Our Thanksgiving Feast

Yesterday we celebrated our last Thanksgiving in this little house before moving into Jumbo and beginning a whole set of new traditions. I thoroughly enjoyed creating our feast, since I was able to stretch the preparations out during the entire day. I actually made the cranberry sauce with serrano peppers and orange juice on Wednesday so that the flavors would have plenty of time to meld. Usually I come up with some kind of new and unusual dessert for Thanksgiving, but this year went with the traditional pumpkin pie, simply following the recipe on the back of the pumpkin can. It turned out perfect!

Larry had found some vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes on Huffington Post, and we decided on a vegetable pot pie with sweet potato biscuit topping for our entree. I actually combined two different pot-pie recipes for the filling and added some touches of my own. It was so pretty that I wished we had company so that I could show it off!

Ready to go into the oven...

Fresh out of the oven, all bubbly with puffed up crust.

I decided that it just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes and mushroom-miso gravy. I came upon the gravy recipe in one of Crescent Dragonwagon's cookbooks a few years ago - she's a fascinating person, as well as an inspiring cook - and it's been a part of our holiday dinner ever since, as well as any time during the year that we feel in need of some real comfort food. Nothing is a soothing as a big bowl of mashed potatoes! I simmered the gravy for a LONG time so that it had a chance to thicken up...

The baby red potatoes boiling away.

We also had sauteed brussels sprouts with toasted pecans, but I forgot to snap a photo!

So now it's the morning after, and I'm enjoying a slice of pumpkin pie for breakfast! Yummm....

Oh, The Places We'll Go!

I've been spending every spare moment the past week or so working on the itinerary for our trip to Washington. Larry plotted out the route and I then created the trip on the Roadtrippers website, which showed me a lot of the attractions along the way. I then checked out a LOT of books from the library and proceeded to read up on as much as I could find about the many places I've never been before. Yesterday I  discovered a website called Allstays that lists all of the highway exits along the way and all that can be found at them, including rest stops and gas stations. Very important!  I'm enjoying the planning  almost as much as the actual trip. It will be an amazing experience, for sure!

Aunt Ruby, Cold Refrigerator & More!

It's been awhile since my last blog post, but we've made a lot of new improvements to Jumbo. First of all, we hung Aunt Ruby - actually "A Young Girl Leaning on the Windowsill" by Rembrandt. We found her at a garage sale about nine years ago, and Larry thought she looked like his aunt Ruby, so we took her home. She hung in our dining room in Elizabeth and watched over our dining room table here in Castle Rock, so we thought it appropriate that she join us in the "dining room" of the motor home. Larry mounted the frame on a background of red canvas to cover the mirror that was there originally. We didn't want to try to pry it off, but we didn't enjoy looking at ourselves as we moved about the area. Looking at Aunt Ruby is much more enjoyable!

Larry put the sealant on the tile work in the "conservatory" and we carried some plants out to Jumbo to see how they will look. We also added a few books & CDs  to the "library". We can't leave the plants out there all night, since we're not living there yet, and they may get a bit chilly without the heat turned on, so after enjoying them awhile, we hauled them back into the "real" house.

I was excited to find that my magnetic spice jars will fit along the side of the kitchen stove hood. I'm going to print some clear labels so that the colors of the spices will show through. Larry hung one of his beautiful glass pieces this weekend. It's one of my favorites, and had a special place next to the piano in our house.

We're parked in our backyard, but we have a view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains! Larry printed one of our photos and mounted it on foam core to fit in the windows. It will act as a bit of added insulation during the cold winter days when we are living in Jumbo.

 

I still need to finish the curtains, and we have so much more to do inside the "real" house before we are ready to leave, but every day we make a little more progress!

Goodbye, Piano...

Yesterday morning we had to say goodbye to our beloved piano, since it just won't fit in Jumbo. The movers came and took it off to its new home in Elizabeth. It was sad to let it go, but necessary in order to make room in our lives for new adventures. We have enjoyed it for three years, and now Dana and her girls will hopefully enjoy it just as much.

Larry playing a final improvisational piece...


It's beginning to look pretty bare in our house. I often used the piano bench as my computer table while sitting in the rocker, but now I have to use the little folding table, which I actually bought for the laptop, but had been using as an end table, since those were sold in the garage sale. That means that I had to pull a kitchen chair into the living room last night to use as an end table! That didn't work too well, so I'll need to come up with something else. We have two months before the final move into the motor home, so we will need to be creative in our decorating in the "real" house until then.

I spent a few hours yesterday sorting through the many boxes of photos and just plain stuff that I have accumulated over the years. How all of this stuff found its way to Colorado from my old life in Washington, I can't figure out, but here it is! And I can't seem to be able to part with all of those old birthday cards, report cards, old school papers - not only my kids', but my own! Not to mention the huge amount of pictures! I painfully threw away two big garbage bags full of stuff, filled up a large plastic container that will go in the "basement" of Jumbo, and still have quite a few more boxes to pick my way through. Larry assures me that there will be room to store it all in the motor home, but do I really need to keep it all? That's a hard question.

While I was working on the accumulation in the basement, Larry changed the motor home's oil, added brake fluid, and checked the propane level. Plus, he installed this cute little bookcase I found at Target. It's just the right size for the "conservatory", and perfect for displaying the African baskets I got at the Denver Gorilla Run last year. They can't stay there while we're on the road, of course, but since the bookcase is now secured with liquid nails, it should be quite secure. We'll put some small books in the larger cubicles and some of our favorite CDs in the smaller ones. I love it!

Oh yes, this morning a nice young man came and took away the futon, coffee table, some dishes, an area rug, and a toaster, thanks to Craigslist, so the garage is becoming a bit more bare as well. There's still a lot out there, though, but things are looking up!

That's all for now...time to head back down to the basement and continue with my sorting!