Vacation

If I were to ever go on a vacation my dream would be here. Most of my favorite knitting designers are on that page as teachers. No wait I was wrong all of my favorites are there. The cool thing is it is right around my birthday. So all I need to do is win the lottery so I can afford it and find a friend to go with me. Let's see most of my knitting friends are due to have babies in August so that will not work. Not to mention I do not play the lottery. I bet I could come up with a way and then I would actually have something cool to blog about.

Apron Giveaway On Another Blog

I spend a lot of time over at Not Quite June Cleaver. I love her recipes and her aprons. I hope to save enough money soon to make one my own. In the meantime, I will continue to enter her wonderful give aways hoping it might be my lucky day!! So pop on over there and check it her out. You must peruse her archives cause seriously her recipes are wonderful. Then you must checkout her store.

Winter Meals From Our Summer Garden

I honestly did not think it would be very easy to start the 100 ft. challenge in winter. We have very little left from our summer gardening efforts. It turns out that this is the best time to do it. I am able to see how much I could feed our family by putting up our food. We had a nice stew to eat from over the weekend. It was made from local grass fed beef. I used tomatoes that I had put up. I also added purple hull peas that were from our garden and corn from the farmer's market. Today we are having fried chicken. I plan on the side being green beans from the garden. For desert I am going to make either a mock pumpkin pie with our homegrown butternut squash or an apple dessert with apples given to me by a neighbor. I also found out that I can get steel cut oats locally grown and milled. The mill is right down the road and we will be going to it for a field trip for the kids when the weather gets nice. It's amazing what opportunities open up when you open yourself to a new way of looking at things.

100 Ft. Diet

This is how I will be spending my time now. I am very excited about this challenge. I am committed to growing more of our fruits and veggies. We live on .75 of an acre and I am excited to see how self sufficient I can become on our little plot. Tonight for dinner we are having homemade pizza. The pizza sauce is made from tomatoes that I put up last summer. I will use cheese that I made from milk I buy from a local farmer. I am very excited about my little start. I encourage everyone to join in!!!

What the Heck Have I Been Doing

Well it has been forever since I posted. I am currently doing some spring cleaning and getting my projects organized for the year. I have to organize sewing projects, knitting projects, homeschool projects, and gardening stuff. In the meantime go check out this wonderful blog for some cool urban homesteading.

Something Old, Something New

Yesterday my sister and I made another trip to my Grandparents house to help with cleanup. It was actually kinda neat because it was me, my sister, my brother and both my parents. We haven't all been together just us three since the 90's. I personally love the walk down memory lane and it is an honor for me to be able to help clean out their house. We found some of my grandmother's old clothes from the 70's. These are the first pants she ever owned. I brought home the cabinet that my Grandfather made for her to keep her pretties in. I also was able to get some of her pretties to put in it. I have it in my kitchen and it looks beautiful. Hopefully they can come over soon and see that it is being taken care of. I know my Grandmother will probably not leave the nursing home again but I have hope.

We have lived in our house for nearly 4 years and I have had the hardest time finding stuff to decorate it with. I do not like over the top decorations. I love simplicity. It seems fitting that I would choose all the things that no one wanted from my Grandparent's house. Many times I even dug stuff out of the trash. I just do not get my mom. She threw away one of my Grandmother's aprons. It is from the 40's and I am pretty sure she made it herself. I took a picture of it a while back. I need to put my girls in it and get a better picture. I am to big to wear it. :-) She was 16 when she got married and I am now 35 trying to squeeze into it. I also got some vintage nighties that are just so pretty. I am hoping that some oxy clean will help me get some of the stains out. When an elderly person develops dementia it is rather fascinating what they do with their things. She was a very orderly person so everything was packed in suitcases. She made sure there was a folded Kleenex in every pocket. Kinda amazing where life's journey will take you....

I Tasted A Carrot

Last night for dinner I made a nice roast with potatoes and carrots. Now normally I do not eat the carrots but for some reason they just called to me. I have always disliked the lack of taste in a carrot. It was wonderful. So full of flavor. I have spent the last 2 years cutting artifical stuff out of our diet and it has paid off. Fruit is like candy to me. We had bananas and raspberries with our breakfast and it was a heavenly treat. I want to encourage those that do want to cut out the hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, msgs and all that other stuff. It is so worth it in the end. Food in it's simplest form has the most amazing flavor. I am amazed that homemade bread just melts in your mouth. I am looking forward to cooking too. It makes a huge difference when you can actually taste the food you eat.