If you happen upon wool sweaters or wool scarves at a thrift store, you can felt them yourself. It is about the only way to craft with wool these days because it is so darn expensive now.

Paintings for sure count. And man, I would like to rip into the mean woman! So disgusting and inhuman.

I have a large leftover yardage of white chiffon from all of my years of event planning (weddings primarily). I am going to make simple ghosts go hang from the trees for Halloween. I will just cut squares, gather up from the center and stuff the head with some poly fiberfil, tie off with clear fishing line and leave enough length of line for tying to tree branches, and then put eyes on them with a fine tip marker. Easy peasy. My grandsons will get a kick out of them. I have some Styrofoam to cut with a hot wire into bat shapes that I will then spray paint black but edge with glow in the dark paint using a brush. I will punch a hole through the head of the bat to run fishing line through so those can hang as well, and then I need to make a party welcome sign for the front fence so our grandsons' friends know they have arrived at the right place for the party. The mountain house has spotty cell phone reception for most folks so their navigation might drop once they turn onto our road. At least when they drive past the sign they will know, "there it is". So most of what I am doing this month is for the party. However, I will be planning out a Christmas throw quilt as well. It might not get sewn until November since I will be spending two weeks in Alabama with the grands and doing most of the party work. Dd is doing great recovering from her bout with long covid, but we are still quite careful with her. She gets to do the things that she can from the couch like make up the clues for the scavenger hunt, put treats in bags, fill the carved out mini pumpkins with berries and kiwi. But, the physical stuff is all on son in law, Mark, and myself. I will have a bit of a list for November. I want to make up some sort of cornucopia, and I want to make harvest themed cloth napkins for the whole crew. My mother in law and mom always want to buy holiday themed paper napkins, and I am tired of filling landfills with them, so am determined this year to make 14napkins for TDay, Christmas, and Easter, and I want to keep extra of each fabric around so of the other two sons ever had a life partner to our mix, I will have enough to make more.

I am sorry to hear about your tree.

Beautiful!

I have harvested the last of the tomatillos and cherry tomatoes. It is going to be too cold at night now for me to get anything else to ripen. So I have a tray of cherry tomatoes for the dehydrator, and some Verde sauce to make. But, the apple tree, emulating some sort of Chronicles of Narnia deep magic, has more ripe apples. I swear, Hive, I swear on my grandmother's grave, that this tree did not have those apples two weeks ago. I swear it. And these things are big, and lovely, and even tastier than the last ones. Cue the Funeral March of the Marionette music because my dear, but-if-he-does-it-again-he-will-soon-be-divorced husband picked a five gallon pail, brought them inside with a wistful face, large puppy dog eyes, and a soft voiced, "Honey, could you dehydrate these too? It would be a shame for them to go to waste." I did not have a stroke, but I felt like my skull might explode. So yes, as soon as the cherry tomatoes come out, the first load of apples is going in. If he picks another bucket, I will be on her asking for the name of a good lawyer. Don't know if I will need a divorce one or criminal! 😱😯😜 I have a lot of stuff composting in the raised bed. Tomorrow I am raking up grass clippings and filling the beds. We are a couple of weeks or so from leaves dropping, but when they do, I am filling up with those. I have branches to run through the wood chipper, so I can then mulch on top which hopefully means I will have nice nutrient rich soil come spring. I also need to move some bookshelves and make room in the eat window for my mint, sweet basil, and rosemary. I am going to try to keep them alive as houseplants. I am very spoiled by having them fresh, and the supermarket prices for even a very small amount of basil is insane now. So I really hope to grow them as houseplants this winter. Does anyone know if you can sprout alfalfa and beans in the winter inside, you know, A cols, low light level, Michigan winter? I love alfalfa and bean sprouts on my salads but have no idea if I can cultivate them myself.

Many many many many hugs!!! 💓💓💓 Remove your child if you can is my advice and please do press charges because I am seriously tired of raging, power tripping, evil morons getting away with shit. Around here it is actually WORSE to assault or obstruct a paramedic than a cop. Like the kind of worse where everyone jumps in to pummel your ass because how dare you stop a medic from doing their job. Same for firefighters. You.just.don't, and cops have ZERO patience for it. How can I put it. Hmmm...this superintendent would literally begin having the kind of day that criminals on cop shows have. Face planted on the ground, cuffed, mirandized, and shoved into the back of a cruiser. Just do not mess with EMS. And then they would be fired for doing that crap and setting that kind of example for the students. His world would BURN! So I hope this trashy man's life is on fire for a while. He needs to learn a lesson the hard way. Hang in there, Tiggy!!

Agreed! 100%.

Sigh. Ya. No one wants to here it! I am tired of the stick fingers in ears and scream la la la while doing nothing. The world is literally burning, and soon it will be flooding with hundreds of millions of displaced persons. Folks need to get on board. Right there with you. We have had troubles with neighbors because we have a wildflowers and milkweed. We greatly increased the number of pollinators in the area. Even they admit that.The wild patch looks very pretty. BUT, they just want grass and think there should be township ordinances against our patch. Like, do they live under a freaking rock???? So they not know we have a crisis of vegetable/fruit production due to lack of bees and butterflies??? I don't get it. And compared to wildfires and hurricanes, this issue is just a nothing practically against the bigger issues of climate change. I don't even know how to deal with people of this mentality. People get mad when the farmers here cut the grass in the ditches and burn. But the thing is, we had a terrible bush fire here several years ago, and it took the whole town turning out along with three fire departments to keep it from getting to town and homes. 200+ people. The ditches had become overgrown on that road because all of the whining about cutting and burning, and taking down diseased, dead, rotting trees. Trimming low branches. The result? Bush fire. It is so hard to get people to accept that this kind of maintenance clearing and burning saves lives, prevents pain and suffering.

Clover

That looks great, Heart!

I agree. Joe loner is no match for the ever increasing horror of climate change. It is so scary! 200 + million is the estimate of climate refugees by 2050. Frankly, I think that is a conservative estimate. Too conservative. Many of these folks live in regions without the resources and technologies to do anything to mitigate the effects.

One of the things I have learned is that deconversion from Christianity means isolation for a while as you work through the inevitable fall out and cultivate new friends. I am thankful the hive was here to chat with during the lonely times.

This, all of this! Right there with you, Murphy!

This is a very astute point. As of June, an estimated 61% of Americans live pay check to pay check with no margin. I remember those days early in our marriage when I was still finishing up my degrees, paying tuition, and dh was new in his career and making not great money with a high medical deductible on our insurance. I stood in the produce section wondering if I could afford to buy more than two apples or if that would mean we didn't have enough tuna for the week. Ever possible scenario where a penny had to be spent that hadn't been anticipated was a practical panic attack for me. Frankly, had we lived in a hurricane zone, we would not have been able to evacuate. We lived far from family, would not have been able to pay for gas to drive very far from home. We would have gone to a shelter IF it was close by, and IF they were going to provide food for free. Otherwise, it would absolutely have been a shelter in place and hope for the best situation. So I absolutely do get how that kind of thinking helps continue keeping on when the outlook is bleak.

You and me both! Like I would sign up all.the.time. and lie like a dog to get more boosters! Thankfully, it appears that my stupid ovaries have finally gotten the message that my uterus is never going to be rented out ever again, and has decided to maybe just maybe STOP being the two little jerks they are!

We have a composting portable toilet so we can use that when dispersed camping. If you haven't been up to Lake Michigan Recreation Area at Huron-Manistique National Forest, you should go some time. Dispersed camping is very, very quiet. The campground if you want a site (potable water and fire ring with grill top and a parking pad for your car, flush toilets but no showers) is really nice. The camp hosts have always been friendly in the past. The day use on the dunes is lovely and there are some nice trails.

I support this. The rating system is not nuanced enough to accurately convey the risks.

I was just thinking of how many colleges would NOT have a plan for evacuating students who do not have cars. The number of freshmen this year arriving on college campuses without transportation is absolutely epic because the cost of used cara and insurance is through the roof. I guarantee you my local university had no kind of workable plan. They never do, even for simple things. Not to mention folks that have meds that have to be done by infusion and can't be stuck for hours on the freeway, people who have recently been hospitalized, are recovering from surgery, are dependent on caretakers, and just reiterating that we have a huge portion of the population living paycheck to paycheck. I know a ton of young adults living on ramen noodles and do not have a penny extra to their names. They literally cannot fill their gas tank until the next pay check comes, and they have no money to rent motel/hotel rooms. They also have employers who will fire them if they evacuate, the storm goes around so the city is not hit, and then they aren't there for work the next day. And they can't be without work. The working poor are always take the brunt of the living hell of these disasters. I don't judge. I do sure as hell worry about them!

And I can get four pairs of pants, several shirts, jacket/coat, pj's, robe, swimsuits and towel, and under things plus extra shoes in each cubbie. So we can go a whole week, even more sometimes, without doing laundry. Our goal is to someday own the hybrid Sienna so we get 36-45mpg instead of the current 23. The only downside is that since about 2019, the Sienna bucket seats have the air bag wiring for the middle seats in the seat itself, so those seats are no longer made to be removable. Now, they can be disconnected by wiring a bypass so that the warning bell does not ding forever and make a person insane. And with some tools, elbow grease, and strong arming, the seats can then be really moved. It is just NOT easy. That is the downside for conversion to van camper. Our hope is that since there has been a bit of a protest to Toyota from the van camping community who has been eagerly waiting for the hybrid Sienna so they can convert it over, that they will change the air bag design and make the seats pop out easily like previous models. Mark did the whole conversion for about $200 maybe $250 at the most. Not sure what it would cost now since I have not recently priced lumber.

Description: Mark made the frame in three pieces, hinged. This allows him to manhandle it in and out without my help. We removed the bucket seats, and recess the back seats, then the main part of the frame goes in, then the cubbies storage cupboards go in where the buckets seats would be. There is a hinge at the back so the under bed storage units can be pulled out just part way, and then we can access supplies without the headache of removing the containers. They push in deep enough that there is room for the camp stove, camp fuel, and a few other things to ride in front of them, and then removed at camp. I make the bed, and then we throw the cooler and whatever else we need on top for travel. When we don't want to fuss with our tail veil, we are completely self contained by putting the Rtic cooler and the food box of non perishable items in the driver and passenger seats. There are sienna curtain/privacy shades that can be purchased from Amazon to fit. But, I had a set of curtains from the guest room that was no longer being used, so I shortened them to fit the various windows, and Mark made bendable curtain rods from some copper tubing he had on hand, and we use 3M hooks to hold the rods. The curtains come down and store in a drawstring bag I made for traveling. The quilt is from a layer cake of a nautical themed fabric collection. It has a sea foam green flannel on the back. We don't take the tail veil when we are going to be gone three days or less, and the weather looks like it is going to be really great. But when we are going for longer, we toss the tail veil on top of the mattress and use it in camp. It is a full tent room that attaches to the van, and is pretty water proof. It has side vent/windows. So we pop the hatch (keep the interior light switch off so we don't run the battery down), and then attach the veil. It attaches over the hatch, and then on the sides. The sides are super easy to disconnect if we want to drive away, and it is then a quick zip up, and it is a stand alone tent. When we go for 1.5 weeks or more and are at a site with electric hook up, we take a camp refrigerator so we don't have to fuss with ice for the Rtic. I will attach a picture of the tail veil. This was when it was not attached to the van. Mark is 6' tall and can stand up fully inside it, but of course he has to duck to go in.

And more

More photos

Sure, let me see if I can attach some.

I would not do it. And that is saying a lot because my husband and I minimalist camp in a Toyota Sienna van we converted for camping. I have more storage than most people would ever imagine due to the way Mark built the conversion. I would not be able to go with less, and if storage is really important to you, what you have described will give you buyer's remorse. Just keep looking.