MerryHeartCrafts.comMountain Momma… Country Living

Yesterday morning, we had a beautiful start to our morning.  I love sunrises and sunsets. 

After church, we came home to eat lunch.  We had hamburgers on homemade buns and fries.  We ate as quickly as possible and left for town to watch the Christmas Parade.  The parade is a big deal here in Floyd.  Lots and lots of people come to watch and participate.  Here are just a few pictures Grace took.

There are lots of old cars.

Marching bands.

Floats and

wagons pulled by horses.  We had a great time!   The girls are already anticipating next year’s parade.  We have rain here today with fog.  Not a good day for doing anything outside.  Hubby is working on the bed but he has to do it inside his shop.  He doesn’t have a lot of room in there so he doesn’t like to work inside.  He is getting very close to being finished however he still does not have his brakes fixed on the van.  He has taken the wheel off several times and did different things to it but it is still sticking.  He wanted to replace the wheel cyclinder today but it is just too wet to work on it.  Hopefully, this will fix it. 

Today, I made a spice tea mix.  I got the recipe from Nadine at http://nadinesnook.blogspot.com/  She also posted a recipe for chai tea mix that I want to make.  These will  make excellent gifts.   Well, our lunch break is almost over.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

I thought I would show you all a picture of mullein.  The girls and I went gathering it this morning.  We got quite a lot.

I then looked it  (I think this might be a mountain term) and removed any that did not look good.  I have the first batch in the dehydrator now.  As I said yesterday, this is the first time I have tried drying it.    I will show you all pictures of it after it is dryed.   I usually just gather the leaves and make a tea from them, add sugar or honey and use it as a cold tea.  It is very good cold with a minty taste.   The problem with this is there are no leaves to gather in the winter.  I have never tried this as a hot tea but according to what I have read on line, you use 1 tbsp. dried mullein to a cup of hot water.  Let it steep for about 10 minutes and strain the liguid through a coffee filter or cheesecloth.  You will need to add honey to this, as it is bitter without a sweetener.  This is good for coughs and respiratory ailments.

I have finished drying the mullein and I thought I would just add the picture of it here on this post.

I will store this in an airtight container to enjoy over the winter.  It actually yielded much more than I thought it would.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

I love old books, especially old school books.  I thought I would share a few of them.   I thought I might share how our school days “normally” go.  I usually wake the girls around 7:00 A.M.  They get dressed, make their beds and come downstairs by 7:30.  Sometimes they fix their own breakfast and sometimes I do.  It mostly depends on what they are having and how our time is running.   I begin cleaning up the kitchen and they start piano practice.  They practice 30 min. each.  While one is practicing the other one is helping me and then vice versa.  We shake the rugs and sweep the floors every morning.  We have certain days that we do other things, clean bathroom, dust.  I have a chart made with the days of the week on it and the designated chores for that day.  We try to have all the house chores finished before we start school.  It is so difficult for me to concentrate on school if these things are not already done.  Laundry gets worked in  every day.  We are normally finished with all this around 9:15.  They then get a 15 min. break to do whatever they want.  We try to start school by 9:30.  We say our pledges, pray and then begin.  Bible is always first.  Then they take turns chosing what subject they want to do.  Our subjects are bible, spelling, history, science, math and language.  Most days we are half way through by lunch time.  We break an hour for lunch.  Free time for everyone (except Mom).  We then finish up somewhere between 1:00 and whenever.  Yesterday was a long day for us.  It was about 3:30 when we finished.  Julie’s math was very long.  Today is an easier day.  It is now lunch time and all we lack is math.  I’m glad as we need to work up an 1/2 bushel of apples.  I already have them in the steam juicer and I want to make applesauce from them.  Well, our lunch break is almost over.   I hope I didn’t bore you all too much.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Here is a picture of the apron I just finished.  I am hoping to take it to the Bread Basket today.  I am working on another apron that I am making from an old pillowcase.  I will take a picture of it when it is finished.    We have been busy with school this week.  It seems to be going pretty well.  I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies because school is just not school without cookies-or so I have been told.  We have had fairly nice weather here this week.  I think though rain is in the forecast and cooler temps.  We’ll see.  Well, it actually started to sprinkle as I typed this, so the girls and I had to make a run out to the clothesline to get them off before they got too wet. 

It is corn cutting time.  For several weeks, this is a familar site here on the farm.   They started cutting above the house this morning.  Well, our lunch break is over.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

My Grace was stung Tuesday with a bee.  This is what it looks like today.  It actually is getting better.  The swelling has gone down.  It must be our time for stings.  Hubby came home yesterday and he had gotten stung with a hornet.  It looked pretty rough this morning.  We have been putting alcohol on both his and Grace’s.   Does anyone know anything else to put on bee stings?

Not a long post right now.  We are still working with peaches.  We took a lunch break and I thought I would show you all Grace’s sting.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

This is Baby Emily, David’s neice.  She is a very hardy eater and seemed very content in Daddy’s arms.

Daniel and his cousin Zack riding bikes.  Zack is Emily’s older brother.

And baby Sam held prisoner in his walker.    We all had a lot of fun with lots of good fun.  Jess had ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls and banana pudding.  YUM!

Yesterday we went to get the inspection sticker on my car and found out the tie rods ends were bad.  We had to make a run to C-burg to get new ones.   Hubby and his brother put them on yesterday evening.  We went back in this morning and got the inspection sticker.  Hubby still does not have his window fixed on the van.  This has given him much trouble.  He of course is trying to fix the old one instead of buying a new one.  For some reason, the wire is not winding up on the spool correctly. 

We are getting rain today.  Temperatures are warm though so it will be very good for everything.  The girls and I checked our seeds out yesterday underneath our greenhouse.  We have a few tomatoes coming up, cucumbers and broccoli.  Very exciting.   Well, our lunch break is over.  Time for school to start.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

I know.  I’ll make tea.  Yes, it is sassafras root.  We found quite a lot of it up on the hill where we cut wood.  They had pushed over a few sassafras trees so we got the roots, brought them down and made tea.  First you wash the root.  They usually are pretty dirty. 

Then I broke them into smaller pieces.  Put into a kettle with water.  I used about 1 1/2 qts of water to this amount of roots.  Bring water to a boil and let simmer for about 15 min.  Then strain the water, add sweetener of your choice and you have a delicious cup of tea.  We love it.  It is probably Hubby’s favorite.

We went to visit Jessica over the weekend.  They have much warmer temperatures than we do.  They have some forsynthias that are already blooming.  Her Easter lillies are almost ready to open up.  We even saw some creeping phlox blooming.  Then we came home, temperature was 34 degrees, very overcast.  YUCK!  We even had a slight dusting of snow this morning.  I don’t want to complain though.  I am working on enjoying the seasons without complaint.   It is still cold but the sun has come out so that makes it all seem so much nicer.

Lunch break is over.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

This is a picture from several years back.  I was reading one of my blogger friends post and she was looking for a modest dress pattern.  I commented about how I had made these dresses before but I felt like my instructions were lacking.  I dug in my old pictures and found this.  I hope this makes it a little easier for her to understand.

Today has been cold and very windy.  Wind gusts of about 40-50 mph.  We are doing school as usual.  I hope to get some sewing in after school.  Supper tonight is homemade pizza.  Yesterday was very busy cleaning the attic.  We use this space as storage and every year it seems to get way out of hand.  It looks very organized now.  Not for long, I’m sure.  I’ve been trying to do some cleaning and organizing this week.  Eliminating some clutter.  I seem to have an over abundance of clutter. 

Well, time for school to start back.  Lunch break is over.  Enjoy your evening and God bless.

My, what a difference a few months can make.  Jasper was about 8 weeks old in this picture.  The other one was taken this morning.  I think he’s grown some, don’t you all?  He is drying off from a bath, waiting on the girls to break for lunch so he can play with them.  I am not sure how this happened.  I’ve never cared for animals in the house.  We now have 2 full time cats inside and 1 part time dog. 

I used to be so strong.  Oh well, it’s not too bad.  The girls really enjoy them being in.  Cold here today.  The wind is blowing pretty hard.  The fire went out last night and when I tried to build a new fire this morning, the smoke was terrible.  I eventually just took the wood out of the stove and left it alone.  I would rather be a little cool than have to deal with all that smoke.  We have the gas logs on so its not too cold.  Hopefully, we will do bible study tomorrow.  I am very excited to begin this study.  Esther is such an exciting book to study and I’m sure Beth Moore will bring out things I would never think about.  We are hopefully going down to Jessica’s this weekend.  I want to do some girl stuff.  The town she lives in has an excellent Goodwill Store.  I love shopping at Goodwill!  I guess I just love thrift store shopping in general, yard sales, consignment sales, etc.  Good deals at good prices.  Well, lunch break is over.  Time for school.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

What do you all think about my Christmas cactus?  Ain’t it pretty?  It was given to me several years ago by a dear friend.  I’m not very good with indoor flowers but this one has been beautiful every year.  I quess I just have it in a good location.  Thanks, Barbara!  I really enjoy it’s color so I thought I would share it with everyone.  Today is a very dreary day in Floyd.  Rainy, foggy, windy, chilly.  Yuk. No outside activities today, except carry in some wood for the fire.  Oh well, it could be much worse.  School has went very well today.  We are learning about writing reports in language.  Not very exciting but necessary information.   Tonight is church night and the girls always look forward to Team Kids.  They have lots of fun and learn about scripture too, so it makes them and us happy.  If anyone wants to learn more about Team Kids, it is a program through Lifeway.  You can go to their web page and find out all about it.  We are still doing the Beth Moore study on the Fruit of the Spirit on Wednesday night.  Pretty good study.  Well lunch break is over and I better get busy.  God Bless.