Feeding the fire

I put a log on the fire last night around 11:30pm. We do not try to keep the fire going all night we do have heat in our house but I do try to keep it from coming on during the day and we have found with what we pay for firewood we save a little money using the stove with lowering our gas and electric bill. Plus if we do have an ice storm or power outage we can stay in our house and be nice and warm. Normally when I get the fire started around 8 or 9 in the mornings there is only ashes in the stove. This morning there was a decent piece of wood still in the stove and when I blew on it there was some embers or whatever the orange glow is called. I only had a few pieces of kindling in the house and I didnt really feel like going out to the wood pile so I found a piece of paper put the little pieces of bark and tiny wood chips that were in the botton of the kindling bucket and set them under the log. Then I slowly started blowing and it took off. I felt like I had won the lottery starting a fire without having to use a match. Especially since those of you who follow me on Facebook know that I caught my hair on fire the other day with a match.

As I was starting the fire and feeling like a real pioneer woman I started thinking. Do I tend to my passions like I do my fire? Well sort of I enjoy my passions but sometimes I let them die out because I know that I am not going to die.  Is that really any way to live? No its not. Every day you need to at least do a little something to tend to your passions. Some days will be easier than others and sometimes the flames will be so hot you wont know what to do. Other days there will just be smoke and you will  not get the flames to catch for nothing. When tending the real fire this is when I go outside and get Mr Ladybugs propane torch and teach the fire whose boss. In life always have a backup plan. When your passions seem to be dying down a little this is where you reach out to others who encourage you and help you fan those flames. This happened to me yesterday when I sweet friend messaged me and asked how I was doing. We messaged back and forth a little throughout the day and it was just what I needed. If they are reading this "Couldahadav8" and you are amazing!

With that I need to get off here and keep the fire going in the wood stove. I have promised Mr Ladybug baked potatoes cooked in the fire with our homemade creme fraiche from yesterdays post. I think I will cook the rest of the dinner on top of the wood stove too.

If you do nothing else today spend at least 5 minutes thinking about where your passions are and start making a plan today on how you can get those flames going. The world needs your passion.

Making Creme Fraiche

One of the things we have recently stopped buying is sour cream. Since getting into cheese making and checking out tons of books from the library we have found a few things that we really enjoy making and creme fraiche is one of them. I checked this book out but there are so many good recipes in there we had to own it for ourselves.

 Since you can get sour cream for $1 sometimes at the store its not cheaper to make but if you check on the price of creme fraiche and other higher end type things you will see its maybe a little cheaper to make and the taste is out of this world.

This is the recipe in the book and it works but we have found doing it a little different is just as good and we dont have to sit over a pan watching it to come to temp or worrying we have it up to temp or worrying about scorching the cream.

First you take a quart of heavy whipping cream , thats 32 ounces. and pour it into a jar. Then you set it in a pan of warm water to get it to 72 degrees. You will need some type of cooking thermometer for this. We have discovered in cheese making that temperature is everything. Take your two tablespoons of buttermilk and leave them out on the counter to get room temp. Once your cream get to 72 degrees add the buttermilk,stir and  put a lid on it sit it somewhere warm. The important part is thats its above 60 degrees. We had been sitting ours by a computer tower but since having the wood stove going we sit on a counter off to the side of the stove where the temp is around 72-75 degrees for most of the day and is around 65 while we sleep. In 18-24 hours you have creme fraiche. How easy is that?

To use as sour cream I just add a little salt to it before serving. If you wanted to use it on a dessert you could leave add a little powdered sugar to it before serving or leave as is and if you wanted to turn it into cultured butter just take the cream fraiche, however much you want to use, place it in a blender or food processor and in about 15 minutes it separates and you have butter. Just run cold water over the butter to get out any traces of the buttermilk or it will sour in a few days.

You can expect to see pics very soon of how we use creme fraiche. With this batch I will use half for sour cream and half for cultured butter.

Friday Fun

I have no idea why I entitled this Friday Fun since I plan on cleaning and mopping the whole house today. I just have to do a quick errand. The boy is in a Christmas Concert tonight and the cost of admission is canned food items for a local pantry. My hubby and I have been going to this concert even before our children started attending this college.

I found this website today and in has two of my favorite things mixed together, quilting and murder mystery. My sister and I are giving some serious thought to trying it out.

https://murdermysteryquilt.com/

Yesterday afternoon I was making my way across down and there was a traffic issue and no one was going anywhere. The monster truck behind me blaring his music kept blowing his horn. Yeah like that really helps. He was wanting me to pull up somehow so he could get around and turn but it wasnt going to work so he just kept blowing his horn. Then he opened his door like he was going to get out and I assume was going to approach my vehicle. This would have concerned so people but all I could think of was I am going to get to finally use my pepper spray on someone. Seriously I was a little disappointed he got back into his stupid ugly truck. I wonder if he saw my excited face in my side mirrors and thought ummm this one looks crazier than I do.  The light turned green again and everyone was able to go on their merry way. Maybe I will get to pepper spray someone soon it is after all the holiday season.

Have a great weekend and be safe and dont blow at cute little red cars with crazy ladies in them.

Quilt Blocks and easy dinner on the wood stove.

In October I made goal to learn to make a quilt in a year. I decided to do only one block per month hoping that by the time I got all 12 done I would feel confident enough to put it together. I wanted to make a black cat block for October and had a hard time finding a pattern I could cut out. Most of the ones I found wanted me to do math and figure out the angles and sides and I was a bit overwhelmed. Then I remembered that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote how she had to make a 9 patch quilt when she started so I decided to keep mine simple as well. In one of the Little House books Laura is a little jealous since Mary got to make the bears paw quilt and she had to stick with her 9 patch until she got better. Remember when setting goals to not go overboard especially if you are just learning somethin


 My squares are 1 foot square or at least as close as I can get. The orange and black one if for October, the yellow and brown for November and the red and green fabrics are for December. I think I am going to do three squares across and 4 squares down. I plan on separating the squares with a pretty blue material a am hoping to have a finished quilt of about 5 foot by 7 foot.

I was home all day yesterday so I was able to keep a fire in the stove and the furnace off all day. Its silly to use your oven if you have so much heat coming from that stove. So I made beef chunks with gravy over rice. The rice I had already cooked and it was in the freezer. I have not tried rice on the wood stove but will try one day, I will tell you that pasta is a bad idea. You have to keep water boiling which will produce lots of heat and you may have to open your windows so you dont cook yourself. The trouble I had was it wasnt boiling and my noodles turned into a mushy mess. The chickens didnt mind eating it though. Think of the top of your wood stove like a crock pot.

Easy beef chunks in gravy

1 pound of roast meat chopped into chunks
2 TBS seasoned flour
3 cups of beef broth
8 ounces of sliced mushrooms
2 TBS oil
1 teasopoon each of garlic and onion powder
salt and pepper to taste

Add oil to your pot and heat up, mix flour and beef together and then throw in pot with the oil and brown for 2-3 minutes. Add broth and mushrooms, mix and put a lid on it. Cook 3-4 hours until the beef is tender.

Rice
1 1/2 cups rice
3 cups broth, the broth I use depends on what I am cooking. Most times I use veggie.
1 TBS butter
Bring water and butter to a boil add rice turn heat down to simmer and put a lid on pot. cook 20-25 minutes.

My quest for mistletoe and an easy soup recipe.

I have always loved mistletoe. I think it started when I was a little girl watching a Christmas movie with my granny and she telling me that if you stand under it that whomever was there with you had to kiss you. At some point I learned that it grew on trees and eventually learned how to spot it. My dad would come across some on occasion and bring it to me and with his passing this year it seemed really important to me to have some. I even remember once my hubby keeping something in the car in case we came across some so he could cut to for me. I am a very lucky girl to have fellows in my life who encourage me whimsies.  So imagine my excitement when I see mistletoe growing in a tree within our reach this past weekend. Well within Mr Ladybugs reach actually. So if you happen to come to the urban farm this holiday season you better be prepared to be kissed.

I really love Mr Ladybug hes the sweetest.

Yesterday it got around 2pm and I hadnt even thought about what was for dinner. I had originally planned to heat something on the wood stove but was having a time keeping the fire going especially since I would leave the room and not tend to it,  That will not be the case today. I have it going and am going to keep it that way. I decided that I would fix an easy tortellini soup recipe and everyone was fed and the boys didnt even notice it was meatless.

Too easy tortellini soup

8 oz of dried tortellini
4 cups of veggie broth
32oz can of crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon of italian seasoning
2-3 teaspoons of honey or sugar ( this really helps balance the acid from the tomatoes but is optional)
1 tsp each garlic and onion powder
salt and pepper to taste.

Put broth in pot and bring to a boil, add tortellin and cook according the package directions, after they are done add rest of ingredients and heat until hot. Sprinkle with parmesian cheese and serve with bread.

Can it get any easier than that?  When telling my hubby and daughter about the recipe I said you started out with 4 cups of the tears of a thousand virgins but that its a little pricey because its hard to find that many virgins these days. My daughter said that I should put that in my blog and I said I just might and she didnt think I would do it so this is to show her thats its my blog and I do what I want.

I saw this and it made me laugh. I hope to shed a few more pounds this month but if I can just stay the same without gaining while baking and making candy and eating candy others make me I think its a win.

Weekend Adventures

My hubby had to grow something so he planted me some

 lettuce under the grow lights, 

We had a 3 day weekend at our house and we enjoyed just about every minute of it. Getting the slow drain unclogged required Mr Ladybug to crawl under the house and with the creepy crickets. But besides that our weekend was perfect. Saturday we didnt even leave the house. With the temps going into the 60's on Sunday we decided to go to Locust Grove Historical Site in Louisville Ky. We had so much fun learning the history of the house and walking to grounds. After unclogging the drain on Monday and replacing a drain in the bathroom we hung out in front of the fire the rest of the day reading. I highly recommend lazy long weekends. Unfortunately we cant spend the whole winter in front of the fire well at least not during the day when there is work to be done. Here are a few pics from the weekend.....

I was surprised to see this color on the home at Locust Grove. Then knew this color was in the house because they had found the ledger with the receipt purchasing 9 gallons, I love it!

They had a beehive. We of course had to go look at it. Mr Ladybug thought I was going to try to take a bee home with me.

Bayberry candles, have you heard of them? They are my new favorite thing and I have been digging up all the info I can find on them. Very interesting.

Do use this app? We listened to a short book on Greek Mythology while driving on Sunday, Lots of older books on here and a great bargain for free.

Gearing up for Christmas

As many of you  may know I dont have a Christmas tree. I have a Christmas pallet. When we were newlyweds we were given a tree from my parents and we used it for several years and then I was given another tree from a friend that we used for several years. We had bought a few trees that you went to the tree lot and cut down yourself but with the wood stove it was hard to keep water in then and our cats seemed to love to climb them. So a few years ago we decided to not buy a new tree and to make our own. I love the idea of making decorations with things you already have and so thats what we do. We also dont buy gift wrap. I save newspaper and bags that I get. 

I have been on Pinterest alot lately and I have found a few things that I had to make. This is a little tree that you many with old spindles.

I think I need to take my fabric off and starch it really good so it stands out more and I love the recycled wire I found in the garage that Mr Ladybug was going to take to the scrap metal place. I keep going out there and snipping some off for projects.

This one is one I found on Etsy. It made me wonder if you could use stove paint to paint a mason jar and you can. We bought stove paint to spruce up our 15 year old wood stove. I have like a million canning jars, the people next door chopped down a pine tree and had the pieces they trimmed off laying on the ground so I got a few of them, the bells are from a wreath I found on the curb, the fabric is from the material I got for my quilt project which I will post at a later date. The arrangement on Etsy was selling for $35 plus shipping. I am sure her pine branches were fake so it would last longer than mine but fortunately I have lots of neighbors with trees and a park near by were I can get more as needed. I used more of Mr Ladybugs wire to attach my bells to and stick down in the jar.

Since having a more organized home I have bought a bouquet of flowers. I have a few vases that I love and why have something if you arent going to use them. I have had these flowers for 2 weeks and was wondering what I could do with them before they died. So I got out my flower press Mr Ladybug made me and am drying them to use for future crafts and cards to send people.

I took this picture so I could show you have as they start to dry I can keep pressing and they get flat.

Have you seen this cereal? Why? If I want banana pudding for breakfast it isnt going to be in cereal form.  I thought I would share just in case any of you had banana pudding fans in your family, It would make a great gift. 

Today is clean all the animals cages and wash the animal beds, clean the bathroom and mop the floors day. I really live an exciting life. Tomorrow is grocery day. I have not grocery shopped in 2 weeks and it has been wonderful so I  may just pick that up again instead of doing it weekly. That also means I need to meal plan for 2 weeks and not forget about lunches. 

I checked out a book at the library a few weeks ago and we love it so much that we had to buy it. I found it on sale at a Goodwill in Washington State. It kind of goes along with the pic at the start of this post and being a beginner at something. More to come on this tomorrow and the weekend. Is there something that you have always wanted to try but keep putting it off? There is no better time than the present.

Two months sort of flew by.

What on earth have I been doing the past two month? Obviously not blogging and by the end of this post you will see not brushing up on my english skills. Have you ever felt like you were running around chasing your tail? Basically getting  nowhere, for those of you without the knowledge of crazy southern sayings. I started focusing on a few things instead of a million and blogging got put by the wayside for a bit. Fortunately I have a million new things to show you. Dont worry I am not going to post all million things today. I will do my best to keep this short and sweet. If you find yourself in the same situation really think about what you need to step back from and where you need to start focusing. Taking a break from social media is a great place to start. Just sayin.

My house is in pretty good order, my kitchen is more organized, meal planning is running pretty smoothly we have new slate around the wood stove and I have lost 21 pounds. Things that have went wrong the past two months are we woke up with our furnace not working, the kids car quit on them while they were turning a corner and we had a plumbing issue. All of these things were taken care of by Mr Ladybug who has lost about 10 pounds himself.  Just because we have done a few things to try to get our life in order does not mean that life doesnt like to keep us on our toes. I had big plans yesterday to can two bushels of apples. I can not find my apple peeler anywhere. I seriously can not imagine why someone would break into your house and steal a $15 apple peeler and just the apple peeler. While I was getting all my canning things in order one of our dogs decided it would be a great time to eat something weird and start throwing up and of course you can just throw up on the floor. you have to it on the couch and every stinking blanket and rug on the whole house and because you had had some plumbing issues you have a slow drain and you have to watch as the washing machine drains or it will come our the drain pipe in the wall until your hubby can address the issue this weekend.

It seems like I am going to leave this on a negative note but thats not how I do things. After talking to my sister the other day who had a bushel of apples herself to do something with I decided to focus on peeling and coring mine today and getting them in the freezer to can at a later date and not all once. I will probable dehydrate some as well. I did go out and by an apple corer and slicer for $5 to make the job a little easier and hope that whoever stole my peeler returns it by the time I decide to buy 4 bushels of apple next year. With all my organizing I am finding I have more time in the evenings to enjoy things. Like knitting by the fire and just watching my daughter work on homework and Mr Ladybug watch crazy things on his tablet and laugh. I can even start my blog posts on the evening and finish them in the mornings and post earlier.

So right now on the urban farm there are apple peels and cores making vinegar, colby cheese aging in the closet that we can try before Christmas, plans to make sour cream later this weekend and bread to be made since we have decided that there are something that we just want to make ourselves instead of buying. Soon there will be things to do with goat milk since I found someone who was selling shares of her goats and we get fresh goats milk. You have no idea how much that excites me and probably relieves Mr Ladybugs fear of finding a goat in our backyard one day. There will also be some deer recipes coming soon since my brother in law and uncle brought us lots of deer meat.

This my friends is a female Red Bellied Woodpecker and I have seen her many times from afar. She swoops in and out pretty fast and I wanted a picture of her so bad. The other day while Mr Ladybug was under the house I was sitting near the crawl spaced entrance for moral support. I never go under there because I know what those crickets look like down there. I had my camera and she landed on the peanut feeder several times and let me get so many pictures.  Nothing teaches you patience like birding.

Never forget to wear your smile

I have jokingly called my home decor Ghetto Chic since I love to find things on the curb and fix them or repurpose them. I have recently decided that I do that because I am sort of apologizing for things that I actually enjoy doing. I have actually tried to go into new furniture stores and the appeal just isnt there for me. Over the weekend I came up with a new name for my decorating taste, Urban Farm Charm. Expect lots of post about this. So many ideas, so little time. I love to find something on the curb and give it a new home and use. This really makes me smile and my home is filled with these smiles. I hope your life is filled with things that make you smile too.


Mr Ladybug and I had a very productive day yesterday. We have wanted to do something with our front porch but wasnt quite sure what.

A few curb finds later and we have a nice sitting area. We painted the chairs periwinkle and covered the seats with indoor/outdoor fabric. The fabric was priced $16 a yard but was marked down to $11 at Hobby Lobby. The table was on the curb as well and had a little rust on it. We bought paint that would cover most surfaces and it covered the glass top pretty well so you cant see some of the rust up underneath of it. We did not attach the seat bottoms back to the chairs. We can now take them in if we think they will get wet. $19 for two chairs and a table really isnt too bad. I know I could have gotten a cheaper fabric but I was so in love with this pattern.

In between painting and upholstering, I had so much fun using a staple gun, we smoked some tilapia and had tacos with mango salsa. It was so yummy! It wasnt one of my $5 meals but came in around $8 for 4 people and I think I can live with that.

Tilapia tacos with mango salsa

2 pounds of tilapia grilled, smoked or baked
Corn tortillas heated up, I stack mine and heat them in a covered dish on the oven at 250 degrees until warm. A microwave would probably work but I dont have one.

Mango salsa
1 mango cubed
1/2 jalapeno seeded and chopped
1/2 cup red onion chopped
3-4 TBS chopped cilantro

Does it get any simpler than that? I dont think so.

I am not a big breakfast person but in my quest for better health I am trying to eat or in this case drink something every morning. This morning it was a blueberry smoothie.

1 cup of blueberries, I used frozen
1/2 banana, this adds some sweetness
3/4 cup greek yogurt
1 TBS chia seeds

Blend and sip.

I am pretty sure that I have mentioned every home should have an aloe vera plant. I saw this cute pot and new I had to grab it for my oldest daughter who does not have one. Imagine my surprise when I seen there were actually two plants in this one pot. I am going to give them some fresh soil and separate them and give the other one someone. Two for the price of one, that makes me smile too!

Time Savers

The two things most of wish we had more of are time and money. Mr Ladybug had to work a little late last night and I was figuring out what I wanted to get done before he got home and I kept adding things to my list and I have no idea how I expected to get them done. I work from home and dont manage to get my to do list completed every day. I really dont know how people get all the things they need to get done and have a job they have to drive to 40 or more hours a week. I am a little spoiled being able to be home like this morning I took Mr Ladybug to work around 6:15 on my way back home three cars in front of me turned into Starbucks for their morning fix. I make Mr Ladybugs morning brew but I usually wait until I get back home to sip my tea.

Even though I do love to cook I do love things that make life easier. We are not big on eating out, not because we think you are evil if you eat out its just terrible expensive and I am sort of cheap. Trust me if I have good coupons and we can all eat pizza from Pizza Hut for less than $10 bucks and have leftovers for tomorrow lunch this momma is all over that.

Imagine my happy face when I see a whole rotisserie chicken for less than $4 and I know I can get three meals out of it.

My 21 year old loves Chipotle. I think if she could afford it she would eat there every day. We always tease her about being in a burrito coma after she eats there. In fact we plan on going there tomorrow because my mom has never eaten there and my daughter thinks thats a travesty. One of the meal I made with the chicken was a chicken rice bowl sort of like Chipotle. Since last night Mr Ladybug was working late and our son has a class that doesnt get out until 6 I made Big Salads. Have you ever seen the episode of Seinfield where they talked about the big salad? Its one of our favorites and big salad is one of our family favorites too. With the remaining carcass and as you can see I left some meat on it I will make a chicken stock and some chicken noodle soup. All of these things allow me to do one of my favorite things and thats get a meal prepared fast and feed 4 people for around $5!

I was at a Walmart store that was a grocery store only. Those things are pretty snazzy. I found a veggie pizza for less than $4 and thought it would be great for our Chipotle loving vegetarian. I came home cut it into four pieces layered it in between parchment paper and put it in freezer bags. I remembered to put the heating instructions on it too. It reheated perfectly. A quick lunch or snack for less than a dollar!

These are just a few ways we save time and money around the urban farm. I hope you found it helpful and as always I am open to any suggestions and ideas you use to save time and money at your house as well.

I loved the quote at the top of this post. I have been trying to be more intentional in my life. When I think of intentional I usually think about with my finances and my relationships but now I will add with my time to my intentional list as well.

Replenishing your garden

The veggies are winding down and the herbs and the flowers and the grass but not my run on sentences! As Mr Ladybug and I were clearing out some garden area over the weekend we were discussing fertilizing the winter bed. We will be planting onions, lettuce, carrots. spinach and they will either lay dormant until spring or will grow very slowly but yield an early crop. We have done this in the past with much success. We just plant, cover with a hoop of plastic and not look at it until late February. On warmer days we will take a peek. Within the next few days we will add rabbit poo, worm castings, worm tea and compost to our beds. We try to keep everything as natural as possible. Next year I would love to try cover crops. There is always something new to try or learn in the garden.

Look at these last peppers from the bed we cleared out. We have banana peppers as you can see some turned red because they were forgotten. We have a chocolate bell pepper which was new and I really loved them. there is a jalapeno or two. The jalapenos are a bit disappointing since we thought we planted some and they ended up being bell peppers and someone keep taking them from our community garden plot. Thats okay we have a different garden plan for next year and I cant wait to share that with you when the time draws close. Anyway with this hodge podge of peppers I plan on making a sweet relish. I might even name it Hodge Podge Pepper Relish.

Mr Ladybug had a regular doctor appt the other day and he was told he needed to make some changes. Nothing terrible, well unless you really like to drink coffee. He needs to limit coffee. We both decided we need to start watch fat, calories, carbs and fun before its too late and we have to take lots of medicines. Not that I am telling people you dont have to take your meds and I know that some people watch their diet like a hawk and still have to take meds. We just feel that we would feel better if we ate better. We aint getting any younger. Mr Ladybug will be the big 50 next year and I follow him 9 months later. Exciting stuff. I am looking forward to being 50 and fabulous.

Just like our garden needs to be fed good things for healthy soil so do we. I can not afford to buy new soil every year for my garden and we only have one body so we need to take care of it.

So lots of new menus items for us and I guess that will give me something to do when I cant garden. This morning I put together a zucchini crusted quiche. It was so yummy and only 325 calories! I even got a little crazy and rode our stationary bike for 15 minutes while it was cooking. I am on a roll today.



Crustless Quiche

1 egg
1 oz cheese
2 TBS chopped red pepper
2 TBS chopped red onion
2 oz steak or any meat of your choice
1 TBS cream or milk will be fine. I just happened to have cream in the fridge
Zucchini sliced with a veggie peeler. Enough to place around sides and bottom of your pan


Preheat over to 350 degrees. Place 6-10 zucchini slices in your pan. I used a disposable pot pie pan. Mix the rest of the ingredients and pour over your crust. Bake for 30 minutes.  This is for one serving. You could multiply the recipe 8 times and make a fill sized pie and just cut it in 8 slices. It would be great to make ahead for a quick morning breakfast. You can use any meat you have. I just happened to have leftover steak I needed to use up. This could easily be a lunch and dinner item as well.

Create in me a clean refrigerator.

Isnt it funny how a song or a bible verse from your childhood comes into mind sometimes? I was cleaning out the fridge the other day and Psalms 51:10 popped in "Create in me a clean heart. O God; and renew a right spirit with in me" KJV I really doubt the Psalmist was talking about cleaning out their fridge since they didnt actually have them at the time. But this could go with any messy areas in ones life.

What made me think about it was my fridge was a mess. There were a few things that I couldnt even identify. Condiments that were past their expiration and a sticky substance that had a jar stuck to it. Like I pulled the shelf out of the fridge and held it upside down and it stayed stuck. Maybe I created a new super glue? How does this happen? Its not that hard actually. We get distracted and just keep opening and putting more stuff in there and not get rid of things we dont need and then it gets a little out of hand and we know its going to be a chore so we ignore it until ones day that leftover meatloaf smacks you in the face when you open the door and say " seriously woman put me in the trash and let me rest". Well at least thats how it happens with me. Then you start rewriting the Bible with verses like "Create in me a clean refrigerator O God and renew a fresh batch of leftovers in me".

As you can  probably tell this isnt just about my dirty fridge. It applies to many avenues in my life. I can only tackle one thing at a time these days and luckily as you can see by my picture the only thing wrong with my fridge these days is that one shelf I got crooked. I even looked at the shelf a million times trying to convince myself it was fine. Seriously why would I not just take the 1 second it took to fix it?

Once I got the fridge sparkling the other day I set a cup of green tea to chill for lunch time. At lunch I got in there to get it out and knocked it over and it ran down on every single shelf and in one of the drawers. Are you kidding me? I really just wanted to close the door and walk away but I didnt. I immediately wiped it down which actually didnt take that long since it was so empty and was done in a few minutes.

I think every once in a while we need to look around and inside ourselves and see what we need and what we need to get rid of. When it comes to the fridge we definitely need to do this weekly! I wondered if I had to post a picture of my fridge every week if I would be more motivated to keep it tidy. Lord forbid I snap a picture of corn growing hair to someone. Its okay to admit that things are messy. Everyone has something messy in their lives whether they want to admit it or not. Trust me the disgusting fridge is the least of my messy worries these days and thats okay. I will get there and so will you. Enjoy where you are but look forward where you are going to be later. For now when I am having a bad day I will open my fridge and enjoy one area of my life I seem to have under control for right now.

.

Great now I am reminded I need to clean the oven

I dont carrot all.

I hope you got my little carrot pun in the title. I love growing carrots but for a plant so small they take lots of time. I have found growing them in pots the easiest way. You can also plant plenty in a pot, around 12 per square foot. This is where that math comes in handy. Once the growing season is over I will just add some compost, worm tea and worm casting to the soil and its ready again next year. In fact I will probably put some seeds in the ground this fall for quicker germination in the spring. I may have mentioned this but I loved the idea of growing the Paris Market carrots.Those grow round like a radish but they take as long to grow as the longer ones so I think you get more bang for your buck and growing season with the Danvers and other longer carrots.

We will definitely be growing more cow peas next year. They are a super hardy plant, they dont care if you forget to water them and they are actually still blooming and its almost October. I think I paid $2  for my seeds. Saving seeds to plant next year and its a free crop. Yay!!!!

Mr Ladybug and I will be cleaning up the garden beds Saturday. The temps are getting cooler in the evenings and we have a date planned tomorrow night with a bottle of wine and the fire pit. Let hope for clear skies so we can look through the telescope.

I have a busy morning with appointments so I threw some chicken in the crock pot and turned it on this time. We will not be ordering out tonight unless there is a power outage while I am gone today. I actually did just hear a chainsaw so that means the tree guys are cleaning around the utility poles. That scares me a little.  Have a great Thursday!

Establishing new roots

The other day I was looking at my memories on Facebook and found my blog post from a year ago about why I stopped going to church. I had stopped going to church a year prior to that post so its been 2 years now. For those of you who dont know me or know me well it wasnt that the church I was going to was bad. I think I had just had it with church and christians in general. That doesnt mean I stopped believing in God either. I still study my bible and even go to a bible study, I pray and share my prayer requests with other believers to pray for me. I love Jesus and thats a huge part of who I am and why I am here. I just got tired of the nonsense and others opinions. Opinions like "you are too progressive in your thinking" or "or your views are too liberal". I love and accept ALL people. Some just make it a little harder to love than others and I find those people usually call themselves Christians which by the way I don't call myself that anymore. I am just a Jesus loving girl who wants to love all my neighbors, save the bees, play with my chickens and grow all my food in my back yard, learn about herbal medicines, meditate, take pictures of the moon, grow new things and drink lots of tea. Is that too much to ask?  If you want to learn any of those things then we can be friends.  It doesnt matter if we agree on religion, I don't care if you identify  LGBTQ or the other ones  I tend to forget. We are all human. I don't care what country you were born in or how you got here I am just glad that you are alive and I want you to thrive.

Micah 6:8

But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously— take God seriously.

I think sometimes we decide what would be fair and just to our neighbor. Someone is stealing gas out of our kiddos car. We usually leave it parked on our driveway at night. A few thought have been to slash this persons tires. Would that be fair and just since they need to maybe get a job so they can pay for their own stinkin gas? Well if they dont have money for gas but I am pretty sure they dont have money for new tires so we have made sure to park the car behind our gate and will look into getting a locked gas lid. I will pray that these people get their act together. 

I think there lies the problem we dont root for those how are not like us. What a different world we would live in if we helped each other reach our goals and be so happy when others fail because we dont like something about them. Seriously just bake the damn cake and wish them well. Yes I just went there

Zechariah 7:7-10

There’s nothing new to say on the subject. Don’t you still have the message of the earlier prophets from the time when Jerusalem was still a thriving, bustling city and the outlying countryside, the Negev and Shephelah, was populated? [This is the message that God gave Zechariah.] Well, the message hasn’t changed. God-of-the-Angel-Armies said then and says now: “‘Treat one another justly. Love your neighbors. Be compassionate with each other. Don’t take advantage of widows, orphans, visitors, and the poor. Don’t plot and scheme against one another—that’s evil.

Defining “Neighbor”

25 Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?”

26 He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?”

27 He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”

28 “Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.”

Sometimes I wonder if the problem in the world is  we do not really love ourselves. I think maybe our definition of love is warped. Maybe if we gave ourselves what we needed instead of what we wanted we would be happier and loving others would be easier as well. We need to unplug. We need to have quiet. We need to have enough rest. We need a million other things. I think we think we need more things when in reality we need to step back from lots of things.

I think that sometimes we are so rooted in our beliefs and maybe we need to establish new roots. To establish a new plant you dont just throw the whole thing away. You clip something from the original plant and you place it in fresh water that you change regularly and wait for those new roots to form. Once they are established you plant the plant in good fertilized soil so it can grow and be just as strong as the old plant.  All my parables are about gardening. 

If you are still reading this post I am glad you didnt leave. we will now talk about rosemary. The herb, thats not the name of the person stealing our gas if you were wondering. This is my rosemary plant its looking pretty good and I plan on babying it all winter to keep it alive outside. But you never know whats going to happen so I have clipped 10-12 pieces off the top to start indoors. I dont need 10-12 new plants but its doubtful all will take root and I have several people I can give an extra plant to for their garden.

This is the plant I planted this spring and its grown very nicely.

If you look hard enough you can see that the stem is lighter and gets darker and woodier towards the bottom. Cut right above where it starts getting woody. 

Here are the stems and a peppermint stem I cut on accident, Looks like peppermint tea for me all day.

Place your cuttings in clean water and sit along side your aloe vera plant vintage juicer you use to make lemonade for Mr Ladybug.Do you have an aloe vera plant? They are so handy to have in the kitchen incase you burn yourself.

This is a clipping from the original plant I clipped when I bought it just in case something happened to it, I clipped three and gave one away and I kept forgetting to water these two and one of them did really well and the other one is just sad looking but still has some green. I will bring them in when it gets cooler and we will see if I can bring it back to life.

Keep it Simple

I try to keep things simple but my brain is always saying GO BIG OR GO HOME. Then I usually go home all stressed out. I have a pretty busy week pulling things together for my dads celebration of life plus all the normal stuff that normally goes on in my week plus all this crazy rain making my pets act terribly. I bet I say to myself "keep it simple" a million times day.

Simple for you and for me can be two very different things. I know a few people who could whip up a fancy dinner party in 30 minutes and it looks so nice and they enjoy every single second of it and that is great and I love that they can do that and love that they love to do it.  I am not one of those people.

I was talking to a friend on the phone yesterday and we were talking about shopping out of your own pantry. That means using up what you have and not running to the store. This is a great time of year to start before the holiday cooking season arrives and it helps you to not have to throw away food that expires like the instant coffee I had from 2015 a few weeks ago, I bought it to use in homemade hot chocolate drinks. So yesterday I went through the canned food in my cabinet and found cream of broccoli soup. I am sure i was for a recipe long forgotten. I grabbed a can of cream of mushroom cooked some chicken breast, boiled some egg noodles and topped with some cheese that was going to expire on a week and dinner is served.

1 Chicken breast cooked and chopped

1 bag frozen broccoli

1 bag of egg noodles cooked

1 can of cream of broccoli soup

1 can of cream of mushroom soup

2 cups of milk

8 oz shredded cheddar cheese

Mix all ingredients together except for cheese, put into a 9X13 baking dish, top with cheese and bake 350 degrees for 1 hour.