Wonderful, Crazy and wild weekend!

Yep, it wasn't just the typical run of the mill Father's Day weekend for us. You see my Birthday was on Sunday too! The weekend started off with Cortney leaving early Friday afternoon for a B-day party at a friends. They had a great time,and even though it was only in the mid to low 60'sF that didn't stop them from swimming in a pond and even challenging each other on the zip line dropping into the pond. She didn't get home until 11pm. Mike and I took a more relaxed approach to Friday night and snuggled on the couch, watching an old western; Steve McQueen in "Wanted Dead or Alive". It was actually a series and we watched two episodes before dosing off to sleep on the couch.*wink*  Saturday morning I awoke to a beautiful bouquet of wild flowers in a vase that Cortney had gathered while at the B-day party, those and a card were left for my B-day on the kitchen table, very sweet and touching. :o)  She again was off and running only this time with her Uncle and his girlfriend, to the local motorcylce hillclimbs. It started at 2pm and she was home around 11:30pm. She thoroughly enjoyed the day and got autographs from almost all the riders.  Mike and I went to the city and did some pawn shop hopping, looking for some work related tools and other treasures. Sadly none were to be found, but we enjoyed the trip and the search. Mike took me out for lunch and then back home to care for animals and relax a bit. Out of the blue Mike says lets go! I said, " where?", he said, " It was a surprise!", so we cleaned up and headed out. Turns out we went to a movie, which was fun and a nice break from all the work we've all been doing around the place and on Mike's outside job.  At midnight Mike gave me one of two of my B-day gifts( get your minds out of the gutter*wink*)  here is the first one, isn't it beautiful!!!!  I was shocked, he typically isn't so romantic, just shows there is always room for change; and let me tell you I love it!!!!( the necklace and the change, even after 27 yrs he can still knock my socks off*wink*)

Here is the second part, which he gave me Sunday morning after breakfast. Didn't he do a fabulous job of picking such beautiful necklaces?  I'm still floating on a cloud!

 Here is a close up( above), it has tiny diamond chips inlaid around the stone and it's so delicate.

Cortney then told us she was taking us to lunch in the city, for Father's Day and my B-day. We let Mike choose, as Saturday was my special time with him for my B-day. Mike picked Applebees and we had a wonderful lunch. I knew then after a call or two on the cell phone that he and Cortney were up to something, finally they confessed they'd invited my brother and his girlfriend over for a BBQ and a movie.  The evening was filled with good food and great conversation. In getting to know my brother's girlfriend we truly have so much in common, and we laughed and laughed at Cortney and my brother telling about being lost at the hill climb. Cortney kept saying, there were so many people, millions it seemed, LOL!!!  All and all we ALL shared and had a wonderful weekend, I personally, was sad to see it end, of course I never like to see Mike go back to work. I'd much rather he could be here more, but we still need a paycheck of sorts until we can get his hydraulic repair and CSA garden businesses off the ground, then he can come home to work, which I'll love and so will Cortney!

Praying your weekend was filled with many blessing and wonderful memory making moments, Ours sure was!  BTW age is just a # to me so I'll share, I'm proud to be 46 yrs old! LOL!!!!

I do have updated picture of the gardens and what we've been up to around the farm and will try to post mid week, keep checking back *wink*

This and That Tuesday

 Finishing up laundry this morning. Yes, those are red one piece long johns, you tend to need these when it's -56F *wink*

 Second time through, to wring out as much water as possible.

 Jeans are the next load, with towels and then whites to follow.

 We did get 5 or so inches of new snow and a two day cold snap, which is moving out late today :o)

 Okay I finished the edges of all the multi colored squares and decided to assemble another row and attach it to the one that was already done when I bought it. Looks good, yes?  I'm excited to get it finished and on the back of a chair or the couch.

 Closer view for ya!

 Next I decided to dig into my trunk and share some of my treasured keepsakes with you.

 Okay the feather comforter is not so special, just needed a place to store it to keep it safe.

 This quilt is VERY special to me, it was a gift from my Grandmother 4 yrs ago. I had given her the cross stitch squares for Christmas one year, knowing she'd made them before and seemed to enjoy doing them. Never in a million years did I think she'd work them up into a quilt for me.

 She hand quilts all of her quilts. Beautiful stitches, especially since she was 89 yrs old when she quilted this. BTW, she doesn't quilt any longer, due to poor eye sight and her hands have a hard time holding the needle, at age 94 yrs old.

  Her special tag, stating she was 89 yrs old when she completed this quilt.  This is the second quilt she's made for me. The first was when Mike and I were married almost 27 yrs ago. When my Great Grandma( my Grandma's mother) passed away, she left several quilt tops to be finished. When asked what we'd like for our wedding gift, I said one of Great Grandma's quilts. Now Great Grandma didn't buy special fabric, matching and beautiful as the quilts are made with today. She instead saved scraps  from clothing her family wore, old sheets, aprons, etc.....  The picture below is the finished quilt. My Great Grandma pieced the top and my Grandma put it together and hand quilted it. Again she made a tag for it stating these facts, making it such a very special keepsake. My Grandma can tell me which pieces where from who's shirts,dresses, aprons or sheets

 Our son, Jon was baptised in this tux with tails, very cute! I need to find our pictures of him in the tux and post a picture.

 See the tails?

 Cortney's baptism gown and bonnet. Maybe someday these will be handed down to my Grandchildren on their baptism days.

 These were Jon's first cowboy boots!  To cute Huh? They are made of real leather, such a soft leather. Again maybe someday I'll pass them down.

 My Aunt Linda made this when Jon was born and I used it for both of our children and it still looks like brand new. It is hand quilted as well. She still makes beautiful quilts, take a look for yourself on Grasshopperviewpoints

 This is a crocheted blanket made by Mike's Aunt Sidney, when Jon was born.

 This is the afghan she made for Cortney. I also have one that she made for me. She is a multi talented lady, crocheting, beading and many crafts.

 Okay now it's time to put the ham bone on to cook down for our ham and bean soup supper tonight.

 Stoke the stove up a bit, to take the chill off and keep the ham bone cooking right along.

One pitfall of a wood stove and a 101 yr old farm house, dust!  Well...... I better get the laundry finished , clean the bathroom, and of course dust( my pet peeve of chores *sigh*)

Blessings and productivity for your day :o)

Happy Resurrection Day

Happy Resurrection Day
He is Risen, Risen Indeed!

For those that are Irish, Happy St. Patty's Day!

Myself, I don't really get into all the commercialized holidays, their purpose is to get the consumer to spend $$. We celebrate Passover, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas and not in the commercialized sense, but rather a traditional celebration of what the holiday really represents.

Yesterday was a personal holiday, we observe right along with Birthdays, it was our 26th Anniversary! Now we don't get carried away but feel this is an important day to celebrate. Mike and I don't exchange gifts or even cards but we did receive a funny card from my parents and a really nice one and some chocolates from Cortney. A friend of ours, gave us a truly special gift and very thoughtful too, a music CD of selected love songs, from country western artist she knows we like. We listened to our gift CD on the way into the city and sang along with each and every song, Thank you Ashle'. :o)

Mike took me out for supper, it was a surprise as to where. We returned to an old haunt, well we ate there a couple of times early in our relationship, but they opened in a new second location. It was a wonderful evening, Mike had a nice steak, garden salad and a potato side. I had coconut shrimp and halibut with garlic mashed potato and I chose french onion soup instead of salad. The soup was delicious, but so hot it was almost boiling, so didn't get much eaten before our supper arrived. The shrimp was a real treat and cooked to perfection, Mmmm, Mmmm., as was the halibut, coated with a herb crust, it had the best flavor.
Mike wanted a dessert but by this point I was stuffed, so we decided we'd share a root beer float( in a HUGE mug with I bet 1/2 pt of vanilla ice cream), sure glad we decided to share.

After supper we decided to do some shopping around, just for the heck of it. We ended up buying........ you know we're so practical *wink*............. new bed pillows for each of us, Extra Firm, can't stand soft pillows! LOL! Actually I think our anniversary gift, if you want to call it that, is our new 16x24 hoop house we'll be building in a few weeks! When we do gifts, 99% of the time are something practical, and those gifts mean the most to us both. Our evening was wonderful and we both pray we see another 26 blessed years together.

Seedling update;
Everything is growing well, in fact almost in need of transplanting into the 4" pots. The ONLY thing that didn't come up was our peppers and I think it was because they needed to closer to the heat and less water, so.... I'm replanting them today*wink* With exception of the peppers and the Silentz tomato, we had an average germination rate of 95%, and some of the seed was 2-3 seasons old, so I'm very pleased.
Looking forward to the hoop house and getting the tomatoes, peppers, melons and okra off to an early start. Our plan is to use this from early Spring( growing cold weather crops) through end of Nov. or until it gets to cold to mess with. We don't want to heat the hoop house, other than for a few weeks here and there and we'll do so with a wood stove( barrel style , most likely) We'll have doors at each end( solid ends) and 3' roll up sides. Our objective is to start our season earlier, for ripe tomatoes, peppers and melons earlier, as well as extend our season. I'm excited! We still have our little starter greenhouse, which is more practical to heat, if needed, so will continue to use this as well. *wink*
Well, today is forecasted to be 67-69F and I have three loads of laundry to wash, and hand out to dry. Then my plan is to be outside enjoying the sunshine, we need to clean up branches and sucklers trimmed from our fruit trees. It's also forecasted to cool down for a couple of days, so will attack our dirty house, and have plans to get cabbage buns made. We have three heads of cabbage that need to be used up quickly and we're working on using up carrots and potatoes too. We're still digging parsnip, some we'll let go to seed.

Tonight's supper will be ham, cheesy potato bake, and steamed carrots and parsnips with a dab of butter and lemon juice drizzled over them.

Blessings for the rest of your week :o)

Our Christmas was quite,....

although we all received such special gifts. Cortney has longed
for a metal detector for months and shared this with her Grandparents so....,
she was blessed with a wonderful detector, with all the bells, beeps and tones
guaranteed to assist you in finding a treasure. The ground is frozen, so outside
the searches are limited to simply marking the "spot", until Spring thaw arrives.
Inside she has come across many interesting finds, in walls under the wood floor,
of course which she'll just have to imagine what the treasure could possibly be...
because we aren't tearing apart walls or tearing up the wood floor, nope, sorry!

Mike was surprised with his gift from Cortney,an all wooden canteen, lined
with paraffin wax, so yes it is usable. He was glad she'd gotten it for him.

Here's a close up shot, it is really a work of art! Mike of course tried it out

and with exception for a small leak, it works great. We'll add some more

melted paraffin to catch the area that was leaking, as well as add

another good coating inside.

Jon, Bobbi and Jaymz arrived around 7:30pm on Christmas eve. Jaymz

already looked tired and was ready to unwrap presents, rather than eat.

Cortney got him two new sweats outfits. We picked up two of the blanket

sleepers( we called them woollies) with football stuff on them, Jaymz is

a big football fan. Then of course he had to have a toy, so we spied a

Magnadoodle, tough enough in design to withstand a 3-4 yr. old boy.

In the photo below he is learning how to erase the picture he drew.

Darn flash, didn't go off but it's still a cute picture of Jon and Jaymz

looking at his new PJ's.( you can click the photos to make larger)

Cortney's gift from us, an IPOD. I'm NOT technologically minded so....

I take her word for it that it can hold up to 2,000 songs, take videos,

can tune into radio stations, etc.... Hers isn't the fancy touch IPOD, it's

called "Nano" It's so small I'm afraid to even touch it! I am amazed at

how far we've come in inventing small items that do four times+ the job

the older versions. On Jan 7, 2010 we're going to DSL Internet,

breaking free of dial up Internet, YEAH! In our area this has just

become available and the introductory offer for 1 yr., is only $4 more

than we pay for dial up. My gift from Cortney was this beautiful necklace she made, using wire

wrap techniques she learned in beading class. It's beautiful and can be

worn with just about any color clothes, as it has multi colored beads

(see below)

She and Mike also pulled a sneaky, a year or so ago I lost one of my

small diamonds from my wedding ring, anyway they managed to sneak

it out the a jewelry store to be repaired as well as replace the missing

diamond. I'll be glad to have my ring back on my finger, it's still being

repaired, but should be finished by the New Year.

Added to all of this Cortney gifted us with a portfolio of her best drawings

and the most heart felt letter to her Dad and I. Needless to say it is

one of our cherished keepsakes.

There were also stocking stuffers and several DVD's as gifts, for

everyone to enjoy!

Now bring on 2010, I'm getting my Spring Cleaning list ready! One thing

about having a wood stove, the walls and ceilings NEED to be scrubbed!

We also have touch up painting, full room painting and other odds and ends

projects to focus on. Then the end of January we'll be butchering pigs,

rendering lard, making sausage( three types). Move ahead to beginning of

March it will be time to get seeds started! WOW! we don't have much

time to get it all finished, time truly does fly when you get older! Now

you see how we came up with our farm's name!*wink*

Blessings to you and yours, for this New Year coming at us like a freight

train! One things for sure it's bound to be an interesting year!

Show and Tell

This is the necklace and braclet Cortney made at our beginner beading
class last night. I thought being outside it would show the beautiful
colors, but alas the camera just doesn't do it justice *sigh*
We also learned how to make ear rings, but ran out of time.
There is a better picture below( 3rd), at least it shows the color better

This is the necklace and bracelet I made. I'm not a jewelry person, so
thought that smaller beads were better. The main beads are Mother
of pearl and then crystal beads and silver spacers to offset it. It's 200%
more beautiful than the picture shows, and that is credit to the
beautiful beads not my work.


Here the color is better of Cortney's, but still not doing it it's full justice.

The result of the rhubarb in the 5 gallon bucket. We made this pan of

crisp and plan to make rhubarb sauce and can it, with the remainder.

Rhubarb is an acquired taste and we tend to like ours on the tart side,

so we don't overload it with sugar.

Rhubarb, like dandelion greens is a good Spring tonic to cleanse your

liver. Most likely, it is best eaten raw, provided you can stand it that

way! *LOL*

Shows the bags full, these are gallon size. We've stored them for a

few days, until we have time to make and can the sauce. I need to bring

up a couple dozen pint jars, my waterbath canner, lids and needed

items. Sure wish the strawberries were ripe, we'd make Strawberry

Rhubard jam and pie, YUMMMMMM.....! The strawberries are just

now beginning to bloom and I have first dibs on the biggest ripe one

I can find! *wink*

Happy Mother's Day!


Cortney surprised me with this dozen roses, bought with
her own $$,aren't they beautiful!!!!!

Mike and Cortney made me breakfast; bacon, scrambled eggs
and toast.

Mike tilled and set rows in our garden, until the belt broke
on the tiller *sigh* He only has 5 more rows to set and he's be done.

Mike and Cortney planned the supper menu and wouldn't let me help

So I snuck out and took pictures while they were inside and then

inside while they were outside.

Trying to hurry, so I don't get caught peeking and got my finger

in the picture.

Homemade french fries, with skins on, and green beans.

They have something special for dessert, but have yet to

reveal the secret. My guess is ice cream of some sort.

Jon stopped in on his way to work and wished me a wonderful

Mom's Day. He also gave me a gift, a pin.

We also went to a local greenhouse and bought a few flowers for

the two front flower boxes on each side of the driveway entrance

We also purchased 5 pots for my Mom she has a favorite flower

and can plant them in one of her pots in the front of their home.

As you can see for yourself I had a very blessed Mother's Day

and we plan to watch an old western, Nevada Smith, while enjoying

the surprise dessert.

Blog Mom's, praying your day was full of special

blessings as well!

Do you have anything that......

Maybe doesn't fit in with your decor, but it has sentimental value, or you just simply love it and don't care? Yesterday, as we were beginning the cleaning of the kitchen( spring cleaning), I took notice that we have a country style kitchen and yet the china cabinet is more a French Provincial style. When we remodeled, we picked cabinets that were built well and to fit into our country kitchen. The we added in the wood cook stove and old brick hearth, flooring that looks( fools everyone) like hardwood, it's linoleum. Recently we added a center work station made from a antique library table and we added a butcher block to half and granite to the other half with our collection of old ceramic bowls displayed on the shelves below and our well used 6 gal. redwing crock under the table. The only piece that doesn't truly fit in,is the china cabinet. This cabinet and matching table were given to us by Mike's mother, thus making them cherished in our hearts and besides the cabinet is just beautiful and displays our eclectic collection of wares, lovely. Inside the cabinet we have heirloom pieces, china, crystal, a collection of tea cups and saucers, as well as ceramic soup cups, chicken collectibles, etc.... When removing each piece Cortney and I reminisced about who gave it to us, what the family history was behind it and why is it that we don't use these items more often. It reminded me of a Little House on the Prairie episode, the one where Pa Ingalls worked refinishing wood work in trade for china dishes for Caroline. At the close of the show Laura speaks of how Ma wants them to be used everyday, not just on special occasions because special dishes are meant for special people. Cortney and I made a promise to each other, to remember to use these special pieces in our every lives, after all we are special, aren't we? I love antiques but also like our modern furniture, so our furniture collection is eclectic and you know what it works for us. We have a modern couch right next to an antique heirloom table( a chess,checkers table built by Mike's grandfather) we have modern glider rockers and on the opposite side sets my treadle sewing machine cabinet w/Singer machine inside. I guess, the point is that our furniture matches our lives, a little old and a little new and we need to remember the special benefits of each. Funny of the things we ponder when cleaning ;o) May your day be full of special blessings!