Good bye to 2010

Is it just me or has this past year just zipped by?  Especially the past two months which feel they have gone by so quickly.

Now that our Christmas celebration is over for another year, my mind turns to things inside my home.  I want to start redecorating and sprucing up my home. 

The next few months are much slower paced and there isn't anything pressing that NEEDS to be done at a certain time.  I enjoy this time of year.  A new year begins full of hope and plans.  Wondering what the Lord will bring our way this year.  What can we do to be more servant minded to others in the Name of Jesus?  What good things do I need to be teaching my daughters? 

Some of my plans for this next year are to read more of my Bible, read more to my girls, make my home a place of peace and rest for my family and anyone who comes into it.  To teach the girls how to sew on a sewing machine.  We will be sure to share our sewing projects with you all! 

One specific thing I plan on doing with my daughters are to chose one person (maybe more if time allows) each month and make something special for them to brighten their day.  I think it will be good to teach the girls to be more mindful of others and learn how to be a blessing.  Plus it will be good mama/daughter time doing something fun! 

We have had a flood here.  We live in the flood plain, so it is no surprise.  Thank the Good Lord it wasn't very big or of a long duration.  The water is to recede by tomorrow.  

Guess what came down the river and onto our property?  A couple of geese.  They are now in our pasture waiting for their owners to claim them.  If they aren't domestic geese gone feral or something like that.  I guess if nobody claims them they will become residents of Bountiful Acres Homestead.  

It was my mother who saw them out her window.  I told her keep her eyes peeled for a milk cow coming down the river, we could really use one of those!  

One year Ed got some lumber that floated down the river during a flood.  We have also lost some things to the flood.  Like one year the girls had a pedal car, it went down the flood and ended up in the middle of a huge field downstream.  A duck pond (wading pool) got lost another time.  It is amazing the things that appear along the road after the flood.  It is because the river runs down the road when it floods, besides flooding from the bank on our back property line.

I will put a up a couple of photos of the driveway and the road.  Some folks who know there are two ways to get into town from here always ask, well can't you go the back way?  When you see how the river is on the road you will know why going either direction isn't an option!  ;)

I have a few roses that are still blooming on my bushes.  I am going to pick some when the water goes down and bring them in for a special bouquet during the winter.  I might pick some rosemary for the greenery part as the leaves on the rose bushes have been gone for some time.

 This is looking down our driveway towards the road.



Now shall we turn left and go the back way to Myrtle Point?

Or shall we turn right and go into Coquille?

Two little girls and their dog looking out the bay windows.

And here are our new guests that came down the river today.

That is the news for today!  Have a blessed day.

Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and pray your New Year is blessed with happiness and love.

We are almost ready for Christmas.  I have some wrapping to do and a little house sprucing up is all.

I have managed to sew lots of gifts and finished up with the last ones last night around midnight.  : )

I thought I would share a few photos of our decorations. 

The coffee table display.

Close up of my cute little snowman votive holder.

The stockings.

Another nativity scene.  Can't have too many of these.  After all Jesus is the reason for the season!

Our cute snowman family.

My cute metal sled.  I just love this silly thing.

More snowmen.  Do you think I like snowmen?  Yes I do! 

The front door.  The lights didn't show up well with my flash going off on my camera.

And a few of God's creations.  My two precious daughters, the old cat Hercules and one of God's most perfect creations a beautiful tree.  I enjoy bringing in a tree and decorating it for Christmas.  The same way I enjoy picking a bouquet of God's flowers to decorate my house in the Spring and Summer.  There is something I think about when I look at my tree.  I think of the life that is represented by a green tree.  I think about the life Jesus chose.  To come to earth and shed his blood for us.  Then he was hung on a tree to pay for our sins.  That is what I think about when I look at this tree.

My prayer is that your homes and families be blessed this Christmas.  May the joy that comes straight from heaven inhabit your hearts.

Cookie decorating time!

Saturday at Bountiful Acres Homestead is also known as Family day.  We used to have Family game night.  It seemed like we were always so busy and tired by the time evening was here.  So we changed it to Family day on Saturdays.  This way we plan on spending the entire day doing nothing but being together. 

The first Saturday of December, we put up Christmas decorations in the house.  We had popcorn and a movie too.

The second Saturday we bought a tree and put it up and decorated it.

This Saturday we had a cookie decorating day.  We baked cookies, invited the girls' second cousins over to help out.  Ed was the official cookie tester.  Then after dinner we packed up our cookies and some hot cocoa and a Christmas carol CD and got in the car.  We drove around town looking at Christmas lights, eating our cookies, singing along with the Christmas carol CD and drinking hot cocoa.  It was a fun time.

The girls said this was the best family day ever!  Want in on a little secret?  They tell us that EVERY family day!  :)

Here are some photos of the decorating party.

 From bottom left, Josie, Sally, Lily, Jadyn, Audrey.

 They each have a plate with frosting, cookies, sprinkle, gum drops.  And we had squeeze tubes of red and green frosting too!  The cups of water were to quench the thirst of little girls who kept licking their fingers and eating too much sweet stuff!

 This is little miss Lily, who didn't really decorate her cookies.  She was more interested in scooping frosting up with her little knife and totally bypassing the cookie and going straight for the mouth.  She enjoyed herself today.

 I caught Audrey by surprise and said "smile"  She had a bite of green frosting in her mouth as you can see.

 Does it look like Jadyn was having fun?  What a smile!

 Sally showing off her art work.

 Josie pretending like she was going to eat her cookie before I could get a picture.

My sister Mechelle and I did some cookie decorating too, but we are camera shy and didn't take photos.  ;) 

Mechelle's granddaughters took their cookies home to eat some later, we sent a plate of cookies home with Mechelle too.  It was a fun day.

Fresh tomatoes in December?



Lovely tomatoes picked from our greenhouse a couple of days ago.  Our greenhouse is working wonderfully for us.  We had these super sweet tomatoes (which didn't last but a few minutes.) We also have some eggplant and peppers still producing out there.  I need to also plant some lettuce for salads.

I just wanted to share my December treat with you.  Next time I post I hope to do the pumpkin pie from garden to table post. 

Winner of the CSN Stores giveaway is....................

Are you ready to hear who is the winner of the $35.00 giveaway from CSN Stores?

The winner is poster #6. 

That person is Ange!  Congratulations!  Please be looking for an email from me with your promotion code for shopping.

Thanks to everyone who entered.  I loved hearing what you all had to say was your favorite post.

Ready for a giveaway? Read all about it and how to sign up.

I am having a give away for a $35 gift certificate sponsored by CSN stores.   There are 200 stores with just about anything you would want or need.  They have everything from furniture, kitchen items, toys, baby gear, and even a leather briefcase and much more.

I personally like their toy store.  They have some wonderful toys with super great prices.

Or how about some great cookware.  My favorite frying pan is this cast iron one.  I use it every day!



Emerilware Cast Iron 12" Skillet

So now you are wondering how you can win?  It is really easy.  Just leave me a comment on this post.  Tell me what your favorite post on my blog has been and tell me what you would buy if you are the winner from CSN Stores.  I will put all the comments in a program that randomly draws a winner. I will announce the winner after 6pm on December 1st.  You will have 48 hours to repsond, if I don't hear from you in that time I will draw a new winner.  Make sure and check back!

 

You have until Dec. 1st at 6pm Pacific time to get your entry in.  Good luck!



Hello!

Just wanted to post a short note to say I have lots of plans coming up.  I will be doing a How To post soon on making pumpkin pie from the pumpkin to the table.  Also I have a give away coming up right after Thanksgiving. 

Ed and the girls picked the last of the apples today.  Right after we had a snow storm.  We actually had snow last night and this morning.  It doesn't last as the ground is too wet, but the girls had a blast playing for a bit.

The pantry shelves are pretty full and so is the freezer.  I just have pie fillings to make and can and jelly and jams. 

Here are a few photos of the latest harvest work.

This is my freezer slaw.  I shredded some of my carrots, red cabbage and bell peppers.  Then I used a recipe for making freezer slaw.  I put 10 containers of this in the freezer.  It is really good!  That is what I did with half my cabbage harvest.

Here is what I did with the other half of my cabbage harvest.  It is kraut, fermenting in quart jars.  This is really simple to make.

Here are some of my beets.  I use my turkey deep fryer for cooking them.  I hose them off to remove any garden soil left on them.  Then they go into the cooker until they are done.

This has been the best buy we ever made!  We bought it from a person on Craig's list for $45.  It is all stainless steel and we use it for so many things.  We cook crab in it, use it for cooking big batches of things like the beets for canning, we use it for scalding the poultry on butchering day.  Yep, a great buy!

After the beets are cooked part of them are put into really cold water in the sink where I slip the skins off them and cut the root and the tops off.

Then into the big silver bowl they go.  The really large beets are sliced and the smaller ones are left whole.

Then they are put in with the seasoning and syrup solution.  Oh what are we making?  Pickled beets!  Sorry, I forgot to tell you what we are doing here. 

Into the boiling water bath canner they go.

And here they are cooling on the table.  I believe I got 29 qts of pickled beets.


I also got the carrots finished up.  We had 28 qts of carrots to put in the pantry.

We also butchered the turkeys, and a duck.  Still have roosters and more ducks to do.

Our turkey we are having for dinner on Thanksgiving weighed in at 30 pounds after being dressed.  Good thing we have a big turkey, we will have 18 for dinner on Thanksgiving day.

See you all tomorrow with the pie how to post!

Our visit to a local cranberry bog

 This is a photo of the bog we got our cranberries from.  It belongs to Marci and Dave Murray.  They have been so generous in showing us their bogs and giving us some really great cranberries!  Thanks Dave and Marci!

 This is Dave and Chad loading the truck with cranberries from the bog.  There is a ladder they go up and during that time most of the leaves and debris fall back down.  Then they are pumped out and they make compost from them.  It is used to put back into the bogs to feed the plants.

 Ed and the girls looking at the cranberries.

 These photos don't show what a pretty sight this is.  It is so much brighter and pretty in person!

 Two 5 gallon buckets of cranberries they dipped out of the truck for us!  They are safely in the freezer now.  I made some juice from them too.  Soooo good!

 In this photo the truck had left to take the cranberries to the plant.

 This is a bog that hadn't been harvested yet.  You can't see the tons of berries in this photo.  Trust me they are there!

 Marci was kind enough to take this photo of us.  It was a beautiful day!

 Here is a photo of the machine that thrashes the plants and the berries float to the top of the water.  From there they use floating booms to corral them and bring them to the edge where they run them up into the truck.

 When we were leaving, we met the truck coming back from the plant going back to the bog for another load.

 Close up of the berries.

 And here they are all washed and pretty looking in my kitchen!

This bowl is huge.  I know it doesn't look like that in the photos, but it is holding one bucket full of cranberries!

Another day we went back to the bog and Marci let us pick from her dry baby bog.  It is where they grow replacement plants for another bog.  They don't flood it, so they have to be picked by hand.  That day we got another bucket full!  I have been so happy to have fresh cranberries!  Thanks again Marci and Dave!

The continuing harvest

These photos were taken on September 29th.  I have since processed them.  Some are pickled, some are canned, some are in the freezer.

 Some of our carrot harvest.  I had actually forgotten I planted this mix of colored carrots.  What a surprise to dig them up!  Aren't they so pretty?

 They were very tasty too!  The strange thing about eating a white carrot was I kept expecting them to taste like parsnips, but they don't.  They taste just like a sweet carrot.

Nice looking corn.  We didn't grow this but our neighbor did and gave us this batch.  It was tasty!

These photos were taken today in my kitchen.  The jars are full of tomatoes.  The one bowl is full of tomatillas that were a freebie in my garden.  They had seeded themselves last year.  I will be making some salsa verde with them.

 These are some sweet banana peppers and the hot peppers I have no idea what they are.  I planted a hot pepper mix.

 Jalapeno and hot red cherry peppers.  So pretty together!

 Some of the banana peppers..........

 Bell peppers, Anaheim, pablano and more banana peppers.

 This is one five gallon bucket of beets, I have a big box of them out in the shop waiting on me.  They will be pickled beets soon in a jar on my pantry shelf.

Stay tuned for a visit to a cranberry bog.