Dehydrating, Decore, and Dogs!

There were SEVERAL things I did in my brand new dehydrator over the weekend but I thought I would share this with you first as well as a few other things from the weekend on this chilly Monday!

First up...

Dehydrated Apples!  Yes...I left the skins on!  I know many of you take the skins off while dehydrating.  I have done both but wanted them on there this time!  I dipped them in Organic Lemon Juice prior to putting them in my Excalibur.  I also sprinkled on Wildtree Hearty Oatmeal Sugar & Spice Mix In.  They were so good I already have to make more.  Hubby enjoyed a few as well!

Dale has been wanting to decorate the living room and put the tree up so we did that over the weekend as well.  He's big into the fake tree and I enjoy outdoor lights a bit more.  This year was the first time we have done both indoors and outdoors in a LONG time.

Here's a photo of our tree.  We have it high and up and out of the way since we have our 3 dogs and 2 cats we had to strategically place it 'just-so'.  Instead of buying a new tree skirt we used the skirting of a 'bed in a bag' since we don't use the bed skirting anyways...it worked out pretty well!

As for outside...many of our lights worked from YEARS ago which was a nice surprise.  We did add a few little things this year, tho, including the lighted candy canes.  I found 8 of them for a total of $17 at Aldi!

As an afterthought we ended up getting the 2 spiral lighted trees last-minute for $20 at Family Dollar.

We are thinking about keeping the 18-foot tub lights out and wrapped around the light pole all year - even after the holidays - because it's VERY dark on our street and Hubby leaves for work around 4am M-F.

Here's another look at the right hand side of our front 'yard'.  I use the term 'yard' very loosely because it's not really a 'yard' due to the fact we don't have any grass!  Right past the public/city sidewalk is our front 'garden' and steps up to our house.

We have some large stones, a fossil (not pictured, but cool to look at), and a cement block, along with a couple of other things in our front garden that we could add a few Season's Greetings type decor to the mix.

And here's another look from the left hand side - the side with our Lamp Post.  The light we have in there year round doesn't give off all that much light so I think the lighted tube might help.  We haven't totally decided if we are going to keep that part up after the holidays but we might.

I think it turned out nice without going overboard.  Unfortunately, we haven't been overly social with our neighbors but I know some of them must be surprised that we decorated out front this year!

And...of course...the furkids enjoyed every minute of us being home this past weekend.  We did get a lot done around the house too!  I spent a good amount of time washing out our main sink...it was pretty gross...around the drain.  I used the last of my Tub and Tile and Tough and Tender from when we used to be Melaleuca Members.  I will miss their natural cleaning supplies the most but I'm sure I will make, create, and find others I like, too!

Here's a picture of Riley being lazy last night.  I forgot to mention last week while I was tinkering around with my dehydrator that Paco some how unzipped my Memory Foam Pillow and ripped apart the inside as well as ate some of it.  BUGGER!!!!  Long story short he's ok, but OMG was I upset and more importantly worried about the little guy!  He hasn't chewed on things in MANY MONTHS so I don't know what that was all about!