Helpful (Free) Household Planner

Amidst all the sickness that my family went through in January I did come across a really neat daily household organization guide that I have found most helpful. I'm a list person and always get more done if I make a list and then can check it off.  This organizer that I have found has been very beneficial to me (and my family) and in a way takes the daily/weekly thinking of what tasks to do and lets the organizer do it for me.  It helps me stay focused and the nice thing is, if I'm gone a day and don't get it done then I know it will show up again in a later week to do.  For me its been a wonderful tool to help me run a better household. Just had to share! :)  Plus its free!

http://www.theconfidentmom.com/services/classes-products/household-planner-sales-page/

What's Been a Happin'

With coming back from the trip to see my family, summer kicking in and misplacing my camera for a week we've managed to stay pretty busy.  Here's a few photos to show you what we've been up to...

Canning cherries from our tree

Checkin on the piggies

Gooseberries from our bush

Future Lawn Mower of America

Hayin' the field

Berry smoothie mishap

Pickin' some berries

Someone is tired of watching the picking!

Our wealth of berries (round 1)

1st batch of raspberry jam

Cookie clean-up

Mommy's Little Helper

It's amazing when you turn your back for a minute what happens!

Busy and then some

I had many  goals the last couple of weeks.  But the goal of blogging didn't make it to the done side of the checklist.  Other things have keep me busy and not all bad just well busy things.
What's been going on...
-My DH and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary. (Sure love you Sweetie!)
-DH and I went away for two nights to the coast. We had a wonderful time hiking, talking and relaxing.
-JB's last baseball game was last week. (Yippee, we have our evenings back!)
-All the haying is done and in! (We got the last load in the night before it rain!)
-Liesel turned 11 months (One month away from being a one year old.)
-Our deck railing is almost completed
-My DH went clamming with a friend. I now get to try my hand at making homemade clam chowder!
-And I know there are a few other things I'm forgetting.  On the bummer side my computer decided to retire (without much warning) so I've been using my DH's.  The only problem with his is I can't download pictures, which then translates to not being able to post pictures.  I do have a few pictures on my phone that I've been able to forward to my email so until we get a new computer that will have to do!

Liesel at 11 months

Oh What a Morning!

My morning started a little before 4:26am today when I awoke hearing footstep on the gravel driveway and then the sliding back door opening.  No big deal I thought I figured my DH had forgotten something on his way to work and came back to get it.  I peeked through the blinds and I didn't see his pickup.  That's odd. Maybe it was my bro-in-law stopping to get something.  Hmm I didn't hear any pickup leave.  That made me a little nervous so I slid off the side of the bed and grabbed my phone and texted my DH. That was at 4:26am.
"R u in the house?"
4:27am His reply "No"
4:28am "Someone came in the backdoor"
4:29am "I locked it Grab your gun. I'll call dad"
4:30am "I do"
4:34am "Call the cops"

From there I called the police. I was trying to be as quiet as possible and yet remain calm. I really can't tell you how scared I was.  Our bedroom door was open a crack so I could kindof see down the hall and the other thing I was worried about is that someone would hear me and/or see the light from my phone. The operator kept asking do you hear anything and my answer was always "No."  But I knew I had heard something outside.The operator was great and just kept me talking while she dispatched the officers.  I have to say when you are in a situations like that it is amazing how long it seems to take for the police to get there.  In reality it doesn't take that long but a minute feels like 10 etc and of course so many things are running through your head. "What if the person comes into the room?  What about Liesel?  What if they go into her room?" What I didn't know that as I was on the phone with the 911 operator my DH  sent the following texts
4:36am You ok?
4:38am I called.They're coming

Of course I feel a little on the dumb side because when they got here the back door was locked and I ended up having to let them into the house. They searched the house and nothing was found so now I question what did I hear.  The officers were wonderful and said they would much rather come and find nothing then to come and find something.  That made me feel a little better!  They probably thought I was a crazy woman but I know I heard something!

Also the other funny thing that I didn't think about until after everything had settle down was both my DH and I had woken up at about 3am.  We both were wide awake and for no apparent reason. Odd! Maybe there was more to that then we thought maybe not.  The Lord is good and all I have to say is I'm very, very thankful that it was nothing and that it is now daylight outside.  I'm not one to freak out or over react to things like that but I'll tell you that one got me. My nerve which are like a bowl of jello are starting to set and I think we are ready to really start the day a fresh! Maybe we'll go out to the garden later today and pick some strawberries! :)

I hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July weekend!

10 weeks to go!

Wow, it sure is hard to believe that we've reached the 30 week mark. Only 2 1/2 months to go and we will hopefully be introducing you to a new little one. Of course this little one could decide to come early making it less than 10 weeks or come later making it longer. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

So what have I been doing in the mean time? Besides finishing up subbing, school getting out, baseball games twice a week, working in the yard, I'm slowly trying to get the baby's room ready. It has taken awhile but I've decided to use the theme of my Great-grandmother's Dresden plate quilt as focus of our little girl's room. I was able to order some reproduction 1930's fabric to blend with G.G.'s quilt and I decided to make the quilt with one Dresden plate in the middle and border it with yellow fabric.

Here's the beginnings of the project. I have cut and assembled the entire quilt top and now all I have to do is mark and quilt it! I'm hoping to get started on that today so I better sign off for now. I'll post more pictures of the project soon!

Our Basement Project

Shortly after moving into our house, my DH and I undertook the job of cleaning out the basement so that we could us the area for storage. There was one bookcase type shelf that I used for my pantry/canning goods since I don't really have a big cabinet type pantry in the kitchen. That has worked out well but we really wanted to add some more shelving so that we could organize the "storage" in our basement better.

This last week we hired a friend to build us some shelves in the basement. We had him build them on two walls so that one set could be used for food items and the other set could store all the boxes, unused canning jars, paper goods, etc. Here's a smilebox of some of the before and after pictures. (Note: I haven't finished organizing the shelves but I'll post pictures when I'm finished with that part of the project)

Digital slideshow created with Smilebox

A Fun and Busy Week

It is hard to believe the week is almost over. As I was out on a walk this evening I reviewed all the activities of the past week and I have to say it has been a great week!


Monday day wasn't to exciting as I did laundry and grocery shopped but in the evening my DH and I had a wonderful dinner of Tuna steaks, yellow squash (fresh from the garden), and french bread with a yummy olive oil/herb dip. We enjoyed the nice quiet evening, eating our dinner out on the deck.


On Tuesday I went out to the back field and picked blackberries and made 5 pints of jam, plus I made 3 1/2 quarts of applesauce from the apples a friend gave us! They both were very tasty!



Wednesday I went down to my in-laws and my sweet sister-in-law and I hung out and did some cooking. I canned salsa with tomatoes and onions from our garden. My sis-in-love canned beans and made fresh salsa! We were going to make pies but my DH, JB and I had to go pick up a few calves. We did make it back to my in-laws after prayer meeting were my sis-in-law fryed doughnuts while I glazed them. They were sooo good! It reminded me of going out for donuts with my dad. We might start a tradition with this!!!!



Thursday morning I discovered that Callie has met a friend in the night and even though she is a friendly dog this new friend didn't take to well to her. Her friend was a skunk. I know I should have expected it sooner than later but wow, was it a scent!! JB and I gave her a bath in tomato juice, which made her white fur turn a slight shade of pink!



When my DH came home he gave her a second bath! Poor Callie girl. She hasn't been in the house since then!

I also had a very new experience as I cougar watched with my DH and JB for about 3 hours that night. My DH's cousin had a cougar attack and kill their pet goat the night before and it continued to stay around the property. My DH's cousin and his wife stayed up most of the first night watching for it but never saw it. Since my DH has a cougar tag he spent several hours the next night watching for it and JB and I tagged along. We never saw anything and we found out the next morning that the cougar had been back sometime after we had left. Who would have thought a year ago I would be doing that!!!



Friday was a fun busy day as I swept out the shop and added the wood shavings to the chickens' nesting boxes. Then JB and I picked 2 gallons of yellow plums, 1 gallon of strawberries and about 1/2 gallon of blueberries. Of course we ate a few along the way! :)



Today I made strawberry jam and I'm going to try a new recipe and see if I can make strawberry-lemonade concentrate! That will be tasty to have.


We also spent a good few hours of the day catching cows. Though I have been told that the cows are typically more afraid of you I still get fairly nervous when one starts running towards the gap that I'm guarding! If anyone would have seen us trying to corral those 4 cows they would have been laughing. The first 2 cows only took us 45 minutes to get caught and loaded into the trailer. The other two were quite a pain to round up. We tried to get them loaded in with the first two but one wouldn't be caught and the other one went into the chute and then broke through part of the fence to get back into the pasture. We came home dropped the first two cows off and went back when the owner had brought the other two into a smaller fenced in area. It then took us close to an hour and a half to get them loaded into the trailer. Though it really wasn't that fun I did get the giggles watching the cows go in every direction but in the trailer! We finally got them in and what a relief that was.


The next thing that happen makes me just laugh. Once we got the animals all dropped off I went to check on how the 4 pork steaks were thawing. I discovered meat bees all over the bag and only 1 pork steak in the bag. Apparently Callie had gotten into the bag while we were gone and had eaten all but 1 steak! One can only laugh and quickly switch to plan B which turned out to be hamburgers!


Looking back, I can say it sure was a fun and busy week! :)

Outdoor Projects

Yesterday was such a lovely day. It was in the 60's and the sun was warmly shining. It was a day where it would have been painful to be stuck inside so my DH and I worked on outdoor projects instead.

My DH's project was putting the skirting around part of the foundation of the house. Here's a picture of the finished project on the front of the house.



And here is a picture of part of the side skirt that has just been stained.


My project was to add the woodchips to the front flower bed. In the first picture you can see what it looks like before and let me just say it looks a whole lot better now with the woodchips!

I'm so thankful that we had a beautiful day to work in the yard and we were able to get things done around the house! The warm weather sure makes me look forward to more warm spring days and summer!!!

Applesauce

Can it really be two weeks since I last posted. I'm finding that hard to believe but when I think back onto all the different things that we've been doing I can believe it. In the last two weeks we've had company over, been company several times, cleared, scrubbed and sealed the deck, front porch and carport, attended a weekend history conference, went to the State Fair twice, had company spend the night, attended the church picnic and in between all of that I did some baking and cooking. Gosh when I look at all that, I realize why I didn't have time to post!

One of the fun baking projects I did in the last two weeks was make applesauce. We have several apple trees and my husband and brother-in law (DN) picked a good amount and I spent the afternoon making applesauce. (A special thanks to B. Shubin for sharing her yummy recipe with my family!) Here's some pictures of the process!

The recipe calls for the skin to be removed but since the apples are so small I decided to leave the skins on!

Here it is cooking and getting mashed up!

Once all the apples were cooked and mashed, I placed them on rack (actually its my cookie cooling rack:) and moved the mixture around so that the apple skins would stay on top and only the sauce would go through. I had a lot of skins left over and I didn't have the heart to just throw them away so I saved them and my DH and I have been eating them. They are very yummy!!

I then bagged all the applesauce into quart size bags and put them into the freezer to save for this winter. In all I made 1 gallon and 1 quart of applesauce!!! There still are a lot more apples to make applesauce out of so I have a feeling I"ll be working on this project for a while!!!

Moving

Man, there is a lot more to moving than meets the eye. I, who has never moved before, have found it to be more work than I thought. First of all I'm glad that I only had my bedroom and classroom to pack. I really can't imagine packing up an entire house (2-3 bedrooms, family room, kitchen etc.)

I was very fortunate and blessed as my sweet family drove the moving truck with all my stuff in it up to my DH and my new home. I really didn’t think I had that much stuff but once you added everything from my bedroom, classroom, and wedding presents there was a lot of stuff. My kind brothers-in-law along with my family helped unload the truck and the comment I heard from them was... “This is all YOUR stuff.” Yep, I’m almost embarrassed to admit it!

Now that everything has been unloaded the next step is to put it into the correct rooms and than from there unpack and organize. That is what I have been doing for the past week. With my mom and sisters help I was able to get most of the kitchen unpacked and organized the day my stuff arrived (Thank you so much mum and sisses. It sure makes cooking dinner a whole lot easier). The area I have been most recently attacking is the guest room. I am happy to say that you can now see most of the floor. Not because I’ve unpacked all the stuff but I have been able to reorganize it and fit most of the boxes in the closet. It is such a relief to have that stuff put away and to see the guest room beginning to take shape.

Even with all the work that it has been to move and unpack I can say I have enjoyed putting stuff away and establishing our new home. There is something about it that makes one feel more settled and I have to say I’m finding great pleasure it making our house a home.

Off to unpack some more boxes!!!!!