what I've been up to this past week...

Some day I'll get back in the swing of regular posting, but until then here's a look at what I've done this week:



on Saturday we went to the mall for a Curious George program (the baby girl had no interest in posing with the giant chimp)


the big girl was selected to go up on stage and play a quiz game about PBS kids' shows - she won a Curious George book


on Sunday the Hubster and I canned up 9 pints and 7 quarts of homemade chicken stock


on Sunday the baby girl began her obsession with "the basket"


on Tuesday I canned up 8 pints of homemade chicken stock


on Tuesday our scanner arrived from the National Consumer Panel - we now scan in all of our purchases and transmit the data to Nielsen


on Wednesday we enjoyed popcorn


Thursday we celebrated Michaelmas - I made a dragon bread that the Hubster slayed at dinnertime


and I also made a pear tart for our Michaelmas feast dessert - you can find the recipe here

Today is a baking day.

I've already got two loaves of bread formed and rising:


I used this recipe, but substituted olive oil for the butter and used a mix of half whole wheat flour and half white flour



and then I'll make a batch of cookies for weekend snacking and another pear tart or two for tonight's dessert. Later on today I'll also go grocery shopping and arrange all of our meals for this weekend.

This weekend is the General Conference broadcast and I like to have fun and easy foods on hand for the family to eat between conference sessions.

I feel so honored

Not one, but two of my needle felted creations were included in this treasury created by GetOutOftheBox on etsy.

Included are my flower fairy Eolande and my custom needle felted pond playmat with swan and doll.

Many, many thanks!

making popsicles

This morning the girls and I made popsicles. The popsicles we made were paper, though, not fruit juice!



I found this cute free printable over at Eat Drink Chic. The designer, Amy Moss, intended them to be used as a memory game but my girls are really more interested in imaginative play and they immediately became part of their play food collection.

It was an easy craft that the big girl, our 7 year old, was able to pretty much do herself. For obvious reasons I needed to provide a lot of assistance to the baby girl. :)

our 1/2 steer arrived today

In the photo you can see the boxes stacked in our back hallway.

The white and brown boxes contain our wrapped and frozen beef. The brown box on top contains the suet I asked them to send with the beef. Hopefully I'll be trying my hand at soapmaking this winter and hope to use the suet.

This year our 1/2 steer was 310 pounds and our cost (butchering included) was $2.41 per pound. Pastured beef for only $2.41 per pound! We fit all of the beef in one small chest freezer. If you can fit in a chest freezer (and they can be purchased for under $300 at most appliance stores - some below $200) it's really well worth the time to find a local rancher/farmer and buy your meat on the hoof.

more mincemeat on today's agenda

I'll be making up another batch of the pear mincemeat today.

When the harvest/food preservation season is over I promise to write out a few real blog posts.

Until then, know I do care about y'all and am thinking of you while I'm in the garden and in the kitchen!

I'm working on making pear mincemeat today

Come on over to my facebook page to see how I'm doing it.

I'll be updating this photo album throughout the process.

our house is a very, very, very fine house...

Those of you who were children of the '70s will remember the rest of that song (Our House) by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. For the younger folk I highly recommend looking it up!

I have a couple of cooking and canning posts in the works, but not quite finished. Until I get those wrapped up I thought I'd give you a visit to our house today. After reading Ginny's post over at Small Things to share with you the state of our house today.

So I walked about the downstairs and took several brutally honest photographs to share with you today.

Enjoy your impromptu visit to our house and "prepare to feel loved".

This morning I was once again squishing up tomatoes and have a pot of tomato sauce simmering on my stovetop right now. Later on it'll be pressure canned and put away for winter dinners.


a big 21 quart pot of tomato sauce simmering on the stovetop


the baby girl started her morning by pretending to be a librarian and she gathered up this basket full of books


another basket of books that "the librarian" gathered


the aftermath of tomato saucing - soon to be cleaned up


what you witness here is the "rocket ship" that the baby girl created while I was squishing up the tomatoes. she abandoned it to play dolls with the big girl


here you see the house in the living room that the girls created for their babies


doll strollers left empty because the "mothers" are off in the playroom dressing babies


the big girl sitting on the floor in the very messy playroom


the baby girl in the playroom - yes, she's still wearing a pajama shirt

How are things at your house today? :)

and today I'll be processing tomatoes

We had our first cold snap of the year last night and in advance of that I did a thorough sweep through the garden (what little there is this year).

I picked these two large bowls of tomatoes. A few are a little underripe and we'll let them wait a bit, but the rest I'll be processing them into tomato sauce today.






I also picked up one windfall apple, two little jalapeno peppers, and the girls helped me pick a few ripe raspberries.





We sliced into the apple and tried it. The girls claimed to like it but I could tell it wasn't quite ripe yet. The peppers will likely be diced and frozen for later use. Many of the raspberries were eaten by the baby girl and the rest I mashed and froze for to make into jam later on when I'm done with tomatoes.

and the winner is...

Angie!!!

The very first post was the one selected by the random number generator over at random.org


Angie, I'll be sending you an email shortly with details about how you'll receive your copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software. :)


If anyone would like to purchase a copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software, you can use the coupon code STMMMS87097 to receive $10 off the purchase price and also receive another $10 to use in the MyMemories.com store!

Today is the LAST DAY to enter the giveaway for the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software!

To enter the giveaway for a chance to win your own copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software visit the original giveaway post.

Here's a wrap-up of the projects I made to show you how fabulous this software is:


calendar pages



cookbook



recording your accomplishments



making gift tags



making a play menu


If you'd like to buy a copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software, you can use the coupon code STMMMS87097 to receive $10 off the purchase price and also receive another $10 to use in the MyMemories.com store!

using My Memories Suite to make calendar pages

Today's project is a calendar page made using the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software.

This page began with me selecting the option to design my own album. Then I chose the rectangular shape and a blank page.

The background paper is one of the textures. You can find it under Burlap - 1st Group. It's the Brown Gold color.

Then I selected the rest of the items from the Embellishments tab. The apple is found under Novelty. I did enlarge the size to 346 pixels high. The dates are from the Quick Calendar 2011-2012 pack. It's the month of September, 2011. The month and year titles are from the It's a Date pack. The stitching across the top is two rows of curved stitching in Forest and the ric rac across the top is the curved ric rac in Basil.



If you'd like to receive your very own copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software click here to enter the giveaway. Entries are open through September 14th!

If you'd like to buy a copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software, you can use the coupon code STMMMS87097 to receive $10 off the purchase price and also receive another $10 to use in the MyMemories.com store!

using My Memories Suite to make a cookbook

The cookbook I'm showing today is for the girls to use in their play kitchen, but you could also use the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software to create a cookbook of your favorite family recipes and include photographs of beloved family members as well.

To make the cookbook for the girls I started with a blank background and used the rectangular shaped page.

I selected the stone background paper in pink light (look under the texture icon for it).

For the cover I used the word art feature to create the title. The font is LDJ What Up in a size 58. I chose cranberry for the font color and it's solid. I added a shadow with a blur of 5. The title is centered over the pink lace embellishment from the Princess Diva set.

Strips of curved ric rac in ballerina pink are placed along the top and bottom of the page. Additional embellishments included flowers e18 and e20 from the Loving You 2 set.





For the recipe page I used the same blank background in the rectangle shape and selected the stone background paper in pink light.

The text on the recipe page is Arial in size 18 and bolded. I just used the text box feature and added a scalloped rectangle mat. The mat color is 225,225,224. The mats are found under the Shapes tab.

The only other embellishment on the recipe page is two strips of the curved ric rac in ballerina pink.

The photos are simple pictures that I took of some of the girls' play foods.




The back cover page is the same blank background in the rectangle shape and the stone background paper in pink light. Curved ric rac in ballerina pink is across the top and the bottom of the page.




If you'd like to receive your very own copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software click here to enter the giveaway. Entries are open through September 14th!

If you'd like to buy a copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software, you can use the coupon code STMMMS87097 to receive $10 off the purchase price and also receive another $10 to use in the MyMemories.com store!

using My Memories Suite to record your accomplishments

Today's post is about using the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software to journal not only family events and pictures, but your personal work and accomplishments as well.

I don't know about you, but I like to keep a visual record of the work I do around our urban homestead. It's not uncommon for me to have digital folders full of my year's canning, gardening, and other homecrafts.

The My Memories Suite software is an ideal tool to use to build up some digital portfolios of your work.

Here are a few sample pages I created to show you what you might do with the software:








If you'd like to receive your very own copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software click here to enter the giveaway. Entries are open through September 14th!

If you'd like to buy a copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software, you can use the coupon code STMMMS87097 to receive $10 off the purchase price and also receive another $10 to use in the MyMemories.com store!

making Christmas gift tags with My Memories Suite

Today's project is using My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software to create Christmas gift tags.

It was a very simple process! First, I downloaded the free (yes, free!) Classic Red Gift Tags kit and installed it on my computer.

Then I selected a blank background and added the Christmas Mats as an embellishment. I added text boxes to write in the "To:" and "From:". Some of the gift tags were blank mats that I added in the Word Art from the Classic Red Gift Tags kit and some were blank mats that I added in the Snowflakes embellishments from the same kit.



Next I decided to add in some photos! Since one of my girls is a pre-reader I thought it would be fun to create some gift tags with photos so it would be easy for the baby girl to tell whose gift was whose.

To create those I used the same Classic Red Gift Tags kit and selected the mats with snowflakes in the centers. I added in some photos and used the shape option to cut the photos into circle shapes. Then I centered them in the mats.



If you'd like to receive your very own copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software click here to enter the giveaway. Entries are open through September 14th!

If you'd like to buy a copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software, you can use the coupon code STMMMS87097 to receive $10 off the purchase price and also receive another $10 to use in the MyMemories.com store!

making a play menu with My Memories Suite

When I first received the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software one of the first things I did, of course, was try my hand at traditional scrapbook pages using digital pictures of the kids and other family members.

And while that was nice, I also wanted to see what other projects I could use the software for in addition to traditional scrapbooking.

And, since most of my creativity is focused on my daughters these days I immediately started to brainstorm projects for them.

One of the projects I decided upon was a menu. The girls love imaginative play and a while back they came up with a game they play with their daddy where they pretend to run a restaurant. After several months of this I finally put together a very simple printed menu for them to use.

The My Memories Suite software gave me so many more creative options for the menu design, though!

I first used the option to design my own page and started with the felt dots background paper in bubblegum. Then I added a text box with the name of the restaurant (they picked it, not me!) and the word "menu" in it. I added a pink ribbon from the Princess Diva Page Elements and some curved stitching in burgundy. That completed the front cover page.



Then I added another page. This page is the main menu page. Again, I selected to design my own page and used the felt dots background paper in bubblegum. I used the text box feature to type out the menu choices and prices. (Please remember the girls and their father created the menu choices!) I added embellishments in the form of the curved ric rac in burgundy and a cranberry flower from the All About Funk designer embellishments collection. That completed our main menu page.



I added one last page - the back cover. Yet again, I selected to design my own page and used the felt dots background paper in bubblegum. I used the text box feature to type out the wording and added the curved stitching in burgundy to match the front cover.



If you'd like to receive your very own copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software click here to enter the giveaway. Entries are open through September 14th!

If you'd like to buy a copy of the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software, you can use the coupon code STMMMS87097 to receive $10 off the purchase price and also receive another $10 to use in the MyMemories.com store!