Rednecks For The Win!

I'm all done, well with what I was doing today, that is.  And what was it that I was doing today?  

Why, I was making candy, of course!  

I made chocolate fudge, peanut butter fudge, lemon jellies, and cream cheese mints. You know, the usual.  None of it is cut up yet, but that's the easy part, and I'll probably wait until Friday morning to do all of that.  Plus, I went ahead and mixed up my roll out cookie dough, since it has to chill.  

I'll get the rest of my cookies done tomorrow.  I really need to come up with more savory snacks for my Christmas Eve  brunch.  I mean, I have sausage balls and Bartley Snacks, but other than that, everything is sweet.  I'm going to make a cream cheese ball this year, so that'll be one more thing.  Back in the day, Denise used to make a couple of cream cheese balls, so I never bothered.  Beverly had a couple of other savory things she made, so when we were all together, we had a good mix.  

I had a brief moment of panic while I was mixing up my cookie dough, because I couldn't find my baking soda.  "Oh, no!"  I said.  "I'm going to have to go back to the store...again!"  I sure didn't want to do that.  I'd literally just gotten home from getting the rest of the things Cody needs to make my pot of gumbo, and I didn't want to go all the way back into town.  Fortunately, disaster was averted when I suddenly remembered I buy baking soda in a large orange bag, not a small white box.  Once I knew what I was looking for, I found the soda post haste, and the cookie dough is now chilling in the fridge.  

The rest of the cookies will be taken care of tomorrow.  

In other news, unless you've been living under a rock these last few days, you know Santa has decided to bring North Pole with him on his trip to the South this weekend.  With that in mind, I decided to go ahead and get my outside pipes taken care of today, to get ahead of the game.  One year, I'd waited too long, and by the time I went out to drip the faucets, they had already frozen.  Fortunately, the pipes didn't burst, but I don't want to chance it this time, especially given how cold it's supposed to get.  

The faucet on the South side of the house was easy to take care of.  I just put one of those styrofoam covers over it and it's all done. 

 On the advice of a local plumber, I stuffed a few old washrags into the cover, just to be on the safe side. 

But this one...this faucet on the North side presented a bit of a problem, because the standard faucet cover wouldn't fit over the T-junction.  I was going to look for something to wrap it with while I was at Walmart yesterday, but as I was on the way to that department, I saw a short check out line, and knew I had to get into it right away.  Alas, faucet covers were completely forgotten, along with the ice cream I'd intended to buy.  

Not that I needed more sugar, but still...

I'm not quite sure exactly when the redneck in my kicked in, but suddenly I had a solution.  I ran to my bedroom, opened my drawer and pulled out an old pair of sweat pants I hadn't worn in ages.  Really, I'm not sure why I still had them.  For such a time as this, I guess. 

I went outside and pulled them over the faucets, and used the waist drawstring to tie them into place.  

Then I pulled the legs up high enough I can still drip them tomorrow night, when the cold is supposed to get here. If I can find my zip-ties, I'll use them to secure the pant legs into place.  If not, I'll tie them up with scrap yarn.  I've got plenty of that laying around.  

Or maybe Duct tape...that's the standard redneck solution.  Duct tape.  

The cat says, "I'm just going to sit here in my nice, warm bed and watch the cold out the window."  

Sounds like a plan to me, cat!

And finally, in honor of Winter Solstice, and the first day of astronomical winter: