catching up & organizing….

seems like that’s what I’m doing all the time yet, I’m still not finished nor  can’t seem to find anything!

I have gotten back on track with my cooking thanks to my friend Alicia and  encouraging bloggers, especially  Kelly @Faithful Prov and @crystalpaine aka Money Saving Mom.  Reading these two bloggers got me on the move again and the house smells yummy!  I was fairly successful at my attempt at bread making this time.  You know it’s always a surprise to see what the same ingredients, cooked in the same manner, will turn out to be!  It wasn’t pretty, but it is good.  A delicious meat loaf is in the oven, (recipe from moneysavingmom.com) and waiting for supper, now. 

In an effort to continue to improve our diets and health, I went to the Franklin Farmer’s Market.  I know it was a HAUL… but I was part of the way there anyway picking  up consignment clothes.  I found some great organic producers. They were all so nice, to explain things. The only drawback is no one is this way!!  Don’t they know folk in this area want to be healthy too??  I got some milk & cream from Hatcher Family Dairy.  Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise, there is a difference in fresh milk.  It is delicious!!  I am now on the search for someone reasonably close.  It just isn’t feasible to drive that far for  a gallon of milk.  I made fresh butter from the cream and it is so sweet and good on the toast and I put a bit in our corn last night and WOW was that good.

I also got a Shiitake Mushroom log while I was at the Farmers Market.  Yeah, I didn’t know they made these either??  But basically it’s a live cut log, with holes bored in it & covered with beeswax.  You put the log in the shade & wait.  Gather the few mushrooms it produced and then soak the log in the pond for a day, wait and more mushrooms will grow.  I figure $20 was cheap, if it produced only a few ‘shrooms.  We like them here, cooked especially.  The fella was telling me about drying them too… 

I also found a great planner  “The Well Planned Day” to try to use to keep our school days on track and focused.  It has other resources in it like meal planning as well.  Funny how that keeps coming up?? So day one (today) I actually used the planner and planned a meal.  Put a smiley face on my chart!

I have also moved my blog to WordPress.  That’s no small feat & I’m still trying to figure out how to get some of the sidebar items on here. (a long with a few other tweaks)  I’ll keep my Blogspot up for a bit longer.  So if you’re a WordPress user and have that figured out along with how to edit autosave feature, please let me in on it.

I also finally followed thru on my committment to build the Celtic Quilt Trail its own site.  I have had a link for it on the Chamber’s site for quite a while, but had told Debbie, the Quilt Trail founder, I would ‘fix’ her, her own site.  So take a second and check that out.  www.celticquilttrail.com   This is a great tourism tool for our county and Debbie has done yeoman work on it.

I think that has me up to date??

Ringing in the New Years

Even though all the holidays we celebrate are one day events on the calendar, it seems as though it takes several days to celebrate them. So like Christmas and all the others, it took more than one day to celebrate the New Year.

Paxton and I spent New Year’s Eve with Mims & Paps and then she & I took an impromptu trip to the movies. We left planning to just see Alvin & the Chipmunks, but then I remembered our Q for the Princess and the Frog, so we decided, since it was a holiday, we’d celebrate big and see TWO movies in one night (can’t let a good Q go to waste!)!! What a night of indulgence it was!! We had TWO Big Buckets of popcorn and TWO Big Sprites, a LARGE Maggie Moo Waffle Cone and a LARGE Hot dog. I just knew one of us would get sick before the night was over. We just had a ball together. I love times spent like that. We both liked Alvin & the Chipmunks, it had funny scenes and good music. The Princess and the Frog I was a little disappointed in. I had been under the impression it was a ‘different’ princess tale, where hard work pays off…. but in the end, the gal got her dream because she married into money! But other than that it was a great Disney movie.

New Year’s Day was spent with the Harris family. We got filled with great food and fellowship. Paxton got the opportunity to spend some more time with her cousins. We probably stayed longer than expected because instead of taking leftovers home for dinner….. we were still there at dinnertime and we just ate again there.

I hope each of you have a wonderful new year and achieve all your goals.

The Bible in 90 Days

    Bible in 90 Days

I am taking this challenge.  Come join me!  I figure even if I don’t make it 90 days or if it takes me 100 days, it’s a goal I haven’t yet achieved.  It will be a challenge to find time to make my brain stop to concentrate, but I will try.  Pray that I can stop the multi-tasking long enough to make this a habit and daily routine.
Please join me and the group of other online readers.
More info and support at Mom’s Toolbox

Bread!

I did it!!! I made edible bread!

The flavor is right, the texture is right, the weight is right, the height is right!!

It may not happen again?? I’m not sure what I did to make the difference, but it is delicious.

Many thanks again to JANE and her help.

Mushrooms

I think we must be full of it and living in the dark at our house. Look at all these mushrooms growing just around the yard. This is only some, a few have already come and gone. Just wonder if any are the good eating kind? If nothing else they are pretty in their own unique way. I can imagine the ‘fairies’ all around them at night.

Blood curtling scream….

I have heard OF them, but before last night I had never HEARD one. I was thrust into total alertness in an instant as the scream just kept coming. I made it to Paxton’s room in four leaps and less than a nano second. (well our house is small)It was about 1:20 a.m.

I have heard the scared scream about bugs of various species or when she thought the dog was going to bite her hand off taking a treat, but nothing like this. When she calmed down enough, she was able to tell that the problem was the monsters coming out of the closet. I told her “Momma don’t allow none of that around here!” In a few minutes she was back sound asleep….. Me I was up till 4:00 a.m.

Thanksgiving

We were able to celebrate a wonderful Thanksgiving with both our families on Thursday. We met with the Allen family at Aunt Bonnie’s; as has been the tradition for a 100 years now…. the food was wonderful as all the Allen ladies know how to cook and we devoured a roasted turkey and a fried turkey and it was hard to say one was better than the other. My Aunt Gail and cousin Rhonda moved to favored status by bringing requested fresh turnip greens and broccoli salad. The afternoon was pleasant and several of us ate on the back deck and the children took an adventure up to the top of the mountain behind her house. I don’t know what’s up there, I didn’t have the energy or room in my pants to climb!

We scurried from Aunt Bonnie’s to Granny’s house (Terry’s mom), for a dinner meal. The food was great there as well and we had fine fellowship with Terry’s parents and his brother’s family. We got our Christmas lists written and now to find those requested items….

Paxton has been anxious to get the Christmas tree up for some time and since I had no intentions of shopping at the crack of dawn, Friday was tree decoration day. We worked to put up lights outside, since we know we will be having holiday guests this year and I hope my rigging holds. Next was to haul everything out of our attic crawl space…. I did the crawling and Paxton did the hauling. Then the next chore was to LUG the tree out and down stairs. The straighting of the branches didn’t win any awards in Paxton’s patience, but finally it was done and time to start the ornaments.

Not long afterwards, Pax started complaining of her stomach hurting and the next thing I know she was running for the bathroom. Bless her heart, she made it all but two times the rest of the night. For the rest of the afternoon and evening she was sick and miserable. She had started to settle down and was ready for bed. As we were reading her second story, I could feel I was going to be in for a long night…. earlier in the morning Terry started his trek to the bathroom. All day Saturday the three of us just rotated from bed to couch to recliner and around. Finally today we are starting to feel somewhat better. No one yet has to brave much more than dry toast and eggs.

Maybe tomorrow the tree will get finished…..

The Kilgore lineage grows another branch.

Congrats to Jerry…. he’s a GREAT grandfather now… we always knew he was great.. just now there is a baby to prove it.

Welcome Miley Hope Johnson, born Oct 28, 2008.
Pictured are proud parents Jessica and Mattison Johnson. They are living out in Colorado near Peterson AFB where Mattison is stationed. So this clan of the Kilgore’s will have to wait another month or so for a formal introduction.

But we are very proud never the less!

Photos

Yes, I know all the photos are gone from the blog. I changed accounts and of course the photos left with the old account.

Just look forward to more new photos….. Halloween hopefully later today!