Birthday Wishes & Empty Plates!

Helen debating seconds on dessert.

 Happy Birthday Helen!

Over the weekend we had the chance to celebrate the birthday of our neighbor Helen, with our other neighbors Mike & Marilyn. She has lived on the hill for a while. It is always a pleasure to talk with her and hear her stories of the people who once lived on Looking Glass Hill and have a good chuckle or two. We look forward to more stories, memories, and laughter!

May you have many more wonderful birthdays!

Mike & Marilyn

Spectacular, Spectacular!

Tonight was the penny auction fundraiser for our church.  Ross made some cookies for it.  Now you should know that two of my favorite tastes are plain, old sugar cookies and anything lemon.  Combine them and you have just made a super food for me.  Ross has done that with this cookie.

As part of Ross' longtime desire to open a bakery we now take pictures of items that he feels he would like to sell on an ongoing basis.  These cookies made the list.  Along with the pictures Ross also has to name his product.  He called this the Lemon Drop Cookie (look closely at the picture and you can see the yellow from the 'lemon drops' that he added to the mix).  I, given the fact that this is Shannon tongue heaven, decided that it needed a different, more realistic, name-The Spectacular, Spectacular Pucker Up and Kiss Me Lemon Drop Sugar Cookie.  Now that's a name!

As I said earlier, Ross made these for a church fundraiser; this means keep your mitts off Shannon! His downfall was asking me to taste test one.  As if. One led to two, which led to three.  Three was the best because I ate it while standing right next to him.  He was so busy taking pictures that he did not notice right away that I was eating his centerfold.  When he finally did notice, he was quick to catch me red handed on film.  I think that this must have been a look that I developed when I was six; it's that one where you know you should be upset with me but I'm just acting too darn cute for you to get there so I just saved my own hide look!  I guess I'm good at naming looks too!

P.S.  I hope you like my Hurricane Irene beard.  It grew over the several days we were without power post the hurricane passing through.  By the time the power came back the beard had grown on me !  (Ha, ha, ha...I just crack myself up).

Fresh Eggs for Sale

Well the time has finally arrived where Ross and I cannot consume all the eggs that the chickens are laying so our little cluckers are now in business for themselves.  We put up a fresh eggs sign last evening (handmade by yours truly).  We are using the honor system where people can stop by and take eggs out of our cooler at their convenience. They just leave their money (and hopefully all the rest of the money) in the cigar box.  The top sign says "today" for when we have eggs, and if we run out then we can switch it to say "out."  We did not get any takers today, but every business starts out small, right?  Let's hope.

Water, Water Everywhere!

Hurricane Katia just passed by the east coast, and thank God that it stayed out to sea!  It unfortunately did give us more rain-rain we did not need.   It has rained for the last couple of days only subsiding today.  The ground is still saturated from Irene so all this extra water is just causing more flooding.  We woke up to an inch of water in the basement; there was just too much water for our sump pump to handle.  Ross and I have discussed adding a second sump pump.  I guess this just jumped to the top of my honey-do list!

Instead of boring you with pictures of us standing in water, or the impromptu brook running through our flower garden or...  (Unfortunately for us we have way too many 'living with water' pictures for our own liking.)  How about instead I share with you some of the awesome beauty all this water can create.

Our neighbor called this morning.  He was working at Kent Falls State Park in Kent, CT and told us we needed to get there.  Normally there is a healthy brook that runs into and out of this park.  In the park the brook drops 250 feet in the span of a quarter mile over a series of falls.  These are stunning on any given day, but today they were massively incredible.  Someone our neighbor was talking to said that this was a once in a decade event (let's hope)!  In the above picture, Max and I are at the lower falls after we completed going up and back down the trail.  If you look closely you can see that I am wet from all the spray that was flying at the top falls.  The force with which the water was running was incredible; the sound of the water was deafening.  It was so cool.  I have compiled a video of the various tiers as we climbed to the top.  I hope you enjoy.

It's Labor Day!

It's Labor Day!  Time to sit back and relax just like Max here to the left. Not in our household; it's called Labor Day so you'd better get to work.  It seems that I always have something else to complete, and every time I look at my list it just gets longer.  Ross had started a list for me that had eight items on it. I've completed three and then added sixteen mores tasks.  Some of these are simple-such as vacuuming all the cobwebs from the basement rafters-while some are a bit more complicated-like adding a second sump pump to the basement.

Before

The most recent cross off on my honey do list was replacing the basement windows.  I'm big on doing lots of research before starting a project, and I did not find as much info as I would have hoped.  Ross and I have installed regular windows before but the basement windows do not get nailed into studs so I was a bit perplexed.  Oh well, if you're not quite sure what you're doing just keep going forward and you'll get somewhere (seems to me that this is a man trait-no honey I don't need to stop and get directions cause I know it's around here somewhere).

After

I have now replaced four of the five basement windows.  The fifth window was knocked out by the previous owner and a sheet of plywood was set in its place.  They placed a dryer vent through this and there it has set since (no paint, no sealant, just a sheet of thin plywood exposed to the elements).  We decided to replace that window with glass block and found a nifty glass block dryer vent that will be installed as part of the window.  I have everything on order for that installation; looks like I get to learn something new!  I have to admit that the new windows do wonders for the light and the general atmosphere of the area. Ross was correct to add this to my honey do list!

On another note, we were walking Max down the street the other day, and I noticed a strange (for here) but familiar looking nut on the ground. Lo and behold, it was a buckeye.  I guess Ross and I aren't the only transplants to the hill as the buckeye tree is not native to Connecticut.  I would think that this was some lost souvenir except that is was still in its outer casing when I picked it up. Looks like we have a tree to hunt down-now let's just add that to my list!