And the Candy Marathon begins

Posted on December 20, 2017 by farm2011

It’s no secret that I started to make the Christmas candy late this year, so it’s going to be a busy week getting the first baskets done by the end of the week – but I’m always up for good challenge!

After stopping at the grocery store for some additional things that I’ll need, I put up my trusty table in the kitchen and start loading it up. Here is just some of the things that I’ll need. 

Well I did have a good last couple of days of candy making and it was really fun to step away from everything else and work on it. I downsized my orders this year because of all my other soap obligations that I have, but did want to make around 6 or 7 baskets yet this year.

With my hair back in a scarf, my apron on, along with Christmas leggings and socks I was ready! OK, I never said I was a fashionista now did I?

And man did I have a good day!

I was happy with everything that I made and even though I’ll have to make more as Christmas comes closer – I was able to get a couple of baskets wrapped up (literally 🙂 ) today for deliveries.

And what does our kitchen smell like today? Well like chocolate, caramel, and peanut butter. Yum!! 

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I have a confession to make

Posted on December 18, 2017 by farm2011

Remember when I said that going to our local tree nursery was one about of my most favorite places to go? 

Well I have something to confess. And to my defense I really almost forgot about how much I love this place also until today.

See every year I make some candy for Christmas and for me I think getting my supplies at the local Amish store is about one of the best places to get it. So after work today I was anxious to go back and see what kind of treasures they had and just to visit this area. It’s a very cool place to go.

As I’m driving to the Amish today I was trying to think of just why I like them so much. I mean they are just farmers in a small community right? Well I think I like them so much because I feel like their world turns just a little slower than everyone else’s. As I’m driving to the store that I wanted to shop at, I am watching a buggy with a bunch of kids in front of me heading home after a day in school. With their red cheeks and bright eyes, you just can’t help wonder what their schedule is once they get home. Will they go right to their homework before it gets too dark? Without electricity in their homes, a lantern can only give off so much light. Or will they need to get out and get their chores done first? Then I pass by wash line and wash line just filled with jeans and sheets hung out to dry. Now I’m not saying that I’d want to live that life because, well to be honest I think I like my electrical appliances way to much! But you would have to admit it would be a much quieter and simpler life.

So I finally see the big red barn on the right and the small white house on my left and I know that I need to turn because it’s the road to the store. And as I’m driving on the gravel road and making my last turn, I can see the store. I’m just hoping that they are open because now the sun is starting to set and it doesn’t look like anyone is home. But when I park the car and scope it out I can see the ‘Open’ sign on the door so inside I go. Now I’m checking out the store for quite sometime before anyone comes in, but soon a younger girl shows up along with her Dad carrying a lantern for light. They are speaking in German and I have no idea what they were saying, and maybe that was their plan 🙂

With my arms more than full and my Amish trip done for the year, I thank the young girl for helping me load up my car and back to our farm I go. It’s going to be a busy week this week making candy – but it’s also going to be fun!

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Gma’s Christmas

Posted on December 17, 2017 by farm2011

It was finally here! The day that our Mom works all year to get ready for. Christmas & St. Nicholas day!!

I was telling someone the other day just how much our Mom puts into this day and I seriously think it’s about the same as someone who is planning a wedding. See she starts thinking about the next years gifts already in January. I mean who else buys around 60 gifts each year and helps organize the day? Well Ma that’s who! And at 87 years young I’d put her skills up against just about anyones!

So like I said the day was finally here for our family to get all together.The weather wasn’t the warmest, but it also wasn’t snowing or freezing rain –  so all in all it was good.

With the Roadhouse all ready to go, now the food started to roll in. With turkey, ham, dressing, and tons of great food, we always say that if you were hungry during the day – well that’s just your own fault! Here’s a picture of just some of the food for the dinner table so far. We started putting a full size ping pong table over the pool table for serving and it seems to work out the best for us. It still gets a little crowded but we can make it work. 

We had a couple of new guests join us this year I made a point to see if they were OK. When they said that they were doing fine, I reminded them that there was another wave of our family coming in about an hour so be ready! See our family is pretty loud. There are kids playing air hockey in the back of the room, the boys were playing catch football outside, babies and more babies were being passed around, and then the adults are probably the loudest by trying to talk over all of it! That’s just how our family rolls and once you know that – well it’s pretty easy to just blend in. But it can be a little scary at times and even I have to step out once in awhile to catch my breath – so that’s why I kept an eye out for the newcomers to the group 🙂

After dinner and with our bellies full, it was time for a special guest to come and to hear what was all on the kid’s Christmas wish lists. We had some brave little ones that went straight up and sat on his lap, and also some that wasn’t planning on sharing any wish list with anyone, much less St. Nicholas! 

Next it was time for Ma to pass out her gifts to everyone. It was so much fun just to watch both Ma and the kids once it was their time to open their gifts. I have no clue how she does it, but she can pick out the most perfect gift from the oldest to the youngest kid! And to think that I struggle with just a couple of gifts that I need to buy for our family here at the farm. Whew! 

And finally it was the annual Adult Christmas exchange game. It’s the game where you draw a number and you can either open a present or steal someone else’s. We’ve done this game now for quite a few years and with this year having 39 people in it, it was sure to be a blast! And going back to my earlier statement about noise – well it’s never a quiet game! FUN .. but not quiet!

At the end of the night when everyone is packing up and gathering their gifts, empty serving dishes from the dinner, and their kids, it seems like even though it’s a big full day and we’re all kinda tired, I don’t know how it happens but it’s even more fun than last years Christmas! So with a smile on everyone’s face and a Merry Christmas in the air, we all head to different directions once again until the next year comes around. 

 

 

Posted in Family, Roadhouse | 2 Comments

Getting ready for a party!

Posted on December 16, 2017 by farm2011

Now I’m not quite sure why I’m not freaking out tonight, but for some reason things are going pretty smooth. See tomorrow we’ll have over 60 of my family at the farm to celebrate Mom’s Christmas. 

Sounds like fun and I can’t wait! We always have the best time for Christmas and I’m only expecting the same thing this year! 

So normally I would be kinda nervous and hoping that everything will get done in time. Will I have everything organized? Will the Roadhouse & house get cleaned in time? Is the food going to be OK? You know – normal freaking out stuff. But for some reason I really got a lot done today! 

And tonight? Well with everything ready for tomorrow, Daryl and I even talked about going out to a movie. Yea, totally not the normal for me. 

Well the lights are all up in the yard, Mom and my sister in law came over to help get the Roadhouse ready last Sunday (2 Christmas trees up and tables are in place) I have the inside real Christmas tree up and decorated, the rest of the decorations are up in the house and the Roadhouse, all the linens are washed for the tables for tomorrow, curtains are all washed, the house vacuumed and picked up, and the food is made and in the fridge. 

And it’s not that I’m normally this prepared (like at all!)  but having everything done sure makes tonight easier just to hang out and watch a Christmas movie or two. 

I’m excited for tomorrow because the weather is supposed to be good for December and with no snow or sleet in the forecast most everyone should be able to make it. 

So for now? Well I guess it’s just time to hang out 🙂 

Below is the Roadhouse all set up for the party

 

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Christmas Lights

Posted on December 9, 2017 by farm2011

Do you have white Christmas lights at your house?

Well if you do, I just want to say I can feel your pain!

And if you don’t, well let me just tell you what we went through at our house putting up our white lights.  And to be honest it’s not the first time that something like this has happened !

So first things first. I’ve been busy with my soap so when the local nursery called to ask if we are getting some fresh garland a tree this year – I knew that it wasn’t going to be on my schedule so Daryl went to get it. I was really disappointed that I couldn’t go because I just love spending the time at this nursery. It’s definitely like stepping back in time and the owner is a lot of fun to talk to. He’s got kind of a gruff voice and with a thick Bohemian (?) accent, it makes an hour visiting just fly by!

So now with the garland home, it’s time for the lights. I got out my box of ‘porch’ lights and it was time to see which ones worked and which ones didn’t. Now in all honestly why wouldn’t they all work? I have no clue – but that was the case!

Now what? Well we knew we had enough of the long strings to use on the garland so we’ll do that and then figure out just what we’re going to use on the poles. My job was to hand the lights as Daryl was wrapping them around the garland. OK so things were going well until we plugged in the second strand for the garland. They were both white  but 2 different colors of white. @#!#^

And it looked bad!

I grabbed my purse and said that I was just going to run to town to pick up another string so that they matched.

It didn’t take me too long and while I was there I bought two boxes of the long lights. I thought that if the new strand of the right white didn’t match for some reason then we’ll replace the whole garland with new lights. And guess what? When we put the new one with the old one (which were both the same whites) they DID NOT match. So we took apart all the porch garland again and restrung the lights with the two new strings. Yay! Things were looking up because everything was matching at this time for the garland. 

Now to do the poles. I found 6 strands that looked like the same color that worked and up they went. And guess what? When we stood back in the yard checking it out we saw that now these lights didn’t match with the new white lights on the garland and they were even two different types of white that were on the poles. You have got to be kidding me!  Well Daryl said that no one was going to notice honestly it looked pretty bad and was the first thing that you saw when you were driving by our farm. So guess what I did? Back to the store the next day to pick up some of the same garland lights but much shorter for our poles. I ended up buying quite a few different boxes  just to be sure that something would work and I’m thinking to make things more confusing for next year when we open up the porch light box 🙂

But after we took down the lights from the poles and restrung them with all new lights on the six poles- we finally had all the same color of white. Seriously who would have thought that this was going to be so complicated!

And how do they look? I think they look great! 

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Peanut Butter

Posted on December 7, 2017 by farm2011

We’ve been talking about making peanut butter at work now for some time and finally today is the day I was going to make some when I got home. Now granted I should probably get out more because when the highlight of my day is making peanut butter – well I’m just saying it might need a face lift! 

But I was excited so I got my bag of peanuts out of the cupboard along with my small blender and I was going to see if I could make this work. 

Well I probably should have looked up how to do this before I started, but when how hard can it be right? 

So I put half of the nuts in the blender along with a little honey and started the blender up. 

It really didn’t  do much and all I had was some chopped up peanuts and a far cry from peanut butter! 

So more honey went in and cranked her up again 

Not much happened again

OK, so I figured if I would just keep blending the heck out of it sooner or later something is going to happen! 

So in when a little sunflower oil and I turned on the blender again. Finally I could see that we were making at least some progress! 

Well at the end of all of this I did end up with some really nice peanut butter and it was definitely worth the hassle! Now that I know what to expect I definitely would make this again. 

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It’s getting a little toasty around here

Posted on December 5, 2017 by farm2011

To say that I’ve been scared to death when Daryl decided to light our tree fire, well that’s really an understatement! We’ve had these trees down all summer and with no wind today, I guess he decided it was time to get rid of them. He wanted to light it when he was home for the day and it’s a good thing I didn’t know about it until it had started. 

See I was just pulling into the farm yard this weekend and I could see a ‘funny’ orange color coming from the trees. Now I’m not a Rocket Scientist but I was pretty sure that he had started the trees on fire. 

And guess what? I was right! 

Now these trees are pine trees and have a lot of sap in them so they’re really not good for any campfires or pretty much anything. When pine trees are on fire they spit sap out of them and kind of chirp. I know it sounds weird but they do! So with a fire going like this, there was a lot of spitting and chirping going on and you just had to step back and hope that everything goes OK. 

And it was HOT! These trees were really tall old farm trees so there’s a lot of wood in there to burn up! 

But Daryl was right that there was little or no wind so it burnt up fast and will probably continue to burn for the next couple of days. And am I happy that the tree pile is gone? Yes I can honestly say that I’m happy that it burnt so it’s not the first thing that you see when you drive into our yard. And yes I’m also happy that no other building burnt in the process! 

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Kitchen Window Flowers

Posted on December 3, 2017 by farm2011

It’s kinda of funny. I really don’t have a green thumb so I’ve never also had a lot of indoor flowers. Well that was the case until I got some flowers from my niece. They’ve blossomed so many times both on our front porch and now on our kitchen window sill I just love them! It’ll be interesting to see how long they last this winter. 

But for now check out how pretty they looked

And even with these flowers starting to fade away, they still look pretty cool!    

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Finding my way

Posted on December 2, 2017 by farm2011

I recently was invited to a house bridal party. Fun right? So I was excited to have the chance to hang out with some of our friends for the day and plugged my phone in before I went to bed the night before so it was all charged to help me with the directions tomorrow. 

Well in the morning when I was leaving Daryl asked if I knew the directions to get to the house? I gave him one of those looks and said that my phone was charged and I’m sure that I would be fine.

Everything was going well, the music was cranked and the sun was out and my shades were on. It was a good day.  And when I was driving for about an 1/2 of an hour I decided to turn my phone on. I mean I never go to this city that I was heading to and it was another hour away so I wanted to be prepared. And I was kinda worried even that I might be there too early.

Yea.

So when I turned on my phone and gave the old signal ‘ok google’ to start my travel directions nothing happened. I mean nothing. 

Maybe I didn’t say it loud enough. ‘OK GOOGLE’ 

Nothing. 

Holding the phone right in front of my face I tried it again. ‘O K   G O G G L E !! ‘ Nothing! 

So I pulled off to the side of the road and stared at my phone and yelled into it again. Now I’m not sure why yelling at your phone would make it work better, but I was for sure giving it my all. And I’m kinda guessing that anyone driving by was probably wondering just what in the world I was doing. 

Now fast forward for the next hour or so. I spent it on the side of the road trying to get my phone to give me directions. Well I knew that I did do a phone upgrade last night and it must have messed something up. So after yelling at it a couple more times and realizing that it just wasn’t going to hear me, and after shutting it off and on multiple times, I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn’t going to work and had the phone company reboot my phone. I had no other options and headed back on the road again.  

After about 10 minutes I was able to have my phone hear me again and just in time. I was just coming into the city and needed the help. 

And did I get to the party on time? Nope. I was an hour late! But they were just starting the party and my phone works again.  All is well with the world again.

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Happy December!

Posted on December 1, 2017 by farm2011

As I looked back on my lack of posts that I didn’t do for November I realized that you might think that I’ve gone to some exotic island or maybe even fled the country. 

Yea, not so much! It seems like we’ve just been so busy with a lot of projects that I haven’t been keeping up with this blog. But now that’s it’s December – let’s see how well I can do. 

First things first. One of the major things that I’ve done in November was to have an Open House for my soaps. I know crazy right? Just about two years ago I was trying to be a big girl and getting courage to sign up for a vender show, and now I rented a building in our town and was sponsoring my own show! Well to be honest I was kinda shocked that I wasn’t freaking out about more about this upcoming show. It was kind of new thing for our town and I wasn’t sure how it was all going to turn out. Oh well right? I mean I would be out $40 for the hall rental if it didn’t go well so I thought why not try it? 

And guess how it turned out? It turned out AWESOME! I mean I had a steady crowd from the beginning and pretty much sold out of all my inventory. With Christmas being a busy soap season (kinda funny there’s a season for soap right?) anyway with it being busy I doubled my inventory before we started and I went home with just a handful or two of the soaps that were left. SCORE! 

To backtrack a little bit, I wanted to have this show on Small Business Saturday and with having the chance to have Friday off before the show after Thanksgiving, and my niece and nephew to help with the setup – it worked out great! But we did have a little bit of a challenge when we were setting up. See the room that I used was a room that needed to be transformed a lot if I wanted to make it look like a little store and with about 6 truckloads of stuff from the farm to town, well we did finally get the room set up and it looked nice. When we were bringing things to town to setup I’m not sure what our neighbors were thinking when we drove by one time with a huge Christmas tree in the back of the truck, and then the next time with all the wicker furniture piled high in the back, and then even the next time with the back filled with some huge area rugs for the rental hall. But for some reason after living in this area for over 30 years – I’m thinking they take just everything in stride 🙂 

The room when we walked in 

The room after we were set up

So when the actual vendor show started we had a great crowd and it was pretty much steady up until the last hour or so. Being a Rookie at this, I wasn’t sure how long to set the time and next year if I do this again, I’ll set it for an hour less. But one thing that I really appreciated was my families help! From the niece and nephew helping to lug all the stuff from the farm to the hall and then helping to set it all up, to our son and daughter in law helping not only to do some final product marking but also helping on the day of the show, our other son’s photography skills that he created some Business Posters along with some great wall art, and finally Daryl for putting up with this crazy idea of mine and also helping with the show. Our house and lives just are not the same since I started this little Hobby of mine! It truly was a family activity and I really couldn’t have done this without them. 

So now what? Now I better get some more soap made!

Posted in Family, Soap | 2 Comments