MerryHeartCrafts.comMountain Momma… Country Living

We certainly have had a lot of fun things going on here.   Thursday we went down to Jessica’s.  We got 2 more gallon of fresh strawberries.  We put 1 gal. into the freezer and just enjoyed the other gallon.  Friday was Hubby’s birthday and the girls piano recital.  We celebrated Hubby’s birthday with burgers and cake.  Then got ready for the recital.  Saturday, the ladies from our church made a trip to Bramwell WV.   It is a town where the extremely rich coal barons lived.  Very fancy and extravagant houses.    The above picture shows the town from one of the houses.

Our group-such fine looking ladies!

Most of the houses had amazing lawns-huge.  The kind you know had to have several gardeners just to keep them looking nice.

Several houses had cooper sinks in the kitchen.  When the wealthy were living there, they all had servants to do the work.

I think every house had stained glass windows.  This one was in a bathroom.

A cozy little nook in one of the houses.

One of the houses-notice the brick road.

Another house.  Altogether we toured 9 houses.  It took over 3 hrs to walk through them all.  On the third floor of one of the houses, there was a ballroom.  We did not get to see it though.

Every house had tables set with old dishes, Mrs. Faye.  You would have loved them. 

The old furniture in these houses was amazing.  The wood floors, cabinets, everything.  I have so many pictures it was hard to choose which ones to show you first.  We had a great day! 

I hope each and every one of you had a great Mother’s Day.  God bless.

Our irises are in full bloom!  These were given to us several years ago by a friend from church.  It has taken them a while to get going but I think they are looking pretty good this year. 

We have been busy this week.  Does any one think this is becoming the norm?  Seems like spring is a busy time.  Anyway, we went to the dentist on Tuesday.  Both girls got a good report.  Then on Wednesday, we went to Sam’s club and bought our bulk items.  Yesterday, we went down to Jessica’s.  Today is full as well.  Our church is doing a Mother/Daughter banquet this evening.  I am bringing rolls.  I also have to take Hubby’s van in to Little Town to get 2 tires put on.  I was hoping the girls and I could get the nests made today for the little chicks.  Hubby also wants to work on the floor for the new boxed in part of the back porch when he gets in from the job site.  We’ll see. 

 School has taken a back burner this week with all that has been going on.  We only lack 15 more lessons in math and we’ll be finished with it for the summer.  We are calling quits to language when math is finished.   Then we plan on doing history and science during June and July and taking August and September off.  These two months are so busy here with canning.  It is much easier for us to take those months off.

I also hope to make strawberry jam today.  Yesterday, while down at Jessica’s we got 2 gal. of strawberries.  I put one gallon in the freezer yesterday evening and hope to make jam with the other gallon today.  I think Jessica is planning on making jam tomorrow.  I am going to try using the liquid certo this time.  I just haven’t been having success with the powdered sure jell. 

Well, that’s about it for now.  I better get busy if I am going to get anything done.  I hope you all have a great day and God bless.

No picture-just wanted to let you all know we have finished working up the deer.  We got 20 qts canned, 16 roasts in the freezer and 15 bags of tenderloin.  YEAH!  We are all tired and so I think tonights supper will be left over homemade chicken noodle soup.   Enjoy your day and God bless.

This is an old barn that is at our pastor’s house.  I love old things, even old barns.  Yesterday we worked with the corn.  We got it all shucked.  We put some up in the freezer on the cob and some we are cutting off the cob. We will be finishing working it up today and then we will start on the peaches.

Our temperature this morning was 50 degrees.  Amazing!  All indications are that we will have an early fall.  Yesterday, we noticed the geese were forming groups.  Several groups flew over with about 40 geese in a group.  They were flying in the “V” formation.  So pretty!  This is another picture from our pastor’s house.  I hope I don’t bore you all too much with these but the girls took lots of pretty pictures at his house that I want to share with you all.

This is the view from his front porch.  Lovely!  Well, our little break is over so I guess I should get busy.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

I hope you all are not tired of sunrise pictures.  I just love a beautiful sunrise and we get some amazing ones here.   I thought this one this morning was especially beautiful. 

Today while the girls worked on school, I worked on the dreaded refrigerators.  We have two refrigerators here in the house.  One is a side by side and the other is just a regular refrigerator with the freezer on top.   So many little cups of this and cups of that had been stored over the holidays.  It was getting impossible to find space to put new cups of this and that.  I decided enough was enough.  I cleaned both of them out completely, removed the shelves and washed them.  I stood back and looked at them and was amazed at how much better they looked.  Empty but better.  So good that I decided to do the freezers too.  Amazing!  I actually have space in the fridges and the freezers now.   I thought I would never get all those containers washed.  I decided since the girls were working so hard on school, I would let them out of that chore today.  Thats one job I am glad to have done.

While we were inside working on this Hubby was busy splitting wood. (Dave, he has your splitting maul sharpened and ready for you!)  After we were finished inside, we went out and helped him move all the split wood inside the wood building.  It was a fairly nice day for working outside.  Temperature was around 30 degrees with occasional sunshine. 

Enjoy your evening and God bless.

Today we are getting back into the swing of school.  We had too many errands  yesterday to start.  We also visited some with the Horn’s yesterday.  For Christmas, the Horn girls had received a kit from Wal-Mart to make a little girl apron and a little doll apron.  I took some interfacing over and Vicki and I traced out the pattern.  So I now have a little doll apron pattern to make.  I want to make a mother, daughter, and doll apron to match. 

Temperatures here are much nicer than they have been however yesterday morning was pretty cold.  Temperature yesterday was 14 when we got up but it did warm up nicely with lots of sunshine.  Cloudy today though, of course, because I am home and could hang our clothes on the line today.  Oh well, thats how it goes.  Hubby worked on getting some more wood yesterday while the girls and I ran errands. 

Tonights menu is something I really don’t have a name for.  I brown hamburger meat, add onions, cabbage, and potatoes.  The options are limitless as to what you can add.   I sometimes add fresh peppers, zucchini, squash, mushrooms.  I like fresh baked cornbread with it.   I got some  cushaw from the freezer this morning.  I think I will make a pie for dessert. 

Enjoy your day and God bless.

For the first time this year, the kids got to play some of the games outside before it got dark.  This was a lot of fun and much cooler than in the basement.  I, for one, was extremely hot downstairs but then I should have known not to wear a long sleeve shirt.  We girls got our hair cut yesterday.  I decided to make a batch of  cinnamon buns to take to the lady who cuts our hair.  We all sat down and enjoy them while they were still warm before we started our haircuts.  It was a nice visit. 

Today it has been pretty chilly here in Floyd.  We have kept a fire going all day.  While the girls worked on school, I have been busy making pumpkin puree to put in the freezer.  I used part of the puree to make a pumpkin pie for supper.  It is in the oven now.  The recipe I used is:

2 cups pumpkin puree, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 cup evaporated milk, 1 egg beaten, 1/3 cup plain flour, 1 tsp vanilla,  1 tsp pumpkin pie spice.  Stir all ingredients together and bake at 350 degrees until done.  Pie is done when toothpick stuck in middle comes out clean.  Start checking for doneness at about 45 min.  Years ago, we were at a farmers market and this older lady was selling pumpkins, cushaw and other fall squash.  I ask her about a pie recipe for them and she just told me all the ingredient and their measurements, right from memory.  I was of course very impressed.  I hurriedly wrote them down (before I forgot them) and have used this recipe ever since.  It is a favorite fall dessert around here. 

Take care and God bless.

This is our progress so far.   It has been a pretty big job.  We finished grouting the tile today.  I think it looks really good.  I really like the  color she chose for the walls.    I think I like the bigger tile too.   David will seal the grout, put on the base trim and get her washer and dryer back in the room.  She is wanting to put lots of shelves in and also they are going to purchase a freezer to go in the room.  I’ll take more pictures when all this is done.

We had a really nice time Sunday with our revival getting started.  The pastor’s messages were really good.  Sunday mornings message was about being cleansed and Sunday evening was about getting a touch from God.  We left Monday morning to go back down to Jessica’s.  She’s such a slave driver, you know.

My next post will have birthday party pictures, however I could not resist showing you these two today.

Ain’t he cute when he’s sleeping?  He has an absolutely beautiful smile and smiles a lot.  He is a very happy and content little boy.

This is a picture of pure love.  I don’t think I have ever seen a little boy love his dog more than Daniel loves his “Buddy” or vice versa.  They spend hours outside doing this very thing, just rolling and playing together. 

Well, I think I’ll rest for a while.  Enjoy your evening and God bless.

Our corn is ready!  I love fresh garden corn.  We have been working some of it up this morning.   So far we have put 58 ears in the freezer and 9 pts cut off the cob.  I have a vacuum sealer which I use for the corn and other stuff.  It is a very handy thing to have.  I purchase items at the store in bulk at a discounted price and then separate them out into portions we can use.  Then seal them with the vacuum sealer.  It really makes a difference.  No freezer burn.

   The type of corn we raise is called Merit Corn or where I’m from they call it Garden Creek Corn.  The man who had the seed for it lived on Garden Creek, thus the name.  It is an excellent corn, very sweet.  It is called the silkless corn because when you shuck it the silks just fall off with the shucks.  I LIKE THAT!  Makes working the corn so much easy.

We have been getting quite a lot of rain here this week.  The temperatures have cooled down some though because of the rain.  Yesterday, the girls and I worked on apples.  16 quarts to be exact.  I used my new steamer juicer and extracted over a qt of juice from the peelings.  We had fresh apple juice with breakfast this morning.  Very delicious!

Better get busy.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Saturday while down at Jessica’s we went over to David’s mothers.  There we found an apple tree loaded with apples and ready to be picked.  She said we could have them.  We did get a surprise though.  They are not your normal apple.

We gathered about a 1/2 bushel and brought them home.  We had never seen an apple that looked like this one.  I’m not sure what their name is but they are difinitely different.  What fun we had today working with these.  Grace of course loved them as pink is her favorite color.

After cooking them and running them through the sauce maker, they turn a beautiful, darker color.

We canned 9 pints and put 1 qt bag in the freezer.  I think they look very pretty in the jar.  Tomorrow, if all goes as planned, we will be making spaghetti sauce.  We have  a bushel of tomatoes to work up.  Our pastor’s wife gave us her spaghetti sauce recipe, so I think we will make it tomorrow.  She gave us a can to try and we all thought it was very good.  The recipe I have made before does not get thick enough so I have been on the search for a new one.  I’ll let you all know tomorrow how it turns out.  Take care and God bless.