I thought I would share with you all a few pictures from our Thanksgiving.  Katie spend most of the time doing what she does best.    Ain’t she beautiful!

Next two very handsome boys.   Sam loves to have his picture taken.  When he sees the camera, he will stop whatever he is doing and sit down for you to take his picture.  Then he wants you to show it to him.  

Then my “baby” girls.  I am such a blessed woman.   Thank you, Lord!

You will notice I am doing something a little different on the blog.  I have wanted to do this for a long time and yesterday David fixed it for me.  I now have a recipe link on the sidebar.  Hopefully, I will be able to remember how to make it work.  Today, I put the recipe for Oatmeal Muffins on.   (Are you proud of me, Dave?)  I got this recipe from my friend Cheryl at http://holcombhappenings.wordpress.com/ and it is one of my favorite breakfast muffins. 

We will be working on Dave and Jessica’s bed today.  Hubby hopes to get it finished this weekend.   I hope you all enjoy your day and God bless.

Saturday, before Grace’s party, we went up on the hill to cut wood.  Grace decided (just for fun) she wanted to chop this log with the ax.  She chopped for a pretty long time.  This is how much she chopped.

Pretty good, considering it was splitting maul and not an ax.  Then Hubby had difficulties with his chain saw and we had to load up and come back home for him to work on it.

Now you can’t see him but in the left corner at the tail gate is Shadow.  This is what he is waiting on.

He is too old and too heavy to jump up into the truck bed.  Hubby has to lift him up now but we would never dream of leaving him behind.  If the girls are riding in the truck bed, he thinks he has to be there too.   He checks out the area where we are cutting and then comes back and stays where we are.  If the girls go for a walk, he goes with them.  He has always taken his job very seriously.

Everyone loaded and ready to go.  Hubby did get his chain saw working again.  He went back up and finished getting the load of wood while the girls and I stayed down and got everything ready for the party.  It was a really fun day. 

Enjoy your day and God bless.

I think it has been a long time since I made a post but things have been kinda busy here.  Jess and the boys came up on Thursday.  We spent Friday doing some shopping and then Dave came up Friday evening.  He and Hubby went over to our pastor’s house for a men’s shoot on Saturday.  Today Dave, Jess and the boys went with us to church.  It was pastor appreciation day.  We had a fellowship meal after church with lots and lots of good food.

Today has been a very nice day here in Floyd.  Sunshine, a slight breeze and a temperature of about 65 degrees.  Very nice.  I hope to get some fall pictures this week to show you all.  The trees are starting to get beautiful colors here.  Tomorrow the girls and I will go down to play with the boys while Jess has one last ultra sound.  She only has about 3 weeks to go. 

This is a picture of some flowers that are blooming beside the road on our way to church.  Aren’t they pretty?  Well, I have a lot of posts to read to get caught up on what has been happening in everyone else’s life.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

It’s not very often I make two posts in one day, but I thought this was worth sharing.  Tomorrow we will be going down to play with the boys while Jess has another doctor’s appointment.   She asked me if I could make her a stack cake.  This cake goes by different names.  Some call it a stack cake, others a “lassie” cake (molasses).  No matter what you call it, it is GOOD!  In the mountains where I grew up, this cake was common at most all family get-togethers.  It is not as common now, as the art of making them has all but disappeared.  It took me many years of trial and error, but I finally got it.   (I think, anyway.)    These cakes are best eaten the next day.  Most like them with a cold glass of buttermilk.  In Grundy, these sell for $15.00-$20.00 and worth every penny.   The layers are thin and between them is a good amount of homemade applebutter.   Well, I just wanted to show you all my accomplishment for the day.  Just kidding, it didn’t take me all day to make it but it did take a long time to clean up afterward.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Saturday we got the chickens more space in their lot.  They really seem to enjoy having more room.  We put the additional 5 hens in with our hens.  It will take them a while to get used to being in there.  You see the coup at the far side of the lot.  That is what they have been in since they were bought by the man who gave them to us.  They don’t really understand the concept of being able to run about.  When we turn them all out in the evening, those 5 don’t really know to go outside.  I’m sure they will figure it out pretty soon though.  The small coup you see in the front is just for emergency use.  In case we need to separate a hen from the rest of them for a short time. 

Yesterday, we made salsa.  We ended up with 16 pts.  The Horn’s came over for a while in the evening.  We ate supper, talked, picked a few blackberries and talked some more.  It seemed like it had been a long time since they had come over.  We had a really nice evening and even got a little rain.  God is good!  Our temperatures have definitely been cooler this week.  This morning it was 60 degrees when we got up.  There is a slight feel of fall in the air.  Humidity is not near as bad.  That always makes it seem cooler. 

I hope you all have a great day and God bless.

We have been working on peaches for a few days.  I think I mentioned that we saved the peelings and put them into the steam juicer.  Well, the above picture shows the 2 qts of juice we got from the peelings.  We had 2 gal. of peelings and got 2 1/2 qts of juice.  This will yield over a gal of peach juice.  YUM!  I definitely will do that again with our next batch of peaches. 

I picked about 1 gal. of blackberries this morning.  Pretty good for the first picking.  I am trying something new for us.  I am making blackberry syrup to use with pancakes, french toast, etc.  Have any of you ever made this?  It sounds good and sometimes I just want something different.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.  I have the blackberries on in the steam juicer now.  Julie and I went up to the cellar this morning and organized it.  I think “little green men” come along over the winter and just scatter all my canned goods.  Anyway, all is in order now and ready for the new cans to fill it up.  Grace worked inside doing household chores while Julie and I worked on the cellar.  Hubby worked on mowing the yard.  It has been a long time since he mowed.  It is just so hot and dry.  He thought it was starting to look a little wild. 

Well, time to check on the blackberries.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

When I was living in Grundy, we would buy our milk, butter and buttermilk from a friend of ours who had cows.  She made absolutely the best butter I’ve ever tasted.  When we moved up here to Floyd, the butter they made tasted completely different.  They call it “sweet cream butter”  here.  Well, don’t get me wrong,  it’s really good.  But just not the taste I’ve been hankering for.   So the other day I called Margie, our friend in Grundy that made the butter.    The cows here on the farm are Holsteins and don’t produce much cream so it takes a long time to save up.  We wanted to make butter for the weekend for Jessica, so I cheated and bought heavy whipping cream from the store.   Here is the recipe she gave me. 

1.  Put equal amounts of cream and buttermilk in a jar.  I used 1 pt cream and 1 pint buttermilk.

2.  Let jar sit out on counter overnight or until it becomes very thick-I mean really, really thick.

3.  Her instructions were then to churn it.  As we do not have a churn, I poured the thickened cream into my mixer with the whisk   attachment on-You know my beautiful mixer my wonderful hubby surprised me with at Christmas.

 4. Llet this mix about 5 min.  (I’m not really sure of the time, it could have been less or more.)  This is what it will look like when the butter is ready.

6.  Then you do what Margie called “gather” the butter.  I put it into a container, added a little salt,  took a spoon and worked it around and all the excess buttermilk came out.  Drain off the buttermilk as you gather the butter.

The finished product.  Chill and enjoy!!  Of course, I had to sample it before this.  I wanted to make sure it was good before serving it to my family. (lol)  It tastes just like Margie’s.  Yeah!!!!  I am so happy.   I am making fresh rolls today for the weekend.  Won’t they be good with  butter spread on them. 

Enjoy your day and God bless.

This is the view from my favorite sitting place.

This, of course, is my favorite sitting place.  Hubby and I spend each morning here in this swing drinking our  coffee together. Notice the rose bush running up in the tree.  It took me a long time to train it to go up there.

I think God is ever so wonderful to allow me to have this beautiful place to live.   Thank you, Lord!

Enjoy your day and God bless.

Aren’t they so cute!  These little guys are on the big tomato plant we bought.  Makes my mouth water just looking at them.  Today has been dry at least.  No rain.  We were able to hang clothes on the line.  YEAH!

We received a wonderful blessing yesterday.  Billy gave us a quarter of a beef.  You will notice on my canning log a new entry.  Thank you, Lord.  My computer is out of commission-so sad.  Dave says he thinks it is the hard drive.  I will be using Hubby’s computer for a while.  I miss my computer already.  Hopefully, we will be able to get it fixed before too long.

Time to take one of the canners off.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

On one of the rare occasions Sunday that the sun actually peeked through the clouds, we happened to be at Smartview Park.  These beautiful fire pinks were blooming everywhere.

I thought you all might like them.  We are always looking  for  different types  wildflowers and quizzing each other to see if we can remember their names.

Today is STILL overcast and foggy.  We had rain most of the day yesterday and more last night.  Our temperature this morning was 40 degrees.  I finally decided to just go ahead and build a fire.  I washed a load of clothes on Monday and hung them up inside.  This morning there were still not completely dry.   It takes a long time for them to dry if I don’t have a fire and besides the house was a little chilly and damp.

Time for school.  Enjoy your day and God bless.