Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers! Thank you for subscribing to my blog and for your visits. Thanksgiving is a very special holiday to me. I began this blog a little over a year ago and Thanksgiving was the first big set of posts I was able to upload. Thank you for allowing me to do what I enjoy to do. I love cooking and I’m very glad to be able to cook for my family, and I’m glad I can share my recipes and experiences with each one of you. Let’s make this new year a better one, and I hope you get the opportunities and/or motivations to accomplish some of the things you’ve always desired too! Have a great day and happy thanksgiving!
Squirrels in the Attic
Josh and I purchased this house the end of last May. Lustrons, I’ve heard, can get all sorts of critters in them, usually into the attic through gap in panels, or into the access panels in the utility room through gaps along the side of the house.
We began hearing noise in the attic almost as soon as we moved in. There was a gap in the roofing between the roofing and where the gutters attach. Shortly after hearing them scratch in the walls, we heard them chewing on our metal house. Since the weather was good last weekend, we decided to finally seal it. Josh cut a piece of sheet metal to help close the gap where they had been chewing. Finally, we added a screw between the panels where there would have been one, but must have fallen out at some point before we bought the house.
The next morning, Josh had work, but the squirrel got back to chewing. I went outside once the sun came up, and saw the fuzzy little faces of at least 3 babies trapped in the attic with a very frantic mama biting the new sheet metal piece. Josh went to work, and I decided to free them. I grabbed the ladder, undid the new screw, and added a block of wood for her to get her babies, and we left it for 3 days before we sealed it up again. The day I had been opening the roof again, Newman and I had heard some noise in the utility room. And after a few hours, we also heard some cries from a little squirrel that must have fallen into the utility room wall. I told josh and he grabbed a small trap from his parent’s house that we set up that night, but we didn’t hear anything more after that. There are plenty of ways into that wall since we usually have some mice, shrew, and voles passing through in the winter. Josh and I inspected the space when we were pulling out the trap, and there were no signs of a squirrel. We are sure the mama was looking and managed to get the little guy out.
All that to say, never a dull moment in this house! We’ve sealed everything back up, and we’ve seen no signs of anymore of our squirrel friends. We did by a spray animal repellent that we’ve applied, and it may be doing something, who knows!
Being Prepared
I’m a bit of a hoarder, and that can either be a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe one day I’ll show you my green room’s storage unit to show you what I mean… Anyway, I tend to overstock on everything. I currently have 2 unopened containers of toothpaste, 13 rolls of untouched toilet paper that will last me and my husband over 3 months, and I have a small horde of canned foods.
Why am I posting this? That’s a good question. I feel kind of embarrassed to say it’s because I went out preparing yesterday. I spend a lot of time listening to the news and some time with my ear towards YouTube, and I just want to be prepared. I grew up as a girl scout where we share the same motto as the boys with “Be Prepared”. I also grew up in a house were we always seemed to be in need of an essential. I just want to be prepared, and I want to make sure my family is prepared.
Yesterday when my husband and I went to the store, we had a shocking realization. We first went to a hardware store. When we went there last Saturday, there were stocked cold face masks right when you enter. Because we remembered that, we decided to go there first. The shelf that was once completely full have 4 boxes left, and 3 of which were opened. Beyond that, these boxes had a sign saying “Limit one per customer” and were $20 for 20 masks. We had a shocking realization at that point that this may not be a simple cold. We checked their safety gear section and they were also out of normal respiration masks. Our second stop was CVS down the road. Surely a pharmacy would have some, right? Right? The selves were empty where there had been the $9.49 and $4.49 face masks. We got some cold medicine and some hand sanitizer and we decided to visit the grocery store. We stocked up on groceries because it had been several months since my last big haul. We got the essentials, and also more canned foods and water. We found some face masks there of all places, and we decided to get a couple.
What prompted my trip was the illness, but I wasn’t expecting the results to be as bleak as they were. I live in a state that doesn’t even have a single case. I live on the east coast, far from the quarantines, so why was there already such a need? Don’t panic. There is no need for that, but would it hurt to get a couple weeks worth of cans? Would it hurt to get some water and a bit of cold medicine? I just don’t know. Nobody seems to know how bad or how weak this illness is going to be. On some levels, even I was at the front of the line preparing, and it’s already getting tougher to find things. Worst case, you have a bit of extra food and you don’t have to go shopping for a bit, right?
Disheartened and Future Change
Hello again. I know not many people will end up reading this, but certain things have happened that make it hard for me to work on my posts for this weekend without getting this burden off my chest.
I have been working on this blog for almost two months now. I’m incredibly hopeful moving forward that I can learn how to create better content that will continue to bring you back to my site. I plan to give this a shot and I would like to soon get the opportunity to monetize and make this my career. Being a blogger is such a millennial dream though, I suppose, and I probably shouldn’t be as hopeful as I am.
Anyway, I have been working and will continue to be working on getting my website optimized for search engines by adding categories and information for every single one of my existing and future photos. I will also be editing my existing photos to attempt to fix lighting, crop out junk in the background of some of my photos, sharpen blurry photos, and adding watermarks to all of my photos.
This I have been meaning to do for over a month since I want to create many of these as posts on Pinterest. But now I have extra motivation since I am aware of at least one site that is posting aspects of my work on their site, and I would like to protect my work. I would have no problems if people would link my work on their website with unique information, but that is not the case.
I am going to continue to improve and I hope that everything will just work out in the end. I have a lot of work ahead of me, so please stay tuned for all the changes that will be coming!
The Bayberry Candle, A Christmas Tradition
One of the most prevalent traditions every Christmas was the burning of a bayberry candle. Every year we would light our taper at about 5 pm on Christmas eve, and it would burn until it extinguished at about 3 am on Christmas morning. Though it seems weird, but our tradition was that it needed to burn into the next day, and that it needed to burn completely. By lighting the candle at 5 pm, it was usually well burnt down by the time we were going to bed, at about 10-11 pm. If the candle wasn’t burnt enough, or the candle wasn’t firm in the holder, we would simply place the candle in our empty sink for the night.
Origin & Old Saying
The story I have seen from several websites was that bayberry candles were made by the colonists for a special occasion, because their normal candles had a foul odor as they rot, and it took many bayberries, 15 lbs, to make one candle (2019; Bowen, 2016; SallyeAnder, 2017). Now, Bayberry candles are burnt as a tradition for luck and blessing for the coming year, and bayberry candles are burnt either Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve ( 2019; Bayberry Candles:Beeman-candles, n.d.; Bowen, 2016; SallyeAnder, 2017).
There are also a few versions of the old saying including:
- “This bayberry candle comes from a friend for on Christmas eve I do send.For a bayberry candle burned to the socket, will bring joy to the heart and gold to the pocket.” (2019)
- “A Bayberry candle burned to the socket brings food to the larder and gold to the pocket.” (Bayberry Candles:Beeman-candles, n.d.)
- “This Bayberry candle comes from a friend, so on Christmas Eve burn it down to the end – for a Bayberry candle burned to the socket will bring joy to the heart and gold to the pocket.” (Bowen, 2016)
- “For a bayberry candle burned to the socket brings joy to the heart and gold to the pocket.” (SallyeAnder, 2017)
(2019, October 16). Retrieved from http://www.alleghenycandles.com/bayberry_candles.html.
BAYBERRY CANDLES: beeman-candles. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.shopbeemancandles.com/bayberry-candles.
Bowen, E. (2016, October 11). The Bayberry Candle Christmas Tradition. Retrieved from https://colonialcandle.com/blogs/news/bayberry-candle-christmas-tradition.
SallyeAnder. (2017, January 26). Bayberry Candles: An American Tradition. Retrieved from https://sallyeander.com/bayberry-candles-an-american-tradition/.
