Homemaking on the Homestead

  I usually make potato salad like my mother did.. mayo, pickle juice, mustard, salt, pepper, garlic, hard boiled eggs, onions, pickles and of course potatoes... never really measure anything. Last night we were grilling some steaks on the bbq and Tobin really wanted potato salad to go with the dinner. But I was completely out of pickles. So I searched online and found a recipe that I modified somewhat and it was delicious!! Tobin and Emily loved it and want me to make it again..   I thought I would share it with you..   Potato Salad 4 very large potatoes (I am guessing about 4lbs) ½ to 1 onion, chopped finely 6 hard boiled eggs salt, to taste     Dressing 2 eggs, beaten 1/3 cup cane juice crystals 1 ½ t cornstarch ½ cup vinegar ½ cup half in half 1 t prepared yellow mustard ¼ cup butter 1 cup mayonnaise ( I used my homemade mayo and it worked great) salt & pepper, to taste   Wash an...

Today we got the garden in!!   Woo Hoo!!     Six of us (me and the kids) spent 2 1/2 hours in the beautiful sunshine and got everything planted..   now we just have to keep it going! LOL..   We planted lettuce, cabbage, summer squash, green beans, corn, flowers and tomato and cucumber plants….   I have a HUG E garden area and in the past have planted the whole thing.   I knew I was not up for that this year so we planted about 1/3 of it..    Here is a pic.. not a whole lot to see at this point..   but soon it will be full of veggies! .. This morning when I got up I decided to get the angel food cake made for shortcake. I knew I would be outside working in the garden and then it would be time to make dinner and I wanted to get it done before that. When I was out shopping yesterday I bought 8lbs of strawberries at Costco.   The kids had already eaten 4lbs of them and if I did not get that cake made the other 4lbs would be...

    The sun came out this week it was so nice!   Hubby did some wood gathering; time to start another year of getting in the winter wood.   We still start a fire some days to take the chill off, but I see that changing soon.   We are almost out of wood now.      This week Tobin spent a couple hours or so letting Leanne get some driving practice in.   She has her permit and is now working on her license.   She will be driving by summer’s end, I am sure.      I finally ordered seeds for my garden this week, they should arrive today.   I was not sure if I was going to have a garden but my girls really wanted one and I figured this summer does not look anywhere near as busy as last summer was so I think we can stay on top of it.   I will also buy some plants (tomatoes and cucumbers) and hopefully we will have it all planted by this weekend.   Tobin rototilled the garden on Monday for the 3rd time so it sho...

  My recent blog post “to-do lists revisited” I talked about my kids doing chores.   I had a comment/question:   Hi Crystal, how do you get your children involved with your chores? Mine do not want to help, they want to play. When I force them to help, they complain the whole time. I am so exhausted of asking all the time for them to do their chores - just set up the table, fill the glass with water. They are 7 and 10 and I don't think that asking for help to set up the table is expecting too much from them? What do you think? No, I don’t think you are asking to much from them in any way.   You asked how I get my children involved with chores.   It is part of their childhood training.   Chores are not an option or something annoying that must be done.. it is just part of life..   kind of like eating and school, etc..    It is a basic that when we make messes.. we clean them up. It is part of living real life.     I...

Sherri asked in my last blog post how to sign up for my newsletter.   I send it out through Yahoo Groups.   You can go to the newsletters homepage:   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HomesteadHappenings/    and sign up.   I also have a sign up box on the main page of my website:   http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com   just scroll about halfway down the page.  

I had a comment that I thought I would share and chat about…      How do you keep from becoming overwhelmed and not getting things done on your list as fast as you'd like?      Good question!!     When I read this the first thing that came to my mind was..   expectations!      We all have certain expectations of what we want to accomplish in a day.   If I was becoming overwhelmed by not getting things done as quickly as I would like then I would have to ask myself if my expectations for what I am actually able to do in a day just too much.      We are all in different places in life and when I had a lot of young children in my home my expectations of what I could reasonably accomplish were always to high.   I had to scale them back and adjust to what I could make happen in a day..   you know, my brain said I could do it all, but real life around me showed me I couldn’t!    Th...

    I have been back from my vacation for a couple of days now. I have been working to catch up on laundry, make bread, grocery shopping, food preps and getting life back into a normal routine. Hubby headed back to work last night and I was sad that life can’t always be vacation! LOL.. but I guess they call that retirement and I am sure not ready for that..    One good thing I have to say is that I think we brought the sunshine and heat home with us! While we were gone enjoying 95 degree days it was 55 degrees and wet here (it was 95 degrees when we boarded the plane to come home and 50, cold and wet when we got off the plane).. .  Yesterday started warming up and today is supposed to be near 80.. and I will take that!!    Since I have been home I have been working to fill the orders that came in to my country store while I was gone. Some orders are already in the mail and I plan to have everything out my Monday...

  Crystals Country Store is on Vacation (and so am I )   All orders placed as of Monday May 4th will be sent out on Monday May 18th.