Happy Wednesday

Hi everyone! Hope you are doing well, and that the weather is nice wherever you are. I absolutely love this time of year, it's not in the 100's anymore and the nights are cooling down. I will be getting out my Halloween decorations before long!

I started the Granny Shawl I told you about in my last post. I haven't gotten too far, only a couple of rows, but I can already tell that it will go fast once I get going on it. Here is the progress so far:

I am using Red Heart with Love yarn and so far, so good. It is way softer than the Red Heart Super Saver and is not much higher in price. Since I don't have a Hobby Lobby near me (yet!) this yarn will have to do.

Here are some pictures of random things around here:

Butterfly bush in our front yard.... it is huge and attracts the hummingbirds. Our cats love to sit in the window and watch the birds all day. Mr. S. calls it "kitty TV"  ha ha!

Speaking of hummingbirds, I was out back one day and was just sitting there with my camera and got this great shot of three hummingbirds at one of our feeders:

 

The area in Arizona that we live in is known for its hummingbird population. We get so many species of them, and they are just fun to watch. We have feeders in our front and back yard both and we have hummingbirds at them all day long.

 

I have not posted a recent picture of our adorable Malti-Poo, Lulu, in quite awhile, so here she is:

 

She will be a year old at the end of next month. We just love her to death and cannot remember what our lives were like before she came along!  One of my next crochet projects will be to make her a sweater. :)

I have been trying new recipes again. We are trying to eat healthier around here, and although Mr. S. loves vegetables, I'm afraid I am not a huge fan of them. I saw this recipe yesterday and it looked good so I thought I'd give it a try. Boy am I glad I did, because it is scrumptious!  It is a Raw Veggie Salad, and the beauty of it is you can really include whatever veggies you like. I did not add radishes because we don't like them, so I added more snap peas. I used pine nuts and pepitas, and since I had them in my pantry, some dried cranberries. Here is what it looks like:

 

It is mixed together with a Citrus Poppyseed dressing... as Rachael Ray would say, yum-o!! It is a great mix of sweet and sour, crunchy and soft, tangy and mild - well, you get the idea. Give this one a try, you won't be disappointed.

Recently I also tried making my own homemade pickles. The first time I made them, I used the method you can find at Jillee's blog here. They came out really good, although Mr. S. says I added too much garlic (I didn't think so!).  The other day while shopping at the Commissary (grocery store on the Army Post) I found a kit from a company called Pepper Creek Farms. It had three varieties you could make - Kosher Dill, Polish Dill and Bread and Butter pickles. They only had enough pickling cucumbers at the store for me to make two of the three varieties, so I made the Kosher and Polish ones. They turned out yummy too, and the nice thing about this kit is that it only takes 24 hours in the refrigerator and you have pickles.

I got eight pint jars of pickles out of it, four of each variety. I only paid $6.99 for the kit, and I notice that their prices on their website are higher than that (you can check them out here, the pickles are under Gift Sets).  I may go back and get a couple more kits.

Okay, I think that's enough rambling for today. I need to go buy vacuum cleaner bags, make a few phone calls and maybe head to the grocery store. Have a great rest of your week.