A Simple, Lovely Friday

Whew! What a day! I stayed up last night getting lists made for this weekend and finishing prep work for one of my courses. Once finally in bed, I just couldn't fall asleep. Thus at 7am, I fed and let the dogs out, then crawled back in for some more shut eye. Next thing I knew it was 10:20 and Roxi was barking outside---she must have known I wanted to see if the Freddie's sock sale was really something to talk about.....Somehow I still made it cutely dressed, face-on, and checked out of Freddies with wool socks (at $4 a pair) and a Christmas candle (for $5) by 11:05am. 

On the way home I stopped at the local feed store to buy a 25lb bag of chicken feed and yummy chicken "scratch" for them. The ladies sure clucked in approval as I filled up their feeder and spread some scratch on the floor of their home!

After brewing up morning espresso, I thought about getting started on some work, but instead took care of a few financial to-dos and then pulled down our crock pot recipe books as I have been wanting to make a pot of soup for weeks. I started out with the intent to make some veggie chili based off a recipe I'd made before, but once I chopped and added half an onion, some celery, carrots, and sweet potato to my chicken broth.....I just kept chopping and peeling through half the squashes I'd used as fall decorations.......threw in some dry white beans and added a variety of good smelling spices from the cupboard....I'm calling it mixed squash soup and it's been simmering in the crock for a few hours now---yum!

The rest of those squash halves got chopped in larger chunks and thrown with some baby carrots, chopped turnips, rosemary, olive oil, garlic salt, and ground peper into a greased pan. I slid the mixture into the fridge til I got home this evening and then I roasted them in the oven at 375 for about an hour---delish dinner!

The chickens gladly gobbled up some of the squash peelings and the rest got added to the compost, as well as one of the bags of shavings and chicken droppings. Next the box of old bras to donate to The Bra Recyclers finally got wrapped and then mailed.  And I picked up one of my cousins to go check out boots at Penney's and to chat for a bit. From there I decided to look for a wreath and some other Christmas decor---and I came home with two poinsettas and hung a wreath on the front of our house.

This evening hub texted to say they didn't see any sign of elk today, but hopefully he's having a good hunting trip with his buddy all the same. I've missed having him around and will look forward to us putting up our tree and adding our LED Christmas lights to some part of house once he's returned. Two pairs of boots ordered from Penney's online (my suede boots that I already own are not going to survive all this rain---time for slick leather boots since we're not in Louisiana anymore), and I've vegged out to a DVR'd episode of What Not to Wear (with a great explanation of the concept of CPU--Cost Per Usage! :)).

Now it's time to shower, make some tea, and do some lecture prep/other work for the rest of the evening! Unless of course a few of those magazines from the stack call my name---sometimes I enjoy too much a simple day of rest.

Hope you all had a wonderful Friday too!