Nearing Hibernation Mode

What with all the cold weather and snow our area has been having so far this winter, Papa Pea and I are very, very thankful we are spending the holidays here at home without having to drive any long distances.

Summer before this last one, I made lots of juice concentrate from our blueberries and raspberries.  The plan was to mix the concentrated stuff with water to have our own juice to drink.  It's worked out well although certainly the juice is not as sweet as commercially prepared juices.  But that's okay as it's the nutrients from the fruit we want rather than added sugar, right?  This morning I found another use for the pint jars of concentrate I still have left.

A while back I bought a case of organic frozen orange juice concentrate.  But drat and dang, the juice had a sour twang to it and because of that wasn't being consumed with any regularity.

This morning I mixed one jar of my blueberry concentrate into the jar of mixed up orange juice.  Wow!  Don't know what magic happened, but we now have an extremely tasty fruit drink which will encourage us to drink not only the orange juice but the homemade concentrate left.  As Kristina has on her blog header,

Eat it up,

Wear it out,

Make it do,

Or go without.

Such a good feeling to be able to resurrect that sour orange juice by making it into a very desirable drink using my homemade concentrate.

This is my nest these days.  I park my bottom on the chaise lounge part of the couch and cover up with my Christmas quilt.  I have books to read, paper and pencil for making notes, knitting needles, yarn and patterns and should the desire hit, remote controls for the TV and DVDs on my right side.  Last night I toppled over onto the pillow against the couch arm and was sound asleep when Papa Pea came out of the bathroom after getting ready for bed.  Awake or dozing, it's a mighty comfortable spot when it's time for some relaxing.

It's another day when it's too cold to snow (9°), but it currently is snowing and blowing out there.  The above is a shot of one of our window boxes outside the kitchen window.  One would expect there to be green boughs and red berries underneath the little drifts, but instead there are branches of fall leaves and miniature pumpkins and gourds.  Weeks ago, we had our first wet, freezing snow before I could get the fall decorations pulled and the winter ones in the boxes.

Yessir, if you want to experience real winter time this year, come to northern Minnesota!