Guess what I did tonight?

Posted on December 11, 2015 by farm2011

Well if you guessed that I made more soap – you are the Winner!! Whoo hooo!! Tonight’s soap was Squeaky Windmill. The reason that I made more soap was because I went to another shop tonight after work to see if they liked my soap and if they are interested in selling them. And just like that – they wanted to keep all the samples that I had brought. I kinda think they were personally going to keep a couple of their favorite ones themselves. But seriously who cares right? And when I left I was felling pretty good about this whole adventure. It’s going to be kinda cool to see how this next year goes. Hopefully I get better at the organizational part of my business. Because now I’ve got two stores selling my soap and I have realized that I am not as prepared as I need to be.  I mean I still need to get some soap out to some people (Kim I bet you thought I forgot about you) and my records? Well they are not so good yet. But I guess that’s why they call it a ‘Start Up Business’ 

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My dentist experience

Posted on December 7, 2015 by farm2011

Today was the day that I had to go back to the dentist to get my crown put on my tooth. Now I’ve had the last two appointments rescheduled do to a death in the dentist’s family and well one of them was because the temporary cap fell off. For the cap falling off, I slapped on some toothpaste and shoved it back on hard and thought to myself why am I going to the dentist again? So that was one of the appointments that was changed.

But tonight? Tonight I had to go and spend some time in the dentist chair. Yea, so not cool! You know that it’s going to be a bad time when the dentist tells you that it’s going to hurt. And that it’s going to hurt a couple of times. Holy Smokes she was right about that!! They took some high pressured air compressor or something and wanted to dry my tooth off before the permanent cap went on. Seriously what was so bad about the toothpaste glue theory again? But I just kept thinking it’ll be over soon and after what seemed like an eternity it was actually on the tooth. But then … then they couldn’t get the floss in between the cap and neighboring tooth. I thought, no big deal I don’t really floss back there that often anyway! But decided to keep that thought to myself. So after one of the helpers pulled my cheek one way and the other one took a type of sandpaper to get the small piece of glue out, and pulled the other cheek the opposite way I decided that I was not having a good time at all.

The only good part of the whole thing was to actually leave and head home. Then I saw the sky and that it almost looked like it was on fire. After stopping a couple of times on the highway (yes I did pull off the road) I finally snapped this picture. Kinda cool right? The poles off in the distance or really windmill’s in the fields.  20151208_164344

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And to all a good night

Posted on December 6, 2015 by farm2011

We knew that the party was going to last kinda late last night so there was plans for us to have overnight guests. Now how fun is that? We really never have a lot of overnight guests and when we do, I am always pretty excited. So of course the next question is what should we have for breakfast? Well I decided to make a breakfast bake. My sister was going to also make one and with around 12 extra people in the house, two pans for the morning is a good plan. After looking at about a billion recipes (OK maybe 10) I thought just pick one out and see what happens. So of course I picked one out that had croutons on the bottom of the pan. Not a big deal but for some reason my bags of croutons were hiding someplace and were not to be found. No a problem. I thought to myself that hash browns are kinda like croutons right? So into the pan they go. After that went the usual breakfast sausage, eggs, and milk. I’m good so far. Then it called out for hash browns. Well, I put all the hash browns on the bottom that I had so I thought it’s a good time to make a new kind of breakfast bake. No top hash browns. Pretty radical right?  So this morning I took it out of the refrigerator and put on some soup and more milk on it, then a little cheese on top and hoped for the best. And guess what? It seriously didn’t taste too bad! Now we had these two breakfast bakes for breakfast and with a loaf of bread toasted up and 5 pounds of bacon – you’ve got a really good time:)

After breakfast, we cleaned up the kitchen and Roadhouse and didn’t do much for the afternoon. When I was outside later checking on the dogs and saw this and I had to stop.20151207_200644 I knew that even though all our party guests were gone and tomorrow we’ll start back on our weekly routine, we sure had a nice weekend. And guess what else? I think that I’m really going to sleep well tonight!

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Happy St. Nicholas Day!

Posted on December 5, 2015 by farm2011

What a great day we had! We had got everything done the night before that we needed to and when the sun came up we were ready to have a party!

The party that we had was for St.Nicholas Day and also my Mom’s Christmas party. We don’t normally have both of these together, but this year we decided it was a good time that everyone should be able to make it. So first things first. We started out the morning with a special guest. Now in our family a special guest this time of the year can only mean one guy – you guessed it, St. Nicholas himself! We’ve been celebrating this tradition in our family sine 1927 and I sure hope we can continue it for many years to come because it’s is a whole lot of fun. Now some of the kids today were not scared of him

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and well some of the others were. And honestly that’s OK. Our family is big and kinda overwhelming and then throw in St Nicholas.. whew!! 

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But with all the kids around the action happening, you seriously couldn’t help smile when you looked at this group. All 60+ of us! DSCN8387After St. Nicholas heard what all the kids wanted for Christmas, Mom handed out some of her gifts to the younger kids. Again, this was the first time that we’ve done this and I think it turned out pretty good. You know me, I like traditions but this time it’s OK to mix it up a little bit. Then out comes the food! There was food coming from all over the place. Some from the refrigerators in the Roadhouse, some from coolers, others were coming from the house kitchen, and some still being brought in from the cars. Yea, you seriously can not have too much food at a time like this can you? DSCN8402After a quick prayer, we dug in. Even though it seemed like a lot of food at the beginning, at the end of the night we seemed to have polished almost all of it off. But in our defense we started dinner around 12:00 and left the Roadhouse that night around 7:30. So with the kids playing games the ‘older’ kids were getting ready for the annual Christmas exchange. DSCN8407Having what we call a White Elephant exchange is one tradition that don’t want to miss and this game literally lasted a couple of hours. I’m sure some families are nice about not stealing each other’s gifts, but that’s not how we play it. We play with strategy and a whole heck of a lot of laughs! DSCN8406At the end of the night we all headed downtown to celebrate my brother’s birthday party at a local establishment. It was a perfect way to end the perfect day!

Happy St. Nicholas Day and Merry Christmas Ma! DSCN8397

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Oh Christmas Tree

Posted on December 4, 2015 by farm2011

Everyone was home tonight and to say that I absolutely loved it is an understatement. Not only did the kids help with some of the last details for the party tomorrow, but they also finished decorating the Christmas tree. Now I don’t want to get sappy here or anything but when I checked in on them from time to time while they were working on the tree it was just so perfect. The portable record player that was set up between the kitchen and living room was playing some music album and all four kids were working on hanging up the Christmas lights. I could hear someone even singing from time to time and my guess is that it was probably Kyle. But they would take each ornament and put it on the tree in where they thought was the perfect spot and when they got done, the annual tradition of Daryl putting the angel on the top of the tree finished it off. With a lot of laughter and memories shared within the group it was a perfect moment. I couldn’t help to think about the Dr. Seuss quote from How the Grinch stole Christmas, :

“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.
Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.”

 

DSCN8382OK, I’m not saying that I’m the Grinch or anything (well I hope I’m not!) but that saying popped into my head and I thought it was quite appropriate at the time.

Then everything changed and the night went downhill from there real fast. We had our annual Euchre card game with the kids and then the whole warm fuzzy Christmas thought left my brain cells. And why the change of heart? Well guess who won the annal card game? Now to Daryl’s and my defense it was a close game, but close doesn’t get the winner’s title now does it? Oh well, there’s always next time 🙂DSCN8383

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Lights ?

Posted on December 3, 2015 by farm2011

Tonight after work Mom stopped in with some more things for the party on Saturday. We all had a list on what we were supposed to bring and for some reason she’s not following it very good 🙂 She’s bringing her things along with a ton of other stuff.  Oh well, it just shows that we’re going to have one heck of a party!!!

As for me? Well I started the task of  putting up Christmas lights outside. OK, I know it’s a little late, but shoot last year I was still adding to them the week of Christmas so this isn’t so bad. But I sure have trouble with the lights from year to year. I mean I seriously take really good care of them and then BAM! the next year they don’t work. So this year is the same old story. When I take them out of the plastic container that has each level of lights separated with newspaper, I take a good look at them and it’s almost a look of ‘you better work or else’ and then plug them in. And guess what? Well some do work which I find myself giving them a little smirky smile but there are some that don’t. I take them and give them the stink eye (like this is going to help or something) and put them on a pile on the floor. But I do give them a second chance at the end of my process of checking to see what lights work or what doesn’t. And to be honest I haven’t had any that came back and worked again so I have absolutely no clue why I do give them a second chance. Then I pick the whole bunch up and throw them away. Yup, I throw them away. I know that you can look at the fuses and check each light bulb to try to make them work…. but I throw them away. Now is this a cost effective way to handle them? Probably not. But is a very good way to handle this situation around Christmas time when you’ve got other things to do? Absolutely! I’ll got some other things to do in town tomorrow and I’ll add a whole lot of lights to my list.

So we’re still getting ready for Mom’s Christmas and St. Nick’s day tomorrow and how can you have Christmas without some homemade candy? Once I got up all the lights that I could, I spent some time in the kitchen making the caramel for the turtle candy. I usually only make candy around the Christmas time and I’m thinking that this is a good thing. It smells so good when it’s cooking and when something looks like this DSCN8381 you just know that it’s going to also taste good. I’m not sure what happened, but for some reason when I was pouring it into the next pan to cool, well there was a stirring spoon full of the caramel that just didn’t make it to the pan. Yup on my lips and then to my hips!! Whooo Hooo let the Christmas Season begin !!

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Where have I been?

Posted on December 2, 2015 by farm2011

I’m sure you’re wondering just where in the world have I been? Well, it’s not that we’ve gone on some extravagant vacation or even some quick get away, the truth is that we’ve just been pretty busy. See now that Thanksgiving is over, we’re working on getting ready for Christmas. The Christmas tree for the house has been bought IMG_3461and the outside garland has been hung on the porch.DSCN8376 The kids even got the outside tree put up in the Roadhouse which was really helpful for our special guest this weekend. But don’t let me fool you, we’ve also taken the time to make a couple of batches of soap now that Kelcie has been with us this week. DSCN8378She’s gotten pretty good at it and has even gone almost solo on the last batch. DSCN8379We’ve snuck away and have gone out for supper which was tons of fun! 20151201_200539At the end of the night after supper we even had a chance to drive through West Union to see the popular Christmas Display that seems to get larger and larger each year!20151201_205616But we’ve been doing some not so fun things these past days also. Tonight we’ve gone to two wakes. I don’t think we’ve ever had to go to two wakes in one night and I sure hope that we don’t have to do that again! So now the dishwasher is running and everyone is settling down for the night. The forecast for this weekend is supposed to be really nice and that will be just perfect. See we’re having around 60 people coming to celebrate St. Nicholas day on Saturday and having good weather sure makes it easier for everyone traveling from further away.

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Steppin’ Up

Posted on November 29, 2015 by farm2011

I did it. I joined the craze right now of people using the software wrist bands that can do just about everything but the dishes. I saw on one of the media posts that someone was selling theirs and because this person lived about 1/2 mile from me, I decided to buy it. It was kinda like fate or something. I’ve been looking at them for sometime now and doing quite a few comparisons of what I would buy if I bought one.  My only hope is that I don’t go too overboard with it. Humm.. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be safe come to think about it.

So I programmed it tonight and I really don’t have a clue how this thing really works yet. Like I said it tracks everything from your eating habits, to your exercise workouts, to your sleeping patterns. I mean it even is supposed to wake you up partially in your sleep 10 minutes before you are going to get up. That way it’s not such of a shock when the alarm goes off. OK, seriously? I mean EVERYDAY that the alarm goes off is a shock to me!

I guess it’s a good thing and I’m willing to give it a try. Now to just figure out if it can help with the dishes! 🙂

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Secret Project

Posted on November 28, 2015 by farm2011

If you’ve read my Blog for a couple of years now, then you’ll know that I’ve mentioned a ‘Secret Project’ that I’ve been talking big about. I’ll get ambition and work on it for awhile and then put it in the back of my brain cells for a couple of weeks – or years! 

So these past few days it was time to either get it done or never think about it again. I mean honestly a couple of years?

Well, guess what? I got it done. Yup, it’s done. And it’s kinda weird. I mean I didn’t know what I was going to expect to feel when it was done, but I didn’t think I’d feel this way. While I was working on it, I felt like it was pretty overwhelming. I wanted to quit maybe about a billion times and didn’t really know if it was ever going to get done. Then when I was just finishing it up I had an overwhelming feeling of anticipation and excitement. I mean seriously there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  I even swear the room was just a little brighter that day. And now? Well it’s done and I kinda feel a little sad. I hate to say this, but I started it about 4 years ago and even though I did like nothing on it for the first 3 3/4 years, it was still something that I always had that I needed to get done. I don’t plan on looking at it now for a little while and once I do with it what I am planning,  I’ll let you in on what the secret was. And at that time I’m sure that I’ll be excited and kinda nervous both at the same time. I just hope they like it as much as I do!!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on November 27, 2015 by farm2011

Thanksgiving this year came in with a little rain. OK, it rained a lot! But seriously wouldn’t you rather have rain than ice or snow? At this point I would.

So for Thanksgiving this year we had Daryl’s side over and we were hoping for a good turnout.  We were really lucky because almost everyone was able to make it. I tried to do a count of people, and I know we were over 40 for dinner. I think everyone had a good time and other than the yucky rain that we had, it was perfect. There was more than enough to eat (check out the food tables) and if you left hungry – well I guess that was your fault 🙂

We did something a little different this year and Daryl’s sister in law and family organized the meal and we just had to show up. Now honestly, how easy is that? DSCN8372The kids ended up playing with quite a few of the games that we had set up. I had to laugh because one of the more popular tables was the coloring table. DSCN8371We even had a birthday cake for one of the sister in laws. Too bad she wasn’t a Cyclone fan! But now it’s the end of the day and everyone has packed up their dishes and has headed home for rest of the long weekend. As for me? Well I’m going to give it a couple of days and then it’ll be time to feed the fall pumpkins to the chickens and get a Christmas tree. All I can say is that I better get my next weeks list done! We’re having my side come over for St.Nicholas day and Christmas next Saturday and I’ve got some work to do!

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