Country Living With Emma

Gardening tools abound. Many are optional, but pruners are not. Can you really have too many?

This is a super quick and tasty dish. It will work with canned, instant, and leftover mashed potatoes.

Friday is usually my accountability episode listing what I hope to get done this weekend. The temperature has finally dropped below broiling so I'm going to work in my storage building and hopefully bring some order to it.

Lots of activity was occurring in the first week of October in 1940. Some locations on the planet were already at war, such as Great Britain, and since were still preparing. The uranium for the Manhattan Project had already been procured and it was still over a year until the US would enter the war. I think we can see parallels in our own fourth turning.

Do you have a household inventory? I confess that I do not, but I want to rectify that. It sounds like an overwhelming task. Hopefully, if I break it down into small, individual projects, such as one drawer, I can make some progress. There are some helpful online tools. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has a free phone app that is pretty easy to use. There is also a browser-based application, Bevelmade.com, that is also free and uses AI to analyze photos to document items in your home.

U-shaped single-piece scissors have been around since around 1500 BC. However, the Romans invented the current scissor design, consisting of 2 pieces connected by a pin or pivot around 100 AD.

This is a go-to for work lunch.

I took not one, not two, but THREE naps after work this week, and the results were amazing!

Why We Sleep

A discussion of what the Greatest Generation did differently from what we do today. There are fewer than 0.2% of US WW2 veterans alive today. They were our only witnesses to the last fourth turning. This is a discussion about some of the things that made them different.

Real Vintage Dolls House

Nothing about our current situation shows any signs of becoming less unstable. Where should we be focusing our preps? Being able to generate at least some power would make a huge difference in an outage, but trying to deal with generators as a single older (maybe elderly) woman can be difficult at best.

Spreadsheets are just good for financial use, but they're also a great way to track a variety of things. You can track time, workouts, and even household inventory.

Our most precious resource is time. This episode is a discussion of ways toy use it effectively. 

168 Hours

Off the Clock

The price and availability of gas and diesel will soon curtail not only our travel but also what we can purchase. There's actually a lot to be said for staying at home.

Yesterday was an interesting day... all the way from talking to coworkers who had no idea there was a problem with the global energy supply to getting attacked by the seat belt in my car. At least my life is never boring!

As a baby boomer, I was in college during the last energy crisis. It changed how we lived. We adapted and continued to function as humans. We'll do the same this time. We have options we didn't have then, and we should take advantage of them.

Earbuds might sound like an odd choice for tool of the week, but I literally use them every day. They allow me to listen to content and learn new things while I'm going about my day and doing chores.

The hand quilting class went so well that they want to do another one. I didn't get as far with the actual stitching as I wanted to, but that would be due to my talking too much. (That's a surprise, I know) For the next class, we will do a lot more stitching and a lot less talking. At least that's my goal.

This is a crazy time of the year in my work so podcasts have been few and fastest between. Hopefully, I'll be able to get more consistent. 

The hand quilting class that I'm teaching is Saturday. I'll report back on Monday!

Spoiler alert: THEY ARE WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Different needles have different purposes. Here's a short explanation of which needle you should use for specific tasks.

Using a levain, basically a subset of a starter gives more control over the baking process and the taste of the bread.

Making a Levain

It's Friday, it's hot, and I plan to stay in as much as possible this weekend. There's still plenty to do though.

Flossie shares her experiences during the Battle of Britain during WWII.

I'm still dealing with the aftermath of the fire ant/ hornet attack from Saturday. Basically, I'm walking around with an ice pack on my arm. 

This is a prep I don't think I've heard mentioned. Making and keeping ice is ignorant for now than just keeping drinks cold. 

Blue Gel Ice Packs

We had breakfast at church on Sunday, so I made Pigs in a Blanket with exactly two ingredients: Crescent Rolls and Eckridge Breakfast Sausages. The hardest is doing the math!

In other news, what are the odds of getting bitten by fire ants AND stung by hornets on the same day on the same hand? Spoiler alert: they're not zero. At least they weren't murder hornets.

Catching up on what's going on at the property.

The headlines in 1938 sound eerily similar to today.

In this new world of AI and digital everything, it is still vital that we keep physical documents and create new ones ourselves through journaling or keeping a diary.

The humble Mason jar is more versatile than I can say! How do you use them?

I'm back from a whirlwind trip to Amarillo. I can't lie...I much prefer my area of Texas, even with the humidity.

I started out to talk about hand quilting, but it ended up being more generic. Here is a link to Esther Miller's hand quilting videos:

Hand Quilting

Catching up on what's going on in the country.

Irrigation is a requirement this time of year in Texas. Hose splitters make that process easier and more efficient. They are not all created equal.

Hose Splitter I Like

One of my sweet coworkers made a zippered pouch for my birthday last week. This is a great beginner project, and she did a fabulous job!

This is a very handy tool, particularly when preparing food for the freezer. 

Bag Holder

Not everything is the end of the world, but it can still be a problem. For example, our power outage last week was caused by a snake in the substation. In addition to the activities in the Middle East, there's a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico and/or America. Fairlife Milk was hit by a cyberattack last week, and Coca-Cola has shut down production. TEOTWAWKI may never be our problem, but high gas prices can seriously affect our lives.

It's Friday, and I have an exciting weekend ahead! Well, exciting might be a little too strong a word. What's on tap? Gardening, chores, and quilting!

There are many options for marking a quilt for hand quilting. Here are some links:

Hera Marker

Sewline Pencil

Chalk

Sticky Lint Roller

Good morning from Texas! It's raining and the weather today will be cool. We will not see 90 degrees until Friday. We can always celebrate that!

On Fridays, we usually look ahead to the weekend and what I hope to get done!