The Thrifty Groove: October 2011

Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween!

Hi everyone!

Sunday was the last day for one of our local greenhouses to be open until next Spring so, we decided to visit and pick up some goodies.

They were decked out for Halloween so, I thought I would share some fun.

I swear, these gray pumpkins looked like they were made out of cement!

Every child that came in got a free pumpkin.

I thought this warty pumpkin was just too creepy!

Cauliflower all decked out for Halloween.

After we left the greenhouse we went to a local church for “Trick or Trunk” and they had games and crafts for the kids and everyone got hotdogs, chips, hot fudge sundaes, coffee and lemonade.

Of course the princess went straight to the lady who brought in some helper dogs. You can see that all the other kids are back in the game and craft areas. Not the princess! If there is a dog around, that is where you will find her!

We just had a really fun family day to celebrate the end of October!

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Night Time Raid on an Herb Garden

Hi everyone!

One of the best things about going to different Farmer’s Markets all summer long is that we get the opportunity to meet some wonderful people. A lot of people we meet are so amazingly generous. They know that we are a small local business and offer to give us their herbs.

Since most people grow herbs for the beauty or smell of them and to use a little here and there, they end up with gorgeous full plants that they have no use for at the end of the growing season. So they offer them to us.

It is not uncommon for Troy to run all over the area harvesting herbs from various backyards. Well, last night we did just that.

One of the local garden clubs had planted a beautiful herb garden at a museum house and told us to come over and cut them all down because a frost was predicted.

The earliest we could get over there was 7:30 last night. It was dark, cold and it was raining. Yes, it is a glamorous job! We all bundled up and headed out to be herb thieves in the night! I looked at the three of us and we were almost all in black so, I felt like an herb bandit! Not to mention, the museum next to the one we were cutting from had a special event going on and when everyone came out of the house they saw us out there hunched over in the rain cutting. We got some very strange looks.

As soon as we cut as much as we could we came home had a quick dinner put the princess to bed and then we had to deal with all the bags of herbs we had just harvested. Normally they could wait until the next day but, since it was raining all the plants had mud on them and if they dried that way, the mud is very difficult to rinse off.

So at midnight, we are rinsing, sorting and getting all the herbs on trays to be dried. I told you I lead a very glamorous life!

Please forgive the blurry pictures. I was exhausted by this point and a little blurry myself!

There are four more trays on the counters and all four dining room chairs have trays of herbs on them.

This is just another reason why I collect fun trays, they get used!

We are giving an herb presentation to this garden club later this week. We had hoped to make each member a small Herbs de Provence package. This is a traditional herb mix which consists of:

3 Tablespoons dried marjoram
3 Tablespoons dried thyme
3 Tablespoons dried savory
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon dried sage
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds

Herbs de Provence are used to flavor grilled foods such as fish and meat, as well as vegetable stews. The mixture can be added to foods before or during cooking or mixed with cooking oil prior to cooking so as to infuse the flavor into the cooked food. They are rarely added after cooking is complete.

Source:Wikipedia

Unfortunately, the herbs are just not going to be dried in time. At least I have created 4 different recipes using our herb products that I will make for everyone to try that night. I will share them with you at a later date.

Don’t forget to enter My Memories giveaway! Just click the picture below.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Revisit~Blue and White Fall Vases

Sunday Favorites

Hi everyone!

A couple of weeks ago, I showed you a pair of blue and white vases I got at a thrift store for a song. Here is that post.

What I didn't show you was this other vase I got which was filled with Fall florals. When I saw this, I immediately grabbed it up and looked at the base where the flowers were punched into some styrofoam. I wanted to count and see how many flower picks were in it. I did a quick mental caculation and decided it was way cheaper to by this flower arrangement for the flowers than to go to the store, even the dollar store, and buy the faux flowers. This is how I get a lot of my faux flowers.

So, the vase was $2.00. I took it home and immediately pulled out all the flowers and threw the vase/urn thing away. It was crumbling anyway at the bottom.

Here is the view from above of the floral arrangement. Lots of great stems in there.

Okay, so I pulled everything out. Which was no easy task since the person who originally made it glued everything in!

I used some flowers from a stash I had also to fill in here and there.

And here are just a couple of upclose pictures.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Thrifty Things Friday #31

Hi everyone!

I didn’t do a lot of Halloween decorating this year. However, I thought I would show you my shelf in the dining room.

The pumpkin gourd is real. The two ceramic candy dish pumpkins came from the dollar store. The black bat in the background was from a yard sale this past summer for .25 cents.