Seems like weekends are never enough time. I have plans for all that needs to get done, but rarely get to it all.  

I was out on Saturday for a nice bike ride. It was a little cloudy in the morning, but low 50s and enjoyable.

I had to wear more layers than earlier this week.

I put a filter on that picture and my teeth look blue. I don’t have any clue what I’m doing with filters 😀

John was away this weekend and I spent a lot of time with Mama Radiance.  We went to a craft show where I bought Christmas gifts.  I am on a roll with gifts!  I would show them, but the recipients might be reading 😉

We stopped for coffee at Spektor. We went in the back entrance and they had a large mural painted on the building of a coffee roaster.

Isn’t that cool? I wish it could be on the street front to see it more often.

Couple more of my 365 group pictures.  Saturday was Strings and I took a picture of my guitar using macro.

I wish I had thought to dust off the guitar first. I don’t touch the body that much at the neck. I like this shot and I find it interesting how the strings look wider when they are out of focus. I don’t understand why that is. So much to learn with this camera, but I am loving it so much! I really should have bought it sooner.

Sunday’s prompt was Crave.  My mom met me for bagels on Sunday morning. 

Blueberry bagel. It was tasty.

Crockpot for dinner today and to make a couple meals for this week. I made this chili, but used Morningstar Griller Crumbles so it would be vegetarian for John to eat when he got home.  I love how easy it is and so tasty!

Eaten in front of the TV while watching the Broncos. Too bad their unbeaten streak is over 🙁

The last purchase of candy corn until next October.  This was 75% off, too!  Must ration carefully. Can I please have a couple more weekend days?

I am glad we have finally gotten to Friday.  This week went fast, though. Is that a good thing?

Looks like our warm weather is coming to an end.  I biked 4 of the 5 days this week, though!

I hope to get out some on Saturday as well.

This warm weather makes me miss the what’s blooming posts. I know the garden will be covered in snow all too soon!

Progress being made on the utility sink area. We are waiting on one part for the sink hook up, so we can’t get that in until it arrives. We’ve got most of the flooring done, though. Here is a sneak peek. There is still white plastic protective stuff on the sink, FYI.

We ended up getting a stainless steel sink at a good price and since I will be making soap down here, this is really great. I wanted a counter or something to set stuff on, so this worked out good. I am pretty excited about this  – how nerdy is that?

Speaking of soap, I’ve been playing with pictures for my website. I still need to work on lighting because I am not totally satisfied with these.  Pine:

This one is called Thai Silk:

I love that scent. It’s a tiny bit floral and a powdery with sweet undertones. 

Here’s to having a productive weekend! 

Yesterday was election day.  I will be honest here. I hate politics. I hate talking politics, hearing about politics, all the hot air of politics – and the joke that our political system has turned into with the ridiculousness going on in a certain party.  However, I do vote.  When we moved to Radiance Manor last year, we filled out our change of driver’s license and voting registration online.  How convenient, right?  Well, the licenses came within a week.  I stopped at the polling place during my bike ride yesterday and low and behold, I wasn’t registered. When I mentioned I had done it online, the official said “Oh, that’s why – the same thing happened to me”. Apparently there was an issue with online registrants. But, since this was a general election and not a primary, I could still vote. I just had to fill out one of these envelopes and put my ballot in there:

Just an FYI for anyone who isn’t registered or moved and still wants to vote, this is what you fill out. You only get to vote once, though 😀

There wasn’t much on our ballot. Some unopposed seats and a couple small races, and the library budget. But, it’s my right to vote. A lot of women went through decades of hard work, blood, sweat and tears to get the 19th amendment passed – so I don’t want their work to be for naught, even if the election doesn’t mean a whole lot.

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Suffragettes did a lot of work so women could have a voice. And if you do use your voice – be informed. Do your research. Don’t toe the party line – vote for whomever shares your ideals, regardless of party.  That’s how politics should work. Too bad it doesn’t.

We have been having amazing weather this week. It’s been in the 60s in the afternoons. It’s crazy!  That means biking has been happening.  Just a shot from along a ride:

A couple of my 365 photos.  This prompt was shades of gray:

I took that at an old train station in North Creek and turned it black and white. I liked the old look of the lettering on this.

Today’s prompt was indulgence and you know this is mine!

Things have been hopping around here. I know my posts are kind of sporadic, but that’s how it goes sometimes.  I did get my official tax license from NYS for my business, so that’s moving along, as is the progress on the utility sink area. Flooring going in tonight!

I can’t believe we are approaching November already, can you? I don’t know why I get surprised when the weather is colder because it is almost November 😀  I have gotten in some riding this week. Still going out when the temps are in the 40s. Not long rides, but 30-40 minutes.  Now weather is coming in from the hurricane, which is crazy that something that started in Mexico is leaving through New England. It’s our turn for the wind and rain now.  That will probably do it for the fall colors around here.  This was the view yesterday from our dining room:

With gusts predicted up to 50 mph, these will likely be gone in a couple days. I’ll have to take another picture 😀

Progress on the headboard. I painted it with Moonlight White.  Not sure why that color shows up so bright on the web, but it is an off white.  It’s cold working in the garage and it takes a while for coats to dry, even with the chalk paint.

I like how the trim stands out.

I am putting some satin poly on it and then will be antique glazing – very subtle. The poly will make it easier to put the glaze on and clean up any oopsies rather than glazing right over the chalk paint.  Not sure when I will get to the glazing part, maybe later in the week. We have our annual pumpkin carving party on Wednesday night.

I have been making soap again.  My longtime customer ordered a bunch and I decided I am going to reopen my soap business all together. Work has been frustrating since forever (as you all know very well). However, the accounts that I am on now seem like the ones no one else wants and I can see why. Production goes down, which means I effectively got a pay cut for harder work. No bueno.  So, that is the reason for getting moving on the basement renovation for a sink area so that I can produce larger amounts and set up my workshop.  Here is one of my test runs.  This is an ocean scent and I put sea salt on the top.

I am not sure if the sea salt is a fail or something good yet.  A lot came off when I cut the soap into bars. I need to test ship it and see how it holds up.  The fleur-de-lis is a soap stamp, which is something fun and different. You just press it into the fresh soap bars.

More soaps:

So, all this means getting a license, setting up banking, building a website and doing all the necessary stuff for that. Needless to say, things are getting busier around here.  ‘Cause I was just laying around eating bon-bons, you know.

Still getting in some riding.  It was supposed to get near 50 degrees, but it was still pretty chilly  at 43 when we went out.  I was pinked up for riding!

I will make that the pink picture of the day, even though I already did this jacket, it’s so pink it deserves another one 😀

I did have to wear another jacket over this because it was pretty cold. We decided to ride to the lake for an afternoon coffee.  There are still some fall colors going on. It’s past peak, but still pretty:

Someone has a cute pumpkin display.  I doubt these will last until Halloween, though.

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I was taking a lot of pictures today.  Sometimes I told John I was stopping and other times I didn’t. You can see him as the little orange dot in the center of this picture.

The lake was so wonderfully uncrowded now that the tourists are gone. It was breezy and chilly, but still good to see it.

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We hopped over to Cafe Vero for our treat and sat by the warm fire!

It was hard to leave this cozy spot and go back out into the cold to get home 😀  

Most of the reds and oranges are gone, but the yellow leaves can be so pretty, too.

Cold Lori, but Happy Lori:

We ended up with 20 miles on the day, which is great for late October!  I’ll take it.

Some progress on the door/headboard. I spent all that time stripping the varnish off and I ended up with the problem I was worried about, which was being able to stain the new trim to match the old door. I tried 3 different stains and just could not get them to match, so I will be painting the door. Oh well.  I could have had this done a couple weeks ago, but I wanted to see if I could match the stains.  Here is the trim on the door:

It doesn’t look as mismatched in the pic as in real life. The door has a very reddish color to the wood and even with cherry stain I could not get it to match. Then I tried a really dark stain for all the pieces and the door wouldn’t soak up very much stain.  I do really like the trim, though!

The door will an off white with some antiquing glaze. Or that is the plan, anyway 😀  I was hoping to get done with it by the end of the month, but I will be squeaking it out if I make it!

We have had a bit of warm up around here this week. It’s been quite mild and we have been able to squeeze in some riding. All riding is gravy riding from here until the bikes come in for the winter.  Today after the rain cleared, I headed out for a 10 mile ride before lunch. Good to clear my head from work.

Oopsie, got diverted!

They were ripping up the path on either side of the road it crosses over. Probably for utilities or something. Detoured for a ways and got back on.

Kind of a damp morning for riding, but it was 58 degrees and you can’t beat that for later in October!

Other diversions:

I did a little door flipping on the side.  Someone put this old door out for free at the curb. John and I picked it up and I sold it to someone on my vintage list for $30 (they eat that old chippy stuff up). Love to make a little scratch from someone’s unwanted stuff!  And it didn’t end up in the landfill. Win-win all around!

I joined a 365 photo group on FB that Fran and Roz are part of. This is my favorite shot this month for the prompt Scales:

I am sure anyone watching me lay on the floor by my guitar shooting macro would have been amused.

My window feeder has been attracting a ton of birds. I got some nice close up shots of them.

The chickadee:

And the Titmouse:

This winter I will put some different seed in there along with the safflower and see what else comes. I had other seed in there before, but the squirrels managed to climb their way up the side of the house and eat it!

Making progress on the downstairs utility sink area.  The carpeting is removed – all old framing removing and now it is ready for new framing and the new plumbing lines:

The sink is on order and we will be putting down vinyl click ‘n lock plank flooring (looks like wood). Eventually we will do the whole rest of the basement in that flooring, but it’s too big for us to afford to do that right now. Next step is framing for the new back wall. John has been doing most of this work, which I appreciate very much.

And finally – Today’s pink item: The flowers on my new gloves:

Bike season is winding down, which means that I need to look more closely at the foods I eat.  I wish that I could just eat whatever, but that’s not the case.  Well, I could just eat whatever, but I don’t want the resulting weight gain that would go with that 😛

I actually did really well with balancing my eating and all the riding this summer, which I am pleased about.  However, that transition is proving to be hard. Cupcake rides are almost over and it is really difficult to fit those into my diet without a lot of exercise – and during the cold months, there isn’t anything I want to do for 3 hours.  Not even the bike on the trainer. Boring.  Plus, I don’t want to slog exercise just to eat a cupcake. Summer riding is fun with a cupcake tucked in there as a bonus.

Fall is also the time of all the foods I love to eat like baked goods, candy corn !!!!, chowders, ect.  Of course, having to really watch how much I take in can make me kind of cranky. Still after many years, I have trouble graciously accepting that I can’t eat that much. Or even as much as I used to just a few years ago.  Now that is annoying.  It can be hard to watch John be able to eat foods in the evening that I want to have, but he is a man and gets to eat more than I do. Even when he cuts back to lose (he recently got back to his goal weight, btw), it is still more than I can eat.  

There are a lot worse things in life than not being able to eat with abandon.  It’s certainly a first world problem, but that doesn’t mean I still don’t feel that way.  I do accept it, albeit at times in a crotchety complainy way.  😀

We have been taking John’s parents around all over the place during their visit. We stopped at Hick’s orchard to pick some apples and have a cider donut.

We went out into the orchard and picked a huge bag of apples. The trees are full of apples.  Our area has a bumper crop of apples this year.  These are Mcintosh:

Of course, we needed to have the cider donuts:

Tasty, yes? Indeed.

There was a trip to Lake George to look around.

It was cold and windy on this day.  No swimming! You can see how choppy the water is.

Sunday was a much nicer day. Sunny and warmer. We went farther into the Adirondacks to see some better fall color.

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We stopped in North Creek at the train station, which is on the historic register.

Model train:

There was a beautiful mosaic mural downtown that is still in progress:

My favorite part, of course:

We also stopped in a shop and I got inspiration for when we redo our downstairs powder room. We just did the wallpaper removal and paint in that room, but in the future we want to make it a little more classic and we saw this:

It’s an old sewing cabinet converted to a sink. So, this is our inspiration piece. Now to keep a look out for a sewing cabinet. Or just see if this is still available in the future when we are ready to do that room 😉

We hope that John’s folks are getting a good taste of the Adirondacks for their visit!

Today’s pink picture

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It’s planting time! I just got the first shipment of bulbs that I ordered back in the spring.  100 bulbs here! I was jumping around when these arrived.

Since I know I would be planting a ton of bulbs, I ordered this:

It fits in to a drill like a normal drill bit.  Here is the link from Amazon for it. Jisco JJB-9 Bulb Planter. It’s less than $13 and hopefully this will make life easier to plant all these bulbs 😀  I will update when I get a chance to use it.

I already posted this on FB, but here is the little snapping turtle I helped across the street.  I was biking down the road near a nature preserve the other day and saw a tiny turtle. I stopped and it was dead. A couple days later in almost the exact spot was another turtle. I went by at first thinking it was the dead one, but then it looked like it moved. So, I turned around and sure enough, he was slowly working his way across the road. He would never make it with his tiny legs before he got sqiushed by a car, so I took him across to the edge of the preserve.

Cute little thing, isn’t he?  Didn’t try to bite or anything.  There must be a nest or something to see 2 tiny turtles in the same spot.

I finally found something I have been looking for. I wanted to use an old door for a headboard in our bedroom, but I wanted a specific style door – this style:

This way when the door is flipped horizontal, the pattern is even across the wall.  Kind of like this (thanks pinterest!):

Or possibly this with the tin tiles:

It’s in great shape and the price was $20!  I was hoping to get a door for less than $50 for this project and for a long time either the door was already sold by the time I saw it or it was more than I wanted to pay.  It’s in really good shape. I had thought I would be painting an old door, but this one probably will just get sanded and restained (hardware removed as well – not vintage).  Yippee – another project on the pile!  🙄 At least I have enough stuff to keep me busy in the cold months now…

Regarding cycling, John and I have been struggling with tire issues the last few weeks. John has had several flats and now has a new tire.  I blew out a tube on Saturday morning and then again this morning.  You can see here how something sharp was able to get through the tire and pop the tube through that slit:

It goes through and through the tire. I was going to buy new tires after the season was over because I hate changing the tires and I was just going to leave the old ones on to ride the trainer with this winter before putting on the new ones.  So, we used a patch kit on the inside of the tire to hopefully cobble another couple of months out of this tire (which was an old tire that I replaced another worn out one with!).

Cross your fingers for me. Tubes are kind of pricey  as well. Every flat tire costs us $6 to replace the tube. So not only do you have the annoyance factor of just having to fix the flat, but then the cost gets annoying when you start getting a lot of flats.  I went about a year without a flat until early this summer and now 2 in less than 3 days.  BTW, I should hit that 2000 mile marker this weekend!