inches into the ground...in a straight line...

...we made it neatly around the hibiscus and the corner of the driveway...

...and then trying to keep it straight and pounding in the long straight section in front of the square foot garden...

...the end flew off the rubber mallet...that was kind of funny...

...I never even realized that it was held in place by a single nail...we just replaced it with a longer one...

...and carried on...we got the first section done and called it a day...my arms are really sore today too...

...the rattlesnake beans are definitely waning...

...but we still picked a good handful...

...in the food prep department...I blended up the last of the sugary mangoes...

...and just mixed them with some self rising flour...

...to make a batter...

...I baked it in the fluted cake pan...but it really turned out more like a muffin than a cake...it was good though...

...I air-fried a block of tofu...first I cut a piece of parchment to fit the air fryer...

...this is how I fit an entire block into our small air fryer...

...it shrinks as it cooks...

...and ends up nice and golden and not stuck together...

...I mentionned earlier that I'd gotten Miyokos at the health food store...that's the only place we can get it here...and we're becoming a one-vegan-butter family...because we really had too many different varieties of vegan butter...

...I like Miyokos...not really better than Earth Balance...but I'm willing to simplify things and only have the one...and Miyoko's doesn't have palm oil...

...and another first of the month thing got checked off the list...I cleaned the Berkie...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

...8.30...Dinner and a Movie...

...for dinner...we had vegan BBQ tofu...vegan potato salad...and vegan baked beans...all delicious...

...and the movie...was Keeping Mum...a British black comedy/thriller...it was funny...but I wasn't at all thrilled...it wasn't 'scary' and that's what usually makes a movie a 'thriller' for me...it was very cute and predictable...and fun to see Rowan Atkinson not being too silly...we enjoyed it...

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

~Have a lovely weekend!