Birthday Sleepover Scavenger Hunt

I'm pretty stoked about this Scavenger Hunt list.  I should get a little bit of piece and quiet in the house while they search for these things.

8th Birthday Present

For as long as I can remember Shelby has been making a bow and arrow out of sticks and duct tape.  We thought it was time for her to get a real one.

English Shepherd Nap Time

Apparently, this is very common for English Shepherds.  They prefer to sleep on their backs and lie on their tummies.

Solo Camping

I camped with the girls on the way home from PA.  

Sleeping arrangements.

Baking potatoes and smores

Supper time

Our site

My view this morning....I have slept in the same bed as the kids nearly every night this week. It's been fun cuddling and talking as we fall asleep.

Some of the fun we had this week....trying on Grandma Jan's hat collection

iPod and DS Gaming Rules for the Wallace Children

I'm kind of sick of doing all the work, or having bad attitudes when I ask for help.  So I'm going to make the kids earn their free time.  This list must be completed each time, and verified for authenticity of actions, prior to even asking to play iPod or DS.

"The" rules:
#1.  It must be after 3 pm.  Don't even ask if it is before 3 pm.
#2.  You must have done your daily devotions and had private prayer time, and your personal time with God must have lasted at least 15 minutes.  Set a timer, so you're sure it lasted that long.  Don't guess at the time.
#3.  Your bedroom must be clean perfectly (including your drawers), and mommy needs to check it.
#4.  Your bed needs to be neatly made.
#5.  All clean clothes from today's laundry must be neatly put away.
#6.  You must have worked at least 4 hours with mommy doing whatever she tells you to do.  For every hour that you work with a good attitude, without complaint, you may earn 30 minutes of iPod or DS time.   The maximum amount of time you can earn is 2 hours.
#7.  You must walk through the Living Room, Dining Room, Bathroom, Kitchen, Laundry Room, and Hall and pick up and properly put away all of your personal belongings.
#8.  You must walk through the Living Room, Dining Room, Bathroom, Kitchen, Laundry Room, and Hall and straighten, clean, put away, or pick up at least 3 items that belong to someone else.
#9.  All the shoes on the porch must be in a straight line.
#10.  You must tell your sister 3 things you love about her, and these must be new things each day.

P.S.  When mommy goes to bed each night she will check to see if you left out any of your electronic equipment (including iPod, DS, games, transfer cords, charging cords, etc), and she will confiscate anything that was left out.  You will lose your electronic privileges the next day.  You must buy your equipment out of the confiscation bin by doing one extra chore of mommy's choosing for each item you'd like to buy back.

Another P.S.  If you'd like to earn 15 extra minutes of iPod or DS time you may present a written list of 10 things for which you are thankful, for which you have never before been thankful.  It must be written, and it must be neat.  It must have your name and the date on the top right corner.  Mommy must approve the list before the extra 15 minutes are used.

Cheese Success!

Making mozzarella and ricotta today was a HUGE success!!!!!!  I'm so happy.  Praise God that the process worked this time.  The last time I tried to make cheese, it was not such a success.

My ultimate dream is this....CHEDDAR CHEESE!!  I would have to invest in a couple supplies, but I did just find out we have the PERFECT basement for aging cheese.  I had just been lamenting the fact that our basement was a waste of space, because it's so cold and damp.  Well, apparently, that is the perfect environment for making cheddar cheese.  Who knew!

Can't wait to try it out!

I also recently found this article that shows lots of ways to use whey.  In the video I watched for mozzarella, the girl just threw the whey down the drain.  I almost died.  I couldn't believe it.  That is such a protein-packed beneficial part of milk.

Making Cheese

Tonight we're making cheese!!!!  We're using this recipe.  I've tried it before, but it didn't turn out so well.  So I watched this video to get a better perspective.  I feel like this time I can do it!  I really like the girl in the video and the company that makes them.  I learned how to plant and harvest my wheat by watching another one of her videos.

After we make the mozzarella, we'll use the whey to make ricotta using this recipe.

On Saturday, we'll use the leftover whey to make bread for the week, using this recipe.  It's the absolute BEST bread recipe I've ever tried.  The whole family loves it, and I think it tastes best when you use buttermilk or whey to make it.  Instead of making two loaves with the recipe, I usually make three.  Otherwise the bread is so big little people can't finish a whole sandwich.

Final Approval for Manuscript!

Months ago I was asked to write a booklet about Anxiety and Panic Attacks.  I had never been published before, so I was unaware of all of the parts of the process.  

I feverishly wrote and edited during my final months as Vision of Hope, sending in my manuscripts at different points of the editing process with just minutes to spare before the deadlines arrived.  It was a very exciting and humbling process, and I am very thankful for the wonderful editors and their helpful changes.

This booklet looks very different than my original version, but I think it is good and will be helpful for those that struggle with anxiety or panic attacks.

I'd honestly forgotten that I'd written this until the FedEx person dropped off my "Extremely Urgent" package, which was the final edition for approval before the booklet goes to print.  It should come out in October.  

What a fun way to end today!  

After livestock chores this morning, we spent the morning repairing storm damage to our garden from yesterday's straight line winds, and that was honestly a little discouraging.  In just minutes, hours and hours of work and months and months of growth were destroyed.  We spent some time praying in the garden out loud together that God would spare our garden from more damage.  

After that I canned dill relish while Hailey cleaned the bathroom and then both girls cleaned their bedrooms.  I had to redo one of the pints of dill relish because I had screwed on the ring too tight, and the lid buckled and caused an imperfect seal.  I also realized that my new canning pot takes longer to come to a boil than I previously thought, which was discouraging because it makes all of the process longer.  I also put away all of my canned items.  For the hours and hours of work that I've done this week, I only had 10 quarts of vegetables.  It was a lot of work, and each step took twice as long as it should have because I kind of don't know what I'm doing.

So on a week where every day has been full of failures and redos, it was good to be reminded that failures and redos are ok.  I got the final copy of my booklet that was rewritten many times, and the effort was worth it.  I don't know how to can very well.  I am going to screw up.  I hope that I don't kill our family with food poisoning in the process.  Hopefully, God will protect us from my inexperience and bless my efforts as fumbling and ignorant as they are.

Now we are rewarding ourselves for all of our hard work with a trip to the pool!

Beets!

Today we harvested this armload of beets.

We scrubbed and trimmed them.

Then we sliced them.  We loved the bullseye.

This is the finished product...two quarts of beets and 4 quarts of beet greens.

Day of Failures!

So today was a day of failures other than the butter, which turned out good, ...but at least we tried! 

Attempt #1 (which I've made tons of times)...Bread. I got caught up in pickle making and forgot about it, and it overrose in this hot humid air. Now it is defeated. The verdict is still out on how it tastes.

This is Hailey kneading it.  It was her first time to knead it completely by herself.

Here is our pick from the garden this morning.  This is our first cucumber harvest.

Here we are with our friend, Jenn, who usually comes to the farm on Tuesdays to be a country girl.  Here we are adding the spices to our pickle jars.

Unfortunately, this is the only jar of pickles that sealed.  One broke in the canner.  Four didn't seal.  But they do look pretty, and we will enjoy them from the refrigerator.  I do need to figure out why they didn't seal and rectify that situation though.  I'm not about to heat my kitchen up to 95 degrees and not end up with a pantry full of food for this winter.   This jar looks awesome.  I made it extra spicy for Brian.

In the background you can see one of my sad loaves of bread.  We have an amazing bread recipe that we use, but this batch got a little defeated today.  I believe I was trying to do too many things at one time.  Next time, I'll take each thing a little slower.  Today I was trying to work fast to keep the kids busy.  I don't want them thinking that each day's mission is to just play all day.  We have lots of work that needs done.

On top of this, our goats got out of the fence for the first time, and thankfully, as far as I know, they did not get into the garden.

There's always tomorrow.  I believe tomorrow I'll try a slice of the bread and decide whether it's fit for human consumption or not.  Thankfully, it wasn't made with the wheat I am growing.  I would probably cry if I had to throw out bread made from hand raised wheat.

And tomorrow I'll check the garden for signs of goat munching.  If I find any, you'll know....by the bloodcurdling scream coming from my direction.

Making Butter

This morning we made butter.

I love our old fashioned refrigerator dishes.

 We use the leftover buttermilk when we make bread, which is our next task today.

Making Pickles

There's just nothing quite like seeing someone do something you don't know how to do.  I've read at least a 10 recipes for making pickles, and I even remember vaguely seeing my mom make pickles when I was a kid.  But now that there's cucumbers in the garden begging to be picked, and I actually need to make them up I was feeling a little bit nervous about doing it by myself.

So YouTube came to the rescue again!  Here's the video I watched to learn how to make dill pickles.

I'm nervous, but excited.  My friend, Jenn, is coming over today to help us on the farm, and I think the first thing we'll do today is turn some of our cucumbers into pickles together!  I'll let you know how it goes.

Moving the Old Grass Pile

Yes, that is Hailey showing me how big her muscle is.

This is what I love to see....little girls working hard and building their self-discipline.  I'm also super glad to see that gross grass pile be gone.

Shelby LOVES trying to catch the ducks. This one's name is Enis.

Babies in Our Garden

How our garden grows so far.

William Wallace

The girls with our new pup, William.

We're back!

It's been years since this blog has seen action....but based on the huge DEMAND from everyone we know to "write a book," or "make sure you keep track of all this" I'm bringing the blog back.

So here's today's news and update to catch you up to speed.

I quit my job.  It was a wonderful job that I felt I was good at and brought benefit to, but we were starting to notice that the long hours and high stress level were not resulting in the kind of parenting successes we believed were what God called us to produce.  So after nearly a year of planning and transitioning, my last day at Vision of Hope was May 31, 2013.

My first day as a stay at home mom was June 1, 2013 and what a month it has been so far!

We've spent the past month working in the garden, taking care of our animals, getting a puppy, transitioning to me being in charge of the finances, and simply learning how to be together.  We have accomplished so much, and we have said at least a million times "This is the best summer ever."

Here is a rundown of life on our tiny little homestead farm:

• We bought chickens in February and we've raised them from babies to mature birds.  The roosters have been cock-a-doodle doing for about a week now.  That means eggs are sure to be near!  The kids and I cleaned up an old fenced in section of the yard, and Brian built me a chicken coop out of old pallets.  We have 43 chickens, about 7 of whom are cockerels.  We have a mixture of Buff Orpingtons, Barred Rock, Rhode Island Reds, and Aruacanas.  We also have about 20 straight run, breeder's choice, which are mostly a mixture of Cinnamon Queen Sex Links and Black Australorps.  About half will be butchered and put up in the freezer for winter eating.  We also have 2 White Pekin ducks and one fawn and white Runner duck, none of which will be eaten.  They're Brian's pets, but I do hope they'll produce eggs.
• We also got meat rabbits last fall, and we spent the winter trying to figure out how to breed them well enough to get a little to live.  On May 31, 2013, my last day of work, 7 kits were born to Ethel, our New Zealand rabbit, 4 of which survived.  There are 3 broken and 1 black kit, all of which were just weaned from their mother this week.  Ethel was bred again last week, so she should be having another litter here in about 3 weeks.  The 4 kits she had in May will be butchered in about another month, and they will be used for meat for the dinner table.
• On May 30, Brian picked up two pigs for us to raise to butcher.  He fenced in a smaller part of our barnyard and built them a home out of recycled pallets.  They are getting big.  Their names are Ham and Bacon.  We got sick of them digging up the barnyard so much, so this past weekend Brian and I ringed their noses.  Brian had to wrestle them to the ground, shove their faces through the fence, and I clamped down on their nose with the piercing tool.
• We have wanted goats for a long time, and just recently we found an Oberhasli Alpine Dairy goat farm locally.  They raise only registered goats, and their buck got to an unregistered doe.  We got to buy two little twin girls for a great deal.  I bought one and named her Clementine, and Shelby used her savings to buy the other twin, Penelope.  We're teaching them to walk on a lead, eat at their stations, and hopefully one day we'll breed them and milk them to make cheese for the family.
• We recently picked up our little English Shepherd puppy, William.  We searched for months to find just the right breed for our homestead farm, and he seems to be perfect.  We're so excited to have him!
• Last, but not least, Hailey's cat, Carolina, had kittens on June 3rd.  Not that we need any more cats, but it was cool getting to let the kids watch new born kittens.

Also on our property are 2 huge gardens.  We have lettuce, spinach, zucchini, green beans, pickling cucumbers, dry beans, sunflowers, cantaloupe, watermelon, carrots, radishes, beets, sweet peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, brussel sprouts, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, wheat, and turnips planted.  We are planning to can and freeze a lot for the winter.  Brian built me a little greenhouse this past winter, and I started most of those plants from seed.  

So, things on our little homestead farm are going well so far.  The transition to being home full time is going better than expected.  There have been a couple little bumps along the way, but overall I think this has been an overwhelming success.  There are little adjustments that needs to be made to our daily schedule, and how we have the kids spend their day, but those adjustments won't be hard to make.  The kids are playing a little more video game and watching a little more tv than we would prefer, but we did warn them that this week we're going to be making some adjustments.

I am so thankful to God for the amazing life He has given us.  This is better than we ever dreamed it would be.  We are so grateful, and we are so excited!  God gives good gifts to his children!