Homemaking on the Homestead

  Today not a whole lot got done around the homestead. We did do some housework, washed a couple loads of laundry and made dinner. I enjoyed the more relaxed day a lot. Tobin had an extra day off this week and it is always so great to have him home. He and I went to town one day this last week. We had errands to run and went out to lunch. Both of us enjoy our date times quite a bit. It is nice to get away and just have a little couple time.   When we left our home it was snowing. Not a lot of snow but enough to make the roads slushy. By the time we got out of the mountains and into the city it was just raining. I called the kids just before we were heading home and they said it had snowed all day. As we drove home it became more and more white the closer to home we got. By the time we crossed the bridge and were making it back to our home the roads were covered in snow. We came across 2 accidents and lots of flas...

  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Our family sure did. For the first time in many years we did not have any extended family join us. The kids were a bit down about that. However we had a small and simple Christmas morning that was very un-chaotic and enjoyable. We started a tradition (did not know it was going to be a tradition when we started this, lol) that Christmas morning breakfast is cereal. I don’t typically buy my kids cereal and when, on the rare occasions, I do I try and buy something that is as relatively healthy as possible. The kids would always walk up the cereal aisle at the store longingly looking at the sugary kid cereal. So a couple of years ago I bought them several boxes of it to eat on Christmas morning and they all went crazy about it.  So I did it last year too. This year before the kids got up I put the pretty Christmas table cloth on and set bowls and spoons with pretty cloth napkins all around t...

    Well Christmas day is upon us! I have been quite busy this last week. It seemed to be a frenzy of packing orders and getting them out in the hopes I could do my part in helping to get them to my customers in time for Christmas. I spent so much time on this that I did not get my Christmas gifts finished… but I saw this coming and thanks to the internet was able to get some gifts sent to my daughter & son-in-law and grandson in time. Tobin and I put together a little box for my sister-in-law too and got that out, hopefully in time. So I think that about does it this year. Tobin’s dad, brother and wife are all local. Now I still need to finish wrapping the kids gifts .. do you notice a small note of not being well prepared here???   Yea, me too.. so next year the new plan will be… plan EARLY!   I am thankful to watch my little internet business grow and now I just need to make my own...

This was just so cute.. I had to share it..  A friend of mine (thanks Catherine!  ) on my boards shared this...   

  Whew.. what a day! But what a fun day! We had 16 children all making gingerbread houses yesterday.. We had a few issues.. like houses falling apart and had some tireless mom’s working to put them back together. The kids really seemed to enjoy themselves.  . Here are some pics of all the fun… - - - - - - - - - - - Emily was very happy with how it all turned out.. and I was too. She is already making plans for next years party!  

  Well tomorrow is the big day.. 16 young children will be here at our home making gingerbread houses. We did this last year and it was a great success so we are doing it again this year.. only with twice as many kids.. we may have a tradition starting here..    Emily and Leanne love making gingerbread houses. Usually they make a big one each year. This year with Emily working and Leanne very busy they decided to forgo this tradition. But they really wanted to still have some gingerbread house fun.. so planned another gingerbread house party. They both stayed up one night till the wee hours of the morning making dough and cutting out house parts.    Here are the house parts all stacked and ready for Saturday: -     Today and tomorrow morning she will be making frosting, lots of frosting..   There are two types of frosting to make.. one the “glue” that holds the houses together and the other is ...

  Well I do believe the reality of my daughter Leanne’s mission trip hit home yesterday when we went and applied for a passport. I think up to this point it was all talk.. and now it looks like the ball is rolling on this.   Leanne has had and interest in missionary work for some time now. Her trip to Mexico really lit a spark in her and she wanted to do more. She talked with our pastor and he recommended looking into Teen Missions International . His son along with a few other young people, from the church he pastored several years ago, went and he has known of others who went and gave them an enthusiastic recommendation. So Leanne began to research this and pray about working with this organization. We prayed about it, looked into it ourselves and discussed this and decided that if this is where her heart is at then we would support this.    In October she signed up for the summer of ’08. She received her pa...

  Wow, it is Friday already.. this week just flew by… Christmas and the New Year will be here before I know it.   I am in a Sally Fallon (Nourishing Traditions) mode again. I have incorporated a lot of her methods, like soaking grains and beans, but my ability to do this regularly is not a matter of habit yet. It takes a lot of pre-planning! So when life gets busy I fall back into my regular habits (which are still healthy! ). This week however, I made beef stock for the first time. I started it on Tuesday using about 7lbs of beef soup bones, onions and carrots. I let simmer for 26 hours. Then strained it and put it in the fridge on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday morning I pulled it out, skimmed all the fat off the top and proceeded to make soup for last nights dinner. Also on Wednesday night I put some rice on to soak with water and yogurt in it. I cooked this up on Thursday. I added some beef stew me...

  We attempted to go to church this morning but the roads were to slushy and snowy so we came home instead. I took my Sunday nap and when I got up Emily had been busy making sugar cookie dough and the boys (Jacob, Isaac and their friend Andy) were busy cutting out Christmas cookies (although some looked a bit more like space aliens then Christmas cookies, ). Now they are decorating them with frosting and sprinkles (with Sierra’s help).  Emily was not sure the boys were enjoying this by the way they were acting but I assured her they were very much having fun… but since they were guys they had a reputation to uphold and could not appear ‘to’ into this.. LOL..  -   My week was nice. Tobin and I went to town one day and then his weekend was kind of cut short by a mandatory FAA class he had to take at work. He had to go into work during the day and had the night off, so it gave us the next day free. We spent the day at ...