Cantaloupe Cake and other goodies.......

Okay--So here it is................Don't you just love shiny, sparkly stuff!! I have to admit, I am not a "girly girl", but there is a little piece of my heart deliriously happy when I get a box in the mail full of bling...........oh yeah!! I love it!!  Fire Mountain is my all time favorite place to buy beads and findings.  They had an 80 percent off sale going on--in fact, it is still going on.  I think until the 12th of August.  Of course, that is only on select items, but I found plenty that I just "had" to have.
 

 The stone above is called "Laboridite. It wasn't 80 percent off, but because I had exceeded a certain amount got some money off of it.  I have been thinking about buying one of these for a long time, but have kept putting it off.  Since I qualified for the discount, I bought it--Happy Birthday to me! I plan on wire wrapping it and wearing it as a pendant.  Isn't it divine?  The colors are beautiful in these stones.  I think that they are mined in Canada.

 this is a photo of all the pretties that I bought.  I love all the blues and browns--decadent!!

 Some of the stones are man made--ceramic, that sort of thing.  Some are composed of apoxy and natural stones and some are just polished stones.  I find them all beautiful.

  This is part of a robot that I am building.  His upper body is started, but it was in the upstairs part of my studio and I didn't wanna run upstairs.  The night that I took these pictures,   it was like 105 degrees (0r hotter) in the bottom part of the studio. It doesn't have conditioned air--just a fan and it was hot.  If you had any question about it, you could'a looked at Big john, ( my Great Pyrenees) and made a quick determination.  He was in front of the fan, face hair blowing and jowls flapping.  He is my helper--bless his heart.  I do love him.

Big John

 More goodies from Fire  Mountain (above).  The little guy below is my first attempt at sculpture with paper clay.  Actually, it is only the second time that I used paper clay but have found that I really like it.  It is easy to use and very light weight.  It gets a little messy but that's okay--it washes off easily.  I like it because it doesn't need to bake--it air dries.  I got mine at a thrift store at a discounted price, but Hobby Lobby carries it also.  I also have a recipe to make your own--I got it online but haven't tried it yet.

 Okay--Here it is!! My Cantaloupe Cake!  I know, it doesn't sound good--at all.  BUT IT IS DELICIOUS. The cantaloupe tastes like peaches.  It is Awesome and if you like peach cobbler or as my husband say "crumble".  So, if you like peach crumble cake I think that you will like this too.  And the best part is--it is super easy to make.  Only took a couple of minutes to throw together.

 I cheated and added a little ice cream to mine--Cantaloupe Ala Mode............It was Delicious--Diet anyone?  I see it coming and soon.

Anyway--If you want the recipe for this it is as follows.  It came from All recipes.com and was submitted by DEMMORG.

                                                      Cantaloupe Crunch
Ingredients
3 C. cubed cantaloupe
1/3 C. lemon juice
1/2 C. white sugar
1 tbsp. all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. butter (melted) I used Margarine
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 ( 18.25 oz.) pkg. white cake mix
1/2 C. butter, melted (again, I used Margarine)
                                                     
                                                    Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degree F ( 175 degrees C)

2. In a medium bowl, mix together the cantaloupe, lemon juice, sugar, flour, 2 tbsp. melted butter, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla.  Transfer to a 9 inch square baking dish, and spread the dry cake mix evenly over the top.  Drizzle the remaining melted butter over the cake mix.

3.  Bake for 45 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the top is golden brown.

Hope you enjoy!!

F.

Well, it is official-I have turned into the Domestic Diva.  For those of you who know me--betcha never would have guessed it!! Me either!  I CAN cook--I just don't do an extraordinary amount  of  it.  That is, til this past weekend.  Seems everything in the garden comes on at one time.  The cucumbers, okra, peas, squash and zucchini were all piled up in buckets just waiting for something to happen to them. So, I dug out the recipe books and this is what I found:

 Pickled Squash, Zucchini, Okra and Dill Pickles.  Spent ALL day saturday prepping and canning.  It wouldn't have been too bad, but I had to go up to the garden and pick some things in the middle of the day and, it is only about 1000 degrees up there at high noon.

 We set the cooker up outside so that it doesn't warm up the house too much.  It was about 100 degrees Saturday.  I just didn't like the thought of doing all of the cooking inside and on an electric stove to boot!  It takes forever and ten days to get the water boiling on electric burners.

 This is Fresh pumpkin pie and one of the all-time best recipes I have ever tried--It was delicious but took a little time to make.  It is so good and made out of fresh pumpkins out of my garden.   This web site http://www.everythingpies.com/fresh-pumpkin-pie-recipe.html  explains the best way to peel the pumpkin, and even gives hints for freezing--which works.  I had made two pies and froze one using these tips and it was just as good as the one that wasn't frozen.

The picture above is a zucchini blueberry loaf and it was divine.  The recipe made four mini loaves and a regular loaf size.  I made it with the zucchini from the garden and frozen blueberries that I put up last year.  The recipe called for fresh berries but it turned out fine with the frozen.   If you want to try this recipe, follow this link http://allrecipes.com/recipe/blueberry-zucchini-bread/detail.aspx.  I'm tellin' ya--it is divine :)

The picture above (I know, a little fuzzy) but it is of fresh cantaloupes taken out of my garden.  I have a cake recipe that I want to try--I know, cantaloupe cake?  Who knows--I will report back to ya on that one.

This was part of supper Saturday.  I put up about 50 bags of peas so far this year and about 5 bags of beans.  These are purple hull peas.  Did you know if you put salt in beans and peas when you cook them, it makes them tough.  I didn't either--I read it somewhere and it is right.  Add the salt to them after they are done cooking.  Eggs also.  Salt makes the whites of the egg tough if you add salt while they are cooking.  Who woulda guessed it. Not I.

And, Last but not least--Shish Kebabs.  I soaked zucchini, squash, onion and steak in an Italian dressing/liquid smoke/terreyaki  sauce combo marinade for about 3 hours and them threaded them onto skewers and grilled them.  MMMMmmmm, yep.  They were good.

I have had so little "studio time" since the summer began, that I think I am losing my mojo.  But, I got a box in yesterday that I wanna show you.  I will post it tomorrow.  Maybe all the sparkly things can rekindle the fire.  We'll see!!



Gonna have to go on a diet after the summer mos.  I can see it coming.

F.

Monday already!!

 I had grand plans for this weekend but they didn't pan out--I did get the dill pickles made but we didn't get started on the porch--I slept in too late Saturday.  I know, my mom said that I would grow out of that and by the time I reached 40 I would get up early all by my self--she was wrong.  I am NOT a morning person.  I try to be, but it just ain't gonna happen.  My perfect time to get up is about 9 am and usually, like clockwork, I wake up about 8:45.  Well, that didn't happen Sat.  I woke up at 9:45.  By the time I had breakfast and coffee it was too hot to begin tearing off a porch.  The weekend was broken up anyway--I had to go to a meeting at the Art Gallery Sunday @ 2 PM.  Maybe next weekend :)  

My Garden is pretty much done.  I made Shish Kebabs Saturday.  Just soaked the veggies and chicken in Italian Dressing and terriyaki sauce for about 3 hours and then griledl them.  They are delicious and not too bad for you either.

This is my latest Bandit.  He was in the live trap Saturday morning.  They really do a trick on the watermelons.  They love them.  They will a chew a small hole in the rind and reach their little arm inside and clean it out entirely.




The possum ( you can see him barely--he is back in the corner of the cage) was also in the live trap Saturday.  These fella's musta been having a party.  He wasn't impressed by the fact that he was caught.  He, like the raccoon, adore watermelons.

 This is the raccoon saying "goodbye".  We let them go away from other houses, next to a bayou.  They are water lovers so they should be perfectly content.


The possum was facing the same direction as the raccoon but decided that he wanted to go the other direction.  So, you can just barely see him scampering across the road.  I am glad no cars were coming!!

 

This little pretty we caught this morning--He was in the watermelon patch.  I'm tellin' ya, if you ever want to catch a possum for something ? --watermelons are the perfect bait. 

 This is were he said goodbye--he ran away so fast that I couldn't get a picture of him, but he is in a good place.

So, Now it's back to work this morning.  I did manage to squeeze in a little studio time this past weekend--not a lot, but I did manage to get a couple of pieces rusted and some pieces apoxied and glued--you know, the drying time is a bummer!!  Hurry up and wait.  I wish there was a way to speed up the process.  Hope y'all have a great Monday.

Ready for a busy weekend!!

We finally made it to Friday--I think I wish my life away wanting the weekends to "just hurry up and get here".  I was really meant to stay home and do work on my art.  So, why do I fight the 9-5 everyday??  Guess because, like so many other people--I am afraid to take the leap and I have serious doubts as to if my art would support me.  And, I like to eat--so, I keep the day job and work on the art whenever I can squeeze it in.  I'm not complaining--guess in this economy, I should just be thankful that I do have a job but I still like to bitch every now and then.  Okay-if you talk to my husband, he may say that it is a little more regular than "now and then", but whose gonna ask him??  Not any of my fwiends.......:)  Got a busy weekend planned so no art this weekend.  We have to rebuild the front porch.  It has been on the agenda for quite some time.  We have just been putting it off and off and off..........okay, you get the drift.  It is not my favorite thing to do, because if you could see my porch you would think that you were standing in The Cracker Barrel.  I have all kinda weird contraptions hanging on there, sitting on there, propped on there.  It will be a major move just to clean the front porch.  But--it has ta be done and that is that.  I also need to put up some cucumbers-------so, dill pickles are also on the agenda.   I made bread and butter pickles a few weeks ago, and they actually turned out pretty good.  It is a Ball recipe that I got from All Recipe.com--If you never checked that sight out, you ought to.  It has almost any recipe that you can think of and it is graded by members on the star system.  I have gotten some really good grub recipes from there.  Really, it is easier to go there than it is to go through a cookbook.  Now, every once in a while, I like to curl up with a good cookbook, but if I am in a hurry--it's All Recipe's for me. Hope that you guys can have a more creative weekend than I do--maybe next weekend.  

Hard fought Bounty     

 

 

 

 

 

 These are some of the vegetables that we got out of our garden this year.  It has been a hard fought bounty.  It is just too hot and dry for them. I just can't seem to water them enough--and what does survive and grow--the racoons and opossums get a large part of.

 It has been another hot and dry year!! I am so ready for the fall months.

Cantaloupes under my kitchen table (next to Lenore)

 

This is a Steam Punk piece that I have started.  She has a paper clay dress.  Her skull is that of a mink or something like it.  I got several of them at Canton Market Place last year.

                     This is a paper mache mask that I have been working on.  It will be on a salvage art piece when it is finished.  Still have a long way to go on it.

 

  This is one of the Steam Punk pieces that I have finished. I have to give her a name--I haven't done that yet.  She has a mesh skirt--it is hard to see in this picture.

 This piece is a "Tribute to Van Gogh".  It is composed of a piece of wood (the body) I don't really know what it is--it may have been a root ball or something.  It had these great swirls all over it.  it just reminded me of Van Gogh's Starry Night--So, that's what I replicated on the wood. 

 This is the paper mache Skull--got a little more done on it.

 This is the Steampunk piece with the paper clay painted. I used Lumineire paints--I love their metallic look.

 This is Savanna.  I got her when she was about 6 mos. old.  She is about 10 now.  She is such a sweet girl.

 

The is a picture of Lacy (above). She was a rescue horse.  She is very stubborn and head strong but we love her.  We know that she has had a very rough go of it and she will be with me for the rest of her life.  No more hunger or mistreatment for her.

The picture above is of Zoey--she is my baby.  This isn't a good picture of her.  She is also a sweetie.  She is very quiet.  She takes in the situation and then runs :)   We also have another one--her name is Ringo.  I don't have a picture of her on here.  She is the "baby" of the bunch, though you couldn't tell by looking at her.  She is huge.

Hugs
F.

Life

Big John

 We finally made it to Friday--thank goodness!! It has been a long week.  I have been so busy with the job and the garden that I have had little time for anything

Shay

Last weekend we canned pickles and put up purple hulls.  I have another bushel and a half waiting to be shelled tonight or in the morning.  We have finally gotten some rain--5 1/2 inches so far, that should help everything. It was just getting so dry that everything was burning up.  You just can't seem to water it enough.

Lenore

When I walked outside last night, I heard a rustling sound.  I have been hearing it when I walk out on the porch.  Last night I  looked for source of the rustling.  All I could see was about 12 inches of snake tail--the rest of him was hidden by the bushes.  By the color, it looks to be a water moccasin.  I am not afraid of snakes, but I don't really like the idea of a water moccasin living by the porch.  I have a big water tub at the base of the stairs and Shay jumps into it almost every day. It is her "swimming pool".  I don't want to see her bitten by a snake--especially a cotton mouth.  Believe me, I looked for it this morning at 5 am when I took Lenore out to potty.  No sight of it--but there are plants and bushes along the walk and it isn't clear sight.

Lewis and a stick bug

 Lewis went to take the garbage out last night and came back in with this stick bug--isn't he just the coolest.  They are so "stick" like".  He offered me the chance to hold it, but I declined.  I am not that much of bug toucher--especially when they are  5 inches long.  He was awesome to watch though.

This is our latest "bandit". Lewis caught him in the garden this morning.  They love cantaloupes and watermelons.  They will destroy the entire garden. .  We take them to a real nice place and let them free.  Somewhere where they won't be messed with and won't mess with anyone.

This raccoon we caught a couple of days ago.  He really wasn't afraid of us at all.  he was laying on his back in the cage just looking at us as if to say "what ya lookin' at"?  He was really cute.  We let him go also.

I haven't been able to get into my studio much these last couple of weeks.  Too much going on around the place.  I do have about  5 different projects started and hope to squeeze in at least a couple of hours this weekend.  We have to rebuild our front porch, so we will be gathering supplies for that and start on that soon.    We always have plenty to do. I don't think that we'll ever catch up.

Hope you all have a great weekend!!