A plan

Let's try this again and see if the tree is still here, it was MIA. This tree was at a fund raiser in the lower 48 that a friend attended. I am glad she took pictures!!

Well, the Christmas decorations are going up slowly. The ornaments are on the tree. This is not my tree but I love this tree. I am working toward this goal. I have to do a little shopping tomorrow but then I can come home and put together my version of this tree. The mess of boxes here is beginning to get to me so I will need to finish up tomorrow so the boxes can go back into storage Friday. The blessings made drawings so I will take those to the copier tomorrow to make our Christmas cards. I will get those put together this weekend and mailed next week. I will post them here when I get the finished products. We will be taking our Christmas card picture on Friday as well and I will get those ordered and picked up on Saturday or Sunday. I am planning on an outdoor snowmachine"ish" picture for us all. Oh, yeah, the plan part of this post, I mean all that was a plan but this is the plan I was referring to. I am not a very organized person in action. I have great mental plans but implemtenting them is a problem. I also do not work well with clutter, which is probably what is slowing down my Christmas decorating. The cookies and goodies plan:   Starting next Monday, we will make one recipe of either Christmas cookies or candies or some savory recipe that we either eat or share with others. That way we have something to do each day and  will not be trying to make 10 recipes or more on one day. I will let you know how it works out.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Blogger Friend School #10

 

It is good to be back on track with assignments!

My favorite cookie recipe is a good old fashioned cookie that I made for the first time with my step mom way back when.

A.

Jam Thumbprints

2/3 cup butter

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

2 egg yolks

1 tsp. vanilla

2 slightly beaten egg whites

1 cup finely chopped walnuts

1/3 to 1/2 cup jam or preserves, your favorite

Oven 375 degrees.

Beat butter on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add about half of flour, sugar, egg yolks an vanilla. Beat till thoroughly combined. Beat in remaining flour. Cover and chill about 1 hour or easy to handle.

Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Roll balls in egg whites and then in nuts. Place 1 inch apart on a greased cookie sheet. Press centers with your thumb. Bake for 10-12 minutes or till edges are lightly browned. Cook on rack. Just before serving, fill centers with jam. Makes about 42 cookies.

B. We were not big cookie makers but I do remember making these cookies especially with my step mom. I enjoy a cookie that is not too sweet and this one is just right for me. I also love the Mexican wedding cakes, I think that is what they are called.  When I was much older my mom and I would make pumpkin roll and coconut sour cream cakes to give as gifts to neighbors and friends.

C.  Jeremiah 6:16 Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.

The tree is up and the lights are on but that is as far as we made it today. Hopefully, I will be back tomorrow with pictures. My download was interrupted by accident tonight.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Around

I have begun the Christmas decorating so I will be MIA for a couple of days! I am taking pictures as I go.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Home

Good morning to you all. As the title reads, I will be home today, yahoo! No sales crowds for me. I think we will read books, watch movies and design our gingerbread creation for the year. Last year we made a gingerbread train. This year I am desiring to make a gingerbread log cabin, this will take some planning! So, look out google and library, here we come. I do not know if I could homeschool without google and the library. Is making a gingerbread concoction homeschool? You bet it is! I hope to keep December moving along by daily working on some handicrafts and other projects. We will try to attend the local gingerbread contest and gain some mental pictures to use in making our cabin, who knows, one of us may enter next year.  The girl blessings and I will attend the Nutcracker Ballet (note to self, call and get tickets!) I am not in the Christmas spirit, as they say. I am really focused on only what is necessary and I am definitely not focused on commercial"ized" Christmas. I desire a homespun Christmas celebration. (I did purchase some Debbie Mumm Christmas paper plates, napkins and wrapping paper at Joanne Fabrics on Tuesday, it was plaid, I loved it and it was almost gone already! )Usually I have my husband hauling up Christmas decoration boxes after everyone leaves on Thanksgiving Day. Not this year. Maybe on Monday.

I really enjoyed Thanksgiving this year. I almost became overwhelmed with the number of people, then I refocused.  (Not that I thought it would be too many people, but would they all enjoy themselves with their being so many?)I became thankful that 17 other people would want to come to our house for Thanksgiving Dinner! What a blessing and something to be thankful for. How many people ate a dinner without being thankful, without any fun Scrabble or Dutch Blitz games played? No football? What, no football? Football is big in this house, but not during dinner. Dinner, the food was all great! We set up three tables in our family room and some of us ladies sat on the couch and chairs around the perimeter of the room. I loved us all being in the same room.  Pa-Pa, where were you?

Tomorrow, I am just going to be with my blessings! Just be!

May the Lord find us faithful.

 

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Happy Thanksgiving

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Monday Meanderings

 

Monday Meanderings

Lots to do here, work on kindness and accepting responsibility for responding kindly to all situations

May the Lord find us faithful.

1. Bible Study/Devotions: Following this daily reading plan:

Monday-Pentateuch

Tuesday and Wednesday- Old Testament History

Thursday- Old Testament Prophets

Friday- New Testament

Saturday/ Sunday- Psalms/Proverbs

Finishing Lies Women Believe Bible Study tomorrow night.

Reading Passionate Housewives, Desperate for God

2. Must-do:

Get back to normal routines

Return home to normal chaos levels, ie. remove all signs of painting and put things back together

Clean this house

Grocery shop

Do as much ahead of time as possible for Thursday

The dog has to have a bath

3. Zone: None this whole week, my whole house is in need of a home blessing and a little de-cluttering.

4. Train them up:

 

5. Menu:

I am just going to post our Thanksgiving feast here, the rest will be quick and healthy meals we can find!!

Turkey ( we have two coming one regular and one smoked, I do not even have to make the turkey this year!)

Stuffing/dressing – the turkeys are coming stuffed but I am making dressing for leftovers for our family

mashed potatoes–being brought

greenbean caserole–being brought

broccoli casserole – I am making this, sweetheart loves it

sweet potato casserole –me

corn–me

gravy–me

deviled eggs–me

pumpkin pie–being brought

pumpkin roll –me

blueberry cake–being brought

rolls–me

other desserts are being brought but I am not sure at this moment what they said they were bringing

I think that is all, who knows what will show up here by the time it is all said and done.

By the looks of this, I need to get this finished and get busy!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

 

Moose meat finale

I cannot sleep... I will finish this moose adventure and drink some sleepytime tea and head back to bed.

Let the wrapping begin. We place our moose in zip top freezer bags, squeeze out as much air as humanly possible and wrap that in freezer paper, label and freeze. The blessings get to help here with taping and labeling and errand running.

And the hip bone's connected to the .....

I actually did a little meat cutting this go around, usually I just package. Look at us looking so serious, we are NOT serious people.

Wow, for a lady who just a few weeks ago had no pictures of herself on her blog, I am all over this thing now.

Enjoying the fruit meat of our labors, Moose burgers. We label those packages.... Mooger.

All finished, YAHOO!

May the Lord find us faithful.

Monday

Good Monday morning,

I will be posting my Monday Meanderings and a completed moose packaging finale later today....

this is our first school day at home in 5 weeks! And we have a busy day of school and finally cleaning up from the painting and the neglect of the rest of the house while I was painting this weekend. Gotta run!

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Blogger Friend School Catch Up

Pumpkin....Oh, I love just about pumpkin anything.

My favorite pumkin thing is pumpkin roll, here is the recipe.

Pumpkin Roll

3 eggs

2/3 cup pumpkin

1 cup sugar

1 tsp. lemon juice

1 tsp. ginger

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

2 tsp. cinnamon

3/4 cups self-rising flour

Beat eggs until thick and lemon colored. Add sugar to eggs a little at a time. Add pumpkin and the rest of ingredients. Grease sheet pan and put waxed paper in pan. Flour waxed paper. Pour in batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Cool 5 minutes in pan. Sprinkle a clean kitchen towel with powdered sugar. Turn cake onto towel (remove waxed paper) and roll cake and towel up until cooled. Fill with filling.

Filling

8 ounces cream cheese

1/2 tsp. vanilla

5 TBSP butter

1 1/4 cup powdered sugar

Beat all ingredients until creamy, unroll cake, spread on filling and re-roll cake and keep covered in fridge.

Galatians 6:10 "As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith."

Laundry.....

I do the washing of the laundry and most of the folding. The blessings put their own laundry away and help with some folding. Dirty laundry is stored in the master bedroom and each blessing bedroom has a basket. I do about 2 loads of laundry and day and I do make my own laundry detergent. I love to hang laundry outside in the summer.

Personal dirty laundry.

I have learned over the past month many areas that our blessings need re-training and even some areas that need to be trained in. Thus pointing to my own weeknesses in my own heart and life. We all need some "laundry cleaned"around here.

Colossians 3:17 "And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him."  even laundry

 

 

 

Part A:

3 Bountiful Blessings

1. The moose, our freezer is filled. That was  a huge blessing.

2. I was able to see my Grandfather before he passed away.

3. I have the priviledge of being a mom that is at home. It isn't a glorified, high paying job but it is what I love doing. Being here daily to be a part of the lives of the 3 blessings we have been given is such a joy. There are days that I am tired, weary and feel like a tape recorder but that is not every day.

I think that our blessings are so bountiful that I could not list just three, but keep going on for quite some time.

Part B

Our Thanksgivings

For  quite a few years now we have hosted Thanksgiving dinners in our home. I thoroughly enjoy the food of Thanksgiving so I enjoy cooking that meal. Our meal is potluck with guests bringing dishes to share, this year I am not even making the turkey, two are being brought (one will be smoked). There will be about 15-17 people around our table(s) and I will love every minute of it! I come from a large extended family on my Mom's side so our meals were always large like this one.

Malachi 3:10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Update

Just an update for all of you who have been praying for my Grandfather, he passed away this evening. Please pray for the family for the next few days as they attend to the business of the visitation and burial. Thank you so much,

May the Lord find us faithful.

Moose meat (Warning: this post contains pictures of raw meat!)

Well, I am home from work and my sweetheart has started cutting up the moose. We have had lunch and I am getting ready to package meat (my job), the blessings will help package as well.  Here is the moose hanging in our garage last night.  The meat is hanging inside of a game bag. The moose is gutted and skinned in the field and the meat comes home like this. Moose are way too big to bring out whole.

When I got home he was finishing up the second front shoulder, they are smaller and will make mostly burger meat. Yes, he is wearing gloves, he likes to be clean! The table is covered with plastic and everything gets sanitized when we are finished.

 

A little home education time. Dad is giving an anatomy lesson, explaining where this bone is located on the moose.

Now I have to go get the kitchen table cleared off to package meat. I will have to have a blessing take a pic to add later. I must go take a picture of the hind quarter, they are huge!!

This moose is actually the biggest that sweetheart has ever taken, so it will get mounted and hung in our family room, just the antlers not the actual head. The rest of the moose antlers are on our roof, we are true Alaskans!!

May the Lord find us faithful.

A moose for our freezer!! Well, these are just his antlers...

the rest of him is going in our freezer. I am so thankful that my sweetheart got this moose. The first two pictures are just of my husband holding the antlers.....

Serious look

The true, happy, estatic "I shot this moose and filled the freezer" look.

This third picture is my favorite, he is showing the antlers to the blessings who are inside.

The best thing, right as my sweetheart walked into the house the phone rang and he answered it... it was our Pastor calling from Hawaii to give his Hawaiian hunting story, so they were able to swap hunting stories. The next couple of days will be filled with cutting and packaging meat. I will document our process and post it here for you all to see. I will keep it as blood free as possible. I am so thankful for a full freezer, or soon to be full freezer. It will be hard work but worth it in the end and it is saving us $$$ and it is healthy meat, talk about free range.

May the Lord find us faithful.

More than expected

Why is it that when we paint it takes:

1. More time than we estimate and


2. More paint than we estimate?

We woke up this morning and ate breakfast and headed to get paint. The paint is gone! Well, I have red paint but that does not help me in the dining room. I still need to give two walls a quick second coat to make sre the coverage is good. It would probably only take about 15 minutes, that is the tough part for me. I will stop tomorrow after church and purchase the said gallon of paint and possibly finish up tomorrow night after church. Then, Monday will be the hallway and entry. The kitchen will have to be Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. I really want to be finished by Wednesday night. When I finish this post I will begin cleaning up the painting supplies and making the room look fairly normal and give the floor a mopping before starting baths and bedtime routines. I really like the look of the room, blessing #2 says it looks cozy. I have to agree, it looks warm and comforting.

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Finished for today

I think I am about settled in here with a new winter template finally. It sure is much easier to set things up when you have done it before. I added a new avatar as well. I have finally decided to post a picture of just me after a short time with a picture with the blessings. I have never had my picture up before because I take 99% of the pictures around here. The ones that are usually taken of me are not avatar worthy. This one was good enough for now and now you see me instead of a blurry moose. Speaking of moose, I hope my husband finds one tomorrow while he is moose hunting, the freezer is bare of moose meat. Salmon I have, but not moose.

To do list:

• Winter template for blog


• Paint

Oh, why did I start painting? I will be glad I did when it is all finished and cleaned and put back together. 

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Painting

I know I said I wasn't going to paint but..... I am painting my dining room Bungalow Gold which happens to be the same color as the bathroom I painted in April. The kitchen will be painted Eddie Bauer Cabin Red, which I cannot find a good picture or link for that color online. Ya'll will have to wait for pictures when I finish. I am ready to spend a little time tonight attacking laundry and cleaning some other rooms to prep for a full day of painting tomorrow!!!  I have to paint the ceiling as well and that has been the major hold back on this whole project. I think this is home therapy for being out of the house so much this past few weeks. This will look so good for Thanksgiving and then with the Christmas decor as well. My snowmen will look so good infront of the red walls in the kitchen!

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Temporary adjustment

I know yesterday was a mismash post. I am truely adjusting (how does one spell truely?) I am going to google it to find out for sure. Okay I am checking our 1828 dictionary instead. It is truly. Settled. Now let's begin again. I am truly adjusting to our schedule. I am not accomplishing what I would if I were home, but we are surviving. I wouldn't want to live this way but one month, we are making it.

There are so many great posts and other things to be joining in out here in bloggy land but I am refraining. I plan on working on my past due bfs assignment about pumpkins this weekend when I will have a little time to be around.

I was in Wal-Mart last night and as of yesterday there were only 51 shopping days left. I am not there yet with the commercialized Christmas. I really do not know what we will do. I mean I love decorating my home  with all the greenery and ribbons and lights(we love lights here in the winter) and I will do so. But the commercialized part, I will pass. I really want a homespun, real meaning Christmas this year. Once I am home we will work on putting that together. I did not even venture into the adorned aisles at Wal-Mart last night, I want no part of their Christmas. I will  probably have to go into those aisles eventually for some unknown as of yet reason. I will need a few lights I am sure. Did I mention we   I love lights in December? We need light from somewhere!!!!  After all the lead paint toy issues.....

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

What have I learned from being outside of the home for 2 1/2 weeks?

I have learned alot.Daily my emotions go from being tired, frustrated, enjoyment, etc. I am tired when I get home, I am frustrated when the children do not obey, I am enjoying working with some of my friends but I only see them for a few minutes a day.

I definitely know that I am to be home, making a home that is a pleasant and peaceable place for my family and a refuge for my husband at the end of a day in the world. I see some areas that my children need "work" on within their hearts. If there is one thing I can rejoice in it is that one factor. I can begin to work on these areas immediately and really work diligently on them once we are home again.

Homeschool is definitely what I should be doing.

I feel so sorry for the children so often. They just need to be loved and cared for by their mothers and not dropped off and picked up, fed and bathed and put to bed. What a life? Not much of one. Yesterday we were out of the home all day. After a morning of teaching we went to Sam's Club for shopping, then to the dentist for 2 hours (4 appointments) and then to the grocery store for a few items that Sam's doesn't carry. We were out of the home for 10 hours!!!! I was exhausted and the blessings were tired and we still had to eat and put groceries away.  Not my idea of a good day.  But, I would rather do most of what needed to be done and get to come home today with no errands to take care of.

So, 7 more school days for me and then I am home. Home where I belong!!!!! 

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

I do not know what part this is but here is more on our trip

Sunday afternoon we went up on the farm with Nana and Poppa.

 The tractor came out and went for a ride with blessing#1.

 

 

Here is my Mom, blessing #2 and myself on the farm.

The girls went for a tractor ride.

\

The the shooting began. All the blessings shot a .22 with blessing #1 shooting the most as the only gun was a full size and the girls are used to our little .22.

 

There was cuddle time and play time

Nana and the girls set up housekeeping in the back of Poppa's truck. They had a broom and swept it out and prepared food.

Here, blessing #3 uses her wooden knife to cut some "herbs".

And just some viewing time.

Here we are at the TN state line, we never took a picture at the KY state line.

Sunday afternoon, we visited Mamaw and Papaw but we did not get good pictures.  Monday we went to a state park for lunch and took the long back way home over Fonde Mountain.

Blessing #1 at the top of the mountain.

Monday evening we enjoyed playing outside and visiting with family and friends.

This picture is blurry but it is my brother and sister playing baseball with the my blessings and their cousin.

A friend came to visit with me.

Tuesday we took it easy around the house but I did go surprise Pa-Pa's sister, she manages the craft store at the local national park.  Pa-Pa called her so she could hear her when she was surprised.

Wednesday, Dollywood Day, in Pigeon Forge, TN

Here we are at the top of Clinch Mountain on the way.

 

We stopped and ate at Cracker Barrel on the way, of course I took pictures.

Oh how I miss front porches with rockers.

I took tons of pictures inside but this is the main jist of it all. They had fun and I go soaked on a water ride!

Thursday night we went out to eat with my sweetheart's family.

My husband's aunt and all the grandkids were making paper airplanes out of the paper napkin rings and attacking each other with them, they had alot of fun.

Friday night.... we were in the south and it is fall. We went to a high school football game. Not just any high school, but the high school we attended and my husband played football. My son was excited about going to this game.

Saturday morning before heading to the airport we took a few pictures of the four generations that were together.

Well, we are finished, I am sure you are all glad. Now, I can get back to my regularly scheduled blogging.  It's November.... time to switch to Thanksgiving mode. Only 9 more days of subbing....I can't wait to be home again.

May the Lord find us faithful.