I got a box in the mail today!

Oh! Our mail lady was good to me today!  She brought me a box filled with goodies all the way from Turkey!  My sis sent me a get-well box!  Thank you sis!!!!   Sweetie Pie was home with me and she brought it in from the mail lady.  We opened it right away- of course!  Here's what was inside:

A lovely key chain/zipper pull, however the pottery heart-shaped bead broke.  I glued it back as best as I could but one side of it was pulverized so it didn't quite work....I'll figure something out. 

 

My first turkish rug (a.k.a. mouse pad-I love your thinking Sis!) it's a little small, but a good start.  I suspect when it's not where it should be(on my desk) it will be being utilized by a barbie doll... or polly pockets.  I'm forseeing future arguments between Sweetie Pie and myself...  

A jar of honey- florally sweet, will be yummy over yogurt with fruit and granola. I love honey!

Now for the other item, the pickles.  I remembered my Sis telling me about these, how good they were, and something else but I didn't bother to recall it.  So we opened this jar immediately, and dove right in.  Yum! I took the first bite with Sweetie Pie looking on, and since she likes pickles, she got the next bite.  Now I start feeling a warm non-pickle feeling in my mouth and then I more fully remembered what Sis told me about these. They are pickled with hot peppers and garlic(notice them on the label?)!  About this time Sweetie Pie is over at the sink spitting her bite out, and I am laughing very hard!   I very much like these pickles. Sweetie Pie?- not so much!  I'm sure S will like them, but I'm not real sure how many he will get, these are really good and I'm not a pickle person.

Thanks Sis for a wonderful box of goodies!  You made my day!  

Now reading....

Ohhhh!  I am soooo excited!  The UPS delivery man( God bless him!) just dropped something wonderful to me!  I have been waiting on these to show up...  I ordered them back in January!  Now while I am waiting on the books I requested from the library, I have a couple wonderful books to read(that I don't have to give back!!!!)! 

More info on the chickens I will someday keep.  Boy, when I actually get some, I will be VERY knowledgeable!  Don't you just love chickens? They are so funny to watch.

And for when I am actually able to spend some significant time in the kitchen, after gathering the bounty from my home garden(HA!), this treasure will come in very handy!  It stands to answer some of my lingering questions regarding canning and the proper techniques for various things. 

The author of these books has a blog that I follow.  She has give-aways sometimes on her blog of her canned chutneys and other various things, but alas I haven't won any yet... I hold out hope that I may win one day.  She is in the process of writing a couple more books for this series, and I am looking forward to them!

Ashley's blog can be found here.  Stop over and check her out, you will be glad you did.

PS  Had my first beer in 3 weeks tonight.  Can you say "AHHHHHHHH"? : )

Get Stuffed...

Sorry for the hiatius, I had an accident.  A rope swing accident.  Compression fracture in my vertebra.  Can you say OWWWWW?  I CAN!  But, who doesn't love a rope swing, I still do, but will be more sure of the capacity of the rope next time....

The child's party whom I did this at, is the purpose of the sorta-tutorial that I had planned on posting right when I got home.  I am a couple weeks late, but better late than never.  So here goes:

What can you make with these?

Regular ordinary mittens(@ Target for a buck!)? 

Maybe so, but if you consult this book you will find many things to quick change them into!

These particular mittens were calling out to become a bear. 

So after cutting apart the mittens, and finding something to become a shirt, I stuffed the appropriate items.

(sorry for the fuzziness, still working on the macro setting and getting the hang of it...)

After assembly, and shirt construction, and keeping in mind the recepient of this bit of cuteness who is VERY into Bear Gryls from the Man VS Wild  tv show, this is the end result.

HEHEHEHE, Bear Gryls!  Complete with napsack and water bottle, ready to go on adventure with a sweet red-headed boy!  Here is Bear with some of his friends(with instructions from the book):

He was both sad and happy to leave our house and his new friends, but I know he will be back to visit!

As for me, I am still recovering.  It will be 6-8 weeks before I am hopefully back to normal.  Not too many cooking adventures will be happening in our household for a while yet, maybe some creative ones, but mostly reading and knitting... 

Until next time....

Chickens and Quilts

The 4-H fair, otherwise know locally as the Southeastern Youth Fair, is going on this week.  It features the hard work of many kids around our county, some who live on farms and some who don't.  Kids who belong to the 4-H clubs pick projects to do, or animals to raise, and then they are showcased and sometimes auctioned off at the youth fair. (Try an $82,000.00 lamb- yes the zeros are correct!) It's a good lesson in life for these kids to learn, budgeting, costs of doing business, the circle of life, making amazing profits once in a while, etc, etc...   
I got to go two times this past week- once by myself and once with the kids.  The day I went by myself, they had cows in the livestock area.  I hadn't really planned to go to the fair that day, but found myself parking in the parking lot and then wandering the aisles.  Because I hadn't planned on going that day, I was wearing inappropriate shoes for perusing a cow barn to say the least! flip-flops- yeah, don't do that! I was fortunate enough to miss the cow patties, but it was muddy, and it's hard to miss that when there are very few paved areas....   The youths were doing a very good job also of keeping the aisles clean- THANK YOU! 
The next day, after I picked up the kids from school, we went again.  They have a couple friends from school that have chickens entered.  We got to see those- one even won a prize!- Grand Champion, Bantam division!  (Woo Hoo- GO CAMP!)  I didn't get a chance to photograph the big winner, but I did photograph his sister's chicken.  It should also win a prize 'cause it looks just like her brother's!

There were also many other kinds of chickens. Asain, Polish, old English, Silkie, and others I can't remember.  Roosters were cock-a-doodle-dooing like crazy, I guess in competition with each other?  It was hilarious listening to them all!  The hens were also funny to listen to, all talking to each other(the little gossips!) and scratching at the floor endlessly looking for something tastier to eat than the food in their cups.  

Here's photos of some of the other kinds of chickens:

This guy was pacing, pacing, pacing.  Love that tail!

This guy was one of the big ones, though there were some even bigger ones there!

HAHAHAHA  This is a Polish breed.  Diggin' that headress!

This is him proclaiming his fabulousness!

I don't remember what kind this was, but all the feathers, instead of laying down on the body, curl forward and are poofy.

This is a bearded silkie breed- the poor thing can't even see!  It looked like a cloud puff!  That pointy grayish-black thing is the beak!  ?????

This is an Old English breed, tiny little things!  Katie would now like to have chickens.

Fletcher wants bunnies, this one LOVED him! 

And now for the quilt section of this posting.  For those of you who have seen me feverishly knitting my heart out on some little, grey squares, the finished product is now available for your viewing pleasure.  

I finally finished it, and it came out too small.  What a joke!  I made it bigger and warmer by adding some edges and backing out of flannel with some sandwiched batting, to make a sort of quilt/knit blanket.  I started out by crocheting some of the squares together and then changed my mind and whipstitched the rest, henceforth the crazy look.  Oh well, there's a lot of love in it and I KNOW my Zman will LOVE IT!  He's only been waiting since Christmas for it, and asks me every time we talk if it's done yet.  He will have a surprise in the mail hopefully tomorrow! : )   

  

Happy Valentines!

Yes, that's a walnut.  Do you suppose that maybe this is God's way of saying walnuts are good for your heart, or maybe a surprise "I love you " from him?????  Could be, and I happen to think it's a completely natural way of saying Happy Valentines to yall, with no additives or preservatives or artificial sweetners! 

 

Here's some valentines I made(and one was for a birthday present).  Inspiration found here.  It's another blog I follow, very talented lady who also happens to be a nurse, she does some very creative things and paints beautifully. 

Short post today, going to spend some time with my Valentines.  Yall enjoy your time with yours!

Laundry

OK  Does anyone else(my sister excluded for reasons to be revealed) get tired of doing laundry?  I can not get over the amount of clothes my family generates!- and I am minus a teenager( he did his own laundry anyhow)!  Do piles of laundry just appear in your children's rooms as well?  Even though you just emptied their laundry baskets??????  Sometimes I can find things still folded up in the "dirty" clothes...  can you say infuriating?  The laziness that abounds in my children just blows me away sometimes, I am not raising them to be this way, so why are they?????  UGH! 

Now my husband's clothes add alot of bulk to the pile.  He's not huge, but he doesn't wear a size small either. 

I, of course, am perfect. I never generate anything of consequence to the pile.  HEHEHE Just kidding.  Of course I do, but why is it that my piles of folded clothes are dwarfed by the other members of the family?

The reason my sister is excluded from being tired of doing laundry is because she does laundry as a way of life, for the next two years at least.  My brother-in-law is stationed in Turkey( I am envisioning a trip in which I amass many Turkish rugs, tiles, art and dishes!) at the moment and I guess Turkish people don't wear that many clothes.  Or they don't believe in wearing clean clothes all the time?  Or maybe they just really like to do laundry?  My sister says it's because the door openings are very narrow and they couldn't fit a regular size washer/dryer in there(I personally would petition for some renovation : )).  Whatever the case may be, my sister's washing and drying machine is a piece of work!  She can fit about 5 pieces of clothing in at a time and then to dry the clothes she has to empty out a container of water every time a load dries, and she didn't find this out for a while cause the directions are in Turkish!  Now, her husband, like mine, isn't huge, but he don't wear no small either!  And the boys have had to cut down on the amount of clothing they change each day for the sake of their mother's sanity.  I'll bet she's glad she has boys instead of girls right now!  You can find a link to her blog about her initial "laundry shock" here.  She's got it down to a science now.  When she came over for my dad's surgery(she was here for about 3 weeks), her husband was overwhelmed to put it mildly.  We had a few giggles about that I have to admit.  She was in for a huge dose of Mommy Appreciation when she finally got home.

Back to America now.  This is the pile I have for today.  It consists of clothes from this past weekend.

Me thinks me children doth wear too many clothes!

However, my Pollyanna-side says to my Laundry-overwhelmed side: " Hey! One day's worth of clothes looks like this to my sister, so you really don't have it that bad!"  Thanks for keeping me positive Sis- love you! And just remember- one day, you'll have your ultra big washer and non-empty dryer back- YEA!!! 

Sunday afternoons

What are Sunday afternoons good for? 

S will tell you they are good for naps. Extra loooooong ones in front of a TV, in a lazy-boy or a bed(and it doesn't matter which one in the house!). 
The Rocket will tell you they are good for running around the neighborhood, with friends, in the cold, doing God only knows what. 
Sweetie Pie will tell you they are good for working on Valentines, which is what she did.  ALL AFTERNOON!  She got about 7 done, one for each of her teachers, and some for her brothers, and some for her cousins and one for her Dad.  I think she worked the hardest on this one. It is so sweet and he will LOVE it soooo much!

Isn't that sweet? It's her running to Daddy after he has gotten home from work.  AWWWWWWW!

Leave it to a girl to spread out her stuff all over a table and work for hours on valentines for her family and teachers!  I love girls!  (I love my boys too, but they don't do this kind of thing- ever! I'm just sayin...)

I will tell you that a Sunday afternoon is good for perusing all your favorite blogs while drinking irish cream spiked coffee and trying to finish the Sunday newspaper and making blueberry pie!

I tried it al-a-mode of course! (is there any other way to eat blueberry pie?) and it was good!

Not a bad day at all!