Apathy to Dependency

I ran across this quote again the other day, it's been around for quite a while. Many have used it, or parts of it, throughout the latter part of the past century. It's powerful, and we'd be wise to heed its warning:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.
(author unconfirmed)

Audio books online

We love audio books around here, especially for school. I just found this resource online. I thought I'd pass it along.

librivox.org

I've linked it on the sidebar of where I can be found.

Fall

Yes.
My absolute favorite time of year is here!!!
The leaves are turning all shades of reds and yellows and orange.
The house has been decorated (as much as I do for fall) with flowers of the same hue.
I pulled the down comforter from the armoire for the bed....because we needed it!!! The temperatures have been down in the 30's overnight.
The feeling of fall in the air wakes me up from my late summer heat nap. There is something to be said for a change of seasons.

One of the best things of all....baking. I no longer need to worry about heating things up with my late afternoon cooking, forcing the air conditioner to work overtime. Everyone in the house is ready for warm, homemade goodies. But that is usually the case no matter what season it is.

The pumpkins have arrived! The Rose and I baked a pumpkin pie when we spotted those gems at the Wally back in September. It's about time I picked up another. You need a little extra effort to bake a fresh pumpkin...ah, but it's worth it.

Aldi had their seasonal baking goods on the shelves. I loaded my cart with several cans of pumpkin, white baking chips, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, dried cherries and blueberries.
The chocolate chips were made into truffles....ok, for a moment I skipped fall, and went right to Christmas, but I was craving chocolate..alright?
We ate most of the dried cherries by themselves...very tasty. The rest went into a coffee cake.

Coffee cake....I have been playing around with coffee cake all week. The mania started last weekend, when on Sunday morning I was awake enough.....a rare thing indeed.....to get out in the kitchen and rattle some pots and pans.
Truth be told...I was also pursuaded by the fact that the Weekend Breakfast Cooker has been out of commission with the killer back, and....we had no cold cereal.
But anyway, I wanted to try a coffee cake recipe I'd spotted in one of my cookbooks. Turns out the recipe was misprinted, and Big Daddy and I had to use our unique skills, and powers of deduction to try to make sense of the text.
Needless to say I was a little leary of the results. So rather than have nothing for breakfast, I whipped up another cake from a tried and true recipe. We had dueling coffee cakes.

I'm sure you can hear the banjos softly in the background.

They both had some things about them we liked, some we didn't.

Coffee cake was on my mind all week long. Rather than making muffins with the dried cherries, which was my original intention, I decided to try another cake. It was a third recipe which again, had some things positive about it, some not.

Also this week, Joy the Baker's blog had a post mixing pumpkin with butterscotch chips, which had been floating around my brain cavity. It was the reason I had purchased the chips at Aldi.

The more I mulled over the previous cakes, and pumpkin with butterscotch, the more I became convinced they would make a good combination for a fall treat.
So here it is...my first ever made up recipe. Inspired by several others, but all my own.

Harvest Coffee Cake
oven-350
8x8 pan-greased
Dry ingredients:
2c. flour
2/3c. sugar
1tsp. baking powder
1tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1tsp. (more or less, depending on taste) pumpkin pie spice
Combine all dry ingredients.
Wet ingredients:
2eggs, beaten
8oz. pumpkin (or approx. 1/2 of 15oz. can)
1/3c. oil
approx. 1/4c. evaporated milk (enough to make the batter loose, but not runny)
Combine the wet ingredients.
Topping ingredients:
1/4c. flour
1/4c. sugar
2Tbs. butter
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
chopped walnuts and butterscotch chips to taste.
Combine topping ingredients.
Add wet ingredients to dry. Mix until just combined. Spoon into pan, top with topping, bake for 50 min. or until done.

Bake ya up some of this fall goodness, and let me know if you liked it!

BTW, I tried to take a picture of the beauty, but we had some technical difficulties this morning.. so no visual, very sorry.

It's a Bully, Bully World

She's really not that tough...the dog, I mean.
A picture of our Rose, and our best girl doggie.
It's Saturday, time for an update. It's been a cloudy, rather gloomy day around the place.
Poor Big Daddy is in bed from the killer back again.
Homeschooling means I never complete my to-do list. The kids were a real help today with the chores.
After chores, The Youngest and I rode to the library to see what movies we could find.
SCORE!
Memoirs of a Geisha, War and Peace, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Barn Burning (based on the Faulkner novel) were all available for the choosing.
I love my library for good, cheap,... ah,hem...frugal...entertainment. And in the case of To Kill a Mockingbird, something that counts for school as well.
We just finished dinner (supper... for those of us in the South). Swiss steak, mashed potatoes, carrots and UNIVERSAL bread.
What, you ask, is UNIVERSAL bread? It's the name the kids gave it.
It's my newest find. The most basic bread recipe ever.... no kneading, and you can keep the dough in the fridge for up to two weeks at a time.... but it's never lasted that long around here.
I use the dough for everything from loaf bread, to rolls, to sweet, sticky buns.
Here's the recipe:
6c. water
3 tsp. yeast
3 tsp. salt
13c. flour
Dissolve yeast in water. Combine salt and flour. Mix it all together. Dough will be sticky. Place in fridge.
DOUGH WILL RISE in fridge.
The first time I made it, I didn't take this into account when choosing a bowl to put it in. Whilst I was unawares, the dough was creeping over the sides of the bowl, and all over the inside of my fridge, engulfing the leftovers. Won't do that again.
Speaking of cooking, Clara is back on You Tube. I put a video bar on the bottom of this page for your viewing enjoyment. Did I tell you she reminds me of my Grandmother? Yes I did, but I'll say it again anyway.
Keeping it full of flavor in the Vines,
Naise

Bad Water

Now, If we were to have a problem around the place, what, I ask, would it involve?
Why, water of course, what else.
This time, however, the house was not involved...hallelujah!
Just the main water line at the front of the property, on our side of the meter....naturally.

So.... Big Daddy had been watching the water bills go up recently. That's not a big surprise for us in the summer, with visitors coming to stay, and watering the garden. Last month, however, it did increase by quite a bit. It really had us stumped as to how our usage had changed.
Little did we know it was a slow leak, that was about to turn into a big-un.
One day last week, Big Daddy decided to drive his gianormous truck through the yard and out the front of the property. The truck made a mess out of the yard near the street...wonder why?

Ha, the main had burst, and flooded the side of the yard, under the soil.
You see, the former owners made a slight breach of plumbing etiquette when the service was taken from the well up the street, to the city water service. The plumbing for the switch was...well...not quite rightly done.
Good enough I guess..... it lasted until we got here. Like everything else they did....not quite rightly.
When I went out to take a peek, the soil was like a water bed...all lifted up and squishy. We were happy to find the source of our problem, and were able to shut off the main so we didn't lose any more water. The leak was fixed by early morning the following day.
All was well in the Vines.

We just got the bill(s).
For the plumber

and the water company.

Oh boy-ee! I seriously think we could have filled several swimming pools.
Treading... to keep my head above water,
Naise

Recycling the Wild Vines Way

I spent most of yesterday running, (as in..running errands, running to the store, running to a homeschool meeting ) and in a near constant state of hot-flashery.
Courtesy of, I assume, the running.
I still shouldn't complain, it's really not that bad. I just like to whine...and use my made up term hot-flashery.

We've been up to a great many things around the place. Big Daddy decided he'd like to make a quilt. It's a long story as to how he came to this idea, which I won't bore you with, but yes, he wants to make a quilt.
Of course I'm all for it, anytime the family gets involved in a project we make more than just the object, we make memories.
It took us a while to get the idea off the ground, because we are too cheap, eh hem, thrifty, to spent a lot of $ on material.
Friday, I was reading the Frugal Hacks site. There was mention of a Goodwill Outlet, where they sell items by the pound. I'd never heard of such a thing, so I did some research.
Wha-la.... there's one nearby.
Big Daddy and I went Sunday a grabbed enough new and used fabric pieces on the cheap, to make some good sized quilts. We happened to have some older, much used blankets around the place, that were beginning to show some wear. These we will use as filling.
Now, not one of us is the sewing master, but everyone is getting a turn at the machine. Our motto is: It doesn't have to be perfect to keep you warm.
These quilts aren't meant to go on top of the beds, but under the spreads as a blanket.
Besides, I find things don't have to be perfect to be just perfect.
I'll post a picture as things progress.
Making new out of old in the vines,
Naise

Paperback Swap... a Shortie of a Post

My new found obsession,
Paperback Swap.
Since August, I have been a swappin' with other members of the Paperback community. I love it!
For anyone who is not already a member, but would like to check it out, click on the linky in the corner. My nickname is tamingthewildvines , if you would like to give me some referral cred.
Another way to be a good steward in the vines,

Speaking of being a good steward, I've been fortunate this week to snag some really great deals.
It pays to wait.
Since July, when I had my surgery, I've kept my eye on some all cotton sleepwear from WallyMart. Just perfect for a girl who spends her "sleeping" hours in dancing in and out of the covers with her partner Mr. Nightsweat...if you get my drift.
I have become so cheap,(eh hem), frugal, these days, in no way was I going to pay $12 a piece for something only a select few were ever going to see.
So, I waited, checking the rack whenever I had the opportunity to be in the store.
This week it finally happened.
Clearance....whoo hoo! $1.50 a piece! Two of them babies jumped in my cart...No, I didn't empty out the whole rack. I could have, but let's show some self control.
Been wearin' em every night since.
Cotton is a menopausal girl's best friend, indeed.
I have more frugally stories to tell, but alas, I have run out of time.
More trimming to do,
Naise