Someone ask me this past week...

"So, what have you been up to?" For a moment, I had no response. I had to really stop and think for a minute, what have I done all week? It isn't like I haven't been busy. My response was, "ah, not much." Then I did a mind recount of the week's events and this is what I came up with.

Mostly, I spend much of the week hanging out and playing with Doodlebug. We spent the week making a few new outfits for her American Girl doll. She really enjoyed that. She had me to make a dress to match a fall dress that I had made her last fall for her doll. We also made an old fashioned dress too, which is requiring a bonnet and I am in search of pattern for that.

 We also picked a world of tomatoes, green and red. Put a few quarts in the freezer for soups and fried up a few green ones. Those were yummy!

In between crafting with Doodles and working around here, I have been trying to reorganize the sewing room a bit. I started refolding a lot of the fabric and trying to have my fabric stash a bit more visible. It never fails when starting a sewing project, I dig through the stacks of fabric and my shelves are a mess by the time I am done. So, I decided to get it together and get that shelf straightened up. I blog surfed for a bit of inspiration. I am amazed of all the creative ways you gals come up with for organizing your sewing rooms.

I started folded fabric in my spare time for a couple of days only to realize, I wasn't going to be any better off when I was finished. My fabric would still have to be stacked and I would still be digging and making a mess of that self with every project. So, I was back to blog surfing to find some answers. I found really neat fabric organizer boards but they were not within my budge. I kept surfing until I ran across several folk's suggestions of using magazine boards or comic book boards to fold the fabric around. I found a  board that suited my needs, it was BCW "life" magazine boards, 10 7/8 X 14 7/8 inches.They are certified to be acid free so, I won't have to worry about them having an affect on the fabric color. I just placed the order yesterday for the boards. I can't wait until I get them and get things straightened up a bit in here again. I'll let you all know how that works out.

Also, this past week a friend shared with us, several DVDs about the universe and the planets. We watched a couple of those with Doodles. She is always interested in the planets and outer space. She is certain that aliens must exist.  She sweet talked Papaw into working the solar system puzzle with her and they talked a bit about the planets.

I do think Doodlebug is starting to look forward to the start of her homeschool routine again. Papaw and I went on Tuesday to sign her up for her homeschool enrichment classes.

One of the classes that we signed her up for was "Hands on Shakespeare."They will be doing a performance of The Tempest. It should be a lot of fun for her. As you can see from her video clips throughout the blog, she has no fear being in front of a video camera. Put her on a stage and she becomes a completely different Doodlebug. She has a case of stage fright so, we are in hopes this will help her over come that a bit. She loves reading scripts and preforming a play at home. Over the weekend we found a couple of fun books for this school term. They are Scholastic's Folk & Fairy Tale Plays for Building Fluency. This book is for 2nd to 3rd grade reading levels. We also picked up Scholastic's 12 Fabulously Funny Fairy Tale Plays. I can't wait to do Rafunzel and no, I didn't spell it incorrectly. Spiderella also sounds like it may be fun too.

I can't blog without an update from the hen house. Our hens are really keeping up production so, I knew making a couple of breakfast quiche' would cut down on the surplus a bit. These were so tasty. I think I will be making a couple of lemon pound cakes this week for Papaw. That will use up a few more eggs.

And last but certainly not least, we have been doggie sitting Bones. It is like romper room here when we have Bones and Doodles too. It is never quiet, until they are asleep. He gets kind of lonely when she goes home. He is a sweet dog and I enjoy having him around.

So, there you have it, our week as it was. Hope you all had a great week.

Blessings!

More Eggcitement

Breaking news from the hen house: We have just discovered that indeed we do have 2 chickens laying a double yoke egg on an almost daily basis. We noticed that we had an extra large egg daily. Then just today, Papaw said, two of the gals are laying the extremely large double eggs. We cracked a few of those open over the weekend and they always have double yokes. Yeah! Now when a recipe calls for two eggs, I'll just use one of our daily doubles.

 

A Hen House Moment

While in the hen house this weekend re-stuffing nesting boxes with straw, a hen laid an egg on the floor right beside my foot. As you can see in the video clip, the gal wasn't happy. I knew she was ready to lay and couldn't get comfy in the nesting boxes because there was very little straw in them. I went to get the box of straw to get busy re-stuffing but couldn't get it done quick enough. She just backed up in the corner on the floor and dropped her egg in the pine flakes. It was kind of neat. All of the gals seem to be doing well and we are now getting seven eggs a day. That still means, one or two are still not laying daily or they are rotating who gets a day off.

While at the produce stand over the weekend, talking to a couple of old farmers, one was wondering if we would want a breeding pair of quail. We have no idea what raising quail would be like but are going to look into it. If you have any input to the pros or cons of raising quail, please let me know. Comment here or send me an email. I sure would appreciate it.

Blessings to you all!

Midnight Science Projects & Chocolate Chip Cookies

Since Doodlebug is on a summer break from homeschooling, we have not been a stickler about what time she turns in when she is here. I am pretty sure her folks are letting her stay up later too. I mean, isn't that the great thing about summer when you are a kid?  So, we let her stay up past her bedtime when she spent a couple of night with us last week and she played games and did science experiments with Papaw. They had the best time together.

They made every kid’s favorite thing, green slimy goo that glows in the dark. Is there anything better than green slimy goo that glows in the dark? We’re pretty sure that’s at the top of the “Best Things In The Whole Wide World List,” for a seven year old. She had a blast, as you can see.

"Does it get any better than this?"

 Several days ago, while enjoying playing outside with a friend, she and her little friend got into some poison ivy. Doodle’s little friend broke out very quickly and had to go to the doctor. Doodles didn’t show any signs for several days and then, she was hit with it and hit hard. Her little legs are so broken out. She has been soaking her legs in oatmeal baths and using lots of Calamine lotion and she too had to go to the doctor. So, one of her nights here, she was itching, we had given her Benadryl and were waiting for it to start helping. To take her mind off of her itching, we made chocolate chip cookies from scratch. She really enjoyed that. She said, “Mamaw, you and I have not been in the kitchen baking in such a long time.” I told her I know and I have missed our baking together.  I bought quiet a lot of peaches today from a roadside produce stand and I see some peach turnovers in our near future.

It has been a good weekend. Doodles spent the weekend visiting her other grandparents so, it gave us some time to get a few errands in. 

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and have a great week.

Many blessings to you all!

A Sunday Afternoon Drive

I can remember as a child taking Sunday afternoon drives with the family. Sometimes it was a fun drive, depending where we wound up. Regardless, I always enjoyed them, well most of the time.

My three older brothers and I were usually jammed into the back seat or one of us up front in between mom and dad, depending on who the trouble maker was that day. We would ride for hours, always where ever my dad wanted to venture out to. We would spend many hours sometimes sitting out in the country while dad did a bit of catching up with an old friend he hadn’t seen in years. He would stop to do a bit of haggling with someone over an old car they had out for sale or to stop at a roadside produce stand to pick up a watermelon. We just never really knew what a Sunday afternoon drive could bring. As a kid, our biggest expectation from the afternoon was at some point, we would stop at a filling station and we would be treated to a grape soda, a small bag of penny candy, or a Popsicle. It was the treat that maybe made the afternoon drive worthwhile. Sometimes we would pop into a state park for a leg stretch and some fresh air. In the photo above are my brothers and I, in front of the falls in the Tellico Plains area. I am not sure if this was an afternoon drive or when we actually went camping over there. I was kind of small then.

I can remember many times while on these Sunday afternoon adventures, I would see rolling hills and scenery that would just speak to my little heart. I would beg my mom and dad to buy the land. "Just write a check for it" I would say. I had no idea that there needed to be plenty of money to cover that check. I am sure my momma remembers this well. 

I do believe those Sunday drives are where my adventurous spirit came from.  I never seem to hesitate a minute to turn down an old country dirt road just to see where it leads to. Sometimes, I do have to turn around and go back the way that I came. Many times, I find new back roads and sights I would have never seen, if I had a moment to think twice about the direction I was headed.  I have been on old logging roads all over the mountains in east Tennessee and parts of North Carolina too. Those trips have been so neat. I have run across so many little one room log cabins, old churches and hunting camps too.

 

 I love the scenery an old country road offers. I think I will never tire of seeing old barns still standing strong or those with the lean that will never be straightened again. I love seeing all the old country churches and being in Tennessee, there’s an old country church within a mile of just about anyone, sometimes even two or three and that isn’t an exaggeration either.

I'm forever stunned by just how beautiful folk’s gardens can be this time of the year. Folks can come up with some ingenious trellis' for pole runners or cucumber vines. You just never know what someone can use to run beans on. I love seeing the cornstalk covered fields with sunflower edging. Summer time in the country has a charm that is hard to explain. Even the fields covered in chigger weed and other wild flowers, I think is a beautiful sight.

This past Sunday, Papaw and I set out for a drive. We stopped for lunch at the Riverstone restaurant and lodge in Towensend, before heading on into the Great Smoky Mountain National park. If you are ever in Townsend Tennessee, pop in and grab a bite to eat at the Riverstone. If you can make it in time for breakfast, which we can’t cause Papaw likes to sleep in on the weekends. But if you can make it early enough for breakfast, you’ll be glad you did. They have breakfast choices to please anyone and I guarantee, you’ll be stuffed when you leave.  They also have great lunch and dinner choices. Personally, I like their catfish. Yum!

We ventured on across the mountain toward Cherokee, North Carolina. Right before going into Cherokee, there is a visitor’s center for the national park called Oconaluflee. They have an old homestead mountain farm museum there and it is amazing.  There are a collection of old log and stone buildings, cabins and corn cribs there as well as, an old barn. They have brought some of the old buildings from other locations from the Appalachians and reconstructed them there. If you are ever in that area, do stop in. It is free to walk through the old farm museum. Also too, while we were there, we were told that this year’s Old Homestead Weekend will be the third Saturday of September. I do think we will be stopping in then. They said, there will be folks cooking, iron smith’s shoeing up horses and many other demonstrations taking place.  Below are a few more photos from around the old mountain homestead.

This little lady was working on a quilt. She told us about an old saying she had always been told by her mamma about sewing on Sunday. She said she was always told "with every stitch she made on Sunday, that God would take a stitch in her tongue." I tried to research this old saying but couldn't come up with where it came from. I wished I could have. I did run across another version of this that went, " "Every stitch you put in on a Sunday, you will have to pick out with your NOSE when you get to heaven."  Since I love sewing, I love hearing all the old sayings about sewing. I also ran across one that said, "never start a sewing project on a Friday or it will never get finished."

We really enjoyed seeing all the old buildings and spending a bit of time just trying to imagine what it would have been like to live in those days. I am sure life must have been hard. I have been blessed in my life to have known both sets of my grandparents into adult hood. I have heard so many stories of how hard life was in those days. I feel blessed to have had those years to hear all the stories and tales of their life and the hours spent trying to imagine what it must have been like.   

The homestead museum is a wonderful place to take a break and step back in to the past for a short time. Have a picnic along the creek or stop into the visitor's center for brochures, maps and souvenirs. I think Oconalufee is one of the absolute best visitor's centers that the Great Smoky Mountains park has. The park is one of my favorite national parks but I may be a bit bias because I grew up in this park. Many of our outings as a child were coming to the Smokies.

If you would like to see more of the photos from this area, you can see them in this album.

Hope you are enjoying your summer. Blessings to you all!

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.  ~Sam Keen

I chuckled to myself when I read this quote the other day. Oh what a true statement. In the spring time, it seems there are so many outdoor chores to be done. Cleaning up the leaves and sticks from the yard that fell in the winter months, pulling weeds from flower beds and gardens and what seems to be endless mowing of grass just determined to grow and grow.  In the spring time, I wonder if I will ever get it all done. One way or another, the work seems to eventually get done. I set back, take a look around and feel the ah of being caught up.

 As the heat of the summer sets in and the grass slows down a bit, the garden is planted, the flower beds looking great and we’re waiting for veggies to grow and harvest, it does seem like everyone is slowing down a bit or certainly wanting to. I think at some point it is a necessity to take a deep breath and allow a bit of respectable laziness to find one’s self by the deep summer; even if it is for an afternoon. After all, it won’t be long until storing up some of your veggies for the winter months and readying the young ones for school will be consuming your time by the summer’s end. So, deep summer bring on the respectability of a lazy spent day here and there. I’m ready! 

My favorite way to spend a lazy summer day is to spend it in nature. It is a way to restore my energy, mind and heart. 

I hope you all find time to have a respectable lazy summer day without the guilt. Have a slice of watermelon and a glass of ice tea. Prop your feet up and just listen to the birds and the kids laughing, playing and enjoy your summer day.  Breath!!! It is wonderful to be alive.

Blessings to you all!

Learning to Earn

We really wanted to start teaching Doodlebug about saving money. We wanted her to learn that working and saving money for the things she really wants and needs, is a worthwhile thing to do. So back in January, we washed out an old pickle jar, made a hole in the top and placed it on the kitchen counter. Each time Doodles was given a chore, I would remind her about the jar. At the end of the week, I would talk to her about the chores she did or didn’t do, discuss how much she earned or didn’t earn for the week and why. I would give her what she had earned and she would put it into the pickle jar.

Over the next few months while working on money Math, we would pull her jar off the counter for a counting session. She was excited to see how much was adding up. Each time, she would talk about what she really wanted to do with the money and I would encourage her to think about it for a while. At first she thought she would buy an American Girl doll.

One afternoon we had to go to the co-op to pick up a few things and from that day on, she had made up her mind what she was saving for. She fell in love with the baby bunnies at the co-op. For weeks and months, that is all we have heard about were those bunnies.

This morning at the co-op we walked in to pick up supplies and sitting right at the front entrance was a bunny hutch and several little bunnies inside. We sized up the hutch, did a bit of math with the supplies needed and the cost of the bunnies and she had enough to buy them. She is so excited. When we got home this afternoon, we talked with her a bit about what it meant to work and save money and also about how good it felt when a goal of saving was reached.

She still has a little money put back but, her pickle jar now only holds her kindergarten two dollar bill and a bit of spare change.



So, here are photos from today of Doodlebug with Snowy or Snowball, she hasn't decided on it's name yet. The other little one is gray and white. It is Papaw and mine's favorite. She named it Raisin.

 I am waiting for it to cool off a bit this evening so that I can go out to the barn and put a few coats of sealer on the rabbit hutch. We are in need of getting it done so we can get it set up and ready for them. For now, the bunnies are in Doodle’s bathroom in a box. It seems her bathroom is becoming our livestock nursery these days.

We may have to start a business venture with her in the future. We have no idea if we have a pair or the same sex or not. The bunnies are only 6 weeks old and too young to be able to determine that now. I am keeping my fingers crossed we have two of a kind. If not, we will be in the bunny marketing business until we can make a few changes.

An Update From the Hen House: As of today, we are a couple of eggs from our first dozen. We now have two gals laying daily, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. They are sharing the same nesting box. The eggs are slightly different colors but as the gals are really starting to produce. One of our gals is laying nice dark brown eggs, while the afternoon gal's is a bit lighter in color. They are still a bit small but hopefully with age, they will produce large eggs.

Hope everyone is have a wonderful 4th of July weekend! God bless America and God bless all of you!