Thanksgiving wishes and my favorite Thanksgiving tale...

May your stuffing be tasty,

May your turkey plump,

May your potatoes and gravy

Have nary a lump.

May your yams be delicious

And your pies take the prize,

And may your Thanksgiving dinner

Stay off your thighs!

- Anonymous

O'Henry's "Two Thanksgiving Day gentlemen"

Rushing it?

All the big box stores are talking about opening on Thanksgiving around these parts, rushing it do ya think?  It is barely past Halloween and I already see Santa’s at pumpkin patches!!  How long before we start seeing black Fridays in July?

It seems that every year Christmas shopping is getting earlier and earlier and honestly it’s all about greed.  Which big box will get the most sales…Wal-Mart, Target, or another?  But just for a minute let us think about the poor souls who have to forego Thanksgiving and work just to make the stockholders richer. 

The mom and pop stores of the world are shuttering their doors more and more and we, the consumers, are to blame.

If no one went to these sales on the morning of Thanksgiving, they might just wait.  If people didn’t camp out with tents in front of he big box doors, they might just wait.  If our kids didn’t demand toys and electronics that are available in small quantities (just to make the demand larger) they might just wait.  If Christmas wasn’t so much about things and instant gratification, they might just wait. 

I know I am steadily sounding like I am the Grinch who discovered what Christmas was all about, but I didn’t need to steal all the present in Whoville to come to this revelation.  I’ve always known it and there is no way I will get up from the table, tell my guests ta-ta and hit the stores on Thanksgiving.  And if others would do the same, they might just wait!

Q is for Quinoa.

ABC…and on to Q

You thought I forgot about the ABC book didn’t you?  Actually I’ve been having a bit of time with back issues and I have been a bit lax in keeping up with my blogs.  I’m a little better so on to Q!

What in the heck is Quinoa –which is pronounced keen-wah.  I love just saying it.  It’s such a cool word.  As for eating it well, I’ve had it and it’s not bad but I am married to a man who will not really try anything new so I haven’t had the opportunity to try many recipes with the stuff.

Quinoa is an extremely healthy protein rich grain (in actuality a seed) and it’s packed with so many essential nutrients that I won’t even begin to name them all here.  It’ resembles cous-cous (which my hubby also won’t eat) but is pretty versatile and is great for baking, side dishes, salads, and a substitute for rice.

Quinoa has a outer bitter coating to deter the birds and most likely if you buy it from the grocery store this coating will be removed, but check to be sure.  If not you will have to soak your quinoa.

Recipes are all over the Internet but here is a good one from the food channel…

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/quinoa-with-garlic-pine-nuts-and-raisins-recipe/index.html

Quinoa…it’s for Q.

No text messages from iphone to android? No problem

While this blog is not usually about technical advice, every once in a while a piece of information reveals itself to me and I just have to share it. 

I have an IPhone and my son, like most young people is never satisfied with the technology that they are currently holding in their hands, so after about 6 months he sold his IPhone and got an android.

Now let me say that my son is serving in the Air force many, many miles away. Due to his work schedule, sometimes the only contact we have is through short text messages. 

IPhone recently upgraded to a new IOS after which I could receive text messages from him, but I couldn’t send any in return.  I’d just get the red flag stating “message failure.” 

Well I finally figured it out.  All the IPhone user needs to do if they are experiencing this problem is to go into their settings and disable IMessage.  Simple!  He got the message and then promptly texted me to ask,

“What did you do?”

“I’m a magician and it’s magic.” I answered.

Tiger burning bright

In case you are wondering I am suffering from spinal stenosis or a slipped/herniated disc, so I haven’t been around much lately.  Today is the first day I am able to get on a computer.  Unfortunately, the pain meds made me sicker than the illness!  Go figure right.  So now I’m back to plain old ibuprofen and muscle relaxers.  Please forgive me If I haven’t visited or commented in a while.  I’ll be up and about soon, because nothing keeps me down for long!

Halloween is right around the corner and sometimes its fun to dress up as a favorite animal.  Tigers have got to be one of the top choices.  I’ve done a lot of face-painting and I found that Snazaroo face paint works the best.  No, I wasn’t given anything to say that, I’m just speaking from experience.  I really don’t like the greasy face paints and this kind is soft, dries on the skin and stays on till you wash it off.

Did you know that the stripes on a tiger are like fingerprints and no two are exactly alike?  I painted this tiger from one at the national zoo. 

Hopefully tigers will be around for a long time but as you can see from the list below tigers are very endangered:

Bengal tiger: Less than 2,000


Indochinese tiger: 750-1,300


Siberian tiger: Around 450


Sumatran tiger: 400-500


Malayan tiger: 600-800


South Chinese tiger: Extinct in the wild


Caspian tiger: Extinct


Javan tiger: Extinct


Bali tiger: Extinct

If you sporting a tiger costume this year, why not educate others about tigers and give to a wildlife preservation organization?

Where comes the sun?

I have to admit I’m not a fan of rain.  I know that we need rain but if I could, I would just have it rain when I am sound asleep in bed.  Waking up to rain is the pits.  It has rained almost every day this week and this morning as I got out of bed I peeked through the blinds hoping to see the sun, but no such luck.  It was raining, again.

Fall is my favorite time of the year.  There is no humidity and many times the weather is cool and comfortable with a light jacket.  There is football and festivals, apple picking and craft shows.  Fall is fun.  Rain is not. 

So lately I’ve been seeing these sausage commercials on TV featuring the sun—and these days it seems it’s the only sun I HAVE been seeing.  Here is hoping that tomorrow the gray will stay away and let the sun reappear with or without sausage!

Enter to win a pair of Breast Cancer awareness drop earrings

To recognize the Breast Cancer Awareness Month of October I am giving away a pair of Sterling silver ear wire drop earrings.  Low entries so be sure to enter today!  And if you are a DIY'er there are free instructions to make a pair yourself too as an added benefit!

Breast Cancer Awareness earrings

Mystery solved!

Some of you may remember that this summer I was visited by a thief, a hummingbird nectar thief to be exact.  This went on all summer.  I either had to take it in every night, or just make more nectar every day--every single day or disappoint the hummers.  If I got home a bit late or had something going on and I didn't get it in--it was drained dry.  Some weeks I remembered to take it in every day for a week and I'd think that maybe if I left it out he wouldn't come, but I was always wrong.  What could it be, I wondered, bats, possums, raccoons?  After I found one feeder on the ground with it's top unscrewed I pretty much figured it had to be a raccoon.

I haven't seen a hummingbird for 5 days now so I think they have embarked on their journey to warmer climes.  Still I have put the feeder out every day just in case a lonely hummingbird passing through may stop to refuel.

Tonight I was bound and determined to catch the thief in the act if only to see exactly how he does it.  So I got a couple pillows, cracked  a space in the vertical blinds overlooking my deck and waited.  I pretty much had figured out that the culprit visited around 7:30 every night.

7:32 on the dot, he came.  Yup, raccoon alright and he was a pretty gutsy little dude too.  He reached up and tilted the feeder.  Our eyes met and I swear he gave me the stink eye, since I was  ruining his party. I opened the sliding glass door and he ran, but only after he gave me one last very dirty look.

Sorry I have no photos since my camera is not that high tech and all I got was a very blurry furry!

Mystery solved and since Hummingbird season is over, he will have to get his kool-aid somewhere else.

Anyone else have raccoon raiders?  

Goodbye little hummingbird

Goodbye, Aurevoir, Hasta la Vista, Adios, Ciao, Auf Wiedersehen, Doei, Farvel, Zenaj, Sayonara, Namaste, Yasou, Slan, Hwyl fawr, in just a few languages—all of them goodbyes.

So long to the little hummingbirds that visit my feeders every day.  I haven’t seen them for a few days and although experts say to keep the feeders up until you haven’t seen any for 2 weeks, I am thinking that they have started their long southward trek.  Soon I won’t have to bring in that nectar feeder at night to stop Rocky raccoon and he will have to get his kool aid from elsewhere.  Goodbye to the hummingbirds and happy travels.