FINISHED Reading Harry Potter?

[some_people_will_pay_a_buck_for_anythin]

Note: If this thread gets off the ground, there are likely to be SPOILERS in here so don't read if you don't want to know what happened in the book!


Well, I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. last night to finish Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - it was so good!

Anyone else finished with it yet...??? what did you think?!

I'm glad it didn't have quite the unfinished ending as Book IV, now waiting for the next book won't be quite so annoying... but I know it will be a l-o-n-g wait!

Anyway... what are your thoughts on it???

[severus*trevor*forever]

[severus*trevor*forever]

[errols*here]

[dalmatas]

Jack O Lantern pumpkins is what the seed package says. Good for eating and carving. That's probably a lie, but at the very least I get some carving ammunition for Halloween, and a bunch of seeds to snack on.

[bess-the-landlords-daughter]

dalmatas, The small "sweet" pumpkins are for eating. The big jack-o-lantern pumpkins can be eaten, but they are coarse-fibered, tough, not very tasty. The seeds are fine tho.
The first year we planted pumpkins, we had a great crop. Then some dang bug chewed thru one vine, and we had cutworms or slugs or something savaging the remainder. There went all our pumpkins.
This year I am putting them up on a lattice fence, in little hanging baskets made of netting from orange bags. You have to turn them now and then, to get nice and round and colored by the sun. I'm putting heavy bug-killer just around the base of the plant. I'm also considering a way to bury a deep plastic ring around the base. Put beer or salt into the ring. At least with beer the slugs die happy. You have to remember to fill and empty the ring before and after rains. It's a PITA but we might get some good eatin' punkins out of all the trouble.
I hadn't planned to plant much of a garden this year, but rising food prices have me panicked. I'm putting lots of tomotoes in, and canning spaghetti sauce. The pumpkins grow with very little attention (unless you're doing the beer thing). Oldest DD has a herb garden that would supply the neighborhood. I'm going to lay in some 25lb bags of wheat and fix our wheat grinder.
I can live with high gas prices---just don't go anywhere! But high food prices really scare me. I have visoins of me and the kids gathering acorns and dandelions, like Gramma during the Depression.
Okay, enough complaining. Sorry. It's got me down that spousal person decided to pay off his $3,000 personal, for-work-only credit card with our tax return. No, we will pay it off like intelligent people---$100/month for the rest of forever. We've got kids in college and a mortgage and my car needs work.
There is a big fight coming up. *sigh*

[just_tonks]

Lordy Alpha, wouldn't it be easier to just buy the pumpkins for $.12 a pound? LOL! I just got some little wimpy tomato plants this weekend. Trying to tuff'n them up before I put them in the ground. Separated the little buggers and put them in individual pots. 2 are drama-queen 'maters and wilting all over themselves. The rest are fine. The wilting ones will snap out of it and probably produce better than the others.

OK, I should be able to get some pictures uploaded soon.....hubby SAYS he's got a patch of some sort on the computer. Not sure I dare, but gonna try it soon.

OH! Went to the doctor's this morning, after about a month off the decongestants, my bp is back to normal! And that's after hiking up a fairly steep hill to get there. AND my glucose, cholesterol and body-mass-index are ALL low normal! Whew! I was worried about the sugar, I'm a pig when it comes to sweets. NOW if I could just control the arthritis I'd be practically perfect in every way! LOL!

OK, gonna go play with the other computer. If you hear the faint sound of swearing instead of seeing pictures posted in the next half hour, it's me. LOL!

[just_tonks]

OK, Let's see....no crashes, no "black screen of death," no smoke....I think hubby actually fixed something!!!!

Here's "Beep"! 6 months old, and the most happy little guy you could ever imagine.


And here is the rest of the gang!

Da Tank, Elmo & Kitten:

[just_tonks]

And, back to the Harry Potter theme, MY QUILT!

I haven't 'quilted' it or put the binding on it yet, but I should finish it tonight if I don't have to babysit. 🙂

I really like the way it turned out. I only wish, looking at it now, that I'd switched Ravenclaw with Slytherin (position wise--for the colors to contrast better--too much dark on the bottom half). Oh well, it is turning out so cool. It's 58" square and I've cleared off a place on my wall at work for it. I love when the students come in and see all my HP stuff. Some of them say something like "Oh! Do you like Harry Potter?" Well....duh! LOL!

Anyway, here it is:

[fredi*frogi]

wow tonks!!! VERY NICE!!!

and the grand kids are soooooo cute!!!

alpha...shoot...food prices don't scar me...too much...my meat is 'free' (time and enegry involve but that's got no price tag)...and i buy in bulk...so i'm good there...

sigh....i guess...i'm not really freaking out about anything...yet...there's food in my belly...& gas in my car...so i'm good to go...for now...when that stops...then i'll get worried...but i probly got a years worth of food in the freezer/pantry...

~♥~Mandy~♥~

[just_tonks]

Fredi, that's how we are too. I did freak a little last week when the Folgers coffee went from $5.99 for the big can to $11.98! AND we had just opened our last can...but Wally World put Maxwell House on for $5.28 and I bought 5 cans. LOL! Hubby buys the big bags of rice, pinto beans and flour, and makes our bread. We have the freezer full of hamburger and chicken (mostly).

Unfortunatly, sweet little Tank unplugged the basement freezer the other day. It was 2 days before we noticed it. All the icecream was liquid, BUT the meat was still froze so it wasn't a big loss. He cried when we thru out the ice cream. The little stinker has been unplugging everything lately, his dad says. The fish in their aquarium were all gasping for breath the other day. Maybe the loss of the icecream will get him to quilt with the unplugging. LOL!

[fredi*frogi]

tonks...poor lil guy!! river of ice cream!! ohh what a mess!!!

my freezers full of deer meat...but its the same...i am out of chicken (mr. frogi bout had a fit when i fixed the last of the chicken breasts the other nite) but i went to the local overstock and got some fish (cod and pollack)...we had pollack sat nite...it was pretty good!

if i could re-stock my chicken supply we'd be good to go...but if i'm gonna do that then i'm gonna buy enough to last for 6 months...and i wanna buy it cheap!! LOL (cuz i am...cheap that is :))

i buy my bread...but i usually get the really cheap kind...cuz i quit eating it (excpet for brown bread...which i have for breakfast and at $3 a loaf...that lasts for a good three weeks...its cheaper then that $10/box breakfast ceral...that i hate, lol)

~♥~Mandy~♥~

[just_tonks]

I found thighs, not the leg quarters, for $.59 per pound and bought all they had. LOL! I also got regular ground beef for $.79 not too long ago. I still have a small turkey, several roasts for the crock pot, and a few packs of steaks and chops. We eat rice dishes for the main course a couple of times a week.

It's the price of eggs that have me going "WTH????" right now. A few weeks ago they were $1 a dozen or so. Now they are over $3 a dozen!!!! YIKES! Hubby is seriously thinking of getting some egg laying chickens....we can have up to 10 (I'm thinking 4 or 5 would be more than enough to deal with). My cats would love it. LOL! Before we do anything like that, I want to know the price of chicken feed, and I want to know that hubby is going to feed and clean them cluckers. LOL! Chickens are not neat and tidy pets. Not even a little.

[dalmatas]

Tonks said:
glucose, cholesterol and body-mass-index are ALL low normal!

Everyone please note that this is the only time anyone would ever accuse Tonks of being normal.


Good-looking quilt, though.

[bess-the-landlords-daughter]

tonks, Oh yeah. Good thing I quit work as a nurse... I forgot that cough meds will increase your BP. That's why folks on heart medication don't take over-the-counter stuff. Anyway, I'm glad you're feeling all better! I love the quilt. I'm not very good with tones and shades. It looks fine to me!
The critters are all so gorgeous! And Beeps looks like an adorable little alien with huge eyes. (that is a compliment to his general cuteness and beautiful big expressive eyes)
We have a lot of seeds left over from last year, so I'm just planting those. We have fertilizer etc, and the compost heap. I won't be spending except on plant-protection ring, if I can find it. A pal offered me her ratty aluminum Jello mold, I might use that.
We have one kid who loves pumkins. They are the highlight of his year. We cook and freeze the punkins. We all love pumpkin bread, muffins, pudding, and etc. It's worth a little trouble to make him happy.
We need to get out to the local u-pik-em strawberry patch this week, make jam and freeze berries.

[magsworldusa]

Now THAT is one fine quilt, Tonks!!! Nice work!


*sings* I'M IN FLORIDA...... *ends singing*

We've got a wireless internet connection here so I'm able to keep up with email. My brother's wedding went off perfectly - I'll post some pics soon. Now we're at the beach house in St. George's Island with my parents for the rest of this week. It's quiet and relaxing. Draco found a dead crab on our adventure walk on the beach early this morning - he's thrilled. He has it sitting under a bucket (to protect it from birds) on the deck..... he was hoping my Mom would cook it up for him to eat, but we had to explain that it was already dead and would be nasty!! 😉

I got burnt to a crisp the first day in Sandestin - I'm completely inept when it comes to applying sunscreen evenly... I look like I went tanning in a WAFFLE IRON!!

Sadly - this was the first time EVER that I was inept on my kids' sunscreen and they've both got some sunburn. 😞 Lost that mother-of-the-year-award AGAIN, darn it!!

---

MagsGraphics Digital Tear Bears
& scrapbooking freebies
magsgraphics.blogspot.com