MerryHeartCrafts.comMountain Momma… Country Living

I thought I would share a few pictures with you all of the picnic and baptism we had Sunday.  This is the pond where we do our baptizing.   Beautiful!  This pond is located on Route 8 here in Floyd close to the Bread Basket. 

This is a young man from our church.  He and his dad were baptized Sunday.  We somehow missed getting the dad’s picture.  I have been busy all last week and yesterday helping Hubby with a job.  He has been remodeling a bathroom.  Today, I picked blackberries, some more green beans and tomatoes while the girls worked on inside house chores.  We will be busy working on those today.  We also have some peaches to can but they may have to wait until tomorrow.

Here are a few random pictures I took this morning.  The blackberries are looking pretty good this year.

A tomato ripening on the vine. 

A view of the back side of the house.  Temperature here has cooled down a little.  Not as humid as last week.   Or maybe it just feels that way because I’m not underneath that house running pipe for plumbing. (lol)  Well, I better get busy.  I hear blackberries calling our names.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

The hummingbirds are really enjoying the feeders.  We have this feeder at the old building and another one at the green swing.  I think hummers are so much fun to watch. 

Today, Hubby and I decided to put an outside faucet on the side of the new room.  When we built the new room we had to take the old outside faucet off.  Well, plumbing never seems to go as you think it will.  We run the pipe and got everything connected, turned the water back on and amazingly, no leaks.  Then we go outside, turn the faucet on and amazingly, no leaks.  Well, of course, we are patting ourselves on the back now thinking wow, that was easy.  Hubby turns the outside faucet off and guess what-it won’t turn off.  It was a brand new faucet so we’re not sure what was wrong with it.  Of course, we have no cut off valve in our collection of plumbing supplies so we have to shut the water off again, drive 30 minutes to the local hardware, get a cut off valve and a new outside faucet.   When we get home, he put the cut off valve on so we could turn the water back on.  He had to go look at a job possibility so the other faucet will have to wait.  He will have to take  the one that doesn’t work back out of the wall so he can put the other one in.  Hopefully this one will work. 

Well, that’s  our day.  Temperatures here today have been wonderful.  Low 80′s.  It is now almost 6:00 p.m. and the temperature is 75 degrees with a great breeze.  Thank you, Lord.  Tomorrow we will be going down to Jessica’s.  She has a doctors appointment.  We will be watching the boys and then going over to David’s mom’s to pick some apples.  Remember last year, she gave us those pink apples.  Well, they are ready to pick.  They make such pretty applesauce. 

Enjoy your day and God bless.

Our VBS went very well last night.  Our theme is “Christ Under the Big Top”.  I think they did a great job with decorating.

Here we are getting ready to play our first game of the week.  The game was called “dress the clown.”  Our pastor and his wife volunteered to be the clowns. 

Don’t they look great?  We are so blessed to have a pastor who loves kids.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

Monday evening Julie and I were outside letting the chicks run free for a while and this is what we saw.  God is so good to show us glimpses of His glory. 

Sorry I did not make a post yesterday.  As you know we went down to Jessica’s on Monday for her ultrasound appointment.  Well, this baby did not cooperate.  He or she decided no one was going to look that day.  All kinds of movement but legs crossed.  They told her they would do one more a little later on.  I guess this is a shy one or stubborn-not sure which.

Yesterday the girls and I went with Hubby to help him work.  He is doing the sheetrock on a remodeling job.  He can do it all by himself except hang ceilings.  That is just too hard to do alone.    The house is in a beautiful location.  If we go back with him another day, I’ll try to remember to take the camera so you all can see some pictures of it. 

Today we’ll work on catching up here at home.  How can a house get so dirty when no one is home?    This morning was very chilly here-42 degrees when we got up this morning.  Yesterday was really nice.  Hubby’s van tells the outside temperature and it was 70 degrees when we left the job site yesterday around 3:00. 

Enjoy your day and God bless.

Here are a few of the turtle pictures we took while at Pandapas Pond the other day.

They were pretty skittish so we had to sneak upon them to get the pictures.

Grace did a great job! 

A beaver lodge on the pond.  Several geese were resting on top of it. 

We have several things planned to work on today.  Rain is in the forecast though so we may not get any of it done.  We’ll just have to wait and see.  I am going to use the remainder of the pork tenderloin this evening to make bbq sandwiches for supper.  I have enough rolls left from last night to use for buns.  I think I will do homesfries and coleslaw with it.  I like to cook enough meat to make several meals from it.  This makes it a little easier I think.  We have dentist appointments tomorrow in Roanoke, then we are going to Sam’s Club to pick up a few things.  After that, we are going to pick out Grace’s frames for her new glasses.  The Horns are supposed to come by tomorrow evening  to visit.   YEAH!  It has been a while since we have got to visit. 

I better get busy.  Hubby and I are working on a big outside project.  I’ll try to show pictures next time I make a post.  Anyway, he is wanting to get started so that hopefully we can get some of it done before it starts raining.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Very few things say home more than fresh baked bread.  Clothes hanging on the line run a close second in my book.  I just pulled this bread from the oven and thought it looked soooooo good.  It smells delicious too.  I tried a different recipe today and am hoping it will be good.  I needed a good sandwich bread recipe.  Here is the recipe I used:

1-1/3 plus 1tbsp. water, 2 tbsp. butter, 4-1/4 cups flour, 3 tbsp. sugar, 2 tbsp. dry milk, 1-1/2 tsp. salt, 2 tsp. yeast.   I put these ingredients into my bread machine on dough cycle and let it do its job.  When the cycle was finished, I took the bread out of the machine, shaped it into a loaf and put it into my loaf pan.   If you do not have an extra long loaf pan, you will need to make 2 loafs.  Bake at 350 degrees until done.  It takes about 30 min. in my oven.

I also have been working on apron patterns and I think I have decided which one to do the matching aprons in.  I just have to adjust the pattern a little to compensate for what I don’t know how to do.  I will show pictures soon.  By the way, thanks Dave, for fixing my problem on the computer.

Warmer temperatures here today-35 degrees.  Hardly any wind.  A really nice day.  I have to go raid my material stash.  I will need a piece large enough to do all 3 aprons.  I’m not sure I have anything.  Hopefully, I will, as I would like to get started on them today.

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.

One of the things I am taking tomorrow for our thanksgiving meal at church will be these rolls.  I froze them ahead of time and have been baking them all day today.  The one difference I have noticed is that the frozen dough did not rise as much as it would if it had not been frozen.  They taste the same though and I guess thats what counts.  I am also making cinnamon rolls to take.  Not sure what else yet.  After our meal, the youth of our church will go shopping.  Every year they get two  ”angels” from the angel tree.  A boy and a girl.  Each family in the church contributes $5.00.  Then the youth go shopping.  They boys buy for the boy and the girls buy for the girl.  It is a very nice tradition.  Our youth really look forward to going.   One year, they were shopping and picked out something they wanted to buy and they were a little short on the  money needed to buy it.  One of the boys said he had some extra from a job he had done that week.  He gave the extra so they could purchase the item.  I love that.   Children being raised to give generously and without expecting anything in return. 

Yesterday I had a WONDERFUL surprise.  Jessica and Sam came up for a visit.  I did not know they were coming.  They just walked in the door.  I was so happy.  Daniel and David were at home.  She stayed until after lunch.  The bible study ladies had not gotten to see Sam yet.  It was a great surprise.  Have I mentioned I love happy surprises?

Beautiful day here in Floyd.  Very nice temperatures with lots of sunshine.  A great day for being outside.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Yesterday I had a WONDERFUL surprise.  Jessica and Sam came up for a visit.  I did not know they were coming.  They just walked in the door.  I was so happy.  Daniel and David were at home.  She stayed until after lunch.  The bible study ladies had not gotten to see Sam yet.  It was a great surprise.  Have I mentioned I love happy surprises?

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.

An almost empty wood pile.  Remember how this looked last fall.  I would show you the picture but all my old pictures are still sleeping on my computer, which is “resting” for a while.  Anyway, last fall this shed had 7 rows deep of wood and 2 rows on each side.  All gone.  We used almost all of the wood last winter.  Saturday, we all worked on the wood pile.  George and I used the splitter and the girls stacked it up.

This is what the pile looked like.  We have about 1/3 of it split and stacked in the building-three rows deep.  We want to have more wood this winter than we had last winter.  Just in case, it is another hard winter.  It is better to be prepared.   I want to take a moment to complement my girls.  They worked very hard Saturday and did an excellent job stacking the wood.  Thank you, Julie and Grace.

Another picture I know Jess will love.  The girls found this lunar moth on the building the other day.  Very pretty.  They enjoy finding pictures for me to use.  Rather chilly here today.  Upper 40′s for the temperature. Lots of rain.  We had a really hard rain last night while we were at church.  We do our Sunday night study in the basement.  Water started coming in through the basement door.  We had to stop our study and get busy-quick.  The outside drain could not handle all the water.  Thanks to mops, a shop vac, and a sump pump we finally got it all dried out.  I’m just glad it happened while we were there.  It would not have been fun to discover all that water on Wednesday night.  Imagine what damage it could have done.  God is good.  Of course, after all that hard work, the food tasted extra good.  Time for piano lessons.  Take care and God bless.