Monday

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend. Ours was very nice. Not much going on. We didn’t have church yesterday as there was no power at church. Lots of people here in Floyd have been without power since the storm. I spoke to a lady at our local supermarket this morning and she is still without power. I certainly pray everyone gets power restored before tonight. We are supposed to get really cold-single digits with wind chills at zero or below. So many people have electric heat. It would be hard for them to stay warm without electricity.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day cutting out quilt pieces. I have been inspired by my blogging friends, Blessings and Cheryl. I am doing a simple block quilt. The block pieces are 5″ X 5″. Then hopefully I will sew them all together (using the sewing machine). We’ll see how it goes. I have made quilts before but always using panels not something I have to cut out and sew together. I thought this would be the simplest to do. If I calculated correctly it will take 216 5″ X 5″ blocks to make a twin size quilt. Okay, so maybe I am already overwhelmed. I think it will be a fun project though-something different for me.

Well, that’s about it for us. School is finished for the day, the outside chores are done and the girls are going for a walk on the tractor road. Two dogs and several cats are walking with them. The geese are swimming happily on the pond, the sun is shining. I am SO blessed. Enjoy your day and God bless.

January 21, 2013 5

Fruit Trees

Yesterday evening the girls and I planted 6 fruit trees. Grace dug every hole. She was very excited about getting fruit trees. As you can see, she has good helpers- the cats and the chickens.

And, of course, our ever faithful Shadow.

We planted an asian pear, bartlett pear, plum tree, golden delicious apple tree, golden transparent apple tree, and a nectarine tree. We hope to get 2 cherry trees in April. While we were working on the trees, Hubby was busy trimming the blackberries.

It was a nice, productive evening. After we finished planting, we went to get the clothes off the line and a huge flock of geese flew directly over our heads to land in the field. Of course, we had already put the camera up so I couldn’t get a picture. It would have made a beautiful picture though.

Today will be school as usual. Hopefully, with more outside work afterward. Enjoy your day and God bless.

March 29, 2012 4

Wednesday

Monday afternoon the rain stopped and the wind really picked up. The girls finished their outside chores and wanted to stay outside for awhile. Do you see the two little dots in the distance? Well, that’s them. I took these this pictures from the house as they were walking the field.

They are never out without company. The cats always follow them any time they walk outside. I zoomed this picture in so you could see them better.

And, of course, Shadow. He would never dream of allowing them to be out of his sight. I’m not sure why this picture turned out so dark but you can still see him.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. The girls and I were at Jessica’s. The temperature at her house was in the 60’s so I know it was probably in the 50’s here. I love this weather-makes me think about spring. Today is supposed to be nice too and then rain is in the forecast. The girls and I are going to the Horn’s today after school. YEAH! We are soooo looking forward to it. Enjoy your day and God bless.

January 25, 2012 5

Sunflowers

I just love sunflowers. I think they are so cheerful and fun. These come up underneath the feeder and I think they add so much to the area. The cats have played there so much though that a lot of them are drooping down to the ground. They still look pretty though.

I have been kinda busy for the past few days. As you all know, we went down to Jessica’s on Friday. We had a great visit and enjoyed play time with the boys. Then we went to pick the apples. She didn’t have very many but we got what was on the tree. I haven’t worked them up yet so no picture of pink applesauce. On Saturday, we went to pick apples at Faye’s sisters house. We ended up with about 4 bushel. When we got home I started working on them. I have told Faye all about our steam juicer and sauce maker. She has been wanting to buy them for herself. Sunday evening at church Gene (her husband) said he was going to buy them for her. We met them yesterday morning in town at the Farmers Supply. He bought the steam juicer, the sauce maker and a steam canner for her. She was so excited. We then went home with them and showed them how to operater their new equipment. She had a 5 gal. bucket of apples to work up. From that she got 2 qts of juice and 5 qts of applesauce. It was a really fun day. I really want one of those steam canners. It takes my water bath canner about 1 hr. to start to boil. The steam canner is ready in about 10-15 min. Amazing. We definitely would be saving on the amount of gas we use. Hopefully, we will be able to get one soon. Much faster and more economical.

I worked up some more of our apples yesterday evening after we came back from Faye’s house. We will be working on them more today. So far, we have 8 qts of applesauce and 4 qts of apple juice. Grace has been taking some more pictures. This is a picture of the sunset God gave us yesterday.

I forgot to tell you ladies about the nice weekend we had. Remember Thursday evening I said temperatures were cooling off. Well, Friday and Saturday morning the temperature when we got up was 58 degrees. Can you believe that? Then Sunday and Monday morning it was 61 degrees. The highs for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were only in the mid 70’s. Wonderful!! Thank you Lord!! Yesterday, it started warming back up and today I think it will be back to normal but it certainly was wonderful to enjoy a few fall-like days in summer. Enjoy your day and God bless.

July 19, 2011 6

Baby Ducks

We finally managed to get some pictures of the baby ducks. They have grown so much. When she first brought them off the nest, they were so tiny. We could hardly see them in the grass.

She is getting very brave with them now. In these pictures, she is in the edge of the yard. Maybe not too smart with all the cats we have running around here.

Today has been rather hot here. Hubby worked some on putting the vinyl siding on the new room we built last fall. He almost got it all finished. We washed clothes and hung them out. They dried pretty quick. Todays “lupper” was wilted lettuce and onions with crumbled bacon, pinto beans and corn on the cob. I also baked some corn bread and made some flitters, watermelon for dessert.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

June 7, 2011 5

Project

This is the big project we have been working on all week. The first year we lived here we enclosed the front porch with glass. Hubby had gotten these glass doors free from a job site years before. This porch stayed wet all the time. So he took the glass doors out of their frames and framed them up on the porch. We love this this area. All winter it is used for coffee drinking, book reading. In the summer, it is a favorite spot to sit and look at the stars, the lightning bugs, summer storms. It is a well used porch. However, this winter we discovered a problem. The wood underneath the porch had rotted so badly the windows were falling down. Not good. So Hubby decided we had to fix this before it became a disaster.

First step was to remove the glass. In this picture, he has already replaced some of the rotten wood but you can still see some of it. We had to jack the porch up and put new wood under it. We also had to replace some of the wood flooring.

This was our attempt to keep the cats out. LOL As you can guess, it did not work but it did keep the rain out which was our real objective. We had a lot of rain Wednesday evening. Lots of wind, thunder and lightning but the porch, Praise the Lord, stayed dry.

We now have all the posts replaced and the 3 big panes of glass back in. We will be working on the last section today and then hopefully start replacing the trim. He wants to cover the front boards with metal. This will keep the weather from doing too much damage. He had to work alone yesterday as the girls and I had to go to Roanoke for a dentist appointment and other errands. Hopefully we will get most of it finished today. Rain is in the forecast for the weekend. We are still working on our surprise project. We just had to stop working on it to get this finished. Priorities, you know. I’ll try to have more pictures to show you all tomorrow.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

March 25, 2011 5

Bigger Now

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.

March 4, 2010 2

Flowers

These are some late blooming flowers in one of my flower beds. Yes, I actually took these pictures this morning . Temperatures in the low to mid 30’s. These flowers are close to the house so they are kinda sheltered. I certainly am glad they decided to bloom so late, adding their special color to fall. Almost all my flowers are gone so these are especially appreciated. I think today I will work on making Grace’s poodle shirt for our Christfest (Halloween alternative) at church. The girls look forward to it every year. Lots of games and of course more candy than any 2 girls could eat. We have a new member at our Friday Ladies Bible study. So good to have you, Vicki! We had a surprise yesterday. We heard a kitten meowing in one of our outbuildings. When we went to check it out we discovered 3 new kittens, 2 gray, and 1 black with a little white on her face. I will try to get a picture of them later today and post it so you all can see them. They are very cute! Of course, we never seem to have a shortage of cats here on the farm but no matter how many we have it is always exciting to the girls to find new kittens. Hours of playtime for them. Well it is time for me to do some work. God Bless.

October 17, 2009 1