Country Salad and Homemade Bread Braid

Using an upside down roaster lid, this is the prettiest country salad, doncha think??  I love using whatever is available at hand to serve and make it lovely in a very simple way.

And......the homemade bread braid, using the BreadBecker recipe and hand braided.  It was delicious!

One Gallon of Yogurt

One gallon of whole milk makes this much, in terms of repurposed jars.  It is delicious, too.  I usually use my crock pot to make it then transfer to jars for refrigeration.

Flashback to the Beginning

These are a few shots from when we began our homesteading journey.  Chickens were a logical first step for us.  Easy to care for, fairly inexpensive to start and maintain and we would actually get something out of it relatively immediately.  My hubby did a good majority of the work on it and did a great job.  Eventually, there was an additional  compartment but this is how the brooder started out.

Thrifty Re-Do Coming Soon.

I thought this was cute.  My 12 year old  daughter severely disagreed.  It's now wadded up in a drawer.  I will rework it for my other daughter.  And she'll like it. :)

Chicks Are Here!

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Thrifty Re-do: Denim Cutoffs Turn into Girls' Skirt

My older daughter recently found a pair of jeans that she needed to give up and cut off just to wear as shorts. By the way, my children think cut-offs are fabulous!  I just couldn't throw the bottoms of those jeans away, though.  I hate to waste perfectly good fabric just due to sizing.

So, I took my seam ripper and did some reworking and now I have the cutest skirt for my younger daughter, for just the cost of my time, elastic and the few scraps that I used to accessorize it. 

Here's the tutorial:

First, I slit the non-topstitched side seam, usually the inner thigh seam.  I did not cut it open, only ripped the seam to allow the fabric to remain intact so that I had the most fabric available for size.

Then, open up both pieces and  match them together, right sides together.  I pinned from the hem back up toward the waistline. Pin and stitch.

I added a little patch here on the inside, just to keep one of the holes from getting to far out of control :)

Also, I turned under the waistline, pinned and stitched as you would for any simple skirt pattern.   Elastic is next and stitch closed.

This is what I drummed up to accent the front of the skirt. I attached it by hand by stitching through the button down through the denim. I made about 4 stitches and secured the threads off inside the skirt. Of course, you could do whatever you desire on this part, or nothing at all!

And here's the finished product, minus my elastic. 

Dylan

Random shot.....just a reminder to myself to live in the moment.

Garden

So, this is our first really big garden.  Our first garden in our new house.  About 40 foot rows, I'd say.  Two of them now contain seed potatoes.  One-broccoli.  Half rows each of carrots, onions, green leaf lettuce  and spinach.   Yippee!!!!  We are sooo excited.  I also must say that I have a fabulous set of neighbors.  Mr. L has been plowing our ground for us for several weeks to get it ready.  He also did the potatoes, all we had to do was prep them and put them in the row.  He ran through it and  did all the hard work.  Soooo thankful!  Now, we've begun to pray for rain and for the Lord to bring His harvest.

Valentine

My first attempt at these since my old fashioned metal pancake shaper-thinggees got tossed out.  I love this gadget my dear sister gave me for Christmas.  You can shaped it into any shape at all.  There are measurement lines for the bisquick or whatever and the liquid and you just shake it together and shape it as it goes into the pan.  It was soo easy!  And made me feel like a great Mom since the kiddos were super excited about these!

Five in a Row ~ Miss Rumphius Day 1

We are FIARowing the book Miss Rumphius this week.  I chose this book since we are doing a lot with seeds and planting right now.  Spring has made an early arrival and we are down to business.

Day 1

Read book and discussed location of story disk.  Ds placed it and did well identifying directions.

We discussed routine and made and hung our charts to establish a good routine. Checked off today's activities so far....

Dd12 read Jack and the Beanstalk to youngers as I prepared lunch.(I like to add a little CM ~tales)

Ds took some time after lunch/play to explain plant life from the pages of  Usborne Science Encyclopedia.

I like to allow the older children to "teach" some things.  They get so excited to share with their siblings.  And opportunities for leadership, patience, understanding and caring abound.  Also, the youngers learn to learn from others.

This was one day's lessons using FIAR.  It is not the same for all families.

Christmas Mantle

I meant to post this at Christmas time. I just loved this picture.  It looks soo homey.  We had a beautiful Christmas, our first in our new house.  We've even had a few fires in the fireplace in spite of our doubts that we'd give in to the "cold" down here.

Bugs

They grow REALLY BIG down here.  What is this???

Garden

And so it begins.....our neighbor has been nice enough to turn our soil for us.  This is our first year in our new place and we know there will be a learning curve with gardening in a new climate.  But we're going big. Well, in comparison to our little quarter acre home/lot we had in our subdivision, this plot IS big.  But it's not huge.  It only takes a few minutes for him to plow, but we are hoping for a good year. 

Our plan is:
potatoes, spinach, lettuce, corn, carrots

Then later:
peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, melons, and we have a few strawberry plants elsewhere. 

This will be our first go of it in the deep south, so pray for our harvest!

Merry Christmas to Me

Because since we moved in, our bar had been calling out to be dressed up -TSC style.

Thanks, Honey :)

Secret Ingredient

I am pretty sure that not many people I know would guess what this is.  Probably only a handful -and they would be within my own family ;)  These bottles are one of the best gifts around, in my book.  It threw me for a loop recently, too.

I was making bread for my family, which I don't always do, but this day I wanted the smell of "home" ....er, OK,  I did not want to have to drive to town to buy another loaf.  SO I went to getting my bread machine ready and found that I had run out of  agave nectar....and honey.  The next thing that caught my eye was this.  I knew it was sweet.  And this bottle was a pretty light variety.  So, in it went.   And  can I just tell you that this bread was Divine!  Just as good as any other loaf.  It smelled terrific and tasted the same.  It worked great for sandwiches and no one knew the difference. And I am delighted that I have plenty of it on hand, since the price of honey and agave is not at its best right now.

I bet you still don't know what it is, do you?

It's old fashioned cane syrup.  Not to be confused with modern day "syrup."  I was raised on this stuff, y'all.  It can't be beat.  I had never tasted "pancake syrup" until I went north on my own.  Honestly.  And this stuff....it just says 'down home' to me! -and it makes great bread, too.

My New Hideaway

Well, I can't hide from much because my sewing area is in the entry of our bedroom, but I can pretend :)  I just got down to getting it together and finding a place for the things that I keep nearby while working on projects.  It's not designer, but it is functional for now.  The cutting board is on top of an old desk which is painted pink so I just covered it with some fabric so that it doesn't catch the eye.  Hopefully one day there will be  real cutting table involved;). 

There's also my bestest Christmas gift there.  My sewing chair.  My mama made it herself.  Well, she bought the chair.  Then she refinished the whole thing and built a storage compartment into the bottom of it.  And she covered the cushion and made the ruffle, in a color that she would only choose for ME.  I love it. I mean I really love it.  I've been asking for one for twenty years.  Yep!  Twenty years.  I've been sewing for a looong time and I've always wanted to "earn" my own sewing chair.  That no one would dare touch.  It's  a love gift..a labor sacrifice...from my Mama.

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Organized Simplicity- My Kitchen

I recently downloaded a free book on kindle called Organized Simplicty and am working through it with the ladies at FIAR . These are my (way too tall for me) cabinets in my kitchen that are being used for pantry storage. Our new house has no pantry but plenty of cabinet space. My challenge in using this space well is my own height vs. cabinet height. I am only 5'4". The ceilings here are 9 or 10 feet and the cabinets extend to about 1.5 ft below that. I cannot really use the top two shelves of most of my cabinets for anything that I would need on a daily basis. So, this is what I came up with.

Reminders of Time Past

While trying to carve out a small space in our closet ( it still needs a lot of help, but I'm getting there) I came across this award.  The frame/box was broken and it was just laying there.  It felt so sad.  All that was given, sacrificed and suffered and this token was just laying broken.  I took hold and repaired it the best I could.  There was no way I was leaving it there, though.  So I had to hang it.  It was the first thing my husband commented on when he came in the door that day...and he had a smile to go with it. 

That year...so hard, so many lessons learned, strength gained,  emotions all over the place and then the reunion.  Delightful.  We've all grown so much since that  time and I am more proud of my husband as the years go on. 

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Family Meeting on Friday

As I posted earlier, I am trying to do a Family Meeting Friday.  This will also include Fine Arts.  I have yet to succeed at getting done what I want to get done on fridays for one reason or another.  I thought I would write it up and publish it and hope that helps me remain accountable ;)

*Present Memory Work progress
*Present guitar progress
*Read aloud (all reading children - non reader will "read" whatever story she wishes to present)
* Narrate spontaneously chosen subject from past week's readings and/or present past week's written narration
* Art ( as in this)
*Composer
*Poet
*Artist study

A Look Back: February 2010

I couldn't find any pictures labeled February 2011.  Seriously???  Did I not take a single picture in February last year?  Surely I did.  There was Valentine's day and our anniversary in Feb.  There must be a picture that was snapped sometime that month?  Was my camera down?  I have no idea and cannot remember anything significant with down times.  So, I found myself going back even further to take a look back.  This was significant!  My first blizzard.  I am born and raised in south Georgia.  Of course this was my first blizzard.  And it was a doozy!    And there was another a few weeks later.

Take a look at our deck: