Day 4 of internet problems

Posted on January 21, 2016 by farm2011

I’ve had some really bad karma lately and it still is continuing. My latest issue is that we are having internet issues and so I’m using my phone as a Hot Spot to log in. Just so not cool and I wanted to let you all know that I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth or anything like that. Now come to think of it, it’s kinda like you are on another planet though. Wish me luck! 🙂

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Seriously Easy Coffee Cake

Posted on January 17, 2016 by farm2011

I was pretty ambitious this weekend and had gotten quite a few things done which is an awesome feeling. This weekend I went to two consignment stores that are selling my soap – one new one and one that has been doing it for about a month, visited Ma twice, did a little shopping in town, put away the rest of the Christmas ornaments (about time), started a pile for the thrift store, cleaned our bedroom, exercised (seriously about time!), mailed a Thank You card20160115_144012_resized_1filled the refrigerator with homemade chicken soup & a pan of lasagna, worked on an a soap inventory sheet for taxes, got groceries, and started to declutter some of our stuff in the basement. So what did I do next? Well I was out perusing the internet and found a cake that I thought I should make. I mean I did exercise and everything right? So it was probably one of the easiest coffee cakes that I’ve ever made in my life and guess what? It even tasted pretty good! Here’s the recipe that I used:

HONEY BUN COFFEE CAKE

  • 1 box yellow cake mix (I used vanilla) 
  • 8 ounce sour cream
  • 4 eggs
  • 3/4 c. vegetable oil
  • 1 c brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 c. powdered sugar
  • 4 Tbsp. milk
  • 1 tsp. vanilla

DSCN8557

Preheat oven to 325 º F

Mix the cake mix with the sour cream, eggs, and oil in a large bowl with a spoon. Don’t worry if it is a little clumpy. DSCN8558Put 1/2 of this in a prepared 9×13 pan.

Next mix the brown sugar and cinnamon in a medium bowl until it’s mixed well together. DSCN8559Spread this over the bottom layer in the pan.DSCN8560

Now spread the remaining 1/2 of the batter on top of the brown sugar mixture. This got a little hard so I globbed (very technical term 🙂 )  it onto brown sugar/cinnamon DSCN8561and then spread it out as good as I could. DSCN8562You then take a knife and twirl it through the batter.DSCN8563

Bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.DSCN8566

Finally mix the powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla together. DSCN8564Now I added more milk to make sure that it was pretty runny. For some reason my mixture was way too stiff to pour! So I just kept adding milk until it was loose enough. When you take the cake out of the oven you immediately pour the powdered sugar mixture over it with a thin layer and let it cool. DSCN8567Then it looks like this and tastes even better. Seriously Easy Coffee Cake!DSCN8570

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Good-bye Chowder and Opal

Posted on January 16, 2016 by farm2011

We have had very bad luck these past weeks with our cats, and two in particular. The two that I’m talking about are Chowder and Opal. When they were first born we knew that they were special and they had spent more time in our house than probably a normal house cat would have. They’ve spent a lot of time upstairs just chilling out on the beds with the kids and you couldn’t ever stay mad at them because they were so cute! But a couple of weeks ago Chowder got in a fight with our dogs and must have gotten hurt inside. By the time the night came, we knew that she wouldn’t live until the next morning and we were right. It was pretty sad in our house that morning! Now on Saturday morning I noticed that Opal didn’t come barreling into the house with the rest of the cats when the front door is open. This wasn’t her normal behavior and it made me pretty nervous. Kyle called around quick to see what vet was open on a Saturday morning and was able to get in to have her checked out. It turned out that she had a stomach blockage and was too far gone to be saved. Let me just say it was another very sad day in our house. Now I know that it is all part of life but jeepers it sure would be nice not to get so attached to them wouldn’t it? So here is a couple of pictures that Kyle took of both little kitties.

Miss Opal

Miss Opal

Chowder

Chowder

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The 5 things that I’ve learned about soap so far

Posted on January 14, 2016 by farm2011

I’ve learned 5 important things so far about Soap that I’d like to share with you.

# 1 – Not everyone likes to talk about soap. OK, that is just plain crazy isn’t it? I mean you like soap right? Now why in the world wouldn’t everyone like it as much as we do? But sadly I’ve found out when those people say something like ‘Hows the soap going’ and then they cringe when I proceed into a 15 minute story on what soaps I’m making and what is the newest scent.. we’ll you can see where that is going. It only took me about 6 months to realize that these people are just trying to make conversation with me and kinda don’t really care about soap. Weird.

#2 – I have come a long way from the first bars of soap that I made. When I first started with this crazy soap habit I was just so excited to have the soap turn out I really didn’t care if the soap was going to have a superfatting level of 5% or not. I just didn’t want it to turn out like a big glob of junk when it was all done. And now? Well the last batch I made I think I had around 6 different oils in it and 9 different colors. Yea, pretty sweet huh?

# 3 – I have a very long way to go. I am by far not an expert in making soap and have just tons and tons of stuff to learn. Have you ever thought to yourself ‘I’m pretty good at this’ and then step back and wonder if you’ve been living in the twilight zone or something? I think it’s one of those things that you always are learning. And seriously I thought I was probably way too old to learn something new. Boy was I wrong!

# 4 – The soap doesn’t have to be perfect to be good. When I made some of the first batches of soap, if it wasn’t perfect there was no way in the world was anyone going to see it. I would take it and either try to use it up in the shower by leaving it get way too wet and turning into some type of funky liquid soap or I just plain got rid of it. Now? Well if it doesn’t have 4 perfect lines separating the different layers of the soap I’m guessing that it’s not that important and others might think it brings character to the craft.

# 5 – Feel good about the little steps of this whole adventure. Now there are people that are not going to understand that this craft really isn’t the worst thing to do with your time and money (see #1 above) But seriously why should I care about them? Tonight I was so nervous about going to one of the shops that is selling my soap now for a couple of weeks. It was the first time I would visit them since I dropped off my soap and I mean I literally practiced on the drive over how to act not disappointed if they said no one liked my soap. But guess what? People bought my soap and I had to bring in more for them to sell. Yea, I didn’t even have to use my acting skills tonight at all. Score! Now granted it was only a few bars of soap that they sold, but still it was a few bars of soap! I’m sure that there will be times that I won’t sell any, but guess what? I’ve contacted another store and they said they would like me to bring in some and see how the next month or so goes to see if people are interested in buying it. So that brings my distribution up to 3 stores. Man I’m on a roll now!

Now I’m sure that I can go on and on with this post but I said that I would only share the top 5 things that I learned so far. So if you are reading this, the next time you see someone selling soap at a craft show or it’s available at a speciality store, you might just think to yourself if they also had the same 5 things to share. Oh and yea if they practice their acting skills in their car too! Happy Thursday!!!

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Discipline

Posted on January 13, 2016 by farm2011

I really wanted a new planner for Christmas and not just any old planner – I was hoping for the Tools4Wisdom planner. It is awesome and I ended up getting one! Whoo hoo!! Now this planner is something that you need to not only be organized to use (kinda defeats the purpose doesn’t it?) but it also is something that you need to be disciplined with. There is a lot of goal planning to do not only for the year, but also monthly and daily.  And I’m really hoping to get better at keeping it filled in as the year goes on so I can be better organized. Why you ask? Well I still have some Christmas stuff to put away and I haven’t lost any of my New Years Resolution weight yet. Maybe a second glass of wine tonight will help me with the planning that’s needed. I’m thinking though it’s not going to help me with the Christmas stuff that needs to be put away 🙂

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Getting our groove on

Posted on January 11, 2016 by farm2011

We have a new addition to our family. And before you start thinking … is it a new cow or maybe a dog? Nope nothing like that. We have a new exercise equipment that has joined our family. Our treadmill has completely died this winter and with all the cookies and caramel popcorn that we eat, well I’ll just say that it’s a good thing that we replaced it. Daryl picked up an elliptical after work tonight and both him and Kyle worked quite a while on putting it together. I was glad it was them because I heard them say ‘OK, now onto the third step’ and this was after they spent some time already on it. Daryl said it was just a workout putting it together! As you can tell they were working on it in our laundry/soap room. DSCN8542But I’ll be interested in how it’s going to work. I went on one once and lasted about 3 minutes. My arms were so sore and my legs were about to die. So I’m guessing it’ll be a good thing for me this winter!

While they were working on that, I took some soap out of the mold that I had made the other day. It has a lot of soft oils in it that it needs to sit a little longer than other soaps that I have made. It smells pretty good and I’m going to let it set for a couple more days before I cut it into bars. To say that I knew what I was doing when I made it would not have any truth to it at all! Holy cow I had a mess!! It was one of those times that I had started something and it was too late to turn back. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. But I would like to try it again and give it another shot because I know that I can do better. I’m not sure what I’ll call it, but what I’m thinking is ‘Not for the faint of heart’ 🙂DSCN8540

And the photo of the night is that of the dogs. They were pretty cold so I felt bad for them. They usually don’t move or make a sound when they are in the house and it works well for them. We kinda forget about them.DSCN8544

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Christmas cookies

Posted on January 10, 2016 by farm2011

If you remember a couple of weeks ago Ma sent over a big container of Christmas cookies. She said that we should put them in the freezer and they will keep for quite awhile. Yea, like they were actually going to make it to the freezer! Instead we just kept them out and kept working on them until tonight. Tonight we had one lonely one left and even though it looked a little tough because most of the sprinkles had fallen off, it didn’t take long and just like that it was gone! DSCN8537Now I’m OK that they are gone because most of them went straight to my hips and I’m kinda not kidding.  But they sure were good!! Humm, I wonder if Ma has any Easter cookie cutters?

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Baby it’s cold outside

Posted on January 9, 2016 by farm2011

Well we finally got our winter. And it’s coming in pretty cold! The air temperature has been around -11 degrees and when it’s that cold it seems like the cars and pickup just kind of growl when you start them in the morning. I couldn’t figure out what the cows were doing this morning when I opened the door to see just how cold it was and then I realized that even though the wind was cold and blowing, the sun was actually out and was pretty warm if you were out of the wind. So the cows took full advantage of this and stayed on the south side of the barn. DSCN8536The dogs also stayed close to the house and tried to keep warm. I saw frost of Reno’s nose but they wouldn’t stay in the barn and insisted to be out for the day. I’ll bet she’ll be in the house more than once before the cold front is over. DSCN8538

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Green- Us?

Posted on January 7, 2016 by farm2011

OK, I’m first going to start off this post as saying that in the past people have asked if we are one of those ‘Green’ people and I kinda do a weird smile back and say well not so much but possibly a little bit. I mean I am probably more conscience of what we use in our house for chemicals and I guess that I’ve taken a personal global footprints test or two, but green?

So that brings me to todays topic – being green and fire starters. I like fire starters and use them quite a bit when we have campfires. Now I could say that I use them because our firewood is always so wet, but probably what is a better reason is because I don’t really have the patience to wait for the wood to get a good fire going. And if you are wondering just what in the world a fire starter actually is, well it is something that you add to your campfire to not only get the fire started but to use it as a constant fire source until you’ve really got a good fire. It can be about anything and in the past we had used sawdust from my dad’s woodwork shop and some wax. Now this brings me to the green part of this post. Guess what was used today? I’m pretty sure that you didn’t guess dryer lint, but if you did than you guessed right! I try to keep our dryer screen clean in-between loads and for some reason we can accumulate a lot of lint. I keep a trash can close by in our laundry room and well you can guess the rest. So today the kids went and melted down some old wax that I had leftover from candles and also picked up some more old candles from the thrift store for the fire starters that they wanted to make. And if you think our house smells good when I make soap, we’ll I can’d hold a candle to how it smelled this afternoon (pretty good pun huh?) The kids had a kettle on the stove for the afternoon and it was filled to the top with the candles that were melting. DSCN8534Now granted I do like using these fire starters and by the looks of it,  I think we’ll have enough for about 10 years.  Great job kids!!  Go Green! 🙂DSCN8535

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Helping Hands

Posted on January 6, 2016 by farm2011

You know when your kids are young and they help out once in awhile and help pick up their toys, it sure makes you feel good doesn’t it? Well our kids have always helped around the house and farm but tonight when I got home from work, the boys this afternoon took down all the Christmas lights from the yard fences, the tree and wagon, the lights off of 3 buildings, the porch poles, and also they also took down all the garland and the lights off of our house. Now I’m just saying that coming home to having all this done and packed away is a VERY good feeling and I sure appreciated it!

So what did I do tonight? Well I made soap of course. I’m working on building up my inventory and have made a couple of different soaps lately. I’m hoping to make a few more batches before the weekend is over and then do a good inventory to see just what I’ve got. I’m so going to be ready for a Spring craft show and I just hope they will be ready for me!!DSCN8532

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