Homemaking on the Homestead

    Hope everyone had a blessed Resurrection Day! My girls and I made a nice dinner which consisted of pot roast, cheesy garlic potatoes, coleslaw, peas & corn and a chiffon cake.    Now I am looking ahead at the week and see lots on my to-do list. I have been doing some spring cleaning. I started last week in my basement storage area. I have been going through all my storage totes and purging lots of stuff. I don’t desire to be a collector of stuff yet somehow despite my feelings on this I still end up with too much, and I don’t like it. Maybe after helping to clean out my grandmothers and step grandmother’s homes and last year my father in laws home I saw the huge accumulation of things that they acquired over the years.  We gave away and hauled to the Good Will and the dump lots of “stuff”. It made me wonder what is the purpose of “stuff”? How much time have I spent over the years, st...

Monday: BBQ Beef in crockpot over brown rice Salad   Tuesday: Tacos w/ all the trimmings   Wednesday: Spaghetti Salad French bread   Thursday: Yummy Pinto Beans w/hamburger Salad Crackers   Friday: BBQ Crockpot Meatballs W/ crockpot mac and cheese Salad   Saturday: Chili (or chili bean soup ) Salad Chips and Salsa   Sunday: Cheesy Ham Casserole Brown Rice Pilaf

  I am getting ready to head to our nearest little town with my older girls. Tomorrow the youth group at our church is holding a bake sale to raise funds for Leanne’s mission trip and for another young girl who is going on a missions trip this summer as well. We need a few ingredients that we don’t normally buy and some small size paper plates.    Here is what the girls are making (and none of this is healthy stuff! LOL):   Rice Crispy Treats Banana Muffins Chocolate Chip Cookies Cinnamon Rolls   When we get home I think I will be doing some crocheting. I am still trying to find time to finish my basket weave afghan. My afternoon looks rather calm actually. Which is nice because yesterday was very busy. I made nearly 35 pounds of soap and that seemed to encompass most of my afternoon. I was quite thankful that Emily had put crockpot chili on in the morning and Leanne made the coleslaw at dinner time. Sierra helped them ...

  Yesterday my baby turned 10!! As with all my children’s birthdays I always ask the same question.. Where did the time go!? And Who said he could get older!?   But they do grow up.     He had a very nice birthday. Grandpa came and brought pizza, which has been our little family tradition for many years now. Isaac’s friend Andy came and even Hannah was able to stop by and wish him happy birthday.        Here a few more pics..   My girls made him Dirt Pudding.. I got the idea and recipe from one of the ladies on my message board and it was a big hit (thanks Ann )! They put gummy worms in the pudding. Definitely a boy thing! LOL… They also made him cupcakes because we were not sure how candles would stay in the pudding..      -   He got a new bow and some arrows from us and loved that. Went outside to test it out even though it was raining.      -...

  Monday Tacos (did not have them last week due to fixing chicken noodle soup instead)   Tuesday Crockpot Cheesy Chicken and Rice Crockpot Bean Dish Salad   Wednesday Isaac’s Birthday! Pizza Buffalo Wings (maybe)   Thursday Laurie’s Mac and Cheese w/ham Fresh fruit platter Salad   Friday Chili   or maybe Crockpot Chili Coleslaw Cornbread or tortilla chips   Saturday Baked chicken legs Mashed potatoes Broccoli Carrot raisin salad   Sunday BBQ beef (cooked in crockpot with homemade bbq sauce ) Brown rice Salad    

  I got a few questions from my post on cleaning and maintaining your cast iron frying pans  that I will try and answer:   Amy Jo,   asked where I bought my pans at. I bought them at a sportsman type store. The ones where they sell items for hunting, camping, fishing, etc..  The brand I have is, Lodge.   Anonymous made the comment that when your pans are seasoned well, no food sticks to them. This is true. The longer you use them, season them, etc.. the better they get!   Another anonymous person asked what to do if you don’t have coconut oil. You can use oil. I have used olive oil but I have not been as happy with the results as when I use coconut oil. You can find coconut oil pretty easily. Walmart even sells it.   She also asked if I use soap, no I don’t. I have written more in detail about this on my website. You can find my article here: http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/casti...

  Today was a very nice day at home. I did some housekeeping and spent some time sewing with Leanne. She has not shown a lot of interest in sewing in the past so I did not push it. Then she had something she wanted to make and so we did today. Now she is eager to finish a couple other projects and learn more.   The house was nice and quiet.. the boys were at their friends house and Sierra was busy with her blogs and updating her ipod and I was assisting in the sewing and getting dinner on, and on top of that the weather was sunny and beautiful.. it was a pleasant afternoon.   Dinner was very easy. I had leftover spaghetti sauce and noodles and made that into a spaghetti casserole. And had salad left from last night.. so I had dinner on the table pretty quick!  I will post the recipe tomorrow. It was delicious and a great use of my leftovers.   With my housework pretty much caught up on I now need to move onto soap mak...

  Seasoning a cast iron frying pan is on going process.  I bought my first cast iron frying pan a couple of years ago and just love them.  Here is how I keep mine clean:   I used the frying pan to cook up some veggies and then I cooked up some hamburger after that to use in spaghetti sauce     When I was done using the pan I poured water into it and let it come to a boil       Then I used my little scrub brush to loosed up and remove all the food bits that were left on the pan     Then I poured the water out and rinsed the pan       I used a scrubbie pad to remove all food     I put the pan back on the stove to let the water evaporate and let the pan heat up.  The heat is what kills the germs     When the pan was hot I used coconut oil to reseason the pan.  I don’t use Crisco.  Crisco is hydrogenated oil and I don’t use it for cooking or anything else but maybe soap makin...

  Monday’s are a strange day. Part of me is gearing up for a new week and part of me is winding down for the weekend. Tobin works over the weekend and then has his days off during the week. We do manage to work this out. So this morning the part of me that is gearing up for a new week has already started working on the to-do list around my home.   Here is what it looks like for today (by this time in the morning some of this has already been done):   Laundry – 3 to 5 loads, actually have not counted to find out the exact number Clean up the kitchen, sweep and mop the floors Straighten up the laundry room: sweep and mop the floor Vacuum the living room and vacuum the furniture off to remove the dog hair Clean the bathroom Sweep and mop the dining room floor Bring in firewood Food preps, which won’t be much today, we are eating leftovers and no baking needs to be done   Of course I don’t do all of this myself. I men...

  Sunday BBQ Ribs (I cooked these today in the crockpot and covered them with my Texas BBQ Sauce ). Crockpot Macaroni and Cheese Salad   Monday Leftovers   Tuesday Potato Sausage Chowder Tortilla chips, salsa Salad   Wednesday Baked chicken legs Brown rice pilaf Peas   Thursday Crockpot lasagna French bread Salad   Friday Navy bean soup Salad Crackers   Saturday Tacos

  Well I took a blogging vacation.. not intentionally but rather by default. I had a huge and building and getting on the verge of overwhelming to-do list that had to be tackled. It was getting to the point I was not sure where to even start! I shared my feelings about this with my hubby and we talked about where to start and what I needed to work on and then the next day he started the day by making me coffee and directing the kids to do their chores and that gave me the time and encouragement to start the first thing on the list. After that was done I started the next and the next and pretty soon I was on a roll! It started feeling so good to get things done that I just kept on going for the next several days. These were not necessarily major things (some things were bigger than others) but an accumulation of lots of stuff that had to be dealt with (make appts, mail off pkgs, catch up on my bookkeeping, make phone calls, make soap, label an...