Time flys when you are having fun

Or at least that is what they say. I just know for sure time has flown by this year. Mostly this fall. It seems like I have been away from home since early last fall. I guess I kinda have tho. Starting in September with the hunting lodge, the loss of my Aunt Ann, home for a bit, house sitting, another hunting season at the lodge, home for a few days and the final round of the hunting lodge. I think the hunting season is over for this year till September at least. Unless Carl comes up with another brainy idea. And knowing him, its possible. But I do enjoying helping out at the hunting lodge and it keeps my aunts memory alive for me.

Back at home not much to do in the way of gardening or farming. Other than keep the chickens fed and watered. Water is not much of a problem with all the rain we have had and are presently having. The temperatures are nice tho. I wont complain at all about that. It was in the 60's here today. I even had the patio door open for a while. I guess it helps that the patio door is off the kitchen and I was cooking supper adding to the heat in here. Rodger came home from work feeling like crap. He said he had been so tired all day and just felt bad. I think he went to bed around 6 , right after supper. Not normal for him. But he was up a lil bit ago and said his back did feel better. He has had several people off work with the flu and such. Some schools in surrounding counties considered calling off school due to illness. For what ever reason my arthritis has flared up pretty bad today. Not sure if its over use of my joints, the weather or just plain age. But dang, its hurty. I guess the one joint that has most of my attention right now is my big toe. OK laugh it up. But do you know how annoying it is to walk with your big toes sore, stiff an hurting? Well it hurts. I guess if that is the worst of my problems, its all good. With all the work at the hunting lodge this fall, I feel really good about my over-all well being. I did well. Not as much pain as usual. Not as much soreness as usual. I can live with this. I do still have major bouts with fatigue but IF time and events allow I can most times sleep that off. That is IF I can crash and sleep 12 to 14 hours straight. It may take a couple days but I feel better after the fact. With fibro, rest is essential or your mental clarity goes out the window. It seems life and your whole body just stalls. I guess it kinda does.

Any who, its almost Christmas time and time to spend some quality time with family an friends. In our case mostly family. Our kids, Rob, Amoy and lil Liam will be home end of this week. Cant wait to see them. We have not seen our Rob since April when we were in Nevada for Liam's birth. That lil boy has grown bunches too and is crawling, pulling up, and will probably be trying to walk soon. Time flys when ya have a lil one, they change daily. So this grammy needs to get some junk food made to spoil the lil one with while he is home.

Oh its so nice to be home in my own world, sleeping in my own bed, on the down side, I have to eat all my own cooking. I have a mental list of several projects I want to get done this winter. Yeas I said
"mental" list. I have a couple quilts I want to finish. Some crochet projects I want to work on and a few embroidery pieces I want to do. Not sure where I got the silly notion I want to make a bunch of embroidery pieces to later set up into a quilt. But the idea is kinda stuck in my mind. Although it may change after I complete one square. But those projects are for when I am house bound in really cold nasty weather if we have any later this winter. But for now I really should be in the summer kitchen getting more of our potatoes canned up so we don't have such a large loss on them. They just are not keeping as well as they should. Not sure if it has to do with the wet growing season or a disease or just what their problem is. But if I get busy and can the good ones they for sure will stay edible till spring. We had to buy sweet potatoes this fall for the first time in forever. Ours did nothing. Well they did the best they could in the grass that took over. They yielded about 2/3 of a 5 gallon bucket in 2 rows 100ft long. May as well say they did nothing. But I got those lil fellows canned up last fall too so its all good. We can use the ones we have stored fresh first before they sprout and save the canned ones will we run out of fresh. They will keep in the jar. I never did but still want to make an can some goulash like my friend Rosie makes. I still remember the taste and it was so dang good. Meat, beef or in my case venison, cooked long with lots of onion in a tomato like sauce. I remember she served it with kraut. Oh my, so good. I guess I should get her recipe to make sure I can get close to the same taste. Nothing in life is more disappointing that having your taste buds set for a certain taste and then it not meet up to your specifications.

I think tomorrow will be a chicken noodle soup day. Rodger not feeling good, its cool and rainy. Yep a good soup day. Good ole comfort food. Nothing better.

Not much else happening here, so till next time, Merry Christmas and many blessings from the McGuire homestead to your family.

Stella

All done, on to the next project

I worked on the baby quilt last night till the wee hours of this morning. I got it tacked and it looked pretty good. The extra padding behind the lil bear blocks sure made a difference.

This  is with the tacking done. Now the tricky part is getting the borders on and finishing the whole thing. I worked on that today and finally finished.

 

Here it is, all done and ready to take with me this week and give it to Rob and Amoy for the lil one. You know how they say you cant always see the forest for the trees. My friend Anna and I were talking on the phone last night and she brought some differences to my attention. The bears are all the same at first glance, but upon looking at the details they are all different. Really the only thing they have in common is that they are all in some shade of blue. Each bear has a different expression on its face, their bows are different colors, and some of them don't have hands. Hell I had not noticed the lil things. I didn't see the forest for the trees. Thanks sissy  for bringing this to my attention. My poor lil grandson will get my very first attempt at making a quilt. I sure learned a lot making this lil project.

 I still need to get busy and crochet  the lil cocoon  and hat for Liam. I will work on that and ship it later. Hope I have more time to sit still when we get back from the wedding.  Its a good thing that I don't sleep much at night I guess. Come spring I will be busy with the greenhouse and gardens and outdoor stuff so the only time I can tinker with crocheting and such is at night when its too dark to be outside plundering around. I still don't really have my craft room/closet organized well yet. I think I need some shelves to store boxes for crafting stuff and shoes and such. At least it would look a lil better. Thas not really on any list of priorities at this point. It works for me and there should not be anyone in my closet anyway. 

I guess I am the worst for procrastinating. I did finally get out of town yesterday and get my nails done. I had planned on attending a friends Pampered Chef party but that did not work out. I had to wait 2 hours before they got to me to do my nails. Gosh the stupid stuff us girls go thru to look like a lady. I actually like the acrylic nails. They work out well for me. Lower maintenance than real ones. They even look nice if I have to work in the garden with em. Thas my kind of product that can stand up to my abuse. 

Not much else happening here on the farm today, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Pushing the deadline

Sounds just like me doesn't it? Always pushing the deadline. I have put off going out of town to find the thread to tack the baby quilt that I have started till dang it its not long till we fly to Nevada. If I keep messing around I wont have it done to take with me. I guess I will go out of town tomorrow and get the stuff to finish it up. I just need the thread to tack the quilt with and add the border and it will be done. I am going to get my nails done tomorrow anyway so I can pick up the thread while I am out and about. That is IF it don't snow. I don't do snow much less drive in it. Rodger cant go he is on call this weekend with his work so he must stay in town.

I was going to get those things done today but I am still having issues with leg cramps. I did go out to a friends house and got my hair cut today and on the way home I had to stop in the middle of the road because my right leg, the one on the gas pedal , started cramping really bad. So with it being 25 plus miles to the next town to the nail salon I thought I might not should try driving with muscle cramps. I didn't go. I came on home and puttered around the house. House cleaning, laundry and such.

Rodger picked up 20 lbs of ground beef from the slaughter house today and brought it home. I made about 15 lbs of it into burger patties and stacked those with parchment paper between the layers on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer to freeze solid. Tomorrow they will go into zip top bags and be stored in the freezer for later use. I did freeze 1 of the 5 lb packs into 1/2 lb patties so I can add a half lb to each lb of ground venison when I make meatloaf. Meatloaf needs a lil bit of fat in it to make good gravy in the pan. So we tried out the burger for supper tonight and it makes really good hamburgers. I feel good knowing we will not get food poisoning this time. Rodger said he stood there and watched them grind the burger for us. He had ordered it and it was to be ready today and as he got there to pick it up they had just started grinding. That is about as fresh as you can get right there. No ammonia smell , no pink sludge in it, and didn't spend who knows how long getting to our dinner table. I sure feel better serving that to the family.

Not much happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

No more for us

No more store bought burger that is. OR fresh produce either. Not sure which one made us both sick but either one could be the culprit. We rarely buy store bought meat or fresh produce of any kind. I guess I am gonna have to figure out a way to grow a small amount of lettuce for a sandwich on the window sill in the summer kitchen or just not have any. Dang that is really bad. After reading things online and researching how foods get to your local store it is no wonder people get sick. And die. Not to mention the detrimental effects they have on our bodies out side of food poisoning that makes you sick quickly. It really boggles the mind if you think about it. Anyone knows that a fresh garden ripe picked tomato would not make the trip for Florida or California, much less Mexico to us at our local store in any kind of decent shape. It is all transported by truck and imagine the thousands of lbs of produce on that truck a "real" tomato would be pulp on the trip. What do they really do to them to make them keep longer? I know, they pick em green and ship em and they get ripe on the way. But we all know it takes a week or more for a tomato to fully ripen on the counter, so the red store tomatoes are more than 1 week old.  Now how about that big juicy burger you just ate. How did that beef get from the mid-west to your store.? For it to stay nice and pink it has to be treated with something to preserve the color. Most times that is ammonia or formaldehyde. Google "pink slime" and read about what all goes in your store bought burger. Or not! You may not ever eat another one. I know I wont no more. And dumb ass me knew all this when I ask Rodger to pick up burger for supper Friday night. Prolly would have been safer just eatin the dang wrapper it came in. If you are interested in what your family eats and research and read about our food supplies, you are trying to figure out how to eat better. Find a farmer in your area, make a deal with a good ethical farmer that is honest, ask around, and buy from them. This will help your own local economy AND put better food on your table. If you really think about it, it is really cheaper. Hey offer to help process your food you buy locally. Most people who know how are more than willing to share their knowledge with you as to how to take care of fresh meat and produce and canning or freezing. I wont lie, its a lil harder when you do more of the work yourself but so worth it.

Rodger didn't work today either as he still was not feeling up to snuff. He did feel better after I got him to drink some kefir water today. He actually felt really bad yesterday but still got out on the tractor and plowed up our garden spot. It was ready to plant peas and stuff. He went over there this afternoon and planted our peas and carrots. It is supposed to rain and snow tomorrow so they are in the ground. I am hoping for a good pea crop again this year. We have used a lot of our canned and frozen stuff from last season. I am almost out of corn in the freezer. Or at least I think I am. I may have to dig deeper to find some. If not I still have home canned corn from the year before. Our potatoes are not keeping well at all. Well they are keeping, they just have foot long sprouts on em. It has been a warm winter and the cellar is not cold enough to prevent or at least delay the sprouting. I will use them for a while and as soon as we get back from Nevada I will try to get Rodger to help me plant a couple rows for early taters to use on this summer and buy some new seed potatoes to raise to store. I think we may have a fungus in the ones we have now. I am gonna try the trick my friend Rosie told me about. She says if you put cornmeal in the bottom of the potato row it will encourage microbes to grow that will destroy the fungus. I got homegrown cornmeal so I can try. Will never know if it works for us if we don't try. We will be putting the plastic on the greenhouse when we get back also. Then it will be about time to start seeds in there. I have to find some other odd thing or 2 to grow this year. Not sure what that will be yet tho. I was looking at my pitiful egg gourds that I use for nest eggs when I gathered eggs a bit ago and I do need to raise more of those to dry. They really work to teach the hens where they need to lay. The gourd eggs I have now are ones I picked up several years ago in an antique shop in Nicholasville when Jason and I went plundering one mothers day weekend.

Well my quilt sewing project is coming along nicely. I got the batting in and double batted the bear squares. Now it is pinned together and ready to tack. I just have to by the thread to tack it with. Not gonna find that in our town tho. Maybe I can talk Rodger into an out of town trip this weekend. And then I can get the lil quilt finished to take with us to Nevada. I would take a pic, but that someone who borrowed my camera has not returned it yet. Soon I hope.

Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Finally working on the baby quilt

I know you are saying "bout dang time". Well I know, I do procrastinate some. But I got my neat cutting mat and rotary cutter in yesterday and figured I may as well do some cutting and see what happens. It was not a hard project. But I learned something already. When making quilts, have all the fabric the same quality, I guess that's the right word. The lil bears that my Granny embroidered were on a thin sheet like material and the fabric I bought to set the quilt up with was a lil heavier cotton. I did the usual wash and dry the material before I started so it wont shrink later. But the squares the bears are on have a little more stretch than the fabric I bought. So I had a really hard time keeping everything straight. But I did get the sash pieces and border pieces sewn on today.

I

I think it will be kinda cute once it is complete. Not done yet. Still need to put in the batting and finish the edges. I really want to get this thing complete before we got to Vegas so I can take it to Amoy and Rob. Some of the things that Amoy has chosen for Liam's room have bears on them and the rest have lil monkeys. Its gonna be so cute. She has really good taste when it comes to decorating. When I get the quilt done I will start on the cocoon for the baby and a lil hat to match. Ya reckon I am getting in over my head here? Probably, but thas OK. Nothing I haven't done before.

Not much else happening here on the farm today, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

February, in like a lion....

.........out like a lamb. At least that's the old saying any way. I just hope it ends that way. I hate to fly and travel when the weather is bad but will if I have too. February started out for us with cold, wind, and now snow. Not just flurries. We actually had a lil snow on the ground this morning. But as the day wore on the snow melted and it seemed to warm up during the day. Not hot mind you but warmer than it was. We are supposed to get snow all weekend. We shall see how much we get. Kinda like sex, never know how much ya gonna get or how long it will last.

We got our new fan assembly that we ordered for the furnace. That was fast too. I ordered it on Wednesday and it came in yesterday. I was impressed. If we need anything else electrical I will for sure order from the same place. This is the place we ordered from. The website was kinda messed up when I placed the order and I could not get it to take my cc info. I was gonna call later in the day and make sure they didn't bill and ship me for 3 blower assemblies but before I could do that THEY called me to assure me they would only send 1 and I would only be billed for 1. That is good customer service and I guess I am a lil old fashioned in the fact that I still appreciate good customer service and human contact. They have replace parts for things mobile home related and sometimes parts can be hard to find for those.

We have not done anything here today other than eat, sleep and watch TV and surf the Internet. Talk about lazy. I have pondered my quilt today and trying to figure out how I can cut the fabric straight and keep it all even without having to buy one of those neat cutting mats and rotary cutter. I finally decided if I want to do it right I may as well suck it up and purchase one. I will need it later to finish the full size quilt from the top my aunt Connie made. So now I am cutting strips from old jeans that Rodger had to make some simple braided rugs to toss outside near the doors to catch some of the crap to keep it out of the house. I could just go buy some cheap rugs and save a ton of time and energy but ya know, I actually enjoy making things to "make do". Not only that I can actually hose the homemade ones off and let em dry and toss em back down. Easy and I am sure they will last much longer than the store bought ones. I have had those in the past and they soon fall apart. When they get too bad to wash and re-use I can toss em and make more. Easy and fast. I will cut the fabric in strips and then twist and braid it, sew the strips together with light weight fishing line and once I get the size I need stop and put em to use. Now if I was going to use them inside and wanted them to look nice I would fold the strips in half kinda like bias tape and sew them down, braid and then sew the braids. But for outside serviceable rugs that will not be necessary. OK I will go back to my strip cutting and let ya know what happens. Maybe I take some pictures along the way.

Till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Whas up with that?

I have ask myself that question several times in the past few years. I have never had a skin allergy, food allergy, nothing bothers me at all. Well except poison ivy. Now it seems every little things causes me to break out, itch or hurt. Whas up with that? My doc tole me a long time ago that fibro does effect some peoples' skin and cause rashes, hives, dry patches and such. I reckon I got every dang one of the symptoms that a person could possibly have. Or maybe its just age, who knows. But I try to steer clear of artificial ingredients in lotions that I use for a moisturizer. So I got the bright idea, I make my own soap, why not make my own lotions too. So I started reading about the how-to's a few months ago. I finally got my lil mind wrapped around a recipe and decided to give it a whirl. I thought lotion bars would be more convenient as you don't need jars to store the stuff in. I came up with the recipe with healing, moisturizing, soothing lotion that anyone can use, even for babies. None toxic ingredients, so very safe for kids. I decided I wanted to use some herbs in the oil for extra umph. I used goldenseal, calendula, rose petals, and chamomile. I wanted to use coconut oil for its antiviral, anti fungal, antibiotic properties. Also used Castor oil, almond oil, and apricot oil as all of these are very nourishing to the skin. For extra staying power I also added Shea butter and mango butter. I added sweet orange essential oil for a lil fragrance. So now ya have the whys, here's the recipe.

1 T goldenseal, dried
1 T calendula, dried
1 T rose petals, dried
1 T chamomile, dried

1/2 cup coconut oil

half cup measure put equal parts Castor oil, almond oil, apricot oil

in another half cup measure put equal parts Shea butter and mango butter

3/4 cup beeswax

15 drops sweet orange essential oil

I do most of this on the stove top. Use a small pot you wont be needing for anything else as it is super hard to clean up. In this small pot put the herbs, coconut oil and liquid oils. Heat to melt an let macerate for an hour, the longer the better. This gets all the good stuff out of the herbs. Keep heat low at all times and stir often. Strain the oil mixture thru a sieve to remove the herbs, Press the herbs with a spoon to get all the goodness out of them. Put oil back in the small pot and add the Shea and mango butter, and beeswax. Set on low heat and stir to melt well. Let cool for a few minutes and add about 15 drops of essential oil and stir to blend. Pour into molds of your choice and let harden. Use as needed for moisturizing. The lotion will be hard and will melt in your hands and can easily be applied to the body.  Once this sits on the skin for a bit it does not have a greasy feel to it. So now if ya don't like having this you cant pronounce in your body lotions, this is for you. If you get all organic ingredients all the better. Enjoy!! I know I do.

I think my next project will be to make homemade shampoo. As most of you know the skin is the largest organ of the human body. Anything you put on the skin does get absorbed. If it is not good for you to ingest I doubt it would be good on the skin, The same goes for shampoo. And yesterday on the way to the dentist Rodger was complaining about his hair being so dry. He has long hair and in winter he only needs to wash it about every other day. And it still breaks and splits. So we picked up a bottle of Dr Bonner's castille soap. It is pure soap made only from pure vegetable oils. From the things I have read it cleans without stripping all the natural oils from the hair. So I will let ya know how this works for him. My dad said all the old folks used plain lye soap to wash their hair. Lye soap is pH balanced so it should be good for washing hair. I have not tried my homemade soap as mine has been super fatted to add moisture to the skin, so don't think I would want to add those extra oils to my hair.

I got lots of projects to work on and winter time is slipping away. I got to get me busy working on a baby quilt for little Liam. He will be here and I wont have a quilt made. My mind commits me to things my body cant get done these days. We don't have any big things to do tomorrow so maybe I can get started on the quilt. We shall see.
Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella