MerryHeartCrafts.comMountain Momma… Country Living

Every Christmas Eve our church has a candlelight service.  I wanted to show you all how beautiful it is but the pictures just didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped.   We light all our oil lamps and they serve as our lighting for the service.  We sing Christmas songs and the pastor reads the Christmas story.  Then we have communion. 

Next, we make a circle around the sanctuary and light our little hand held candle, sing a few more Christmas songs and leave.   It is always such a moving service reminding us of the TRUE reason we celebrate.  

Sunday morning, Hubby and I got up and enjoyed our morning coffee together as usual.  Then the girls got up, we opened our gifts, ate breakfast and got ready for church.  It was a very nice service.  We did not have Sunday School.  We came home, ate homemade soup.  I made it from the leftovers from Friday’s dinner.   Then we just relaxed the remainder of the day.  We didn’t have Sunday night church. 

We had planned on taking down the Christmas tree and all the decorations today but I think that will have to be another day.  It is raining pretty hard here and it is cold.  Temperature is 28 degrees with a fairly strong wind.  All our decorations are stored up in one of our buildings.  I’m not too big on carrying all that up in the cold rain.  Maybe tomorrow. 

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.

Our newest addition.  Ain’t they cute!  The girls are soooooo excited.  They never thought of having kittens to play with this late in the year.  They belong to “Stripes”.  You all have seen pictures of her in previous posts.  They seem to be very healthy and she is a wonderful mama. 

Today we had to go to Roanoke to the dentist.  Afterward we went to Sam’s club.  Sam’s does this thing called click and pull.  You can go on line, order your stuff and they will pull it for you.  They will have it waiting at customer service.  All you have to do is walk in, give them your name, pay for it and walk out the door.  Pretty amazing, I think.  This made our day so much easier.  We even made it home it time to do some school. 

Yesterday, for supper, we had chicken and dumplings with green beans.  I used the remainder of the chicken and made southwest chicken soup for supper tonight.  Easy stuff.  We will be having mexican cornbread with this and honey baked apples for dessert. 

We just finished having a tremendous hail storm here.  Lots of rain and high winds.  The temperature dropped about 14 degrees in just a few minutes.   It had been very warm before the storm came through.  Enjoy your evening and God bless.

Time to enjoy some of the fruits of our labor.  Our first zucchini, our first squash, and our first peas.  Delicious!! I think it is so exciting when the garden first starts coming in.   I combined all these together with a few other ingredients and had a wonderful stir fry for supper last night.  I am eating the remainder of it for lunch today.  Today is ladies bible study day.  We are on our third lesson.  It is about being a true servant of God and how we can encourage our church leaders.  I think it is a very interesting study.  Many times in churches today, the members can’t encourage their leaders because they are too busy criticizing them.  This lesson shows us ways to avoid that trap.  The girls and I cleaned house yesterday, found some new kittens (which are adorable) and in general just enjoyed the day.  Dale and his mom came by for a visit and to pick up his wood splitter.  They came right when I was taking some homemade rolls out of the oven.  It was so much fun to be able to share them.  Hot and buttery.  YUM!  Food is so good when it’s shared.

Can you believe this is the baby geese?  They are almost as big as mama and papa.  It certainly has been entertaining to watch them grow.  This morning as Hubby and I enjoyed our morning coffee together, there were lots of wildlife activity  here on the farm.  The geese were playing at the pond,  a deer was grazing in the field straight in front of us, and a coyote was passing through on the ridge to our right.  Some mornings we don’t see anything but cows and birds.  Other times there are lots to watch.  I so enjoy our morning time together.  We think its worth getting up a little earlier for.  The ladies will soon be here so I guess I better get ready.  We are going to Jessica’s tomorrow.  PawPaw has yet to see his new grandson.  Take care and God bless.

This is my honey bun cake recipe.  It is really easy but oh so delicious.   1 box yellow cake mix, 4 eggs, 3/4 cup oil, 8 oz.sour cream (or sour cream substitute).  Mix ingredients, spread 1/2 mixture in a greased 9X13 cake pan.  Sprinkle 1/2 of the following mixture on top–1 cup brown sugar, 1 tbsp cinnamon.  Spread remainder of cake batter on top sprinkle remaining brown sugar mixture on top of this.  Swirl batter with a butter knife.  Bake at 350 degrees 35 minutes or until done.  For the glaze I use 2 cups powdered sugar, 2 tsp. vanilla and 5-6 tbsp evaporated milk.    Drizzle glaze on while cake is still warm and enjoy.  I would like to take a minute to thank my friend Marie for this recipe.  She is one of the best cooks I have ever known.  Unfortunately, Alzheimers has robbed her memory of many great recipes but every time I make this cake I think of her.  I hope you all enjoy it as much as we do.  God Bless.

Sometimes I wonder at the intelligence of this pup we have brought here to the farm.  About 2:00 this morning, I hear what I think is the coyotes going through.  This is not uncommon as we have quite a few coyotes here in Floyd.  Then I hear Shadow(old dog) barking like crazy.  Still not uncommon as he does not allow the coyotes to come to close to the house.  After this my sleep induced brain makes out another sound.  Jasper (young dog) in great distress.  I open the upstairs window but cannot see him, however, his distress is getting louder.  Hubby gets up and we quickly run outside to see what is going on.  Jasper has somehow managed to get in the pond.  However, he cannot get out because of the ice.  He is whimpering so loud and struggling to get out of the water with his front paws, however they can’t get any traction on the ice.  We have no idea how long this had been going on before we were awakened but he seemed to be pretty tired and definitely very scared.  I run back up to the house and get a long pole.  George uses it to break the ice on the edge but it was frozen so thick he couldn’t do much good.  Finally he has some success.  He takes the pole and pushes Jasper down the edge of the ice until  he gets to the closest place to the ground.  The pup is still struggling to get out but can’t.  I lay down flat on the ice and stretch forward and manage to grasp a front paw and pull him out.  He was extremely grateful and extremely cold.  We brought him into the house and dried him off as best we could.  As a special reward for all his hard work (and ours) he stayed in the house the remainder of the night to warm up.  I think he liked that part.  Here is another picture showing more details.

This entire adventure took about 1 hour.  We are very thankful for the warmer temperature last night.  This would have been terrible with below zero temps.  We are also thankful Jasper seems okay, as we have all come to love him.  Well, that was our night.  God Bless.